August 31, 2024 • 51 mins
Claude Robinson has been shot, stabbed, chased at gunpoint by drug dealers, was struck by a car driven by undercover cops in a robbery gone wrong and spent years behind bars with some of the most notorious criminals including Ivan Milat. This is how Claude broke a crippling drug addiction and left the life of crime behind him.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Detective see a side of life the average persons never
exposed to. I spent thirty four years as a cop.
For twenty five of those years, I was catching killers.
That's what I did for a living. I was a
homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys, staid,
I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
(00:23):
The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Join me now as I take you into this world.
(00:46):
Welcome to another episode of I Catch Killers. If I
met today's guests twenty years ago, I would have said
he's going to an early grave or spending the rest
of his life in prison see claud Robertson. Our guest
has been ad by a Lebano's gang. He's been shot,
he's been addicted to heroin. He served lengthy sentences in prison,
but was in jar with notorious murderers like Ivan Malatt
(01:09):
and the Granny Killer. His life for crime saded when
he was just ten when he was arrested for breaking
into cars. A few years later, he became addicted to
drugs and soon became a drug dealer in Sydney's notorious
King's Cross. He was heading down a path of self destruction,
but he's turned his life around big time and he's
making a difference in the criminal justice system. I first
(01:31):
met Claude after I'd left the police, at a formal
invitation only function at New South Wales Government House. The
function was about criminal justice reform. It's safe to say
Claude and I stood out a little bit from the crowd.
Since he last walked out of prison almost seventeen years ago.
Claude has turned his life around and today he's going
to tell us his story and I dare say open
(01:52):
our eyes up to problems within the criminal justice system.
I think it's going to be a really interesting chat.
Claude Robertson, Welcome to I catchkell.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Thanks Garry, A pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Well, we always seem to meet in these really formal settings.
The first time I met you was at Government House.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
There's true and I was the last time I wore.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
A suit, a bit of a shing dig with all
the politicians and the senior members of the legal fraternity.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
It was I remember walking down the long path to
the government House and the security the security guards were
dressed immaculately, you know, and he asked my name was
on the list, and yeah, he gave me directions. And
it's quite an imposing you know, with the paintings are huge.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Yeah, it is an imposing building. When I was in
the cops, I spent a bit of time there when
I was doing close personal protection, anitary protection, and have
times there. But it is an intimidating place and it
is I got to say, looking around the room, I
saw of checking out who's there, And the director of
the DPP was there, and there was judges there and
politicians there, and I looked around and think, what am
(02:57):
I doing here. I've just been out of the cops,
criminally charged, convicted, and I was quite happy I've got
an invite there. And I look around the room, I
saw you and I thought, yeah, I reckon, I can
talk talk to this.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
But yeah, I probably felt very very similar there were
I remember I think the governor got up and introduced
and I just remember her entry into the room and I.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Thought, wow, this is really formal.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Yeah, you know, and she's got up and spoke and
yeah it was. And I was sitting there very similar thing,
you know, as you said that the former DPP was there,
who was in charge of it when I was incarcerating
New South Wales.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Yeah, you know, but I thought it was good because
that was it was on justice reform and jailing's failing
and different things about that. It's healthy to have those
people sitting there talking, talking to people like yourself with
life experience, people that have been on the other side
law me as a cop and getting people's opinions. So
it feels progressive.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
You know.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
The solution involves everyone, you know, I don't. You know,
I'm not one of those people. But just because I've
lived experience doesn't I don't believe on an expert in.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Anything by my own life, but it does give me
an insight.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
But you know, I have professional experience, and you have
to take into consideration the different perspectives that everyone brings
to it. If I look at it just from my perspective,
is very narrow and the community is made up of
lots of different people and like you said, most of
the people there were represented different parts of that community.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
And parts of the whole justice system. Yes. Anyway, so Hobknobin,
the next time I saw you was at Parliament House.
It sounds like we lived the good life and that
again was a formal invitation and you did a keynote
there and on the back of that, I thought, I've
got to get this guy on my catch killers you
were very passionate. Do you want to tell us about
what you were talking about there and what that function
(04:42):
was about at New South Wales Parliament.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Yeah, so I was invited there because I'm part of
the Justice reform initiative with Mindy Satory, the amazing Mindisatory.
I think that's how I got the invite to the
first one.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yeah. She's a good lady, she is.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
I've had a bit to do with her.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Over the years and she knows that I've got lived
experience and professional and then I'm very passionate about advocacy
about changing the system. So she, you know, called me
up and said could you speak you know at Parliament
House we've got a couple of lived experience speakers.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Gail was the other one.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
And funnily enough, you know, Gaila and I were in
rehab together seventeen years ago. So when I as soon
as I saw it was Gail and you know, and
our journeys have been different, but you know, we started
in that rehab coming off methadone together, so pretty amazing.
And two and we had had a chat with her
about that while we're in Parliament House, you know, speaking.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
The message you were trying to get across, because again
there was a lot of politicians, senior police there, there
was a whole range of people from the justice system.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Look my take on it, especially you know, having that
sort of powerful people there was. The economics of imprisonment
don't make sense. It's you know, I pay taxes today,
you know, And as I spoke about that, you know,
every time we imprisoned someone, you know, you wait longer
at a hospital because this not a doctor or a
nurse at cost us. And I think it's a really
(06:03):
bad investment. And I don't believe the community has an
understanding of what they the non value for money they
get right.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
I remember speaking to Tim Watson Monroe. I'm not sure
if you know of Tim, a criminal psychologist. He raised
that very issue. He said, look, the amount of money
you spend on having one person in prison, you could
have a full time psychologist assigned to that person helping
them get their life in order. So I think we
do need to look at that, besides all the other
(06:33):
aspects of it. From the fiscal point of view, the
cost of keeping people in prison one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
And I spoke to that on that very day. You
know my service.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
So we get funded by DCJ ninety six thousand dollars
a year to work with four people twelve weeks each.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
And the work that you're doing with those people is
that at where's.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
That at the Rainbow Lodge here in a city of Sydney.
So we work with medium, high and high risk offenders.
