A Mafia Murder? the Nca Bombing

By Michael Madigan

Almost two decades after her husband was killed when he opened a parcel bomb, Jane Bowen-Sutton is still learning about the circumstances of the horrific act.

Geoffrey Bowen died when he opened the parcel at the Adelaide office of the National Crime Authority (NCA) in March 1994.

"Just coping with Geoff's murder and having two young sons probably was all I could cope with [at the time]," Ms Bowen-Sutton said.

Now a new book about the bombing is filling in some of the gaps for her.

The NCA Bombing: A Mafia Murder? is written by Adelaide author Michael Madigan and traces a line from the bombing through the world of Italian-Australian organised crime.

It paints a stark picture of ruthless criminal gangs who controlled the lucrative marijuana trade in Australia in the 1970s and 80s and who, in part, created the need for a national police force to investigate their activities.

That force became known as the NCA and began having an impact as it made arrests and large cannabis crops were destroyed in South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

Madigan outlines how the crime syndicates were linked with the notorious Ndrangheta, the Calabrian organised crime group.

"Ndrangheta has infiltrated the whole world. They own the cocaine market and are responsible for the death of a number of people in Australia, including Geoffrey Bowen," he said.



The author spent more than five years researching the book and said the NCA bombing was a "stain on the soul of Australia".

There is a $1 million reward for information about the bombing, but Madigan thinks it needs to be increased five-fold to convince reluctant witnesses to come forward.

The author sent the first copy of his book to Jane Bowen-Sutton when he received it.

She admitted it was not an easy read but said it was important for her to understand and know what her husband was up against.

Mike Sexton ABC TV

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 31, 2016
• ISBN: 9780975674680

Book preview

Prologue

When two sides go to war…

July 15, 1977

7.15pm

‘Fred’ Bazley sat nervously in the driver’s seat of his large white Ford, in the car park at the rear of a country hotel in N.S.W. He was cold but refrained from turning the ignition key to start up the heater. Bazley’s eyes focused on the rear vision mirror. He had adjusted it so he could see who was coming and going from the rear door of the hotel. The car park was in complete darkness, as he had earlier broken the globe of the overhead lighting. Bazley cradled his trusty old weapon; the French made ‘Unique’ .22 long pistol which dated back to the late 1930s. Attached was a homemade silencer.

Bazley froze when he saw his tall target walking towards his car, carrying what looked like a cask of wine. The tall figure veered towards a small white mini-van, only metres from Bazley’s passenger door. Bazley gently pushed the unlocked driver’s door open, and quietly walked over to the white van. He could hear the jangling of keys; the tall man was having trouble unlocking the door in the winter gloom. Bazley lifted his pistol, took aim at the lower part of the targets head, and squeezed the trigger. His victim’s arms flayed as he fell forward onto the van’s side panel, and then to the ground. There was the sound of a savage thud as his head hit the concrete. The second bullet blew open his chest; another pieced the victim’s scalp, spraying blood onto the side of the car door and the wooden fence a few metres away. Bazley tucked his gun into his trousers, and then dragged the man towards the rear of his Ford. Gurgling sounds from the slain victim filled the chilled air. Bazley was momentary spooked as he saw a man in a suit look out from a nearby office building, but the darkness provided sufficient cover. Blood was gushing out of the tall man’s wounds onto the assassin’s clothing, as he heaved the body into the boot of the car with all his strength.

Bazley whispered to himself, stay calm, as he turned the ignition key. There was a moment of silence before the roar of the V8 engine came to life. With adrenaline pumping through his veins, he slowly drove out of the car park onto the main street. He desperately tried to keep within the speed limit, even though his instincts told him to flee as fast as he could. As he reached the edge of the town, Bazley planted his foot hard down on the accelerator pedal, eager to put distance between himself and the crime. The ‘job’ however was not over. He had to dispose of the ‘tall man’.

The town was Griffith. The murdered man was Donald Mackay (43), a small business operator.

Bazley (born in 1924) was a hardened Melbourne criminal who played a key role in the violence which corrupted the Melbourne waterfront in the early 1970’s. Bazley could aptly be described as a stand over man. He was a fervent supporter of union faction leader and multi-murderer, Bill Longley. Bazley once stood defiantly and menacingly, with a gun in his hand, at the foot of a ballot box the day of a Painters and Dockers Union election. Following the ballot, Bazley was wounded in an ambush. He was blasted with machinegun fire as he opened his front gate of his North Carlton home. On the way to hospital he shocked the ‘ambos’ by calmly pulled out a bullet, deep within his shoulder.

