Paul Higgins - a policeman who took secrets to the grave

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This was published 8 years ago

Paul Higgins - a policeman who took secrets to the grave

By John Silvester
Updated

As a detective Paul William Higgins was tough, brave and ruthless. He received a record 11 commendations before he became the target of Australia's longest running corruption investigation and was finally jailed.

He died on Monday, after a long battle with cancer, maintaining he was a sacrificial lamb and had only conformed to the rules of the day.

Paul Higgins, pictured sixth from left, as a schoolboy at Assumption College.

Paul Higgins, pictured sixth from left, as a schoolboy at Assumption College.

The investigation into Higgins exposed a vigilante mindset within a group of Victorian detectives that encouraged planting evidence, terrorising suspects and bypassing the justice system they swore to uphold.

A champion schoolboy athlete who joined the force in 1965, he was brought up in an era when many police believed the ends justified the means – that if the law had to be bent to convict a criminal, so be it.

Paul Higgins, pictured third from right in the back row, while a schoolboy at Assumption College. Pictured on the far left in the front row is Francis Bourke, who went on to play 300 games for Richmond.

Paul Higgins, pictured third from right in the back row, while a schoolboy at Assumption College. Pictured on the far left in the front row is Francis Bourke, who went on to play 300 games for Richmond.

But there were those who believed he bent the rules to line his own pocket and, eventually, they moved against him. Senior Sergeant Paul Higgins was convicted by a County Court jury in March, 1993, of taking bribes – an allegation he always denied.

He was alleged to have accepted bribes from 1978 until 1982 of between $3000 a week and $3000 a month from well-known massage parlour boss, Geoffrey Lamb.

The investigation into Higgins and the subsequent criminal trial was the longest and most expensive corruption investigation in Australia's history, estimated to cost up to $33 million.

Higgins always stood out, excelling in football and cricket as a boarder at Assumption College, Kilmore. He was a team-mate of VFL captains Peter Crimmins and Francis Bourke and played two VFL games for South Melbourne before a back injury finished his football career.

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Dennis Allen pointing a gun at his mother Kath Pettingill during a party in Richmond.

Dennis Allen pointing a gun at his mother Kath Pettingill during a party in Richmond.

He turned to boxing and became the heavyweight champion of the Victoria Police, beating many larger men, and trained at Ambrose Palmer's gym with world class fighters Johnny Famechon and Paul Ferreri.

Higgins transferred to South Melbourne, before it became a trendy suburb where he dealt with some of Australia's toughest criminals, the men from the Painters and Dockers Union.

Paul Higgins in 1987.

Paul Higgins in 1987.Credit: Sebastian Costanzo

He cultivated criminal contacts, which made some wonder if he sometimes became too close to the notorious.

An example was the seriously unhinged Dennis Bruce Allen. Allen was a drug dealer, murderer, pimp, police informer and gunman who was connected to 11 mysterious deaths in the 1980s. At a time when he was making between $70,000 and $100,000 per week from drugs he was on bail for 60 different offences.

Paul Higgins photographed in 1977.

Paul Higgins photographed in 1977. Credit: Fairfax Media

He would inform on criminals to Higgins (and others) to keep out of jail but at what price?

When he died in in 1987 from heart disease one death notice read. "Dennis the Menace with a heart so big. Sorry your gone, you were such a good gig [informer]."

Higgins served with the bureau of criminal intelligence, the armed robbery squad and the consorting squad, a squad that was disbanded because of allegations of corruption.

The consorting squad monitored Victoria's heaviest criminal crews to gather intelligence and stop crime. It was also the heavy squad, used to chase escapees and crush criminal conspiracies.

Part of the squad's duties was to attend thoroughbred, harness and greyhound meetings on the basis that criminals love race tracks. On-duty members of the squad would pick up cash envelopes from the racing clubs, purportedly for acting as race day security.

Squad members would later say the cash was put into a slush fund used for entertaining interstate police when in Melbourne.

Higgins would claim the practice was approved by a senior officer who was to end up one of the highest ranking in Victoria. Every Melbourne Cup carnival, pickpockets would converge on Melbourne, as would interstate detectives.

The interstate detectives saw it as a paid holiday and a time to go wild. It was the consorters' job to entertain them when they were in Melbourne. During the Spring Carnival they were known as the "Gurkhas" because they took no prisoners.