So those are few and is a great risk of
recidivision and returning to custody, so we work with them.
And we also work with people on the Wallama List,
which is a new initiative for First Nations people in
the District Court in New South Wales.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Okay, well, I want to talk about that all in detail,
but I also want our listeners to get an understanding
of where you're coming from and your lived experience so
you haven't always hung out at Parliament House and Government House.
It's definitely yeah. So tell us about your upbringing.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
So I come from Melbourne originally. I grew up in
a big Catholic family. So I'm number five of six kids.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Good Catholics.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Yeah, good Catholics, you know, believe it or not. Altar
Boy forced religion. And when I look back on my childhood,
what I understand now that led me on the path
that I went on was that the message I got
really early was that the adults in my life were incongruent.
(08:04):
What they said and what they did were two different things.
And I'm talking six seven years old. I'd work this
out and I found that, for whatever reason, really damaging.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Was sending you mixed messages.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
As a child, it was, Yeah, I didn't know where
my safety was.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
You know, I say to people, you know, I could
behave the same way in two days and get two
different outcomes. And as a child, I understand now as
an adult and the work I do, how damaging that
is because it doesn't have any safety.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yeah, when you break it down, I'm just thinking, in
that strange world that you live in as a child,
if you're getting inconsistent messages from parents or people in authority.
It's acceptable to do that one day and then next
day you're in trouble. Yeah, yeah, I can see how
it plays with.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
You and LinkedIn with the Catholicism.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
You know, because my parents were from that where you
had to go to church and you know, and I
had to be an older boy, and you know, the
memories I have from that. I remember where I was
an altar boy. On the Sunday, my team played AFL
football over the fence and I had to sit in
the church and miss the first quarter every week, and
I could hear my mates yelling out to me, and
(09:13):
that was just such a painful thing because I hated.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
I didn't want to be there.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
I didn't.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
I wasn't an alder boy because I wanted to. I
was forced.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
And the other thing was that I saw in my
community that you know, on a Sunday, everyone went to
this church and dressed up and pretended the world was perfect.
Yet you know, during the week, they're sleeping with each other,
they're bashing their wives, like like I remember going into
a mate's house to pick him up one Sunday to
go and kick the footy.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Or whatever you do with kids.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
The door was off, there was a knife in the wall.
It was like it was and I didn't think anything
of it, and I just walked down to his room
and kicked it, you know, banged on the door, grabbed
the footy, and walked out, you know. And I think
about even that talking about it, and I just go, well,
that's just so insane.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
But that's what it was like.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
I remember on one occasion going down the street read
and I saw a few of the people I knew
from church carrying the priest out into the car because
he was so drunk. Because they would drop around your
house in those days, you know.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Yeah, I look, one thing I don't like in life
is hypocrisy. And I don't want to attack the church
or agen or whatever, but let's just call it for
what it is. Yeah, I don't like the hypocrisy of
present one way, but then the real fact you're a
completely different person.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
I think that fed into the you know, the incongruence
of the adults. And then I saw all these and
I was like, so the message that I understand now
that I got was that the world was hostile. Fuck everyone.
You get what you can anyway you can get it,
you know. And I started stealing money from my parents
when I was seven eight years old to go to
the tuck shop and you know, and it just led
(10:49):
me down that path.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Yeah, And it's interesting you say that, like stealing. I think,
as kids, well I can put my hand up. We
all go through that stage where he's an opportunity and
you take it. But then you get caught and you
think of the consequences, and then you start as you
get older, you realize it's wrong. But as a child,
you can go off track pretty easy.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
Cant I did, And you know, I know went off
track because you know, I two of the primary schools
I went to, you know, I was expelled from.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Yeah, I saw you. You managed to do two primary
schools and two high schools.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
I did the high schools.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
I can understand, you know, Like I look at my daughter,
she's ate, and I just go, how do you get expelled?
Speaker 1 (11:32):
How did you get expelled from a primary school?
Speaker 3 (11:35):
So the first primary school was the one I'd gone
to from prep and was close to my house. I
was just so chaotic, you know, my behaviors. I wouldn't
do what I was told, and in those days there
was corporal punishment. I'd have to sit up the front
of the room with my hands on the desk, and
he had one of those big wooden meter rulers, the teacher,
(11:56):
and it didn't matter who did it, but he turned
around and hit me, you know, and like so I
just you know again, it was that message, it didn't
matter whether I was doing right or wrong. I was
getting punished. Our males will do wrong. So you know,
they thought, we'll go to school somewhere else and believe
it or not. So I went to another school because
my mum was a primary school teacher.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Just break this down, that thought. You always get interesting
facts on my catch killers, but you got to expelled
from a primary school that your mum.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Was a teacher at I did. I did, so my
mom's a big effort. Yeah, it is a very big effort.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
So I lived in Franks there's not a pretty tough
place to grow up. But where my mum taught and
where I played footy and went to school was a
place called the pines, you know in New South Wales
equivalent to eds or man draw to case housing commissioned
like you know, when all the houses were pink blue
or yellow and lots of burnout cars. And she taught
in the school there and it was a tough school.
(12:51):
So she went there and it was you know, I
just met a whole heap of kids like me, you know,
and I and I still can't remember the up to it,
but I put the remember the old Galvi and I
steal binge.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
It had at school.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
I put that over the vice principal, mister White and
hit him with a cricket bat.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
That's pretty good going, how are we?
Speaker 2 (13:12):
I would have been like nine or ten.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
Yeah, yeah, I look again, like I look at my
daughter and I just go, well, what was going on that?
I was willing to do that and there so we
didn't get the rule there. We got strapped with a
thick leather strap called Freddy. And I was so you know,
and I led this. I did this into my thirties.
(13:35):
But I would go to the principal's office and then
go Robinson, what are you doing here?
Speaker 2 (13:39):
And I go, well, let's just get it out the way.
I drive him nuts, you know, because I thought it's coming.
You know, I'll get a couple on credit.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
But punish me now because I'm going to do something stupid.
