Brothers: Justice, Corruption and the Mickelbergs

First published in 2011 by

FREMANTLE PRESS

Fremantle Press Inc. trading as Fremantle Press

25 Quarry Street, Fremantle, WA 6160

(PO Box 158, North Fremantle, WA 6159)

www.fremantlepress.com.au

Copyright © Antonio Buti, 2011

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.

Editor: Janet Blagg

Designer: Allyson Crimp

Cover image: Marcelo Santos/Getty Images

ISBN 9781921888472 (paperback)

ISBN 9781925815085 (ebook)

Fremantle Press is supported by the State Government through the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr Antonio Buti was educated at the University of Western Australia, Australian National University, Oxford University and Yale Law School. He is a member of the Western Australian Parliament and Honorary Senior Fellow at the Law Faculty, University of Western Australia. Dr Buti’s biography on Sir Ronald Wilson, A Matter of Conscience, won the 2007 Western Australian Premier’s Book Award for non-fiction and the Premier’s Prize.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

A. Buti, Separated: Aboriginal Childhood Separations and Guardianship Law (Sydney: Sydney Institute of Criminology, Sydney, 2004).

A. Buti, A Matter of Conscience: Sir Ronald Wilson (Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2007).

Co-authored:

A. Buti and S. Fridman, Drugs, Sport and the Law (Mudgeeraba: Scribblers Publishing, 2001).

D. Thorpe, A. Buti, C. Davies, S. Fridman and P. Jonson, Sports and the Law (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2009).

If the law represents an expression of moral sentiment, then police officers stand as instruments of that morality.

Chief Bob Harrison

Vacaville (California) Police Department

68(8) FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin

August 1999

Dedicated to Oxford

CONTENTS

About the Author

Preface

Acknowledgements

Prologue

1 If the Crown pleases

2 The Yellow Rose of Texas: ‘It like to broke my heart’

3 Caught at gulley

4 Brian’s release

5 The Mickelberg Stitch

6 1987

7 Justice under fire

8 Gold

9 Corporate cowboys and rough diamonds

10 Tangled webs and the deceivers who weave them

11 Red Emperor — the one that got away

12 1998: Court gives Ray the finger

13 The evil that men do

14 Lewandowski comes to the party

15 The justice system: flawed and floundering

16 The final appeal

17 The verdict

Epilogue

Bibliography

Endnotes

PREFACE

A few years back I was asked by a supporter of the Mickelbergs to write a book about their twenty-five year campaign to have their conviction overturned. The supporter and the brothers, Ray and Peter, were keen for a book to be written. While a tough challenge, I thought it worth writing a book which analytically scrutinised the various legal issues in play and chronicled in detail the Perth Mint swindle and the Mickelbergs’ confrontation with the criminal justice system.

The brothers have always maintained that they served time in gaol only because some of the police officers investigating the case had behaved corruptly, fabricating evidence. Ray and Peter Mickelberg wanted to make these officers pay. Their court saga spans twenty-five years; it involves seven unsuccessful appeals before the eighth and final appeal in 2004. Whether they embarked on their journey from a sense of outraged innocence or from a personal need for retribution is for others to decide. But whatever motivated them to engage in it, their long struggle has had a socially valuable outcome.

There are two possible consequences of police corruption in a case like this. First, if the corrupt police get away with it, an innocent person might go to gaol. Second, if a court uncovers behaviour that corrupts the judicial process to the extent that a jury does not have before it all the evidence, or it has before it evidence that police officers have corrupted in their zeal to get the job done, a guilty person might go free. In each instance, the public has been let down and the integrity of the police force has been tarnished.

While the courts have a significant role to play in maintaining the integrity of the justice system, the police must also play their role; they must look within to uncover, remove, and punish corrupt officers. Invocation of mateship is neither warranted nor defensible when corruption rears its ugly head. True esprit de corps results not from sticking by your colleagues come what may, but from expecting and demanding that those who want to share in the proud tradition of the police force behave in a manner that reflects and enshrines the normal, decent standards of the community. This is the moral I draw from the Mickelberg story.

