Killing Time Read online

  One poor Marlborough prisoner was the subject of a supposed prank by four prison officers. The so-called prank came about when the officers concerned told the prisoner that it was his turn to leave the jail with the screws to get the doughnuts for the unit that week. To show you how gullible this young man was, no doughnuts are brought in from the outside, ever, for any prisoner. That clearly didn’t cross his mind, and he didn’t have the mental capacity to intellectualise the fact that there were no doughnuts, ever. He fell for it and was very excited at the prospect of going outside the prison to buy a treat for the unit.

  The officers told the prisoner that, before he could go out, however, he had to participate in a security drill, which involved him inserting up his bum a sausage from the kitchen wrapped in a bit of glad wrap. He would then see if he could get through the security at the front door to go outside the jail and purchase the doughnuts without the staff at the front gate discovering the “contraband”. What followed was that the prisoner stuck the sausage into his anus and went with the officers to the front gate, where he was immediately strip searched. As happens in a strip search, once you are naked you are ordered to turn around and bend over and part your cheeks (about as demeaning as it gets) – “smile for the Governor”, as it’s called – and lo and behold there was the end of the sausage sticking out of this kid’s bottom.

  Apparently this preying on a gullible young person by precisely those employed to protect him was a source of great hilarity. A photograph was taken of the sausage in situ and the young man was allegedly threatened with being charged with trying to remove an item from the jail. Needless to say, as he had failed the bogus security drill, there were no doughnuts for little Johnny and he was sent back to his unit. All the screws thought this was a huge joke and this story got around the jail very quickly.

  This would not have gone any further had the young fellow not casually mentioned to his parents on his next visit that he had failed a security drill during the week and hadn’t got any doughnuts. Once the parents heard this all hell broke loose and the senior supervising officer involved, Mr (he always insisted on being addressed as “Mr”) Trevor Spearman, endeavoured to cover up the whole incident on behalf of the other three officers. (By the way, I was always taught that respect is something that is earned, not demanded. So much for MR Spearman!) All four officers concerned were stood down and there was an investigation.

  The wash-up of this so-called “Sausagegate” was that the young man has now, I understand, received a substantial payout by the prison and the officers were all sacked. Can anybody therefore explain to me how, when I was at Melbourne Airport recently, I spotted Trevor Spearman checking hand luggage and clothing at the departure gate? Believe it or not, Mr Spearman is still working in the security industry, actually X-raying your luggage, coats, shoes, etc. before you board a plane to depart Melbourne. How does Trevor (Mr no more!) have a job in the security industry after being dismissed for being prepared to cover up the incident? I suppose it’s because there are very few sausages exported from the passenger terminal at Melbourne Airport!

  What amazes me more is the fact that this young man was taken from his unit without any proper paperwork. He was taken to the front door of the jail without any paperwork at all, and was then submitted to this unnecessary humiliation by officers, all supposedly in the name of a bit of fun. The preying on the weak by an officer who is trained to know better is inexcusable.

  I noted with interest that one of the other officers dismissed over “Sausagegate” was an officer by the name of Russell Davies. Mr Davies had an unpleasant disposition and clearly didn’t like his job at all. One evening I had finished a visit with my family, and I was coming back out to the strip room where you are taken out of the monkey suit that you wear on a visit and then strip searched. The monkey suit is a one-piece garment with a zip up the back with a cable tie placed around the top of the zip, the theory being to stop you secreting any contraband around your person. It clearly doesn’t work because the entire jail is riddled with drugs. However, the procedure is that you come out from your visit, you take your key off the key ring board, unlock your locker and take your clothes into the strip room where you are strip searched. After the strip search you head back to your unit.

  I followed this usual procedure and Mr Davies, without warning, started screaming abuse, venting a tirade of fuck this and fuck that upon me. It was all to do with me taking the key off the key rack. I was absolutely dumbfounded at his attitude, and I told him in no uncertain terms. A hush descended over the entire strip room because not many prisoners spoke back to the officers. There were three other officers on duty there and they all said nothing. The crooks thought there might be some fun and games as a consequence, so they all stuck their heads around the corner into the strip room to see what was going on.

  Davies screamed at me that the procedure wasn’t to (fucking this and fucking that) take the keys off the key rack, but rather for the officer to do it. Talk about a storm in a tea cup. I had been in jail about two years by this time and that was the first occasion on which this alleged procedure had ever been outlined to me. I was merely following the practice that I’d been following whenever I had received a visit. Nevertheless, Davies continued to scream abuse and berate me, becoming so red in the face that I thought he was going to blow a valve. I just stood there.

  I made every attempt I could not to infuriate the screws for obvious reasons, and this bloke’s berating out of the blue really shocked me.

  We subsequently went into the strip room and he conducted the strip search. As I was leaving I said to him: “I want you to remember one thing. One day my sentence will be over. I will go home and I will work hard to make a success of myself once again. In the meantime you will still be here looking up blokes’ arses in the strip room!” I did not know at that time how prescient my comments were but after Sausagegate it became clear that Mr Davies had gone one step further than just looking up blokes’ arses!

