Collingwood man Richard John Lovett (more recently of Bundoora) burgled he whom the press are carefully describing as ‘disgraced millionaire businessman’ Steve Vizard’s then Toorak mansion while Steve and the kids were at home slumbering. You may recall that little Stephanie V. woke up to find him rifling through her things, in her bedroom. Security cameras at the disgraced white collar feller’s lair had Lovett and a mate in the mansion for 40 minutes. Remarkably, after the altercation outside with Stephanie’s dad, that same evening Mr Lovett went on to burgle another house nearby. Then, in Collingwood the following day, he stabbed a man in the back, puncturing his lung, in the course of the Harmworth St liberation of a backpack, clothing, and a gold necklace in a street robbery graced by a 20cm long blade.

Harmsworth St and its environs, tucked up near the corner of Johnston and Hoddle Sts is definitely the spot to get stabbed. It runs into Perry St, locus of the yellow racer murder. Housing Commission territory.

Mr Lovett is an aboriginal father of four who has been a drug addict for the last 15 years, since he was 14. He was intoxicated by ice at the time of the Vizard burglary. He pleaded guilty just the other day.

County Court judge Barnett said discrimination prevented Aborigines getting work and there was no access to culturally-sensitive counselling. “Unfortunately for some Aborigines the sort of opportunities that are offered to them are something that in my mind are meaningless.” According to the Hun, his Honour ‘blasted treatment of repeat Aboriginal offenders and said the community had no sympathy or understanding of the problem. He said the man who robbed Steve Vizard’s Toorak mansion had little chance of rehabilitation because Aborigines were treated with misery and neglect. “We are putting them on shelves, we are warehousing them, we are not getting them back into the community and the community doesn’t seem to offer a solution”.

According to The Age’s Kate Hagan:

‘Defence counsel John Desmond said Lovett was institutionalised from the age of eight in state homes, youth training centres and prison.

He was abandoned by his abusive mother when he was 13, had no secondary school education and was a long-term drug user. Judge John Barnett said there were various facilities where he could simply “warehouse” Lovett, but traditional approaches were not working.

“It’s a case of Europeans saying, ‘do this, do that’, but they don’t listen, they don’t trust (them). It’s not Aborigines saying, ‘there’s a better way’,” he said.

Judge Barnett said the wider community did not offer solutions, just “neglect and misery”, and had “no sympathy or understanding of the real issues”.

“The world is full of deaf ears but the problem doesn’t go away, the problems keep coming back before the courts,” he said.

Prosecutor Ray Gibson said Lovett’s background was tragic and there was an obvious gulf between the life of a Melbourne Girls’ Grammar student (Stephanie Vizard) and Lovett.’

Mr Lovett’s accomplice, Eric Mark Lawson, drove the getaway car — an Alfa Romeo. He went in for a 6 year holiday courtesy of the Crown last month for an 11-week crime spree. Mr Lovett will be sentenced this week. It will be interesting to see how it compares with Mr Vizard’s $390,000 fine.

If so, please return to its owner, or ring 000. It’s 3m long. It’s as thick as an arm.  It escaped from a balcony at  Tim Marshall’s Noone St, Clifton Hill apartment on the 9th, where it had lived with another carpet python for a decade. They suspect it might be in your roof, or up a tree. The police suggest not leaving little birds outside in little cages, but the opinion on that is divergent.  Tim says the snake ate well last week, so not to worry. The Hun reported that the snake is not on any medication.  And this, for me, is the fascinating bit of the story.  What motivated Patrick Horan to report that bit of non-news?

I have to say, Wellington St between Johnston St and Gertrude St is not a nice place. In fact, it’s the closest to a slum I know of in Melbourne (see pic of a side street off Wellington St).  At twenty to eight in the evening of Sunday 28 October 2007, a Collingwood man answered a knock on his Wellington St unit’s front door. Four black-clad men shot him in the lower body. He’s still alive. Sounds like a reprise of the gangland murders a bit too close to home for my liking.

By the 31st, Bou’ellas Kahalil, 32, had been arrested at Craigieburn police station and charged with seven offences including attempted murder, aggravated burglary, false imprisonment, intentionally causing serious injury, kidnapping and being in possession of an unregistered firearm. And another man from Port Melbourne, one-time home of Hizir Ferman, has been arrested and charged as well. See The Age’s article here.