The Mickelberg story is part of a larger narrative about the temptation to take a furtive step outside the moral boundaries for a cause one thinks is noble, or, in some cases, in spite of the fact that it is not. That is why I have included accounts of corporate cowboys who were taking such steps over the period that the Mickelbergs were pursuing their personal cause. There are stories, too, of those who lived in the shadows, but often could not avoid the glare of the media spotlights, never referred to as crooks or criminals but by the titillating euphemism ‘well-known identity’. Nor were politicians immune to the opportunities that the rambunctious 80s threw up. The Mickelberg saga was regularly upstaged by disclosures of the deeds of errant politicians, such as Western Australian premiers Ray O’Connor and — later and more spectacularly — Brian Burke.

And then came more bombshells; two revelations of police corruption that preceded by many years the Mickelberg case, and one that emerged at the very time that the Mickelbergs were approaching the end of their long journey. These were three separate instances of wrongful convictions for murder for which three innocent men went to gaol, and each the result of corruption by police officers to whom no noble cause can be attributed.

I have included accounts of these other instances of corruption because they added grist to the Mickelberg mill; over twenty-five years they were able to point to each new revelation as support for their claim that corruption was endemic. And in the process they became adept at enlisting media to make their feeling known to the public.

Their twenty-five year war of attrition against the police force had a dramatic finale. The case was over, the appeal court had quashed their conviction, but, in an impassioned address to the media, the Assistant Commissioner of Police still declared them guilty. Such were the passions of this extraordinary battle. I have recounted the verdict and its consequences in chapter seventeen.

I spent approximately twenty months writing this book, and more than three years doing the research on which the writing is based. I interviewed many people and spoke informally with others, including Ray and Peter Mickelberg. Some of those with whom I spoke would only do so off the record, and thus unfortunately I have not been able to record their views and opinions here. I trawled through court transcripts and documents, legal judgments, legislation, inquiry reports, Hansard speeches and media reports. I have also referred to several books and journal articles dealing with various aspects of rules of evidence, criminal law, police conduct and corruption. Two books by Avon Lovell, The Mickelberg Stitch and Split Image, were a valuable resource. I do not claim that my chronicle and analysis is the only one possible. But it is my honest and detailed assessment. I can do no more.

A note about courtroom dialogue

In chapters one, two, three and sixteen, I have taken counsel and witness dialogue from the official court transcripts. In presenting the case for the Crown I have attempted, in my reconstruction of the courtroom dialogue, to present the oral evidence in the way the jury would have heard it. You, the reader, can react to the dialogue in your own way, making up your mind as you read whether or not the jury would believe what the witnesses were telling them. I have adopted the same approach with defence counsel rebuttal of the Crown’s case. This, I think, allows you better to appreciate the nature of the jury’s task in teasing out the truth from the often self-serving evidence of witnesses from either side.

Endnotes

It is unavoidable that, in recounting the court process, many terms common to legal practitioners, but not so well known to those outside the legal system, will appear. Unless they are vital to understanding the unfolding narrative, I have consigned these terms to endnotes. There they are available to you if you wish to know more, but, in the meantime, they do not interfere with the narrative flow of events.

Antonio Buti

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to thank first my dear friend Eric Fisher, without whose help, advice and encouragement over the years, I could not have completed this book. You are a most special individual and I am privileged to have your friendship and counsel. Thanks also to my dear family of Mandy, Alkira, Paris and Tennessee for your continuing love and support. You are all very precious to me, as is our new puppy, Sophie. And to my beautiful mum, Mimma, thanks for your delicious scones, which provided much needed sustenance for the early morning writing sessions.

