Casefile True Crime - Case 24: Russell Street Bombing (Part 1)

Episode Date: July 3, 2016

[Part 1 of 2] Haros Avenue in Nunawading (Melbourne) presented a problem for the police surveillance team following the red Jaguar. It was a small dead-end street. No way to observe the house there bank robbery suspect was heading to, without being obvious… To avoid being detected the police had no choice but to let the suspect out of there sight. There was only one way in and out of Haros Avenue, so the suspect would have to come back past them eventually… For all credits and sources please visit casefilepodcast.com/case-24-russell-street-bombing-part-1

Nanna Wadding is a suburb just outside of the main city area of Melbourne, in the state of Victoria. It was 11.30am, Thursday the 27th of March 1986, and Harris Avenue in Nanna Wadding presented a problem for the police surveillance team following the red jaguar. There was a small dead end street, no way to observe the house their bank robbery suspect was heading to without them being obvious. To avoid being detected they had no choice but to let the suspect out of their sight. It was only one way in and one way out of Harris Avenue, so the suspect would have to

come back past them eventually. No big deal they thought, as they parked outside Harris Avenue, keeping a close eye out for the red jaguar. When the 1979 model Holden Commodore drove out of the street, the police weren't to know their suspect was inside. They were looking for a red jaguar, not a Commodore. It was a stroke of luck for the suspect, he had no idea the police were watching him. The change of cars had nothing to do with avoiding the police tail.

There was a far more sinister reason for the switch. Back in 1986, the Victorian Police Headquarters building was located on the corner of Russell Street and La Trobe Street in Melbourne. Opened in 1943, the building was recognised as a symbol of policing in Victoria and was referred to by many officers simply as Russell Street. The building housed many different police units and hundreds of officers were based there. At 12.50pm that same day, Thursday the 27th of March 1986, Officer Charles Bazina from

the drug squad parked his unmarked police car on Russell Street, directly outside of headquarters. He was annoyed at the car parked in front of him, a two-tone Holden Commodore sedan, the same one that had driven out of Harris Avenue past police surveillance teams a short while earlier. Bazina knew it wasn't a police car, but it was parked in the police parking spot. He had a quick look through the window, there was no one inside and he couldn't see anything to be worried about.

He didn't have time to deal with the illegal park, he forgot about it and made his way inside headquarters. Directly across the road from the Police Headquarters building was Melbourne Magistrates Court. Constable Carl DiNardio was a young 19-year-old officer fresh out of the academy. He was assigned to court security at the time, which basically meant he sat up the back of the courtroom and made sure no one caused any trouble. It was a slow day and DiNardio was happy when the court broke for lunch. He made his way out of the court building and onto Russell Street just before 1pm.

As DiNardio was walking out of the court, 21-year-old Constable Angela Taylor was flipping a coin with her partner. They were working in the watch house that day, which is the police cells next to the court and they were also on a lunch break. Angela Taylor graduated from the police academy at the top of her class and was described as a brilliant and vibrant person with a magnificent career ahead of her. The loser of the coin toss had to go on by lunch. Angela lost the toss and made her way onto Russell Street, heading across the road to

the canteen inside Police Headquarters. The quickest way to the canteen was through the southern entrance and that's where Angela Taylor headed. DiNardio was headed for the canteen as well, but he wasn't as familiar with the layout of headquarters being fresh out of the academy, so he made his way to the northern entrance. DiNardio and Taylor headed for the same place, but were walking in opposite directions. They didn't bat an eye late as they passed the Holden Commodore Park in the police parking. Drone into a scene of mass panic by the blast, the first explosion went off just before one

o'clock when a car blew up outside the police headquarters. Eyewitness news cameras were first on the scene. Just a few minutes ago, a car bomb exploded outside the police station here in Russell Street. There was a sound of one massive explosion. We were sitting in our office, our eyewitness news office just around the corner. The glass was shattered in the windows of our office. After that, there were several more explosions, the sound of properly fueling the car exploding.