Yesterday, the Police announced they’d like to have a little chat with Robert Musso of Mill Park, but said not to approach him. The Age reported in 2004 that a top cop, Simon Overland, was a bit frustrated with what he perceived to be the lack of assistance from the courts in the police’s efforts to quell the spate of gangland murders. The article said:

‘Police fury over the granting of bail to crime patriarch Lewis Moran, gunned down this week in a Brunswick gaming club, is well known. Police are also dismayed by a County Court decision to give known gunmen linked to two murders, Hizir Ferman and Robert Musso, 12 months’ jail for carrying firearms when law provides for a maximum penalty of 15 years. Both men were out on parole when the Special Operations Group apprehended them with loaded guns.’

Someone named Robert Musso has been in jail before. He was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment on 30 March 2004: R. v. Ferman and Musso, a sentence which the Court of Appeal later referred to in another man’s case as ‘manifestly inadequate’: DPP v Faure [2005] VSCA 9.

Musso claimed to have suffered injuries in jail. According to the judgment in Musso v Department of Justice [2004] VCAT 1268:

‘10 On 19 November 1999 there was a considerable disturbance in Port Phillip Prison. A prisoner was stabbed. A lock-down ensued. A group of prisoners, including the Applicants, were forcibly extracted from their cells in Swallow Unit for the purpose of relocating them in Charlotte Unit, which is apparently more secure. This extraction was carried out by members of the Tactical Operations Group (“TOG”). It is alleged, in essence, that, during this extraction and relocation, excessive force was used by TOG, and that prisoners suffered injuries as a result.’

Who knows? Perhaps it’s the same Robert Musso who is a suspect of this latest bit of attempted gunning down. And perhaps it’s the same Robert Musso who is referred to in this Bulletin article which says he was:

• a friend of Nick “the Russian” Radev;
• found with a .38 calibre revolver with live rounds in a bum bag and so was popped into jail;
• where he was stabbed up to 12 times in April by fellow inmates of Barwon Prison.

According to The Bulletin, Mark Mallia led the knife attack.

‘A knife attack last month of Robert Musso, a former ally of Nik “The Russian” Radev in Barwon prison by inmates loyal to Carl Williams shows how volatile the situation remains. The main attacker in the group hit has been named as a player in the murder of western suburbs drug dealer Mark Mallia. To understand the calibre of human being we are dealing with, it’s worth remembering how Mallia was killed. They tied him to a chair, bound and gagged and then probably tortured him with a soldering iron, before strangling him. They then poured petrol over him and set him on fire inside a wheelie bin, before chucking him down a stormwater drain.’

More recently, a case named DPP v Robert Musso & Khalil Bou’elias was listed for a hearing in the Supreme Court of Victoria on 15 December 2006.

Dale Phillip Ward, formerly of Nicholson St, Abbotsford, fell into difficulties when his brother was convicted of murder, and committed suicide in jail in a drug overdose. His brother’s girlfriend was murdered too, her dismembered body dumped into the lake at Monash University. Ward used dope, amphetamines, ecstasy and ice, and developed a drug induced psychosis. Almost 2 years ago, in 2005, he stabbed Alex Cooper four times in the chest and once in the arm and killed him. He was charged with manslaughter and other offences from what the Herald Sun describes as “a crime spree”, and pleaded guilty. Sounds awfully like a plea bargain to me.  Update,  29 April  2007: more stabbings at more public housing estates.

The victim, a father of three, arrived in Perry St at the Dight Street public housing estate with a yellow racer he had just stolen. Ward’s half brother offered to buy it but the victim refused. So the half brother, then on methadone following a heroin addiction, put a knife to the victim’s throat, and there was a scuffle. Ward intervened by plunging the knife repeatedly, for which Justice Betty King — who moved on today to Carl Williams — gave him 8 with a minimum of 6. Whelan was jailed for 9 months for intentionally causing serious injury in an earlier hearing.

All in all, a sad story. I went for a walk around that area the other evening. There is great and grim ugliness in the block between Wellington St and Smith St.

All this is from The Age, story here, and the Herald Sun: story here. Previous posts here and here. Thanks to an American, Mo Riza, for the excellent snap.

Pappas once earned $15,000 a month ranked second on the international skating circuit, but he said that at 13 he was smoking marijuana “flat out” every day, first used coke at 15, was a regular user two years later, and by 18 it was “part of my diet”. In 1999, when he was 21, the County Court confiscated his passport for 3 years for smuggling 100g of the stuff into Australia in his shoe.