Bazley could not have imagined the uproar his callous killing of Donald Mackay would create. The three .22 bullets that ended Mackay’s life began a war. He was just a cruel ‘hired gun’; he had no idea the man he had just murdered was a prominent anti-drug campaigner who was creating waves around the Griffith district. Mackay had been upsetting the ‘business’ of Griffith based Italian drug barons, who were reaping in millions of dollars in the growing and distribution of marijuana throughout Australia.

Mackay’s body has never been found. Initially, police stubbornly described the crime as a disappearance, even though they had found at least two cup fulls of blood on the ground, next to his car door. The killing so outraged the Australian public that a special Royal Commission was established to find out who were the main players behind the Australian illicit drug trade. Justice Philip Woodward chaired the Royal Commission between 1977-80, and he concluded that the Calabrian Mafia known as ‘Ndrangheta, dominated the illicit drug industry within Australia, and that the organisation was responsible for the disappearance and murder of Donald Mackay.

The break-through in Mackay’s murder investigation came in 1983 when Police pulled over Gianfranco Tizzone, driving back from Griffith to his home in Melbourne where he was the distributor for the Griffith Mafia’s illicit drug business. Inside his car, police found 97 kg of marijuana. Facing a long stretch in Melbourne’s Pentridge Prison, he decided to come clean and become a ‘song bird’, telling police all he knew about the Griffith mafia to gain his freedom. During an interview with Victorian Homicide Detective, Carl Mengler, Tizzone opened up; he named names.

Tizzone: The threat by Mackay to our operation was considered so important that the problem was discussed at a meeting between Tony Sergi, Tony Barbaro, Bob Trimbole, and myself in Griffith. During the meeting, we discussed three alternatives to solve the problem. One was to buy Mackay off at any price; another was to compromise him by getting him involved with a woman. The third alternative and the last resort was execution.

Tizzone, Bazley and gun shop owner George Joseph were all found guilty in the Victorian Supreme Court of conspiracy to murder.

*

Australia’s criminal history is littered with references to Italian organised crime, dominated mainly by Calabrian criminal societies. Police authorities have known them as ‘The Honoured Society’, ‘Ndrangheta, La Famiglia (The Family) or in some cases, ‘Mala Vita’ (Evil Life).

Crimes by the Italian Mafia have been recorded as far back as 1907 when a Sydney police station received a threatening letter, warning police not to investigate a murder. Accompanying the letter was a crude drawing, in black ink, of a handprint. It was from a member of the ‘Black Hand’, an Italian criminal gang. During the 1920s, Vincenzo Dagostino and his Black Hand group of thugs terrorised fellow Italian migrants in the Queensland cane fields, using knives, guns and bombs to get their way. Calabrian criminal cells also engaged in extortion and murder in Western Australia as far back as 1922, Victoria in 1926, South Australia in 1927, and NSW in 1929. Police intelligence believed that up to 11 Italians were murdered in Queensland, Sydney and Griffith between the late 1920s and early 1930s.

In 1964, John Cusack, of the US Federal Bureau of Narcotics, was invited to Melbourne to help the Homicide Squad investigate a number of ‘Ndrangheta murders, connected with the Queen Victoria wholesale produce market. State Governments of Victoria, and New South Wales, then commissioned him to report his findings. Cusack reported that the secret society of ‘Ndrangheta had over 500 members in NSW, 300 in Victoria, with links to all states across Australia. He listed their ‘business’ areas as extortion, prostitution, counterfeiting, sly grog, illegal gambling, and the smuggling of aliens and small arms. He believed that without immediate action from police authorities the criminal group in 25 years would have diversified into all facets of organised crime as well as legitimate businesses.

A number of Royal Commissions in the 1980s produced common conclusions regarding the fight against organised crime. The reports emphasized that police forces across Australia had largely been ineffective against the sophisticated, and cashed up crime syndicates. Traditional methods of detecting and investigating were ill suited to the task of controlling the burgeoning drug industry that crossed all borders of Australia. There was also the prickly issue of parochial state police forces being reluctant in sharing information with each other.

