Click on the image above to see a map of Sydney showing famous crime locations. Then click on any blue marker to find out more.
Merchant banker Frank Nugan viewed the world of high finance like a game of chess. For every move there was always a countermove — until checkmate. If outmanoeuvred when actually playing chess, he would sit back imperiously and utter his favourite saying: ‘so I’m in a corner. So what?’ If… Keep Reading
In evidence before the NSW Royal Commission into Drug Trafficking, identities named as the major figures controlling the Griffith-based marihuana racket were described as little educated and having limited understanding of financial matters. Who, then, did they look to for professional accountancy and tax advice? Judging by witnesses called before… Keep Reading
Each week, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Australians have a bet on the races, or have a fling on other forms of gambling. Most lose. If their accounts were to be believed, Australia’s most successful punters happened to go on parade before the NSW Royal Commission into Drug… Keep Reading
Horse racing is eulogised throughout the world as the Sport of Kings. In Australia, it is also very much the playground of the Mr Bigs and Mr Big-Enoughs of organised crime. No wonder punters are called mugs; races, more so than other sports, are regularly fixed. Racing became more than… Keep Reading
When somebody of the American Mafia reckons a racket is big, it is big. And, with prophetic irony, Vincent ‘Big Vinnie’ Teresa, a New York Mafia boss turned FBI informer, once took it upon himself to warn that bird smuggling from Australia was getting bigger and bigger in the… Keep Reading
With a nudge, nudge, wink, wink and a ‘Yer know what I mean’, Neville Biber used to exhort television viewers to buy discount goods at off-the-back-of-a-truck prices. Unshaven, and looking like a shifty character, Biber would close his ads by hurriedly cleaning out the till and taking off to the… Keep Reading
When Frederick ‘Paddles’ Anderson died in Sydney in January 1985, the public knew who he was . . . thanks to the now legendary NSW police tapes. Otherwise, he might have died as he lived, relatively unnoticed. For Paddles was a true Australian godfather, the rarely acknowledged titular head of… Keep Reading
The following glossary was published at the front of the final report of the Wood Royal Commission into the NSW Police Force in 1997. GLOSSARY The expressions listed below describe corrupt and/or criminal practices and other colloquialisms referred to in evidence received by the Royal Commission and in this… Keep Reading
On Thursday, 12 October 1978, Sydney commuters were for once genuinely surprised by the blazing headlines of the city’s afternoon tabloids. Under the bold headline ‘League Star Heroin Charge’, the page one story of the Daily Mirror’s late final edition began: ‘Paul Hayward, the Newtown Rugby League star, has been… Keep Reading
Obscured from the Royal Commission by the stubborn silence of the Double Bay mob, the exceptional violence of its heroin enterprise was revealed in a series of brutal murders involving its New Zealand affiliates in 1978-9. Requiring a permanent drug buyer based in Southeast Asia, the ‘Double Bay mob’ seems… Keep Reading
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