Free Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly by Sue Bursztynski Page B

said, were planning to firebomb a nightclub, he wasn’t sure when or where. He suggested that Bolton should go around the nightclubs with him and warn the owners.
    On 7 March, 100 people enjoyed live music played by two bands, the Delltones and Trinity. At 2 a.m., Finch and Hamilton leapt from their stolen car. Finch held two petrol drums and Hamilton took off the cap. They threw the drums inside the door, where the petrol spilled on to the floor, and threw in a match.

    With a whoosh, the fire began. It roared up the stairs and the air conditioning system spread poisonous carbon monoxide fumes through the air.
    People screamed and scrambled over each other to get out. Some managed to break the windows and leap out on to the footpath, five metres below. But fifteen people died, ten men and five women.
    Stuart left a note for Bolton at his newspaper, saying he’d been waiting for him from 8.55 till 10.40 p.m. – where had Bolton been?
    Despite all the covering of tracks, police arrested Stuart and Finch on 12 March, less than a week after the firebombing. Hamilton was missing, probably dead.
    To get the charges going quickly, police charged Finch and Stuart with one murder, of a woman called Jennifer Davie.
    Stuart and Finch pleaded not guilty. They swallowed wire crosses, as a protest. Being in hospital didn’t stop them being tried and convicted.
    They appealed. They complained that they had been unfairly treated, that there had been too much publicity, making it impossible to get a fair trial. In November 1977, Stuart climbed on to the roof of his jail and used bricks and guttering to write a message: ‘Innocent – victim of police verbal’. He even wrote poetry. None of it helped.
    In 1979, a heart infection killed him in his cell.
    Finch spent his time in prison protesting his innocence. He wrote letters. Journalists supported him. There were even groups who were trying to get him released. There were claims that the confessions had been made up by police and weren’t genuine. For years after the event, the men’s guilt was questioned.
    One of Finch’s supporters, Cheryl Cole, actually married him.
    Eventually, he was released and deported to Britain, leaving his wife behind. She did travel to England for a few months, but he treated her badly. She returned home.
    Thinking he was safe, Finch admitted to a journalist that he and the others charged were guilty of the firebombing after all. When the Queensland government pointed out that he’d only been convicted of one murder and could be brought back to stand trial for the others, he backtracked, saying he’d been confused.
    Whoops!

    DID YOU KNOW…?

    The 1970s were a good time for shoplifters in England. In fact, a group of Australian criminals, the Kangaroo Gang, travelled to the UK especially to shoplift. They worked in teams, usually sending in one member to cause trouble while the rest of them helped themselves to the goods. This wasn’t a case of pinching a bag of sweets from a supermarket or a pair of jeans from a clothes shop either. One team actually stole a chimpanzee from the Harrods Zoo in London!

ROBERT TRIMBOLE

    O n 15 July 1977, furniture store owner Donald Mackay disappeared from the car park of a pub in the New South Wales town of Griffith. He was never seen again. At midnight, police found his blood-spattered white van and some spent cartridges in the car park.
    Donald wasn’t just a shopkeeper. He had worked hard to try to stop people in the area from growing and selling the drug marijuana. The first time he told police about it, the farmers just paid small fines. Then, in 1975, Donald found out about a much bigger crop being grown at a nearby place called Coleambally. Most of the growers and sellers went to jail. Donald had succeeded, but this incident ended up killing him. Defence lawyers saw a list of people who had reported their clients to the police. Now they knew their enemy.
    Robert Trimbole also lived in Griffith. At first, he