In 1983, Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser submitted to Federal Parliament a bill that would see the birth of the National Crime Authority (NCA), a police authority that had new and extended policing powers that crossed all state borders. Before the bill became law there was a general election, which saw the Labor Party elected under the leadership of Bob Hawke. The Federal Parliament finally passed the legislation in 1985.

The NCA chiefs handpicked the best police officers, lawyers, and other skilled civilians from across the land. All investigations were tightly controlled and targeted. The legislation deemed that the NCA could only investigate criminal activities specifically given to them (referred to as a ‘reference’) from the Inter Government Committee (IGC), made up of participating federal and state ministers on behalf of their governments.

On one side of the war, were the NCA, Its brief history and structure in the open, for all to see. Its direct opponent was the deadly and secretive Italian criminal sect, ‘Ndrangheta. This strange sounding word supposedly means courage or manliness, and is pronounced, en-drang-get-ah.

‘Ndrangheta

Recent studies of ‘Ndrangheta show that this criminal fraternity emerged almost fully formed from inside the Calabrian prison system around 1870. In order to survive the harsh conditions inside Italian prisons, some prisoners formed secret pacts. Once on the outside, this bonding continued, primary for criminal gain. However, the membership of ‘Ndrangheta in the twenty-first century is now principally along the pathways of kinship; built around family.

As with the other three Italian mafias – Cosa Nostra (Sicilian), the Camorra (Naples), and the Sacra Corona Unit (Puglia), the solidarity of the group is enhanced by what is termed - ‘Omerta’. Omerta is an ironclad, code-of-silence that every member must abide by. Cooperation with police authorities is forbidden. Of course, there have been many instances of this code being broken by Italian mafia men, however few betrayals have come from the tongues of the ‘Ndrangheta fraternity, whose strength lies in its family blood-line structure.

‘Ndrangheta’s power also comes from its ancient rituals, which bond the men together for life. Selected recruits become Made Men at a ceremony similar to a Christian Baptism. The ceremony has variations, but usually involves the burning of a Christian ‘holy card’ in the palm of the hand, drawing blood from the thumb with a cut from a knife, while swearing his allegiance to his criminal blood brothers. The recruit is now deeply rooted in an organisation that has total control over him; his only option for escape is death, natural or otherwise.

This ‘brotherhood’ commitment takes precedence over both family, and religion. ‘Ndrangheta men believe they are a breed apart, living outside the law of governments. Only their laws are relevant.

‘Ndrangheta’s epicentre in Calabria is centred on two small villages: Plati, which is often described as the ‘heart of ‘Ndrangheta’, and San Luca, the ‘soul’ or the ‘cradle’.

Adelaide, Evil and the NCA

South Australians are looked upon as being ‘different’, as their State was formed by free settlers, not colonialised with the blood and sweat of the convicts and troopers from England. The citizens of its capital, Adelaide, are proud of their heritage and have been political leaders of the world on a number of issues including democratic rights for women, where it was the first Australian colony to allow women to vote, and had the first Parliament in the world to allow women to be elected as members. South Australia in the 1970s also led the way with homosexual reform, and Aboriginal land rights under the guardianship of the much loved, bisexual Premier, Donald Andrew Dunstan.

But the ‘City of Churches’ is often lampooned as a rust bucket, where nothing gets done, and nothing changes. Too conservative is a label regularly pinned on Adelaide’s lapel. South Australians are also looked upon as a poor cousin. In the early 1990s the Government owned, State Bank collapsed, leaving the citizens of S.A. owing billions of dollars. At the time, it was the biggest banking collapse, per capita, in the world.

To counterbalance its sleepy exterior, South Australia has a much publicised sinister side. The so called, ‘evil’ underbelly of Adelaide has been the talking point of many social commentators, including acclaimed author, Salman Rushdie who described Adelaide as a Gothic village and the perfect setting for a Stephen King film. Since the 1960s Adelaide has had some of the most bizarre crimes ever recorded in Australia.

Adelaide had an experience of ‘evil’ on Australia Day, January 26, 1966, when three children, now known as The Beaumont Children, disappeared at the popular beachside suburb of Glenelg. I was playing on the sand at Glenelg beach on that fateful day, as a nine year old with my brother, four sisters and parents, enjoying the blazing hot morning. No trace of Jane (aged nine), Arnna (seven), and Grant (four), has ever been found. Within six years, two more children, Kirsty Gordon (four), and Joanne Ratcliffe, (eleven), went missing without a trace at the historic Adelaide Oval while watching a game of Aussie Rules.