When I walk out. But yeah, it's interesting when you
look back at school because I went through an era
where corporal punishment was there. It was the cane, and
there were certain teachers, and I can see it had
to be stopped because certain teachers enjoyed it too much.
There was teachers that any reason they could think of,
they would cane you. And it's a little bit creepy
(14:07):
standing in the in the room with some man with
your hand out and he's and you get sentenced I
think six with the maximum. They could give you the
six strokes and you'd be warming your hands up before
you went in, but you'd come out with blood, blisters
and all that. But when I say it didn't hurt,
it was a bit of fun. You walked out like
it was a badge of honor. Actually, and I look
(14:28):
what I got.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Yeah, And when I look back, you know, the things
I remember from then aren't the physical scars, you know,
it's the message, the lesson the emotional, you know. And
when I tell my story, one of the things that
I believed happened for me was you know that I
went too you know at home that you.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Know I got in trouble. I was tired. I was bad.
I went to school. I was tired. I was bad.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
You know, becomes a self fulfilling profit.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
So does the police told me I was bad? I
went to the courts. They told me I was bad.
I dow up in prison. See, in the end, you
just couple everyone's says it your males or that's.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Yeah, you do. I think if you get that negative
reinforcement in you, it's almost like you just follow the
path that your lack of self worth. You got locked
up by the cops when you were ten or in
trouble with the cops.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Yeah, in the ninten soo again, you know where I
grew up, as it was a pretty tough place. So
I'd hang out with older kids. And so we're break
into cars at night. And yeah, this particular time I
break into this and this. You know I must have
been so this has been nineteen eighty, you know, so
(15:34):
a long time ago. I in those days, you used
to be I can't remember the make of the car,
but they get me. I could stand on the roof
and pop the yeah pop, the things would pop out.
You didn't even need a cay to get into them.
And or you could have a budget. They were quite easy,
you know, back in those days. But they'd get me
to walk up and jump on the roof and.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Top the things, break into the car, break into the
cars and.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Generally, you know, most of the time we're looking for
five bucks or smoke source, you know something. And this
particular day, for whatever reason, this guy left his paypacket
on the seat and I got the paypack and I
think it had six hundred dollars in it, which was
a lot of money, a lot of money. I didn't
know that he lived in the local sergeant.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Right, So a lot of money and six hundred dollars
are going to investigate that, it's probably not too hard.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
Well, I remember it because and I split it up
with these guys and I think maybe I took one
hundred dollars, which is a huge amount of money. And
it was we have the Royal Melbourne Show and it
was around that time, because I know because I went
with my mate the Royal Melbourne Show and came back
with you know.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Yeah, where'd you get all that clock?
Speaker 2 (16:47):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (16:47):
So, yeah, there was no criminal genius involved in it,
and so you know I had to with in back
those days, you didn't get in trouble.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
You didn't go before the courts at that age, so.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
I juvenile caution would have been what we can hear
a police officer, you've got to gether. The superintendent speaks,
you realize what you've done is wrong, Claude, you say yes,
and yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
This is where you're going to end It's funny, you know,
this is where you're going to end up if this keeps.
And you know, I just thought, yeah, And it was
not that I I wasn't rude or disrespectful to him.
And my experience with the police that was, I was
never I never had that relationship with him.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
I just they were doing their thing. I was doing mine.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
You know, when did drugs start to become into your life?
Speaker 3 (17:34):
So do you know, due to my family situation, my
first escape was sport yep, So I played a lot
of sports. I was really good at tennis, you know,
I played baseball for Victoria. You know, I played AFL
with you know, Nathan Burke, Robert Harvey.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Like really, so you have a potential career path. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
I played all those sort of sports.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
And because I did everything to get out of the house,
to not be at home and you know. One of
the things I've learned because I have you know, I'm
an adict of have addiction.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
I get obsessed or focused, so.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
That can be beneficial for you.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
So, yes, I was really whatever I set my mind.
I was really good at you know, you know, I
played tennis. I was a really good junior and you know,
and that worked for a while, and then me and
my mate.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Every when we were grabbed.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
This is like in the early eighties, everyone had you know,
cooler bar wine cast in the fridge, so you know,
we'd be stealing his mums whatever at mosal or whatever
and drinking that and then and I stilled it to
this day. I don't know why, trying to hold the
thing open and pour water back in like they were
going to know that we've taken two glasses out of it.
(18:44):
It seems crazy now, but you know, as a kid,
you know, we did that, and you know it gave
me the sport was good and all that, but I
had to practice and train, you know, and put effort in.
And you know, I remember the first time I drunk alcohol,
I got that same sense of feeling.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Okay, what age were you around then, twelve something like that?
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Quite young at that time. It's a crucial time in kids' lives,
isn't it. I see it that a lot of kids
you can serve and they're fine, it's that, but they
can go off track very quickly. Yeah, just by perhaps
being exposed to alcohol or access to different things. Definitely.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
And I think, you know, I grew up in the seventies,
this is the early eighties. And you know another thing,
My grandmother was the Catholic patriarch, you know, and on
Christmas Day, Christmas night we go day, we go to
the other grandma's, but we go to my father's mother's
house on Christmas Night. And I still remember you'd park
(19:45):
the car and walk down to her house, and she
had like a car port, very rudimentary one back in
those days, and all the men would drop the eski's there,
go inside, kiss the matriarch, get there lotto to get
everyone got for Christmas, and walk outside and drink. And
the women would stay in there and drink tea and
(20:07):
eat scones, and the kids and you know, I always
when you're about ten or eleven, you're allowed to go
outside and have a shandy or a beer. And you know,
I still have all I ever wanted to do, was
you know, go outside and drink with the man and
what would happen was you know, my uncle's and that
would all get drunk and fight and argue, you know,
was it like? And I thought I was attracted to
(20:30):
that back then.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
The role models there, the people you're looking up to
at the time. It's just a lifestyle of culture that
is easy to fall into. You played in some bands
or you been in the music as well.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
I did so I after I started drinking and you know,
smoking pot, because that gave me the sense of being okay.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
I didn't want to do sport anymore because that took
hard work.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
So I got into music, you know, because I had
some mates who are into music. And again, you know,
because with that addictive personality, I set my mind to it,
you know, and we did pretty well, you know, for
how young we were. When I look back now, you know,
we were playing in pubs at sixteen and seventeen to
three or four hundred people, and well.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
That would have been a bit of a high for
you at that stage.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
It was it was you know, getting up on stage,
it was an adrenaline rush.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
And you know, I smoked pot from that pot. I smoke.