I spoke to many people in researching this book, some in person, some by phone and some by email. I deeply appreciate the useful and valuable information generously provided by: Carol Adams, David Baxendale, Mike Dean, Jamie Edelman, Alison Fan, Rod Hatcher, Rex Haw, Hal Jackson, Bob Jennings, Bob Kucera, Peter Mickelberg, Ray Mickelberg, Jim McGinty, Graham Pidco, Robert Radley, Harold Tuthill and (the late) Henry Wallwork. Thank you all. Others of you to whom I spoke wish to remain anonymous, and I am respecting your wishes. But that does not lessen my gratitude for your contribution.

To Joe Freeman, thanks for your research efforts, which made the daunting task of researching and writing this book a little bit more manageable. I also thank Bevan Eakins, a cool dude with a fine mind (even if he does support the Pies) and excellent editorial pen — great work and thanks for referring me to Jane Fraser at Fremantle Press. A nicer and more helpful publisher would be difficult to find. Jane, you have made the ‘torture’ of the publishing process that much more bearable through your sensitivity and understanding. I am deeply grateful to my editor Janet Blagg for her skills and pushing me that bit harder to make this project as good as we could possibly make it. To the whole team at Fremantle Press, thanks for being such a talented and supportive bunch.

To my former employers, Murdoch University and the University of Western Australia, my appreciation for providing the ideal environment in which to undertake this project.

Finally, I sincerely thank a certain person for his outstanding generosity over so many years. I have not named the individual here but his support will never be forgotten by me.

PROLOGUE

Police divers mostly love their job — work that takes them under the temperate waters of the Indian Ocean or the Swan River where, for at least six months of the year, the diving weather is ideal.

But on an otherwise perfect day in 1983, they were not a happy lot, despite the welcoming waters off the coast of Kalbarri. A favoured tourist destination 800 kilometres north of Perth, this was where Raymond and Peter Mickelberg had made a very good living diving for abalone, which was why the police divers were there.

They were frustrated. For months they had painstakingly crawled across the same area of seabed, every centimetre of it, searching for gold. This was not some long-lost treasure trove. This was gold bullion, worth then just in excess of $650,000 (though commonly reported by the press to be worth more than one million dollars), that had been swindled the year before out of the Perth Mint on Hay Street, situated within the spiritual shadow of nearby St Mary’s Cathedral.

Perhaps some Mint officials found solace in this architectural symbol of West Australian Catholicism, but divine intervention was not to spare them embarrassment. The Mint, this emblematic fortress of material wealth, had been breached, and not by professional robbers but by a bold team of swindlers armed with nothing more than a few pieces of worthless paper.

Nor had they stolen cash; that would have been embarrassment enough. This lot had stolen gold — a precious metal treated almost with reverence in Perth. Gold was more than just money and power. Gold was at the core of Western Australia’s history.

In 1885, the first discovery of gold in the remote Kimberley region of the north brought an early rush of eager diggers. It was a hard life, and rewards were meagre, except for the few who struck it rich. Those that did not simply folded their tents and moved to the next field, their hopes fuelled often by nothing more than embellished stories, told by diggers, of the fortunes others had already made there. However, it was in the goldfields of Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie where, in the last decade of the nineteenth century, the romance of gold blossomed, after three Irish prospectors discovered enough gold to change the course of Western Australia’s history. This newfound source of wealth was a watershed for the newly self-governing colony. Gold revenues and related income flowed into the Colonial Treasury and Perth prospered.

Although the fortunes of gold waxed and waned throughout the twentieth century, the precious metal never lost its iconic status; nor did the Perth Mint lose its lustre as the shrine at which fortune hunters worshipped. Little wonder then, that when someone violated the shrine, people reacted with shock.

The public expected the police to act quickly and decisively to bring the culprits to account. What they did not expect were the revelations of police corruption that would result. Nor could anyone have imagined that two highly respected police officers would come to violent and tragic ends because they believed their role was to get the job done, no matter what it took. After all, theirs was a noble cause.

Which brings us back to the police divers and their exhaustive but fruitless expedition off the coast at Kalbarri, where two of the leading protagonists in the story of the Perth Mint swindle used to camp and go diving for that other treasure: abalone. As it turned out, it would be a long time before Ray and Peter Mickelberg would again have an opportunity to dive for that seafood gem, because someone had decided they were going to gaol — with or without evidence.