  The next day I was on my run when Davies appeared in the compound where I was running and walked over. He said he wanted to talk to me about what had happened last night. I said to him “Is this official business?” He said “No.” I said, “Don’t talk to me ever again unless it’s on official business” and I kept running. I looked back as I was running around and he was still standing there clearly nonplussed by my reply.

  If you stick to your guns and let them know that you are not prepared to be walked over, or stood over, then by and large the officers are essentially gutless bullies and only prey on the weak.

  While on the subject of officers, the other aspect that is perennially kept quiet is the issue of trafficking of contraband by officers to prisoners. It is not just drugs, it is general contraband. Pornography can be purchased, even alcohol can be purchased. While I was at Fulham, a medium and minimum security prison, you were at some stages able to buy for $100 a bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label Scotch whisky, which at that time had a retail of less than $20. Some blokes were that desperate for a drink that they paid their $100, particularly around New Year’s eve.

  The big ticket item, of course, is drugs. Drugs are trafficked within the jail not only by crooks but by officers. Yet again it surprises me the lengths that the authorities go to, and by this I mean the Office of Corrections generally, to hush up these misdemeanours. The obvious reason for the hush-up is that it reflects badly on the system, as it should.

  In my previous book I talked about fellow inmates trying to sell me drugs, and prison officers attempted to as well. In Port Phillip it is on for young and old, it’s every man for himself in the drug trafficking department! As it turns out, both the prison officers who tried to sell me drugs have been charged with trafficking and have been dismissed from the prison service. How long had the trafficking been going on? The answer is: quite some time. It was common knowledge that these officers were selling drugs, and if that was the case, and all the prisoners knew, how come it took the authoritie
s so long to wake up to it?

  The first time I was offered drugs by an officer was when I was walking back from the gymnasium one day while I was in Sirius East. Because I was in maximum protection I could not go anywhere through the main part of the jail without being escorted by an officer. There were just the two of us and we were chatting away about football and he said to me, “Are you right for everything? “Yeah, I’m pretty right.” He said, “Well, are you right for everything?” with the emphasis on “everything”. I looked at him and said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Do you need any drugs?” He was as blatant as that and I thought it was a setup. In any event I was well and truly clean of drugs by then and, as now, and I wanted nothing to do with them. Even so, he said if I changed my mind he could easily get me some cocaine. He told me it would be $4,000 for half an ounce or $600 for a gram. He was quite specific about the type of drug and the amounts and the cost. I declined his kind offer and nothing further was said about.

  Another prison officer at Port Phillip was charged too. She and I had had a similar conversation one day when I was being escorted to the gym. I was not the only prisoner this happened to; it happened regularly.

  While on the subject of the gym and prison officers, what about the prisoner who was having sex with a female gym guard? The shit hit the fan well and truly, the crook being shipped off to the slot and the screw getting the heave-ho. This was not an isolated incident. Another bloke, Joe, with whom I had been in Sirius East was moved out of protection to a medium security prison and, hey presto, started horizontal folk dancing with one of the female staff, the inevitable result being that young Joe was sent back to Port Phillip for a cold shower or two!

  One officer at Fulham suicided in the prison car park after he had been found in possession of child pornography.

  It was blindingly obvious that the gymnasium was the handover point. I have seen packages change hands there that were obviously drugs because of the size of the package and the way in which it was slipped from one hand to the next. Easy to miss, but equally easy to spot if you know what you are looking for. With my history of drug abuse and the clandestine nature of the drug industry, it was apparent to me what was happening. Once a crook had scored he would head for the toilet and “boot” the drugs (stick them up his bum) and then head back to the unit where it was party time!

  It’s interesting that, since I raised the issue, in my last book, of officers selling drugs and of drugs in jail, not one person has come out and said that I am lying. I find that an extraordinary acceptance of guilt by omission. Have these officers been dealt with by the courts, and what penalty was imposed, if any? Have you seen a result published in the media? I haven’t.

  The other random observation I wish to make doesn’t surround the prison officers and the way the prison is run, but rather the genesis of some of the prisoners and some of the trends that appeared to emerge. The one that interested me the most was the number of ex-servicemen in custody for crimes of violence. In particular, there were four blokes in there who were all ex-army. All in for shooting murders. Three were in for indiscriminate murders and the fourth was in there for a totally irrational piece of behaviour which resulted in a murder and one attempted murder.

  One of them, Julian Knight, is infamous in the state of Victoria as the Hoddle Street killer. He murdered a number of people in cold blood, for no apparent reason, in Hoddle Street one night many years ago. Knight is in custody and there he shall remain until he shuffles off this mortal coil.

  On its own this is not so interesting, but the second army person I came into contact with in Sirius East was Andrew Norrie, another member of the Dupas crew. Norrie was a former soldier who had been hitchhiking to Victoria from Queensland when he was picked up by a couple. Norrie murdered these charitable people, who had picked him up out of the goodness of their hearts. One of the victims had been made to run through the bush while Norrie and his co-accused had pot shots at them, just like at target practice.