This is normal. Everyone did, and you know, and then
we drink, and I think that was the other thing though, So.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
You know, when I drunk, I've never would have beer
in the fridge, like I would never come home and
have a beer like I drunk to get pissed.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Yeah, it's interesting that we'll speak more on the addiction
and your understanding of it. But I see people like that.
I have friends, yeah, throughout my life that, yeah, I
can go home and have a drink all each night
and it's not like it's why I say, it's not
an addiction, but it's not a problem in any way.
(22:04):
But then I have friends that don't know, I don't
want to drink, I don't drink all week and then
have an absolute blind They're on the weekend and just
once they've had one, they need another one, another one,
until they basically write themselves off. And yeah, it becomes problematic.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Well, I you know, I realize looking back that I
drank it for the effect, not for the enjoyment. Yeah,
you know, I would rather have a water or a
coke or something if I wanted to drink, So I'd
buy alcohol and I'd drink it all.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
For the effect, for the effect of it.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
So yeah, and I did music, and I don't want
to put a picture across that. My parents were all
bad and neglect you know, you know that shit teachers,
and they did their best. You know, I was five
or six. I think by the time I came along,
they were tired and worn out. They're always working, you know,
six kids, like I got like one at home and
an older one.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
I think, Yeah, six is a lot.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
It's easy unless you've walked that path. I've got to
that stage. It's easy to look back at life and
go why didn't they do that? But quite often your
parents are products of their upbringing and plays on. What
about the hard drugs? When when did that? When when
did you realize that it was becoming a problem in
your life?
Speaker 3 (23:13):
I probably should have, you know, when I smoke pot
every day, but still you know, and again grown up
in Australia. And I'll jump forward just a little bit
before I go back. You know, when I did get
into hard drugs and i'd get clean and stop using them,
my parents would you know? If I was smoking pot
and drinking that was acceptable in Australia.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
You know what most definitely I've got friends of known
the whole life of the Yeah, poth hits. Yeah, they
like a smoke, That's that's what they do and they
and they get functioned in life, per fact.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
So that wasn't my take. So you know, my parents,
you know, if I wasn't using heroin and I was
just doing that, you know, I probably they probably thought
the better of two evils, you know. So I think
I got in the music industry that you know, and
I got introduced to speed. You know, in the lay
eighties we had ecstasy and acid coming along. But I
(24:04):
think my life it started to change. Then I got
introduced to some people who were large scaled drug dealers
that when I look back, that was one of those
pivotal o It was like the next the next stage,
because so I knew lots of people and I'd go
and you know buy, I'd get ecstasy or trips or coke.
(24:28):
And I was living in Frankston and suddenly I had
access to you know, coke and like drugs. Yeah, we're
in Frankston at that time. You know, you might have
the old truck of speed and drink and smoke.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Pot. I suddenly had access to this.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
So you know, lots of people would ask me, and
I'd begun with these people and you know, buying drugs
not to make money, just because I knew people. And
I just remembered this guy who became my friend, you know.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Just said ah fuck. You know, he said, I'll just
give you some and just sell.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
It and then you It's a path that you see
so many people walk down. Yeah, I was just taking drugs,
taking and then I wake up. I'm actually a drug dealer. Yep,
And I didn't realize it, got the.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Keys to the candy shop.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
And thankfully, you know, that guy doesn't do that anymore,
and he's amazing mental health nurse changed his life in Melbourne,
you know, and he didn't go the same path as me,
but he certainly got out of it.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
And it's funny. There's a number of us and we
all work in helping fields.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
You know, when did your life get to the point
where you realize it was tipping that Okay, this was innocent.
I shouldn't have done that. But I've done this, but
I'm still a good person. When did you realize, okay,
I'm living the life of a criminal.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Well, that same guy when he came after me, with
a gun. Okay, when I eyed him seventy grand Yeah, okay,
well I'm sticking a gun down my throat.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Tell us about that. What happened there?
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Well, because I had access to the drugs, but I
was using too many, so I was what a bit
was profitable.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
It had become a Pyramids game.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
So it was going to crash at some stage.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
But so you know, I could get drugs off this guy,
a couple of pounds of pyton sell and get money
and buy drugs and you know, rob Peter to pay Paul.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Sooner or later, you were going to be short.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
The pyramid. Yeah, came crashing down, and.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
You know he came after me in that instance, and
you know, wanted his money back, and it was it
was a really difficult time.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Because there's two areas of my drug use and drug dealing.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
There was that period and I say it's different because
I was selling drugs to people who didn't do crime
to buy them.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Okay, you know, okay, so you're mixing in a circle
of just that's social.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
I would do it.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
I used to do the court run in Melbourne to
all the barristers, you know, so it's quite prevalent, so
most of the people. And I was selling drugs to
people in TV, the music industry. So though my actor
was criminal, the people I was dealing.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
With weren't, so you weren't call in that criminal.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
So it was a much safer way to do things.
But my user was getting getting out of control and
I was using I had news heroin at this stage.
I was like nineteen twenty and I you know, but
I was out. I was using drugs all the time, cocaine, ecstasy, marijuana, drinking.
You know, it was totally out of control. The money
was all and I remember this. I had a friend
(27:22):
who was actually a heroin addict who I used to
sell speed to and it was funny because you'd always say,
I'll never sell it to you know. It's terrible him
and his wife, you know, they were and I saw,
you know, what it had done to their lives.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Though they owned a house and were manageable, that it
cost them. And you think, I'm not going to be
like them.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
And I was with my girlfriend at the time and
we've been on the two day coke bender, and I
was like, yeah, I thought I was having a heart attack,
you know, And I still remember she said to me,
I forget some heroin, it'll take the edge.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
I think we can have some more cake. And I
thought it's a.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Rational yeah, And I wrung my mate, the one who
said he didn't never sell it to me.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
I'm laughing, I shouldn't know. It's interesting. I think you've
got to look back at the logic at the time
and what.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
I thought that was really, you know. And I rang
and he said because I bought her and got heroin
off him before, but for other people. And he said, oh,
you know, who's it for, you know, like he's got
my moral dealer. It's you've got to laugh about it
because it's just insane.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
And I said, no, no, it's for me.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
And he's like, oh you know what you did it,
you know? And I said, no, no, it's all right.