The Perth Mint swindle is a story of intrigue and ‘noble cause’ corruption that would wreck the lives and reputations of many who played a part in it.

CHAPTER 1

IF THE CROWN PLEASES

On a typically hot February morning in Perth, Chief Crown Prosecutor¹ Ron Davies QC² rose to his feet before the Chairman of the District Court,³ Judge Desmond Heenan, to begin his opening address to the jury.⁴

A criminal trial before a judge and jury follows a set procedure. It begins with the prosecutor outlining to the court the nature of the case it will present. Counsel for the accused then has the opportunity to tell the court how it intends to present its defence to the court. After prosecutor and defence counsel have finished these opening addresses, the prosecutor calls and questions all its witnesses, each of whom the defence is entitled to (but does not have to) cross-examine. The sum of all the evidence that the prosecution adduces from its witnesses is the prosecution evidence-in-chief. When the prosecutor has finished, the court invites the defence to do the same thing with its witnesses. In simple terms, counsel thoughtfully and benignly guide their friendly witnesses through the oral examination process to attempt to present the evidence in the most favourable light. It goes without saying that the cross-examiner does their best to extinguish that light.

‘Mr Foreman, ladies and gentlemen, the story you are about to spend certainly the next few days if not weeks on involves a tale of a very clever, but not quite clever enough, planned scheme to obtain gold bullion from the obvious place, the Mint.’

So began the Perth Mint swindle trial on 7 February 1983.

Three men stood accused of the crime. They were brothers Raymond Mickelberg, aged thirty-seven, a former SAS soldier and Vietnam veteran who operated a successful abalone fishing business in Kalbarri, 800 kilometres north of Perth; Brian, thirty-five, a helicopter pilot operating from Perth’s second airport, Jandakot; and the baby of the family, twenty-three year old Peter who worked with Ray as an abalone diver.

On 7 December 1982, the three brothers were indicted⁵ on eight counts.⁶ The first was the general count of conspiracy to defraud the Mint.⁷ It was alleged that, between 1 April 1982 and 23 June 1982, Ray, Brian and Peter conspired to defraud the director of the Perth Mint by inducing him to part with a quantity of gold without being paid for it. The other seven offences were said to have been committed to further the conspiracy. The second was the burglary⁸ offence committed on 7 April 1982 and the stealing of WA Building Society (WABS) cheque forms from the building of Conti Sheffield Estate Agency Pty Ltd. The third count was arson,⁹ committed at the same time, allegedly to cover up the identity of the offenders.

Counts 4 and 5 were charges respectively of burglary and the theft of Perth Building Society (PBS) cheque forms from a Bull Creek real estate agency on 13 May 1982, again with an accompanying offence of arson. Finally, counts 6, 7 and 8 on the indictment alleged that on 22 June 1982 each of the three men falsely claimed to an employee of the director of the Perth Mint that three cheques presented in payment for the bullion were genuine.¹⁰ The two PBS cheques were to the value of $104,492.50 and $298,550 and the WABS cheque was for $249,932.74.

Over ten engrossing days, Davies, a hard-nosed and uncompromising prosecutor, led circumstantial and scientific evidence¹¹ to present a story that might have come from the pages of a crime novel. Crucial to the Crown’s case were alleged admissions and statements made by Ray, Brian and Peter to the police that pointed to their involvement in the swindle. Davies was relying on police evidence regarding these admissions to convince the jury that the three accused were guilty as charged. Davies also asserted that ‘there are certainly strong hints of other involvement than three persons.’ But, he said, all that would mean is that someone had yet to be caught.

Day after day, the Crown introduced its witnesses¹² — more than a hundred in total. Included in their number were many of the police officers and Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) detectives who had been involved in the Mint swindle inquiry. The star witness was head of the inquiry, Detective Sergeant Don Hancock, known as the ‘Silver Fox’ because of his silver grey hair and cunning.