A small patch of blood, which may or may not be his, and a message scratched into concrete were found at Victoria Harbour, near where his corpse was dragged from the water in the vicinity of where a skating exhibition had been found 3 days earlier: “Love u LL” “Mum” Nan”. The media buzz is that it was a suicide. An autopsy revealed an absence of trauma, consistent with suicide.

His wallet floated to the surface. A passer-by handed it in to the police. The desk jockey linked the name with the alert for the search for the person of interest. The water police motored down to the Harbour and fished out the corpse in a very low key exercise.

According to The Hun, Pappas had a “history of violence” against Phillips, who had an intervention order out against him.

In the other incident, two carjackers punched a driver in the nose through the car window, but he managed to speed away with his wife and young daughter safe.

A 19 year old has been arrested.

Meanwhile, a man has been arrested after a woman was thrown from the bonnet of a moving car turning into Hoddle St from Johnston St in Abbotsford and hospitalised with head injuries on 26 February 2007. It is said they had been arguing. The man has been charged with failing to stop at an accident, failing to render assistance and handling stolen goods.

3MBS had its open day at the Abbotsford Convent yesterday, but I didn’t make it. I would like to hear from anyone who did. When you walk past the building with its St Hellier’s Street frontage, though, you can peer in the window at the announcers doing their thing live, and see the vast CD library as well. The current broadcast is piped through a speaker at an appropriately demure volume.

Meanwhile, the Neighbourhood Justice Centre at 241 Wellington St in Collingwood has actually heard a case now, on Wednesday morning, and is set to get into full swing this week. It has only one Magistrate at the moment, former social worker and lawyer David Fanning, until recently Tasmania’s Commissioner for Children. This Age article is worth a look. I’ll pop my head in soon and give a fuller report. It seems that there is to be an open day on 16 May 2007 as part of Law Week. The government says of the Centre:

‘The first Neighbourhood Justice Centre to be established in Australia will open in
Collingwood in January 2007. It is an innovative approach to justice that will
respond to the crime and safety needs of the City of Yarra community and improve
access to justice.

What is the Neighbourhood Justice Centre?
The Neighbourhood Justice Centre (NJC) is
the first community justice centre in Australia
It will focus on addressing local crime and
safety issues and improving access to justice
for people who live in the City of Yarra.
It will include a court; on site support services
to assist victims, defendants, witnesses and
local residents; mediation; community safety
programs and community meeting rooms.
The Centre’s approach is unique and involves
working in partnership with residents, traders,
police and support agencies in both the
establishment and the ongoing development
of the NJC. It is a pilot funded by the
Victorian Department of Justice.

Why is the NJC located in the City of Yarra?
The catchment area for the NJC is the City of
Yarra which includes the suburbs of Fitzroy,
Richmond, Collingwood and Abbotsford. The
City of Yarra is an ideal site for the NJC pilot
as it is a vibrant and progressive community
which has solid and innovative networks,
programs and facilities. In addition, the City
of Yarra experiences significant social
disadvantage and considerable crime. This
means that there will be a busy court at the
NJC.

What is the NJC Court and the role of the Magistrate?
The NJC Court brings together the
jurisdiction of the Magistrates’ Court (which
includes the Victims of Crime Assistance
Tribunal and a Crimes Family Violence List),
the Children’s Court (Criminal Division) and
some Victorian Civil and Administrative
Tribunal Lists to form a court where one
magistrate can hear all a of person’s matters.
The NJC Court will concentrate on hearing
cases where the court user (defendant or
applicant) resides in the City or Yarra or
where the subject matter arose in the City of
Yarra. The NJC has one principal Magistrate –
Magistrate David Fanning – who was
appointed in September 2006. He will preside
over all cases at the NJC. This will enable a
more holistic and comprehensive resolution to
legal problems for the benefit of the
individual affected and the wider community.

What services will the NJC provide?
The NJC will house a range of services
including drug and alcohol, mental health,
housing, employment and financial
counselling. There will also be a Screening,
Assessment and Referral Team (SART) that
will work closely with the services and the
NJC Magistrate. The SART is a multi-
disciplinary team that will deal with the
complex cases that often present in our justice
system and involve multiple interlinked
problems, such as homelessness, mental
health and substance abuse. The NJC service delivery models are
currently being finalised in collaboration with
existing service providers in the City of
Yarra.

