Police Tape Blue Sirens: Deborah Wallace reveals ‘gut feeling’ about murder of MP John Newman
She was one of the first officers at the scene of the murder of Labor MP John Newman. And Detective Superintendent Deborah Wallace has her own theory about who was responsible. LISTEN TO THE PODCAST
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Senior Constable Deborah Wallace was at home when she got a call about a murder in Cabramatta and she rushed straight to the scene.
She had been off duty that night. But because of there were so few detectives in the troubled western Sydney suburb at the time, whenever there was a murder everyone had to pitch in.
By the time she got there, the police tape was already up around the crime scene. Local MP John Newman’s body lay on the driveway.
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The deputy state coroner, John Hiatt, also turned up. Det Superintendent Wallace said he came to get a feel for what happened. They both sensed the enormity of the crime that night, September 5, 1994.
The pair knew each other well, due unfortunately to time spent dealing with fatal overdoses in Cabramatta – which in the 1990s was a drug epicentre.
The deputy Coroner asked Det Superintendent Wallace to walk through the crime scene and was known so far about what happened. Mr Hiatt also asked about her “gut feeling” on the likely killer.
“I probably shouldn’t have said it, and I was probably a bit naive, but it was just instinct, I said to him, “I don’t think it’s very sophisticated ... I don’t think it’s an assassination …like you see on tele. It has been done really quickly.”
He questioned why she thought that - because in effect John Newman had been assassinated.
“I said “Yeah, but there are so many bullet holes, scattered around ... I don’t think they’re very good at this.”
She went on to say if it’s gang related (because Mr Newman was very outspoken about gang members), “then I think it could be an Asian gang member, if anything.”
“He said you’re like profiler.”
“I said, ‘No, no, no. It’s just they’re (Asian gang members) are very good with machetes, it is usually their weapon of choice - but not very good with guns’.”
Deborah Wallace has talked about the crime scene of Australia first political assassination as part of the Police Tape podcast series, Blue Sirens.
The podcast series talks to policewomen around the country at the peak of their careers including detectives who worked on Melbourne’s gangland murders, Australia’s first woman bomb squad technician, a Deputy Commissioner and an FBI trained criminal profiler.
In her 36-year career, Det Superintendent Wallace has been the Commander of the Asian Organised Crime Squad, the boss of the Middle Eastern Organised Crime Squad, and now is the commander of the combined State Crime Command Gang Squad. She is the first police woman to hold every one of those positions.
Seven years after Newman’s murder, a local club owner, Phuong Ngo, who wanted Labor Party preselection for the seat of Cabramatta and had run against Newman as an independent in 1991, was convicted of orchestrating his killing.
No one has been convicted of carrying out the shooting.
Det Superintendent Wallace was a rookie cop when she started in Cabramatta and the 5T gang were terrorising the streets.
The suburb has been a hub of for immigrants and refugees from Asian backgrounds. Before Newman was murdered he had fought to combat organised crime and corruption that plagued the area.
But the 5T gang didn’t faze her.
Instead she used to meet them at the local coffee shop to discuss how she could break up their gang to which they laughed and said “many people have tried to do that before you”.
They developed a strange rapport, with them warning her one night about roaming the streets on her own.
“I had a terrible head cold and I was going up to the chemist. I got out of the car ... and three gang members pulled up beside me and said “Madam where are you going? ... It’s very dangerous, this is Cabramatta, you know the reputation of Cabramatta’ ...”.
She said “yeah but the reputation is about you guys. You’re the machete wielding criminals.”
“Oh yeah you are right,” they said. But still they waited for her while she got some medicine and walked her back to her car.
Det Super Wallace said when she asked them why they had become a gang in the first place, she said it was because a lot of them had come from prison camps and didn’t have any family to guide them and they had no English which meant no chance of a job. So they did robberies just to survive.
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Originally published as Police Tape Blue Sirens: Deborah Wallace reveals ‘gut feeling’ about murder of MP John Newman