It was apt that Hancock should head an inquiry into missing gold; he came from three generations of gold prospectors. Born at Boulder City in 1937, Hancock worked in the family goldmine at Grants Patch before joining the police force in 1959 aged twenty-two. He spent some time with the Gold Stealing Detection staff and later rose to the head of the CIB and assistant commissioner. In 1988 he was awarded an Australian Police Medal.

Hancock and his partner in the Mint swindle investigation, Detective Sergeant Tony Lewandowski, were the perfect Crown witnesses. They withstood cross-examinations from three defence lawyers,¹³ one for each accused brother. Ron Cannon represented Ray. He had been a brilliant law student at the University of Western Australia in the late 1940s and practised law in Africa and Hong Kong before returning to Perth where he specialised in criminal law. Brian Singleton QC represented young Peter, and Cannon’s nephew, the relatively inexperienced Michael Bowden, represented Brian.

But Hancock and Lewandowski were unflappable. Cannon tried to force Hancock to admit that without the police interviews they had little evidence against Ray. And the notes from those interviews, he accused, were concocted ‘because you were convinced that Ray Mickelberg was guilty and this was the only way to bring him to justice, by admissions?’¹⁴ Cool as a cucumber, Hancock replied, ‘I’m telling you, the interview was not concocted.’ Hancock’s loyal offsider Lewandowski followed him to the witness box, and equally calmly supported Hancock’s evidence.

With their multitude of witnesses, Davies and his assistant, Senior Assistant Crown Counsel John McKechnie, methodically developed the Crown case.

The court heard that in the two years leading up to the swindle, Raymond and Peter made purchases of gold bullion from the Perth Mint, paying for them with building society cheques. In the several months before the swindle, using the false identities of Bob Fryer and Mr Blackwood, Ray and Peter regularly phoned the Mint to buy up to $250,000 of gold when the price dropped below $300 an ounce. Though the identities were false, the cheque accounts did have the necessary funds to pay for the gold.

The Mint made no effort to check the identity of people buying gold or silver. Its usual practice was to take an order over the phone and assign an order number. The purchaser, or someone acting on their behalf, would attend the Mint, quote the order number, and hand over a cheque in exchange for the gold. As far as the Mint was concerned that was the end of the matter. It seems no one gave any thought to the potential money laundering and tax evasion opportunities this practice created.

On 5 March 1982, Peter signed a six-month lease for a residential unit at 112 Rupert Street, Subiaco. He paid the whole rent in advance. For one referee, Peter offered the name Otto Kleiger, which was in fact one of Ray’s many aliases.

The Crown alleged the brothers’ next step was to obtain blank building society cheques. On Wednesday 7 April 1982, the premises of Conti Sheffield Estate Agency in North Perth, which was an agency of WABS, were broken into and a bundle of blank WABS cheque forms were stolen. The burglars set fire to the building to cover the theft. Called to the scene, the managing director of the agency saw a small burnt-orange car, which he believed to be either a Mazda or a Toyota, slow down, change lanes and pause outside the building. He noticed three men inside. Suspicious, he attempted to note down the car’s registration number. He wrote down the letters XAK and noted that two of the digits were the same. Brian Mickelberg owned an orange Porsche, registration number XRK 500.

The mysterious Bob Fryer re-entered the story on 27 or 28 April 1982. By phone, he rented business premises at Suite 3, Barker House, Hay Street, Subiaco, without any prior inspection, paying the rent and the bond by untraceable bank cheque. A courier delivered the key to ‘Fryer’. Less than a month later, a man calling himself Frank Harrison rented the nearby Suite 15, also without prior inspection, and had a telephone service connected in that name.

On 13 May 1982, burglars broke into a real estate agency in Bull Creek, a southern suburb of Perth. They stole a bundle of blank PBS cheques and set fire to the building to cover their traces.