Russell Street was in a complete state of chaos for seconds. Russell Street was in a state of chaos. Policemen, policewomen were screaming. Everybody was in a state of complete hysteria. Nineteen people in the busy lunchtime crowd were injured. Two police officers and a passerby are in a serious condition. Three cars were destroyed in the six explosions. There was massive damage to nearby buildings.

Russell Street was covered in a thick cloud of black smoke. The Holden Commodore, which police referred to as the bomb car, as I will now call it, had been packed with 12 kilograms or 26 pounds of jellignite. Three quarters of it was in the boot, and the rest was in the centre console. A small crater had been left in the road, underneath where it was parked. The crater was 15 centimetres deep and one and a half metres wide, which equals six inches deep and five feet wide. The explosion was extremely powerful, shaking the foundations of the police headquarters

building and other buildings nearby, as well as shattering a heap of windows. The force of the blast sent Constable Donatio flying back 15 metres in the air. He suffered a severe wound to his leg, where he was hit with a piece of shrapnel. It completely sliced through his muscle down to the bone, and it was bleeding heavily. He couldn't walk, but he managed to crawl off the road where he was assisted by two fellow officers. One of them used her shirt to tie Torna K around his leg to try and stop the bleeding. One of his kidneys had been sliced by the shrapnel, and his lung was also punctured,

making it difficult for him to breathe. He had also been struck with a number of smaller shrapnel pieces, all over his body. He required emergency surgery that night. Constable Angela Taylor was closer to the explosion and was caught in the inferno. She suffered horrific burns, 70-80% of her body. Many people tried to do the best they could to help her, but she soon lost consciousness. Magistrate Ian West, who was walking out of the court at the time of the explosion, was also struck with shrapnel and was badly wounded.

There were around 20 people injured in total, half of whom were police officers. Constable Angela Taylor was the most critical, but Constable Carl Donatio was in a bad way as well. Ambulance officers arrived on the scene quickly and conveyed the injured to Royal Melbourne Hospital. The busy city street now resembled a war zone. Injured people scattered along the ground everywhere. There was debris and smashed glass all over the street, confusion, panic and people screaming

for help. I was standing out in Mackenzie Street just around the corner from Russell when the first explosion hit. Like an earth tremor, the buildings shook and the windows all around us shattered. As we rushed onto the street, debris started flying all over the place, almost hitting most of us. The first thing we saw were people pouring out of the buildings. There was one woman strained off with bleeding legs.

The crowds seemed to gather from nowhere, but they were being pushed further and further back. The special operations group people moved in. Every car was a potential bomb and they had to check them all. Everybody was being pushed further and further away out into the city street. Police headquarters happened to be where the Victorian Police Special Operations Group were based. Pretty much the same as SWAT, which you might be more familiar with.

They quickly responded to the carnage on Russell Street, helping to secure the area and carry the injured away from the blast zone. For these officers and the other officers who were assisting, the threat of a second bomb was firmly in their minds. It's a common tactic for a smaller explosion to go off, which attracts a lot of people into the area to help, only then for a second, larger explosion to go off, maximising near the amount of casualties. What happened in the Russell Street bombing was that it didn't go off as planned.

When the primary explosion went from the boot, where most of the Gellignite was, this disrupted the secondary explosion in the centre console, where the rest of the Gellignite was. And as a result, that Gellignite in the centre console hardly exploded at all. So the bomb didn't go off to its full potential. This meant there were still live detonators and sticks of Gellignite present. And the bomb car was up in flames. Firefighters weren't all that keen on approaching the vehicle to put the flames out. That job was left to senior Constable Dennis Tipping from the Special Operations Group.