In the 1970s, Melbourne police used illegal phone taps to gather information. They would fabricate informers to cover the information trail. The police force would pay money from an informers' fund for the non-existent sources. The detectives would simply pocket the money.

Detectives from the heavy squads had access to unregistered firearms (known as "throwaways"), explosives and drugs that could be planted on criminals when they did not have the evidence to legitimately convict them.

For years, Higgins lived with allegations he was bent. In the late 1960s he was romantically linked to a Melbourne dancer with a questionable reputation. Higgins had been selected to be part of the UN police contingent to go to Cyprus. Senior police told him to dump his girlfriend and scrubbed his name from the Cyprus group.

In the 1970s, "Buck" Higgins, was single, a non drinker or smoker who still lived with his parents. When most police his age were struggling with mortgages, Higgins always seemed to have cash in his pocket. In 1980 he owned a grey Condor, a kit car that looked like a new Ferrari. It was powered by a Ford Escort 1600 motor and didn't have a luxury car price-tag but, sitting next to the secondhand Commodores his colleagues drove, it looked good. Which didn't look good to those who suspected Higgins of corruption.

In 1979, he was charged with a minor internal disciplinary offence and transferred back to uniform. He had been set up because his command wanted him out. A senior officer in the crime department stayed back at work when Higgins was on afternoon shift. Higgins was working alone and the senior officer tried and failed to contact him on the radio.

The reason was not explained in Higgins' official diary and he was charged with not keeping his diary up to date.

Some thought Higgins would never work as a detective again but in 1982 he used the internal appeal process to apply for a job in the crime department. Despite evidence by senior officers that they had no confidence in Higgins he won the appeal and returned to the CIB.

In 1983, police launched a taskforce, code-named Achilles, to investigate police corruption in the massage parlour industry.

Higgins was one of the main targets. The taskforce was run by John Frame, later to be a deputy commissioner, Bob Falconer, who became WA Chief Commissioner, and Bernice Masterson​, who became the first female Assistant Commissioner in Victoria. They were unable to gather sufficient evidence to lay charges but they were later to be in positions of authority that allowed them to support a second investigation using unprecedented resources.

In May, 1986, a police taskforce, code-named Cobra, was set up within the elite police anti-corruption branch, the Internal Security Unit, to investigate Higgins and another policeman with a colourful past, Brian Murphy.

Cobra investigators flew around Australia interviewing 805 people, including former police, murderers, prostitutes and drug dealers, in a bid to gather evidence against Higgins. They ended with a witness list of 170 but the stars were Lamb and Alistair Farquhar MacRae, a man later convicted of three murders and suspected of at least six more.

Higgins, then a uniformed senior sergeant at Prahran, was arrested and charged in April, 1987. Murphy was never interviewed nor charged.

Behind the scenes, senior police tried to broker a deal with the police association to drop the charges. If Higgins agreed to plead to a minor internal disciplinary charge and be sacked, then all criminal charges would be dropped and he could go free with his superannuation. The association agreed and Higgins looked as if he would go along with the deal but he later refused, deciding to go to trial.

It took seven years to investigate, try and convict Higgins. It took six to fight World War II.

The County Court transcript ran to 32,000 pages. The trial went from November 1, 1991, until December 11, 1992. The court sat for 410 days, including 135 days of pre trial legal argument before the first evidence was presented to the jury.

The judge's charge to the jury went for one month.

Legal fees were staggering with one senior lawyer paid nearly $3 million for the case.

The Police Association Legal Defence fund nearly went broke after funding Higgins to $1.8 million. Finally he was sentenced to seven years' jail with a minimum of five and was released in February, 1998.

A fitness fanatic he survived five years in jail with many of the men he had locked up. Armed robbers Peter Gibb and Archie Butterly​ tried him on early but when he wouldn't back down there was an uneasy truce.

From prison he wrote to me saying he had been dumped by most of his old police colleagues. "True friends from within are few and far between, looking after number one, but let's hope in the not too distant future I can express it in much more detail !!! Watch a number go for cover."

When he was released he refused offers to "tell all" and tried several times to begin a career in the fitness industry. Each time someone with connections would make a call to sabotage him.

He died a 69-year-old pensioner.

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