Twelve days later, on Tuesday 25 May 1982, a man calling himself Robert Talbot purchased a 1965 white-coloured Ford Falcon car from a Mr Allen in the outer south-east suburb of Armadale. The Crown alleged Talbot was Peter, dressed in disguise, wearing a wig and dark-rimmed glasses. He gave Mr Allen a slip of paper on which he had printed the words ‘Robert Talbot C/o Meekatharra Post Office, Meekatharra’ as the address at which he wished to receive the disposal notice.

On Thursday 27 May 1982, PBS issued a cheque for $20, drawn on a savings account which Ray had opened on 10 March 1976 in the name of Peter Gulley. The cheque was payable to C. Wilson, but never presented. Only two transactions had been processed through that account since 1979. The first was a $10 cash withdrawal made on 22 April 1982, and the second was the C. Wilson payment. The Crown case was that the building society cheque, drawn on the account Ray had opened in the name of Peter Gulley and made payable to the mysterious C. Wilson, was to serve as a model when the time came to fraudulently fill in details on the stolen blank PBS cheques.

Wilson’s name comes up again. A Colin Wilson operated an account with PBS which, unlike the Gulley account, had been very active over the period March 1982 to June 1982. Withdrawals from it were reasonably proximate in time and amounts to the rentals paid for Suite 3, Barker House. The cheque for $20 withdrawn from the Gulley account had not been deposited into the Wilson account.

On 8 or 9 June 1982, a man using the name Fryer telephoned Peter Duvnjak and engaged him through an employment agency as a temporary driver. He was told to drive a vehicle, fitted with a citizen band (CB) radio, to move geological core samples from Barker House to Jandakot Airport and to other offices in Subiaco.

From 15 June 1982 onwards, security guards from three different firms were hired by phone. They were instructed to collect bank cheques from Suite 3 in Barker House on 22 June and then transport bullion from the Mint to that suite. A young secretary, Jo Armstrong, was also hired, by phone, to be in attendance at the suite.

On 20 June 1982, Duvnjak spoke by phone to a man calling himself Frank, from Fryer Investments. Duvnjak agreed to use his own car for the work he was to do. His car was fitted with a CB radio. Frank instructed Duvnjak to park his car in Churchill Avenue, a street running parallel to Hay Street in Subiaco. He was told to wait for radio instructions to enter Barker House, pick up mining equipment, transport it to Jandakot Airport and leave it at a designated point.

The Crown alleged that on the morning of the swindle, Peter, in disguise, parked the white Ford Falcon off a laneway near Barker House. He entered Suite 3 before the young secretary Jo Armstrong arrived and he left three fraudulently completed building society cheques there. One of the cheques was a WABS cheque form stolen from Conti Sheffield. The other two were PBS cheque forms stolen from the Bull Creek agency.

The old Falcon, fitted with a CB radio, was parked at the rear of 31–33 Hay Street in a parking bay belonging to the sales manager of City Business Brokers, Mr Henry. He saw a man step out from the driver’s seat of the Falcon, open the boot, take out a lightweight white plastic shopping bag and, with a white glove on his right hand, wipe the lock of the boot as he closed it. Henry also observed the man wiping the driver’s and passengers’ door handles.

His suspicions aroused, Henry telephoned the police. When Constable Buchanan arrived at the scene, the driver had disappeared but the driver’s door was unlocked and the driver’s window half down.

Some two hours later, Henry returned to the car park with a work colleague, Mr McCracken. The Falcon’s engine was running and the driver was bending under the dashboard. McCracken told the man that he shouldn’t be parking on private property. The young man told Henry that the car had been difficult to start. (During the trial, McCracken said that the man looked similar to Peter but his hair was shorter.) Henry, the amateur detective, noted the registration number of the Falcon, which matched that of the car sold by Mr Allen.

On the afternoon of 22 June 1982, the hired security guards from Transurety, Armaguard and ASAP headed to the Mint with the cheques and boxes collected from Barker House. The Mint had earlier received three telephone orders to buy large quantities of gold bullion. One purchase was in the name of Blackwood, a second in the name of York and a third in the name of Fryer.