Will mediation services be available at the NJC?
Yes, access to telephone and face to face
dispute resolution advice, as well as referrals
for mediation in appropriate cases, will be
available to those who use the NJC.

What input will the community have into the NJC?
Input from the local community is an essential
element of a community justice centre. This is
a continuing process through public forums,
focus groups, one-on-one interviews,
workshops and working groups.

In April 2006 a Community Liaison Committee (CLC) was established with
twenty people representing local residents,
traders, Kooris, service providers and Yarra
Council. The Committee meets monthly and
liaises with the community on key justice
issues as well as exploring local experiences
of the justice system.

How will we know if the NJC is working?
The NJC will be evaluated by independent
evaluators to ensure that it is achieving its
intended outcomes. The NJC is based on a
community justice centre concept and the
evaluation of other overseas models in the US
and the UK has produced encouraging results.

Further information
Contact the Neighbourhood Justice Team on
Ph: (03) 8684 1561
Email: njc@justice.vic.gov.au
www.justice.vic.gov.au/neighbourhoodjustice’

Did you hear? At 2 p.m. yesterday, a walker found a woman’s corpse wrapped in a blue sheet, weighed down by a large backpack full of weights. It was resting against the concrete barrier over which Dights Falls flow. We will know who it was soon enough: she had “Reggie” and “Elsie” tatts adorning her two wrists, and a gold navel stud, but the body has been in the water long enough for police to venture only that it appears to be a caucasian corpse. Keep you posted.

Update: the woman was 27 year old Balaclava woman Lynette Phillips. Her family is from the country. According to Sky News Online, she was a former heroin addict studying drug counselling at Swinburne University, and last seen in her flat on Monday. She is pictured in this Age article. Something I read suggested that the corpse is thought to have been dumped in the Merri Creek at Northcote.

But who was the walker? Abbotsford Blog wants to hear from you.

The other way Dights Falls have been making the news recently is in the government’s contemplation of the possibility of diverting “after-storms water” at Dights Falls and storing it in underground acquifers or in Yan Yean or Sugarloaf Reservoirs. By the end of the year, we will know whether Melbournians are set to drink Yarra River water from close to the centre of the city.

At the last minute I remembered it was the night to go hear Barry Dickins at the Collingwood Library. It was all very librarianish: the Arnott’s biscuits, the tea, the coffee. A couple of casks of wine would have been far more appropriate, and maybe the party would not have dissolved so quickly had the red wine not been absent. But to listen to Dickins was a great pleasure. He sat behind a table and chatted to 60 people without hubris, but without any affectation either. Many rhetorical questions were asked. Audience members answered them to themselves under their breath, or sotto voce. He is a man with an obvious affinity for the criminal, a fascination with low life, drawn to the world of the prison, a man who has been laid into by police. He dressed scruffy, but poem crept into his speech from time to time: he sketched an old taxi driver bearing a straw hat and popped “held together with helium and string” in there. The cabbie professed to be the gentleman who drove the cab which conveyed the mortally wounded Squizzy Taylor to St Vincent’s. Squizzy Taylor was in fact a riff off which he soliloquised, about himself, about Ronald Ryan, about the sense an audience has when it hears a line in a play which has the tang that “somebody actually said that”. I learnt that his Squizzy Taylor play is to come on in another season next year, and that he is writing a play now on Ben Hall, the bushranger.
After, I bought a diary he wrote when gathering information for his play on the hanging of Ronald Ryan, and invited him and a fellow who has lived in Abbotsford for 25 or 30 years down the pub. He didn’t have his glasses so I had myself a new experience — buying fags from a machine (ooff they’re expensive). We had jugs of Carlton and wicker baskets of chips in the front bar of the Carringbush, and he reminisced about an ex-girlfriend named “Bendy Rainbow” (it was the 60s I suppose) whose real name was Raelene. Poor man wanted to talk poetry but I had so little to say. But I was very happy to listen to him enthusing about Yevgeny Yevtushenko and reciting in an understated way Dylan Thomas (pictured) and one of the lesser beat poets. Now, I am going to learn some poems suitable for recitation over a few beers. Never know when you’re going to have to drink with a writer again. He was a great friend of Frank Hardy, it seems. That will have to be the next talk.