He put on a bomb suit and managed to get close enough to put out the flames safely. The area was completely shut down and evacuated, creating traffic chaos throughout the city. A thorough search was conducted of other vehicles and buildings in the area to see if there were any other bombs. None were found. Such was the force of the explosion. Debris was found several blocks away. A tyre from the bomb car was found in the rear car park of police headquarters, meaning

it had been blown over the roof. Well, there were three cars parked across the road, and then there was this almighty explosion, and one of the cars just burst into flame and shelled us with sort of debris and everything else. And with that it sort of threw us against the wall and down onto the ground. I think one of the guards of the car came down on top of Jenny's head, so he hit the wall and bounced off from the gash door shoulder and that. And Jay was wandering around, he hit the ground, so he threw him to the ground.

I don't know, it's just like a big fireball. Oh, I heard this big explosion. So I just automatically ran outside to see what was happening. And what about you? Well, I was facing the window and I heard the huge explosion and the window just shook, the glass panel just moved, and it was just like a gas explosion. And how frightened were you? Very frightened.

It was a very powerful explosion. Numerous crime scene officers attended, and bomb experts from the defence department were also called in to help. They quickly found the first big clue, a piece of wood with the remains of an alarm clock attached. There was another piece of metal connected to the alarm clock which helped make up the circuit, but the piece of metal couldn't be identified at that time. The piece of wood looked like it had been cut from a fence post.

The alarm clock was the timing device. When the alarm sounded, a metal piece at the back of the clock clicked over and connected with wires which completed the circuit and set off the bomb. The bomb was found to be poorly constructed. An amateur job, definitely not made by an expert. But it was designed to inflict maximum damage. The bomb maker had packed a large amount of metal tools and sockets around the bomb to act as extra shrapnel.

In total, 50 sticks of jellignite were used. If the bomb had gone off to its full potential, it was believed that part of the police headquarters building would have come down. Some thought it may have been an attack against the court. Maybe somebody who was pissed off with a court ruling and was taking revenge. Of course, this had happened before in Australia. It was actually still very fresh in everybody's minds. But perhaps the largest chapter written in Australia's history of outrages concerns the family court

and family court judges. The first Judge David Opus, gun to death outside his Wallara home in June 1980. Then Justice Richard G, whose bell rose home was blown apart in early March 1984. The Parramatta family law court was badly damaged by a bomb blast in the following month. And then in July 1984, possibly the worst of the family law court attacks. The wife of 61 year old family court judge Justice Ray Watson was killed. The family's Greenwich apartment was shaken to the foundations by a bomb triggered to explode as the front door was opened. Although a member of our family law judiciary had been the target, his wife became the innocent victim.

But today's attack, although not an isolated incident, stands out as this city's first senseless terrorist action directed at the public at large. Not yet the streets of Beirut, but a big step closer to the madness. That madness that we thought lurked only beyond our shores. The Russell Street bombing and family law court bombings were not considered linked by police. But consideration was given that the court may have been the target. The court lists were checked and recent decisions were reviewed, but nothing stood out. Others thought that maybe it was a terrorist attack, saying that Beirut had now come to Australia. A comparison made due to the Lebanese civil war that was going on at the time, where there were a lot of bombings.

But the obvious conclusion for most was that this was an attack against the police. The bomb had been put directly outside of police headquarters, and it had been set to go off at lunchtime, ensuring that a lot of police were going to be outside the building when the bomb exploded. After all of the initial confusion had settled, a direct attack against the police was how the case was treated. Although it was on fire and damaged, the bomb car wasn't completely destroyed, and something stood out. The chassis number had been drilled out. The chassis number being the serial number of a car used to identify it. The bombers had drilled through right across the chassis number, so you could no longer see it.

This was very unusual, something the police hadn't seen before. The way criminals usually got rid of chassis numbers was to grind them down, or some would even try and change the numbers. Drilling through the chassis number completely was unique. Although it was completely pointless in this case, because the number plates had been left on the car. Maybe they thought the plates would be destroyed in the explosion, but they weren't, making the bomb car easily identifiable. It had been stolen two days before the bombing from the Brandon Park Shopping Centre in Mulgrave, which is about 20 kilometres or 12 miles away from Russell Street. A red and green coloured blanket was found inside the bomb car.