The guards handed over the cheques to the Mint in exchange for $650,000 of gold bullion. In what the police argued was a major mistake by Ray, who they were confident was the mastermind behind the swindle, the cheques used for the Blackwood and York purchases bore the account number of the PBS savings account kept by Ray in the name of Peter Gulley. The details on the cheques and the application for the telephone service in Suite 15 had been written on the one typewriter and the WABS cheque bore Ray’s fingerprint. On it, the word ‘forty’ was spelled ‘fourty’.

The hired guards drove out of the iron gates of the Mint and returned to Barker House where Jo Armstrong took delivery of the boxes, unaware of their contents. A security officer from Arpad (a security firm made up of serving and former SAS soldiers) guarded the gold bullion at Barker House. After receiving instructions over the CB radio, allegedly from the white Falcon (which was later found abandoned and burnt), Duvnjak collected the boxes and drove to Jandakot Airport. Duvnjak, who had no idea he was carrying a fortune in gold, believed he was followed to the airport.

What happened to the gold bullion after Duvnjak left it at Jandakot Airport has remained a mystery until this day.

In a hangar near where Duvnjak deposited the boxes, airline Captain Graham Hewitt was working on an old Auster aeroplane. Hewitt told police that some time before the arrival of Duvnjak, two young men in their twenties started their powerful car nearby and sped off towards the main part of the airport.

The next day, Mint executives finally became concerned about the size of the previous day’s transactions. When the bank cheques bounced, red-faced Mint executives notified the police. Soon, detectives from the CIB were running in all directions, following up leads.

A few days later, courier Duvnjak appeared on local Perth radio station 6PR with well-known radio personality Howard Sattler, talking about his role as a courier. He had gone to the radio station because he was concerned he wasn’t going to be paid for his services. On air, he told Sattler he observed an unidentified man taking photographs of people entering and leaving Barker House during the time the swindle was taking place. Apparently, the police did not follow up this information, and never provided a reason why not.

Their break finally came with the Peter Gulley account. Australia-wide inquiries had revealed Peter Gulley did not exist and the address that the non-existent Peter Gulley had given when opening the account in 1976 was now a vacant block. Detective Sergeant Round checked council and State Energy Commission records, which revealed the last SEC account for the address, 144 Barker Road in Subiaco, was for the period 1976 to 1979 in the name of P. Macjelberg. Further digging turned up a similar name, Meckelberg, who lived at Unit 7, 112 Rupert Street, Subiaco. This was in fact Peter Mickelberg, who had terminated the lease in July 1982. Detective Round next discovered that an R. Mickleberg lived at 1 Leach Street, Marmion. This was Ray’s home.

On 9 July 1982, Round and Detective Sergeant Dennis Henley visited Ray’s home at Marmion. Ray was not there, he was in Penang, Malaysia, with his family, and Peter was looking after the house. Round asked Peter to ask Ray to telephone the Perth CIB on his return. Meanwhile, the detectives took the opportunity to question Peter.¹⁵ He confirmed that his mother had run a boarding house at the Barker Road address but said he could not otherwise help with the inquiry about the cheques used by Gulley.

The police interviewed Ray twice on his return from Malaysia on 15 July 1982. Round and Detective Sergeant Henry Hooft conducted the first interview at Ray’s home in Marmion as police searched the premises. Initially, Ray denied any knowledge of Gulley or that he had operated the PBS account in that name. However, when confronted with the fact that the handwriting on the application forms for the opening of that account had been identified as his, and that it could be proven that he had operated the account since 1976, Ray admitted the account was his. He claimed he had operated it for tax purposes. (At trial, he also admitted operating the Wilson account.) According to Round, Ray said he would make a phone call to see if he could retrieve the passbook.

Round and Hancock conducted the second interview at police headquarters in East Perth. Ray told them he did not have the Gulley passbook. He said it had been in a black clipboard folder which he had lost, most likely at the Karrinyup PBS office. The detectives asked him to explain how two of the cheques used