Gangland mystery: Sara Morse discovers assassin Terrence Blewitt’s fate
Underworld assassin Terrence Blewitt had been missing for 12 years, his fate unknown, until a gangland murder case led a tenacious cop to literally dig up the brutal answers. LISTEN TO THE PODCAST
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EXCLUSIVE. His skeleton was dug up fully clothed and wearing a balaclava. But when Detective Senior Sergeant Sara Morse noticed he had a bullet hole in his back — she knew she had the right man.
Career criminal and underworld assassin Terrence Blewitt had vanished without a trace 12 years earlier. No one knew what happened to him, and Blewitts’ family hoped he was just lying low on a beach somewhere in Thailand.
His disappearance was likely to have remained a mystery, if Detective Senior Sergeant Morse hadn’t been called in to investigate the murder of another Melbourne mobster, Graham “the Munster” Kinniburgh.
It was during this murder inquiry, she came across information that led to the discovery of Blewitt’s remains.
It is a strange and twisted tale about the slayings that gripped Melbourne for years and how it has taken a new turn with the underworld figure jailed for shooting Kinniburgh, Stephen Asling, now hoping to be the second man freed over concerns about evidence potentially tainted by Lawyer X, the barrister turned police informer Nicola Gobbo.
Asling is reportedly planning an appeal on the basis that the criminal supergrass who gave evidence against him was linked to Gobbo.
Detective Morse reveals the story of finding Blewitt in the latest episode of the podcast Police Tape: Blue Sirens.
The podcast series talks to five policewomen around the country including the top cop dubbed the gang buster for smashing her way through the nation’s network of outlaw motorcycle gangs, the Deputy Police Commissioner who has been stalked, harassed and had death threats as well as an infatuated offender, Australia’s first female bomb technician, and an FBI-trained criminal profiler.
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Carlton crew member Kinniburgh was shot dead outside his home in 2003. He had been hit in the head, the shoulder and the thigh. At least three guns were fired in a shootout that night.
Mob boss Carl Williams had confessed to police he ordered the hit on Kinniburgh but wanted an indemnity against prosecution before signing a formal statement.
Williams, who was himself murdered in prison in 2010, had been dealing with Petra Taskforce detectives regarding the 2004 murders of police informer Terence Hodson and his wife, Christine, when he raised the Kinniburgh killing and allegedly identified those he tasked with carrying it out.
Detective Morse was struggling to make progress in the Kinniburgh investigation and so started focusing on Blewitt who was also believed to have been involved in Kinniburgh’s murder.
She tasked her team with going back through phone records and checking calls to Crimestoppers and within half an hour they found a lead.
Detective Morse then hired a large digging machine and headed to the northern suburb of Thomastown.
She said they had dug up half the suburb before they finally found Blewitt’s body buried under three metres of dirt and rubbish in an old industrial site.
After being buried for so long, all that was left of him was a skeleton.
She knew of Blewitt’s previous injuries, including a gun a shot wound suffered when he was fleeing prison.
But Blewitt’s body had a new wound, a gunshot wound that had come from the back to the front.
He had been murdered.
Detective Morse said it was “extremely rewarding” to be able to return him to his family after he had been missing for so long.
Detective Morse has been awarded a string of medals for her work, including Detective of the Year, a Commendation for the Kinniburgh investigation, and she was given a Medal for Merit for her work on the Petra Taskforce investigating the Hodson murders.
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