A roll call of Roger Rogerson’s hits and misses

When Roger Rogerson shot drug dealer Warren Lanfranchi dead in Sydney’s Chippendale, it wasn’t his first killing.

Undated photo of Warren Lanfranchi.

When Roger Rogerson shot drug dealer Warren Lanfranchi dead in a back alley in Sydney’s Chippendale, it wasn’t his first killing. And it wouldn’t be his last.

The 1981 shooting was por­trayed as an arrest gone wrong. Rogerson, then a detective serg­eant in the NSW police, claimed Lanfranchi pulled a gun. So he shot him in the neck. The shot wasn’t fatal, so he fired another into Lanfranchi’s heart.

There were suspicions at the time, espec­ially after Lanfranchi’s girlfriend, Sallie-Anne Huckstepp, dropped the bombshell that he had been on his way to pay Rogerson a $10,000 bribe. Five years later, Huckstepp was found dead. Her drowning murder, which captivated the nation, remains unsolved.

Rogerson was cleared of wrongdoing at a coronial inquest in the wake of Lanfranchi’s death. It wasn’t until 17 years later that Neddy Smith, the Sydney gangster and “Mr Big” for whom Lanfranchi had worked, gave a different version of events.

Smith was Rogerson’s informant. They allegedly shared the proceeds of drug deals and robberies. On trial for another murder, Smith told the court he drove ­Lanfranchi to the meeting with Rogerson. He saw Rogerson exe­cute Lanfranchi in cold blood.

Rogerson had shot men before, in the “line of duty”. On June 29, 1976, he and fellow members of the Special Weapons and Operations Squad tracked bank robber and jail escapee Phillip Western to a fibro house near Avoca Beach on Sydney’s central coast. When Western tried to climb out the window, the squad fired. The shot that killed Western was Rogerson’s. He told a documentary: “We all fired and we blew his head off.’’

A year later, Rogerson and his men lay in wait outside Souths Juniors in inner Kingsford after a tip off. Lawrence John “Butchy” Byrne was planning to steal the payroll. When Byrne pulled up in his Valiant, detectives opened fire. Byrne died in hospital from wounds from Rogerson’s weapon.

The Valiant, Rogerson said, “looked like your mother’s ­colander”.

Lanfranchi’s murder four years later was the start of a different chapter. On a June evening in 1984, undercover cop Michael Drury was shot and nearly killed as he stood in the kitchen of his home in Sydney’s northern Chatswood. Drury had busted Melbourne drug dealer and underworld figure Alan Williams in a sting two years earlier.

Williams later pleaded guilty to the attempted murder. He accused Rogerson and hitman Christopher Dale Flannery of conspiring with him to kill Drury when he refused a $25,000 bribe to let Williams off. Rogerson was cleared. Williams was convicted.

Flannery, known as Rent-a-Kill, went missing a year later and was declared dead — presumably murdered. Suspicion fell on Rogerson, but he never stood trial.

For five years after Lanfranchi’s death, Huckstepp maintained Rogerson murdered her boyfriend. She was smeared as a former heroin addict and prostitute but she was bright and articulate and good TV “talent”, appearing on the Nine Network’s 60 Minutes.

After she was found drowned in Sydney’s Centennial Park in 1986, Smith was charged for the murder, but cleared. Despite a four-year inquest that lasted until 1991, no one was convicted.

Glen McNamara claimed he asked Rogerson about Huckstepp in a February 2016 conversation. Rogerson allegedly said: “F..k me, she had to go.” He also ­allegedly confessed to McNamara he was behind the murder of Williams, suspecting the heroin dealer of fingering him to the police.

He allegedly confessed, too, to involvement in the murder of an unknown Hong Kong Australian heroin dealer, Luton Chu, who “thought he could outsmart his suppliers”. McNamara said Rogerson told him: “I helped my Chinese friends fix him up for good. Cops thought about (Neddy Smith) for it, no one was ever charged.”