‘Evil’ decided to take up residence in Adelaide in the 1970s. Clifford Cecil Bartholomew became Australia’s most notorious mass murderer, when he ended the lives of his family. Seven children and three women were bashed and shot in a farmhouse in a secluded part of the beautiful Adelaide Hills. The murderer was released from prison after only eight years; serving nine and a half month’s imprisonment, per life.

Adelaide couldn’t take a trick with the bizarre way people were being murdered. There was the body in the freezer episode. Lawyer, Derrance Stevenson was murdered by a single shot to the back of his head supposedly by his eighteen-year-old male lover; then dumped in his kitchen freezer, locked down with superglue. It looked to most observers to be an organized hit. Stevenson had enemies. Stevenson was known around some Adelaide circles as a ‘procurer of young boys’. He was just one of many in the vast paedophile network entrenched in the city. The 1970s was the decade when the mantra, anything goes, as long as nobody gets hurt, echoed around the streets of Adelaide. Well, hundreds of children were hurt, badly. This sorry story is only now, slowly being told.

Between, 1976-78, police were baffled by young women going missing on the streets of Adelaide’s CBD. The village of Truro is situated along the road to the beautiful wine growing region of Barossa Valley. Five young women were buried there in shallow graves. (Two other girls were found at Port Gawler; and Wingfield). A young man by the name of Worrell; described as charismatic, ‘picked them up’ while scouring the streets of Adelaide and killed them…. ‘Evil’ only stopped when he died in a car crash.

Adelaide is probably best known for ‘The Family’ murders. A group of men menaced the streets of Adelaide in the late 1970s and early 80s, kidnapping and killing five young men. One victim was the fifteen-year-old son of Channel Nine News presenter, Rob Kelvin. The deviant responsible was Bevan Spencer Von Einem; a cardigan wearing, book-keeper who was convicted of murdering Richard Kelvin but has never faced a trial for the other deaths. Rumours were rife at the time that ‘The Family’ was made up of ‘old money’ professionals…but that’s a story that will never be told.

Apart from the bizarre nature of Adelaide crimes, there was another issue bubbling beneath the surface; illicit drugs. Of course almost every city in the world has a drug problem, however John Bannon’s Labor Government in 1987 decided in their wisdom to decriminalise the growing of marijuana plants, if grown in your back yard; ten plants were allowed per household, for your own use! Adelaide soon became known as the ‘Pot Capital of Australia’. Hydroponic stores boomed. A cottage industry sprung up where drug syndicates harvested the crops in a ‘win win’ deal for all involved; the profits were huge. The marijuana potency strengthened five-fold; the damage done is an ongoing story…

Corruption was never a major issue in the eyes of the governments and police hierarchy in South Australia. S.A. Police were highly regarded and unquestionably ‘straight’; until a secret Federal Police operation, code named Vigilante, targeting Italian criminals, slipped silently into Adelaide in 1986. The operation was led by an impressive young cop by the name of Mick Keelty (2001-2009 Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police). The Italian Mafia was put under intense scrutiny, and a number of marijuana crops were spotted being tended by newly arrived Calabrian farmers. However, the big surprise was that the leader of the drug operation was Barry Moyse, the Head of the S.A. Police Drug Squad! In public Moyse was a high profile anti-drug campaigner who helped organise the South Australian, and later national drug phone-ins. The national dob in a druggie campaign was launched in Brisbane by Moyse and the infamous Queensland Police Commissioner, Terry Lewis who was later convicted and jailed for corruption as a result of the Fitzgerald Inquiry.

With a ‘shock and horror’ response to the Moyse arrest, the Bannon Government called in the big guns. The NCA came to town to set up a permanent office. The S.A. Attorney General, Chris Sumner in February 1989 commissioned the NCA to investigate whether there was any truth in claims that, senior public officials, including politicians, are reluctant to tackle the issue of public corruption because they are being blackmailed. A short time later, Sumner had to identify himself as the person who was being investigated. Sadly, he collapsed with a nervous breakdown. The NCA did get to the bottom of the allegations. It found that there was a man, who looked almost identical to Sumner, who had engaged in kinky sex with prostitutes, but it was ‘another’ Chris Sumner! Sumner (the politician) was completely exonerated of any wrong doing, and eventually recovered to continue as a competent and respected government minister.

