Long before barrister Nicola Gobbo became the lippy lawyer of Lonsdale Street, there was another who didn’t just go off the rails, he derailed the whole train.
Graeme Alford was a smart, cunning, hardworking criminal lawyer with a loyal and regular client base all connected to the feared Painters and Dockers Union. It was a licence to print money (no doubt some of his clients would have tried that, as they did everything else.)
Nicola Gobbo and Graeme Alford.Credit:
For years he was the private school, top-of-the-class-type student who won a Commonwealth Scholarship, excelled at Melbourne University and breezed his way into a city law firm. He was also a heavy punter and prodigious drinker – both vices that are not unknown in the legal fraternity.
As he would write much later in his book, Never Give Up!: “Booze, gambling and the law, I was under the spell of all three and they would influence my life for years to come.”
It was when those worlds collided in a bar near Geelong that Alford started a descent that took only a few years to destroy his marriage, career and reputation - and decades to rebuild.
In 1975, after a routine .05 case at Winchelsea, he stopped off for a beer on the way back to Melbourne and ended up chatting with a couple of blokes at the bar. They were members of the Painters and Dockers (a union that proved a perfect front for organised crime) and when they discovered Alford was a knockabout lawyer who thought the art of drink driving was not getting caught, they saw a kindred spirit and one asked for a business card.
It turned out to be a pivotal, lucrative and ultimately disastrous move. He ended up with a group of habitual criminals on his books – the type that were likely to provide repeat business – with the union underwriting his fees so he was always paid.
He was able to roll his two great pleasures, betting and drinking, into a networking opportunity. Quickly he was drinking with his clients and every day he would down 20 to 30 beers, sometimes topped with a half a bottle of Scotch. Add around 60 cigarettes a day, a diet of fast foods, crushing work hours and a pathological desire to prowl Melbourne at night and it was always going to end badly.
Just as Gobbo did, Alford crossed the line and began socialising with his underworld clients. ‘‘I was warned about socialising and drinking with my clients - in legal circles an absolute no-no. But I thought ‘No, I’m cleverer, this is how I will build my practice’.’’
The Age's report.Credit: The Age
At night he would drink in pubs then head to the illegal two-up and baccarat games until around 2am, drive home drunk and be back in the office at 7am. Quickly Alford stopped being a lawyer acting for criminals and became a criminal acting as a lawyer.
He laundered money at casinos for select clients, organised bail at any time of night, was available to crooks 24 hours a day and saw many of them as his closest friends. He washed money through the TAB and would buy winning tickets above their market rate. He knew “a couple of TAB managers who would arrange for me to acquire winning tickets”.
He also had a kickback system with some police where if they recommended him to arrested suspects he would sling 10 per cent of the final fee back to the officer. Sometimes he would bribe police to remove prior convictions from his client’s file so that if they were convicted they would receive a lighter sentence.
Eventually, facing huge gambling debts, he stole from his legal trust fund and was short $80,000. He was charged with multiple counts of fraud and was handcuffed in the Russell Street Police Station lift when one of his clients, who was also under arrest, stepped in. He looked his lawyer up and down and said: ‘‘Well Graeme, there’s not much point ringing you, is there?’’
He was sentenced to five years with a two-year minimum. Out in 16 months - fit for the first time in years but still in denial - he applied for a series of jobs requiring a legal background and failed each time.
He drifted back to crime because, he says: ‘‘The money is good and the hours are short.’’
It was October 15, 1982 when a half-drunk Alford donned a balaclava, grabbed his shotgun and with fellow armed robbers burst into the Chapel Street Prahran branch of the National Bank. It was just after 2pm when two junior police in plain clothes patrolling Armadale in an unmarked Datsun 200B searching for burglars cruised down Chapel Street looking for a park to grab a late lunch.
Phil Bogle, 20, and Craig Gye, 23, may have been inexperienced but they already knew cops can park where they like when on duty and so they mounted the curb and parked with two wheels on the footpath.
