Widow of Laurie Prendergast says someone knows the truth

The widow of murdered gangland figure Laurie Prendergast says there are still people alive who know what happened when her husband vanished 36 years ago.

Laurie Prendergast in police custody in 1978.

The widow of murdered gangland figure Laurie Prendergast says there are people alive who know what happened to her husband.

Prendergast, who disappeared on August 23, 1985, was last week declared dead and the likely victim of homicide in a ruling by a Victorian coroner.

The Victoria Police missing persons squad had reinvestigated the case in recent years and Coroner Caitlin English made the ruling last week, 31 years after a previous inquest finding that Prendergast may not be dead because he had incentive to disappear.

Prendergast, then 35, was a suspect in the multimillion-dollar Great Bookie Robbery of 1976 and was acquitted of the 1978 murder of Les Kane, a member of a powerful Painter and Docker family.

Laurie and Ursula celebrate the birthday of their daughter Lauren.

Ursula Prendergast outside the Coroner’s Court in 1990.

But to Ursula Prendergast and the couple’s daughter, Lauren, he was a husband and father whose loss still has a huge impact today.

They had fought for years to have a finding that he is deceased, one of their wishes being that he be farewelled with a proper Catholic funeral.

“Imagine if your husband or loved one never came home one night,?” Mrs Prendergast said.

“Imagine the pain, torment and anguish that you and your children would have to suffer, if that one night became 36 years?

“This is the unresolved hell that my family and I have had to endure since 1985.”

The family’s ordeal was compounded by a lack of certainty, Mrs Prendergast said.

“Every wedding anniversary, birthday, Father’s Day, letters I still receive to this day addressed to my husband, all serve as painful reminders that we are still without answers.”

Laurie Prendergast was acquitted of the 1978 murder of Les Kane.

“Laurie’s body was never found, no search party, no anonymous tip-offs, no breakthrough evidence and not even listed in the database of the National Missing Persons,” she said.

But there were people still holding on to the secrets of what happened, Mrs Prendergast said.

“The court acknowledged that my husband Laurie is deceased, as a result of a suspected homicide.

“We still believe that someone out there holds the answers we seek and can bring justice and closure to our family.”

Prendergast’s car was found abandoned in Heidelberg in the days after he was last seen alive.

He had started to sleep with a gun under his pillow in the weeks before vanishing.

Lauren Prendergast told the Coroner’s Court last week no conclusion other than murder was possible.

“Especially considering every close friend or associate of my father’s has been murdered over the course of the past 40 years,” she said.

Among those friends were armed robber Ray “Chuck” Bennett and the hitman Christopher Dale Flannery.