I'm on a coke ben, I just need to take
the edge off to take more coke. And he's like,
and I heard it. I remember yelling to his wife
and oh yeah, yeah, all right.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
So they sold me. Then.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
I remember I was living in East Melbourne near the
mcg in this giant townhouse and it was funny because
my sister lived in America and for a long time,
and my parents had picked her up. I don't know
if your parents are naive or they just don't want
to believe.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Yeah, sometimes a combination.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
And I remember hearing back, you know that she they
driven past my house, you know, and it was this
is like ninety ninety one or something. It's like fourteen
hundred dollars a week, you know, and.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
The CD he's doing well for himself, young Claude.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
Don't have a job, you know. And my sister was
like rock what you know. She sort of thought or
there's something going on here. But so, you know, I
came back that night and I remember sitting in his
house and I snorted some heroin, you know that time
I talked about having the drink and that feeling it
was that this was the real next one level. And
(29:33):
I remember standing at the back door. She was sitting
on the couch. I was at the back door, power
spewing as you do on heroin, smoking a cigarette, feeling
like the best.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
It was like.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
Every orgasm you'd ever had, but your grant, all the
people that ever loved you were like it was just
and I just remember thinking, I'm going to do everything
in my power to feel.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Like this for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
That's the day you offer, isn't.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
And that was it?
Speaker 3 (30:01):
Yeah, you know, and drugs took over, you know, and
you know, within you know, six six months of you know,
snorting that hair and I was shooting up and I
shot up my whole recording in studio and every everything.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Lost it, everything everything, just for that fix.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Just for that fair I just never had.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
How old were you then?
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Twenty twenty one? You know, the Chinese call it chasing
the dragon. You never get it that first time. That's
you spend the rest of your.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Life seeking that seeking that you know, and.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
It's you know, there's some poems, but you know, everything
it offered in that moment, it took away one.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Hundred So what did your life become?
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Then?
Speaker 3 (30:41):
You know, all anyone who was in my life really
disappeared really quickly. I was a liability, you know, all
those guys who were in the access to drugs just
you know what I mean. You would know with the police,
you don't want junkies around. Annoying junkie yeah, bad for business,
you know, like you know, were the people we didn't
deal with.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
And I became, you know, in my group.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
At least ten of us used heroin in you know,
two of us became addicted and my mate who you
know is now the psych nurse and threatened me with
the gun and that, and we lived in that big
house in East Melbourne, you know, and within a couple
of years, you know, we slept in a tree on
Gray Street in the parking, Melbourne in winter.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
What was going through your mind that that stage, Like,
were you looking at hating yourself? What? I'm just curious
what the psychology of what goes through your mind when
you've hit bottom like that.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
I think I had a huge amount of denial when
I look back at it. You have to, you know
what I mean, because it's shit like I'm living in
sleeping in a tree that night, and my memory of
that was that and God bless the Salvos. They ran
the needle exchange there on Gray Street and their policy
(31:59):
was winters called him out, you got one great blanket
and they gave us to that night, which is really
important because the pivotal moments, you know, with the drink,
the snorting, the heroine on my journey, that person and
I don't know who they are, and they don't they're
that humanity when you can make it of any I
remember those those acts of kindness.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
We're huge.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
So I just I think it just became so all
encompassing that I just I didn't think about it and
I just tried to guess smashed as I I could.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Okay, what are the crimes you started committee for?
Speaker 3 (32:37):
I thought it was a legitimate crime. I was a
good forger, so I could do signature. So I would
steal handbags, get check books, checkbook or the credit card
because in those days you didn't have pins, you know,
you used to put them in and sign it. And
I had it downpacked so much that even if it
(32:58):
was a female's, they'd put the card in swiper and
I just turn it upside that sign and all they
wanted to see was the signature side and didn't say anything.
And I remember, because i'd go to when I did,
I'd go to Cole's and it was all desperate, but
I'd go to Cole's and buy cartons of cigarettes and
walk across the road and sell them at the Lebanese
(33:20):
seven eleven. You know, I think in those days, I
was getting to come for fifty bucks and they'll give
me twenty five you know, so two of those and
I could.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
Get okay, so you fraudently get the cartains taken.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Across and this day, you know, she picks it up
and she says, oh it's a famous said.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Oh it's my wife.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Oh yeah, not worry about Yeah, it.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Was different back then, you know.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
That's how I got caught because we were staying in
a hotel and I was quite careful, and I remember
the detectives and I don't know how it come, but
I was back at my parents as separated. I was
back at my dad's place, maybe on methadone, I think
at this stage. And I remember the detectives came to
arrest me because that was that just luck because that
(33:57):
was my last address and I was actually back there.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
And they might have been good police work.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
You don't know that, yeah, but in this insin shadow,
the rock up, my dad comes to the door, the
detectives are there. I'd been sloppy, I'd put my fingerprint
on the bit, you know that the carbon bit.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
They just got me on that. And I remember thinking,
I really is sure, you know, because I thought I
was always so so careful.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
When did you do your first stint inside?
Speaker 3 (34:26):
So there I spent a lot of time, you know,
in the three days four days, because you've got to remember,
so this is the nineties in Victoria. It's not like
it was now. If you got caught and you weren't
a dickhead like that kicking in the ass and then
you want the paper, you know what I mean? They
throw your drugs down the drain because I knew that
they cause more pain than any and so I was
(34:49):
very lucky in.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
A couple of times. You've been given a little bit
of latitude.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Oh I remember one time in Melbourne. It's three times.
