Melbourne lawyer Andrew Fraser, who represented Walsh St accused and Alan Bond, dies of cancer
Former lawyer Andrew Fraser, who earned a reputation as a notorious courtroom brawler before he was jailed on serious cocaine charges, has lost his long battle with cancer.
Police & Courts
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Former gangland lawyer Andrew Fraser has lost his long battle with cancer.
He died early Wednesday afternoon after a morning spent calling relatives and friends from hospital to say a final goodbye. He was 72.
The man who lived life on his own terms, though not always wisely, left it the same way.
“I’m pulling the plug,” he told one friend just before 11am. He waited for his son Lachlan to arrive at his bedside to join his second wife, Arts executive Lindy Allen.
At his own request, Fraser’s oxygen supply was turned off and he died around 1.30pm.
Fraser was a controversial figure even before he was arrested and jailed on serious cocaine charges in 1999.
He was an aggressive courtroom brawler admired by a long list of criminal clients who believed he was their best chance of staying out of jail.
Even Fraser’s critics agreed that he was a master of obtaining bail for his clients and then securing the services of the best criminal barristers to keep them out of jail.
Listen to Andrew Fraser telling his incredible story to Andrew Rule
His bruising courtroom manner won success but also many enemies in the police force and critics in the legal profession.
The animosity some police had for Fraser was aggravated by his robust defence of career criminals charged with shooting two young policemen in Walsh St, South Yarra, in 1988.
The Walsh St accused were ultimately acquitted but that victory did not win Fraser many admirers outside the underworld that he knew too well.
Among his long-term clients was the notorious Dennis “Mr Death” Allen, a vicious drug dealer (and police informer) linked to the deaths of more than a dozen people.
Fraser was also on close terms with “criminal royalty” in the person of Lewis Moran and his brother Des (“Tuppence”) and sons Jason and Mark.
Lewis Moran sent Fraser a string of clients for many years until it was clear the underworld’s favourite lawyer was breaking one of the iron rules of old-time criminals: don’t get high on your own supply.
Fraser started using cocaine after a bikie gang leader tossed him a bag of the drug as a “gift” when Fraser was going away for a weekend at the Adelaide Grand Prix in the late 1980s.
It was the beginning of a slide that would see Fraser eventually using the drug every day, which led him to make increasingly erratic decisions.
He gave advice to his own cocaine dealer on how to import the drug, a conspiracy that cost him five years in jail — part of it in high security with some of the state’s worst prisoners.
After his release in 2006, he rebuilt his life from scratch as an author, documentary maker and public speaker. He leaves two adult children from his first marriage.
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