It was burnt and damaged, but it was in okay condition considering. Good enough to be forensically tested anyway, which was important, because the blanket didn't belong to the vehicle owner. He had never seen it before. An examination revealed it contained dog hairs, belonging to a bull terrier. This could be useful to match to a suspect's dog, if a suspect was ever identified. The car was checked for fingerprints using the super glue fuming method, not the dusting method. This is where super glue is combined with water, and the vapours react with chemicals in fingerprints. But no prints were found.

The search for evidence wasn't just restricted to the ground. Police from the Special Operations Group abseiled down buildings, hunting for evidence that had made its way up onto roofs and window ledges. It's on the roof of police headquarters that they found one of Constable Di Natio's boots. All of the pieces of shrapnel and all of the other evidence were bagged and taken to a large auditorium where they were catalogued. Twisted metal, bomb components, pieces of wire, the alarm clock and any other debris that was found. It was all bagged and treated with great care. The debris was basically treated like pieces of a large jigsaw puzzle that investigators would have to try and put back together. Any piece of the debris could contain valuable forensic evidence to help catch whoever was responsible.

To help with the cataloging, a large grid was placed over a map of the blast zone, and every piece of evidence was marked with a letter corresponding to where it was found on that grid. Five days after the explosion, Constable Di Natio was recovering from surgery, which had been successful. He was interviewed, but he wasn't able to assist with the investigation. He didn't see anyone or anything suspicious. Constable Angela Taylor was still in a critical condition and was fighting for her life. Although there were still no suspects, the investigation was coming along. Some of the debris from the blast had now been identified as being bread crates. Investigators had worked out the main part of the bomb had been placed onto a bread crate. Then the metal tools and sockets were placed on the crate around the bomb.

And they knew where the bread crates came from. They were stolen during a robbery from a milk bar at Brayside, another suburb of Melbourne, about 26 kilometres or 16 miles southeast of Russell Street. The robbery occurred six weeks before the bombing. A large amount of cigarettes and confectionery were stolen along with the bread crates. There were no suspects for the robbery. A task force was established to investigate the bombing. It was made up of over 30 detectives, brought in from all different areas of Melbourne, making sure they were drawing on knowledge of possible suspects from across the entire city.

As well as local detectives, members from the Arson Squad, Major Crime Squad and Homicide Squad were called in to assist. They felt there weren't a lot of people that would be capable of the attack. There was one thing to hate the police. There was another level altogether to bomb police headquarters. It didn't take long for the task force to link the bombing to a break-in that occurred six months earlier, on the 6th of October 1985. A country mine was broken into near Blackwood, about 70 kilometres or 43 miles northwest of Melbourne. A large amount of detonators and gelling night were stolen, and those detonators and gelling night were used in the Russell Street bombing. There were no leads and no suspects for the break-in.

The first lead for police happened when an unnamed male caller got in contact with the Victorian Police Commissioner. The caller said he knew who the bombers were, and he even had photos of them. He ended up calling in on five separate occasions, and he eventually said that he wanted US$500,000 in a Swiss bank account before he would tell police what he knew. The calls were traced to a number of public phone boxes in the St Kilda area, which is only a short distance away from Russell Street. Police weren't sure if the caller was genuine, or if it was just a hoax, but they couldn't ignore it. So the police commissioner was able to convince the government to offer a reward of $500,000. Not US dollars, and the money wouldn't be put in a Swiss bank account, but it was hoped it would be enough to entice the unknown caller to make contact again.

Premier John Kane and Chief Commissioner Mick Miller jointly announced the record $500,000 reward. But in a press conference, they refused to answer any questions on developments behind their decision. The offer of an amount of this magnitude might succeed in producing vital information. And I don't propose to divulge the nature of that information in case it might jeopardise this development. Police staked out phone boxes in the St Kilda area in the hope that the caller wouldn't be able to resist the huge reward. While waiting to hear from him again, police received hundreds of other calls from members of the public. Did it work? Find out next week in Part 2 of Russell Street, here on Case 4. Thank you.