We used to call them bluies. Blueis feel Kans. I
think they call them here, but they were blue easy now.
And I remember the third time and like the sergeant
just gone like mate, fucking go on the train and
get away, like you're a nuisance, you know. So I
did that, and so I went in and did a
(35:16):
couple of small stints in there.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
But when was the first time you got a heavy
sentence and you thought, shit, this is really.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
So the first one was when I came to So
when I was twenty nine, my mum was diagnosed with cancer,
and you know, she was dying and she was in
a lot of pain and you know, she needed to
have morphine.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
I was like twenty nine and i'd come back home.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
I'd actually been one of the first twenty people in
Australia on the bupern orphine trial.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
So there was this amazing thing. You took this thing.
You didn't hang out. And so I was on this trial.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
So my parents, as my family, would let me come
home or I would come home if I wasn't using
and causing chaos. So I came home, but Mum was
sick and she didn't want what She wouldn't have morphine
in the house because I was there and I was
doing all right, and I you know, I just got
to this point and I just went, fuck, I cause
them enough pain, Like you know, twenty I just need
to go. Like, you know, my mum, you know, she
(36:08):
had non Hodgkins slim fomer. She was going to die,
and I just thought, you know, fucking I need to
do something adult, something decent. So you know, I left
and I went to Cans backpacked and you know, drank alcohol,
holy smoke, pot was dealing in bowen within you know,
(36:30):
like you know, it's sad thing. Wherever I went Unfortunately
I got off the plane with me, you know, and
quickly I ended up in Sydney in late two thousand
in place with some backpackers in Crown Straight, right near
the Cross.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
Late twenties ings Cross drugs. So what did you get done?
Seven years in prison? What did you get locked up? So?
Speaker 2 (36:52):
I was dealing, yeah, straight away.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
So what was the first big sentence you got?
Speaker 3 (36:56):
So the big the biggest one I got was the
last one I did. So I got six years eight
months for ongoing supply heroin and well I was on robbery,
but I got it downgraded to robbery.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
I went to trial on that.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
Okay, who'd you rob again?
Speaker 3 (37:13):
It's a sad story. It was funny I was thinking about.
I was thinking, fuck, you don't want to tell that.
It's embarrassing.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
But this is to understand it.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
Yeah, I was on bail, believe it or not, for
ongoing supply of heroin. I don't know if people understand that.
You've got to sell it three times. And I knew
that I'd sold it to the coppers. But if I
didn't sell it to him, I knew they were This
is the insanity. I knew the moment I stopped selling.
I'm going to kick my daughter down. I couldn't use,
so I fucking kept putting you my off and so
(37:41):
I sold it.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
Over it, kept selling it so you could keep using.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Knowing that they were coming.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
They had to great playing cord. Yeah, and that's the insanity.
That's the best plan I had, you know. So I
ended up I was out on bail. I was with
my girlfriend.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
I had it.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
They used to call me because my name, so my
dealing name was Corey because you couldn't have you know.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
So what a decent dealer would be called Claude.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
So I was leaving up there with her and I
don't even know. I think she'd done a job and
someone to give her a ton of ice. So I
ended up on ice for three days and I just said,
I'm going to get some milk or some smokes.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
So I go up the street and for some.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Reason I thought, fuck, I feel really sick, and you know,
and then I just had this moment.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
I was in Crown Street.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
And fuck, I'm a heroin addict. I haven't used. I
couldn't even remember. I fucking need heroin. I need to
shot a heroin. And I saw this lady closing up
her shop. I don't k't even remember what it was,
and I just thought, I just I'm going to rub her,
which I did, you know, and I stole her.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
I didn't know what that.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
I had no idea, but it was I think that
the handbag was worth more than any of the money.
It was like Louis Vatan or something something. So I
stole that. And my dealer at the time was at
the other end of Crown Street, so I thought, fuck,
I haven't got far to run. I can't make out
the shop because she was screaming.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Of course, and got hit by a car. That's only hard.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
So I get hit by a car, and of course,
you know, I'm on adrenaline, so I just get up
and go and I'm bowlding down cramps. I've still got
the bag, and then I hear this, and I thought,
oh no, I know that that's the Cobs And you know,
believe it or not, the car that hits me, the
two behind me are two undercovers, just you know.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
So they chase.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
So I cut down through the back laneways because I
think I know how to get to this guy's house
through the back laneway. They pull up and set chase
to me, and I look back and one of them
is like this fat sort of copper. I thought, fuck,
I've got hear me and I got a hope, and
the other ones like this twenty year old girl out
of the fucking academy. You're down, she's you know, I
(39:44):
probably would have got away because she obviously didn't know
all the lame ways. But I tend down a dead
a dead end lane way, so I end in the
lame way. There's me and her, and again the insanity
al of it, and.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
I thought, fuck or robber.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
I rob her too, you know, and you know she
I don't know whether I did, but she believed I
was going for her gun.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Okay, you know, things are starting to get serious.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
It was pure, you know, and all I wanted to
do was get to this guy's house to have a
shot of heroin, to fucking fix it all, you know,
to work it all out. And I'm sitting, you know,
we have a scaffle and all that, and you know,
she pulls back and pulls her gun on me, you know,
and I'm like fuck, you know, and still even then,
I thought she's not going to fucking shot She really
(40:29):
not really just fucking run off, still got the bag
like just insane. And then by this stage, you know,
fucked her every like they were.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
They came pouring in, so.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
You got locked up and you get sense to six
years eight months.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
So first off I was unfortunately there was it was full.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
So I spent two weeks in SPC.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Which is it's like twelve weeks anywhere else.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
It's horror.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
You know, it's underneath the Surreel's police and it there's
no window, there's one shower if you're lucky to get it.
You know, they heat the pies so hot that it
burned your mouth.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
You know, it's a horror show.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Yeah, you're not the first guest on my Catch Killers
that has complained about that.
Speaker 3 (41:14):
So then I went from M double RC to Paramatta.