A confidential NCA report was handed to the S.A. Government by celebrated ‘corruption buster’, Justice Donald Stewart, on the last day of his tenure as Chairman of the NCA on July 30, 1989. The report was damning of certain police procedures and named 56 officers. However, the incoming head of NCA, Peter Farris shelved the report and put out a briefer, more circumspect report in December 1989.

To help clean up Adelaide’s mess, Australia’s most respected cop was seconded. Former Head of the Victorian Homicide Squad, Carl Mengler was appointed as Chief Investigator and hit the ground running with a number of breakthrough investigations. However, his momentum and enthusiasm was soon dampened. His Adelaide NCA boss, Sydney lawyer Gerald Dempsey, was gravely ill, dying of AIDS. Dempsey was not up to the job, and Mengler became hamstrung with what he wanted to achieve.

Their working relationship had an explosive ending. One night Dempsey’s car was fire bombed outside his Parkside home, and in his anger claimed a member of the NCA Adelaide office was the culprit. That night Dempsey rang Mengler (who was in Melbourne) in a rage, and according to a witness, his voice rising to a shriek, demanded to know who had leaked to the media information about the authority’s latest investigation. Mengler was stunned by Dempsey’s allegations. Dempsey then demanded he hand over the combination of his office safe. When Mengler refused, Dempsey obtained the combination from confidential NCA records, opened the safe and ransacked its contents. Mengler was furious at Dempsey’s irrational behavior and was backed up by his loyal NCA staff, who threatened industrial action in retaliation to Dempsey’s actions.

Mengler resigned soon after in disgust, and sought saner pastures as a member of the Queensland Justice Commission. In an interview soon after leaving, he hinted at outside pressures while he was at the Adelaide NCA office, We were doing extremely well until about mid-1989 when I became aware we had to close down certain investigations. Things were not good.

In June 1992, the NCA appointed a fresh faced, broad shouldered young man from the W.A. Drug Squad, to lead a new ‘reference’ investigating Italian organized crime; Operation Cerberus. Geoffrey Leigh Bowen came to Adelaide…

1

Hidden Valley

August 20, 1993 - Six members of the Northern Territory Tactical Response Squad watched the sun setting in the remote outback near Daly Waters, 600 kilometres south of Darwin and 3 kilometres off the Stuart Highway. In 1861 the explorer, John McDouall Stuart named the area after discovering a series of natural waterholes, used for sustenance for thousands of years by the traditional landowners, the Jingili people. These ancient deep wells were once again in use, helping to grow thousands of marijuana plants.

The winter air was heading towards zero as the police officers bunkered down for another night of surveillance on the massive crop, tended by members of Australian/Italian organized crime. The elite police were dug into fine red sand that surrounded the crop site, and were keeping their heads down low, as the crop minders were about to embark on a deadly ritual. Every night, the ‘happy campers’ would grab their automatic assault rifles, and randomly fire rounds of ammunition into the mulga scrub.

Tonight’s sunset was stunning. The rich orange and red glow from the setting sun mixed seamlessly with the striking blue sky. The serene moment was smashed by a sudden, deafening noise of automatic gunfire. The muzzle of the weapons leapt to life with fire. The police were showered with leaves and bark, stripped off by the power of the bullets blasting the trees and bushes. There were many close shaves as the metal missiles ricocheted off stones, which then whistled past the camouflaged clad police. The trigger-happy men laughed in delight at the power of their weapons. Police speculated whether the shooters were scared of the dark or just randomly protecting their multi-million dollar asset. Protecting crops is a normal procedure for marijuana growers, although usually the deterrent is a deadly booby trap. Trip wire attached to a loaded shotgun is a favourite; carefully placed fishhooks in scrub near the entrance of the crop is another ‘unwelcome sign’ not to enter.

For four days, police had been keeping a watch on both the campsite where the marijuana was being grown, and the homestead, which was a few hundred metres away.

The Usual Suspects

August 21 – At 7a.m. a campervan left the crop site. Police in two unmarked cars trailed the van along the Buchanan Highway for a short distance, until they drove up parallel to the van and flashed their police identity badges. The two occupants were ordered out of the vehicle, and police began their search. It was not long before a satisfied looking police officer stepped out of the van and held aloft a number of suspicious looking, black garbage bags. Police had uncovered 79 kilograms of compressed cannabis estimated