Meanwhile the manageress of an adjacent food bar saw the bandits park at the rear of the bank. She rang the police saying there was a robbery in progress and then used her own car to block the getaway vehicle.
A young Phil Bogle, seen here at graduation, chose to warn bank robber Graeme Alford rather than shoot him.
Bogle, who is now the senior sergeant at Lakes Entrance and about to retire, recalls: ‘‘We were parked illegally of course, but we were on the Queen’s business buying our lunch. A radio call came in that there was a holdup at the NAB in Chapel Street. I said to Craig ‘I think that’s here’. In plain clothes we wandered in and there was a full on stickup in progress. There were three blokes disguised in masks, they had sprayed over the cameras and were emptying the tills. All armed with sawn-off shotguns. One of us yelled out 'Police!' and we pulled out our [undercover] five-shot Smith & Wesson revolvers.
‘‘One of them ran off down a lane. He was carrying a shotty and a bag of money. Money was flying everywhere and people were taking cover. He turned around, raised the barrel and pulled the trigger. We were too scared to shoot him so we yelled ‘Police, don’t move, drop it or we’ll shoot’ and he dropped it.’’
The bandit was Graeme Alford. ‘‘How lucky was I? They were young coppers who still believed in 'stop or we will shoot'. Thank God it wasn’t the armed robbery squad.’’
‘‘When they yelled 'stop or we’ll shoot', I thought ‘I think I’ll stop’.’’
Two sergeants from Prahran, Peter Steele and Ray ‘‘Dingo’’ McLeod-Dryden, were nearby on an important mission - heading to the Station Hotel for a long afternoon - when they saw ‘‘the divvy van scream by’’.
Unarmed and in civilian clothes they saw bandits scarpering from the bank and Dingo tracked one, Lawrence William ‘‘Chocka’’ Rowley, as he tried to disappear through a car park. ‘‘He produced this big shooter from his tracksuit and I thought ‘Jesus, what’s going on here?’.’’
The policeman backed off for a moment as Rowley walked away, but cut back to Chapel Street where the gunman again took aim at his pursuer. He watched as Rowley walked down the middle of the busy road trying to carjack a motorist.
‘‘I thought ‘I can’t have this’ so I ran up and grabbed him around the guts, but I had new shiny boots and slipped on the ground. He pointed the gun at me again and I thought it could be third time unlucky.’’
McLeod-Dryden crawled under a car and Rowley jumped in another vehicle, put his gun to the female driver’s head and ordered her to drive to Canterbury Road, Middle Park. He was arrested months later and convicted.
A young Phil Bogle in the typewriter days.
Instead of receiving first aid or counselling, Ray McLeod-Dryden continued to the Station Hotel: ‘‘I think I had 20 pots.’’
Meanwhile Alford was in jail with broken ribs (care of a robust police interview) and finally went to an AA meeting. He hasn’t had a drink for 37 years.
He was sentenced to five years' jail and was released in 1986 after serving just over three years, determined to rebuild his life. He gave up cigarettes and the booze, dropped weight, ran marathons and set himself mental challenges to improve his alcohol-damaged memory.
The turnaround has been remarkable. He has written three bestselling books, set up several successful businesses, is a sought-after motivational speaker and now works in drug rehabilitation.
On Gobbo, who ended up acting as a not-so-secret police informer, Alford says: ‘‘I’m amazed on two counts. On any level, how did they think this would finish? Why would she do it? It makes no sense. No one in their right mind would do it.
"The big question is, did any of the prosecutors or judges know? I have seen people who have become besotted with the underworld but what Gobbo did was madness.’’
Alford said drugs had changed the underworld. ‘‘Drugs have changed everything. Once it was all about tough hard people like Les Kane, Brian Kane and Ray Chuck. Now with drugs it is about how much money you have. People like Carl Williams would have been chopped up back then.’’