But I got stabbed at Paramatta.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
What in there? If correct me? If I'm wrong, You've
been shot once yep, and stabbed twice, SA twice, Yeah,
tell us about those events.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
Well they're stabbing happened at Paris. I was on ramand
I was in four wing at Paramatta and in those
days so it was C and B CLASSO ramand prisoners
one two and three wing was I think it was
weekend prisoners and the laundry. So I ended up being
the become the laundry sweeper with.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
My cell mate.
Speaker 3 (41:53):
So you know, we had all the blankets and all that,
and they used to come with this white string around them,
So our job was to give about the blankets and
all that and keep all the strings so people couldn't
use it as weapons.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
So we had all this string in our.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
Room, and my cell mate knew the guy who was
the laundry sweeper, so we would pack it all up
and he would take it over to one, two and
three and his mate lived down the road who had drugs.
So in those days, at three point thirty, when they
locked you in the guard tower above four wing, he
would go inside. So this guy would whistle and we
would tie all the bits of string together with a
(42:29):
pan and a finger off a glove and make a
slingshot and shoot the wire of the fence and he'd
tie the drugs too, would bring him over.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
We got half and the other.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
Half went to the guy whose drugs they were, so
we did that. But to do that it's not as
easy as it sounds. And then the dickhead bloody put
a phone on it. So when sal mate goes to
pull it back in over the wire, it gets cart
and falls into what we call the steriles, are in
between the wall and the building. And fuck but my
(43:01):
mate at the time was the sweeper for the steroll zone,
so I had to wait till the morning. So as
soon as we got let go in the morning, I
ran to my mate and said, fuck, you know, I
don't know, we'll give you. You've got to get out there.
And you know, he just bolted. He didn't get.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Halfway down and wah wah.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
They'd seen it. So there was our cell and below
us was the Lebanese The guards went straight to the
Lebanese blakes and you know.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
Blamm and all this sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (43:30):
But I'm in my cell because I because I was
a sweeper with the laundry, I could stay in my
cell when you got let out into the yard, I was.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
I was doing something.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
And yeah, the next thing you know, ate Lebanese blake's
walking to my cell, and you know, this fucking blake's gone.
You know, you've got to go and tell me what
you And I'm like, okay, fuck yourself, let it. Not
telling them fucking anything, you know, and then I just
felt this in my guts and you know, and they
started attacking me.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
How many times? What were the ship they.
Speaker 3 (43:57):
Got with a sharpened toothbrush. No, I only let them
get at me once. Yeah, luckily because it sort of
got stuck in there, which in hindsight was a good thing.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
And I just, you know, I hit him Australia.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
I thought, I need to just fight fucking for your
life here. And I didn't know at the time, but
one of the guards had seen them, so they were
on their way up. So you know, they the guys
had a lookout and they yelled and they all ran
and you know, they came out in these blood everywhere,
and I just pushed my way past the guard and
went straight back out into the yard and they're calling
(44:32):
for me, you know, Robinson, you need to come to
the office. And I'm like, I'm not going to the office. Well,
I'm going to trial. Fucking I know, I've got a
big wacking ahead him. You're like, I'm like, this is
not good, you know, And you know, the Asian boys
come out and give me towels and all that, you know,
and you know, I just didn't go. And in the
(44:53):
end they sent the squadding and they just extracted me
and took me up to the sick bay and then
the deputy governor down. He's usually had a security or intel,
he said. I said, I slipped on my coffee, he said,
he said, have you seen yourself?
Speaker 1 (45:10):
When did you get shot?
Speaker 2 (45:12):
That was when I was younger.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
We were going to a house to so the guy
was dealing drugs. There was three of us. We knew
he had a twenty two and I, you know, we
just went, fuck, he can't shoot us all and we
know he's got money.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
And you know, claud do you look back at some
of your logic and think maybe drugs are another good thing?
Speaker 2 (45:35):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (45:35):
It's hands why I don't drink or any drugs. I
haven't for nearly seventeen years. Yeah, like when I sometimes it's.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
Hard to actually like even make sense of the You think.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
How logic?
Speaker 2 (45:51):
How the fuck do you get to that?
Speaker 3 (45:52):
But it seemed so you got's gotten to do a
drug group off, he's got the gun, but he can't
shoot all of us.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
You go in there and get shot and.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
We got Yeah I got shot, but we got drugs
on the money.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
Did you get shot in the lad?
Speaker 2 (46:03):
So it was lucky I turned. It could have been
much worse. So you know, things like, yeah, it's just insane.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
So so your time in prison, like just you did
that was your longest stint six years?
Speaker 2 (46:16):
Yeah, I did, so.
Speaker 3 (46:16):
I did four and a half, been over four and
a half years. I got out from Goldburn actually came
to Rainbow Lodge where I'm now the manager, believe it
or not. And so when I was in prison, my
mum died at the start of that prison sends.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
I never got to say goodbye or go to the funeralround.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
How did that make you feel?
Speaker 2 (46:36):
You know, it's on.
Speaker 3 (46:38):
Like I still you know, since I've got clean, I've
been to their grave site, you know, with my baby
daughter at the time. And I just think the circumstances
of because both my parents died when you were in prison,
I was in prison in that stint that.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
It's so far locked away, you know, And I don't
blame anyone else, that's really you know, it's not it
wasn't the courts or the police or the prison guards.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
You know.
Speaker 3 (47:10):
I've you know, in the process of changing my life,
I've taken responsibility that I was in jail because I
used dougs and I did cry. Now I don't agree
with the system, but that's the system that I lived in,
so I accept that, you know. And the consequence of
that was I was in prison and they weren't going
to let me out to see that, so I never
got to speak to her. And then at the end
(47:32):
of that sentence, I was in Golben and I was
in the the maximum security section.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
You were released from Golben.
Speaker 3 (47:42):
I was released from Golben in two thousand and six.
Speaker 1 (47:48):
How long had you serve there?
Speaker 3 (47:50):
So I've been in Golben nearly three years. So once
I got sent to Golden, I didn't go anywhere else. Yeah,
it was horrible. I still remember everywhere I went. I
was handcuffed and two guards everywhere.
Speaker 1 (48:04):
Well, you got your papers marked when you've sold the
prison office, Yeah, definitely, for the rest of your time
in prison.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
Definitely.