  The third was Bobby “the Batsman” Pickford, so called for his serial self abuse that went on day and night. I know because I was in the next room and could hear! Bob had also been hitchhiking after discharge from the army and had murdered a mum and dad, yet again for no apparent reason, had sex with both people after they were dead, and kept their bodies in the back of their utility, which he stole and drove away from the scene of the crimes. Some weeks later the Batsman was brought undone by a Vietnam veteran who, when walking down Darlinghurst Road in Sydney, smelt a stench coming from the car. Being a Vietnam veteran he knew precisely what that stench was and called the police. Pickford has now done twenty-three or twenty-four years and I understand he is just about to be released or has been released.

  I happened to live with Pickford at Fulham and he was completely unready for life on the outside. His sole preoccupation was to clean out the jail’s rubbish bins. That was his job and nothing else occupied his day except his obsessive bin cleaning. No rehabilitation, no courses and no leaves. To say the Batsman was not ready for release is an understatement.

  The poor old Batsman had undertaken a basic cookery class in jail and had worked in the kitchen at Pentridge, he believed he was a “Silver Service Chef”, whatever that may be! At every turn he would tell you, usually incorrectly, how to cook a particular dish.

  I have always been a bit of a cook and once I arrived in the cottages at Fulham and was able to do some proper cooking I got right into it. The weekends were the highlight of my existence because that was when visits were allowed. I was very lucky that not one weekend went by without one of my friends making the trek from Melbourne all the way to Sale. Sale has nothing to recommend it, so those who visited did so purely out of friendship and not to take in the local sights.

  I became a bit of a dab hand with cake cooking and I used to cook most of the week in eager anticipation of my visitors. We were allowed to take food out to the visit but unconsumed food could not go back to the unit. Visitors were not allowed to take away any food either. Leon Woods, one of the screws, would not even let my son take a muffin I had baked for his birthday out of the jail. The look of disappointment on my son’s face tore my heart out. A good bloke is Mr Woods.

  One night I was baking a Lumber Jack cake for a visit and the Batsman was watching. I told him what I was baking and he observed that there was a lot of desecrated coconut in the recipe. I could not believe what he had just said, so I corrected him, telling him the coconut was desiccated, not desecrated – but no, Bob wanted to argue the toss. In exasperation I finally told him not to argue with me when it comes to the English language because desiccated means dried (and in this case shredded), while desecrated was what he did to mum and dad in the ute when he killed them! He did not get the joke!

  Another Batsman story: Bob would use every dish, saucepan and utensil in the joint to make one small pizza base. One day I walked into the kitchen and there was stuff everywhere: on the benches, on the floor and on the stove. I asked whether Bob had caught “that bloke”, to which he replied “Which bloke?” I said “The one who threw the hand grenade in the kitchen.” Again he did not get the joke.

  The fourth ex-serviceman in for a murder was Frank Garner, who also lived in my cottage at Fulham. How’s that for the daily double: living with two blokes, both off their cruets and both convicted of indiscriminate murders! Garner had been involved in what he perceived as a matrimonial slight from his ex-wife and had gone around and blown his ex-wife’s boyfriend away through a closed door. In other words, shot the wrong person and so then had tried to kill his ex-wife as well. I lived with Garner for over a year.

  Norrie and Pickford had blocked their crimes out of their memories, so much so that they didn’t think that they had committed any offence. Garner came from the other direction, was totally unrepentant and said he would do it all over again if the opportunity presented itself. Now that he has been released, one wonders what benefit he has had from being in prison. I worked with him in the laund
ry. Andrew Norrie cleaned cells at Port Phillip until he was deported. He undertook no programs, and in fact did nothing for himself, that would ready him for the outside world. Bob Pickford cleaned rubbish bins at Fulham until he was released. What a ripping effort in the rehab department!

  What is going on in our armed forces if these types of people are accepted into the armed services when they are clearly not mentally stable? Is it the army that fails to address the issue or discover the problem while recruiting, or does the army make these people that way? Whichever way it goes, it is a disturbing trend.

  The second and more unsettling aspect is that not one of these men, as far as I could see, received any treatment at all that dealt with the matter of their extraordinarily violent offending. All four men had served, or are serving, big sentences and were to be released back into the community without any adequate preparation for what I personally found a confronting return to the real world. If I felt so confronted re-entering the community after five years how must have these blokes have felt after a double figure whack? Nobody seems to ask these questions and most assuredly the Office of Corrections volunteers no answer. It further raises the question: What in God’s name is the Parole Board doing? It is well known in prison that there are certain answers the Parole Board seeks when interviewing a prisoner and if you answer correctly your parole chances are greatly enhanced. These blokes finish their sentences and they are let out the door. They are let out the door without any preparation for the outside world and if they can’t cope out there, the obvious reaction is that they are likely to kill again.