Speaker 3 (48:12):
So I arrived at Goldben and Big Bernie he's dead now,
died on the muster and the boys cheered.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
But he was a tough.
Speaker 3 (48:20):
He was an asshole, but you know, he was the
old style, you know, when Goldben was tough.
Speaker 1 (48:27):
And he was sure services.
Speaker 2 (48:28):
Yeah, and they brought me in.
Speaker 3 (48:30):
And he said to the two guards, take the handcuffs
off and piss off.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
And I was like, what's on, what's going on here?
Speaker 3 (48:37):
This guy was big, Apparently the story goes, his chair
was worth two and a half grand and he's looking
at my file and.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
A spit it officer assault.
Speaker 3 (48:46):
You know, it's it's not pleasant, and you know, he says, Robert,
if I could get if I wasn't so fat, I
could get off this chair, I'll punch.
Speaker 2 (48:55):
You through the fucking wall that was your welcome.
Speaker 3 (48:58):
And he said, you're a Goldman, now I own you.
This is not like any other jail. And then they went.
And so when I went to Gold when it was
segregated on Race, so coury yard was like two yard
was Lebanese, Ossie Islander, Ossi Asian. Then there was the
cookhouse protection and then the filthies, you know, fucking the
(49:19):
Murphy's and fucking right down the end there.
Speaker 2 (49:23):
I went in the.
Speaker 3 (49:23):
Aussi Asian, but I didn't even get there. They put
me in the Cory wing right up the end. And
I was on one hundred and fifty mills a methadone
at the time, so they put me in the end
of the sound. Didn't give me a methadone for three days.
I was fucking so yeah, I was horrifying, you know.
And my mate I just by luck, I knew the
sweeper and he would put because the bars didn't have
(49:45):
any windows, he would put the cardboard box in and
I'd put it up on the window and they'd come
and take it out. And all they had was two
gray blankets and a bible and it's pretty cold.
Speaker 2 (49:54):
I was freezing. I was so sick.
Speaker 3 (49:56):
And then they took me out and put me into
the Assi Visian yard and I remember like it's you know,
it's half a ten. It's called the sixty five blokes.
And you know, in those days, it would take ninety
minutes to empty the wing because they only brought two
cells out at a time.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
And I was like, fucking is going on here?
Speaker 1 (50:19):
You know?
Speaker 3 (50:19):
And I had nothing like I was, you know, and
they knew you don't turn up here for nothing. So
they asked me and I told them what was going on.
You know, by the time I went in might sell
that night at radio books, smokes like of all that,
they looked after you. Yeah, you know, they made sure
you know, I was all right.
Speaker 1 (50:37):
I had some stuff. Yeah, all right, well look we
might card just take a break at this time. We've
left you in the bad spot. We've left you in prison.
We've seen the chaos that is your life. The chaos
is your life. When I think when you're saying that,
I'm seeing here looking at you, are you for real
like some of the decisions you made? But that's the
path of go down with that lifestyle and drugs and
(50:59):
all that. You can laugh at it, but it's sad
and tragic and it's you know, you look back at
it and go, well, how did my life become this?
When we get back in part two, I want to
talk about how you've turned your life around, because you've
been clean now for what.
Speaker 2 (51:12):
Seven seventeen years.
Speaker 1 (51:14):
And by the end of this year, you've been out
of prison for seventeen years, and you're doing some good work,
and we really want to focus on that, focus on
that and get your take on that. How the system
can be you've seen it, how the system could possibly
be improved. All right, it's got good stuff.
The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Detective see a side of life the average persons never
exposed to. I spent thirty four years as a cop.
For twenty five of those years, I was catching killers.
That's what I did for a living. I was a
homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys, staid,
I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
(00:23):
The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Join me now as I take you into this world.
(00:46):
Welcome to another episode of I Catch Killers. If I
met today's guests twenty years ago, I would have said
he's going to an early grave or spending the rest
of his life in prison see claud Robertson. Our guest
has been ad by a Lebano's gang. He's been shot,
he's been addicted to heroin. He served lengthy sentences in prison,
but was in jar with notorious murderers like Ivan Malatt
(01:09):
and the Granny Killer. His life for crime saded when
he was just ten when he was arrested for breaking
into cars. A few years later, he became addicted to
drugs and soon became a drug dealer in Sydney's notorious
King's Cross. He was heading down a path of self destruction,
but he's turned his life around big time and he's
making a difference in the criminal justice system. I first
(01:31):
met Claude after I'd left the police, at a formal
invitation only function at New South Wales Government House. The
function was about criminal justice reform. It's safe to say
Claude and I stood out a little bit from the crowd.
Since he last walked out of prison almost seventeen years ago.
Claude has turned his life around and today he's going
to tell us his story and I dare say open
(01:52):
our eyes up to problems within the criminal justice system.
I think it's going to be a really interesting chat.
Claude Robertson, Welcome to I catchkell.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Thanks Garry, A pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Well, we always seem to meet in these really formal settings.
The first time I met you was at Government House.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
There's true and I was the last time I wore.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
A suit, a bit of a shing dig with all
the politicians and the senior members of the legal fraternity.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
It was I remember walking down the long path to
the government House and the security the security guards were
dressed immaculately, you know, and he asked my name was
on the list, and yeah, he gave me directions. And
it's quite an imposing you know, with the paintings are huge.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Yeah, it is an imposing building. When I was in
the cops, I spent a bit of time there when
I was doing close personal protection, anitary protection, and have
times there. But it is an intimidating place and it
is I got to say, looking around the room, I
saw of checking out who's there, And the director of
the DPP was there, and there was judges there and
politicians there, and I looked around and think, what am
(02:57):
I doing here. I've just been out of the cops,
criminally charged, convicted, and I was quite happy I've got
an invite there. And I look around the room, I
saw you and I thought, yeah, I reckon, I can
talk talk to this.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
But yeah, I probably felt very very similar there were
I remember I think the governor got up and introduced
and I just remember her entry into the room and I.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Thought, wow, this is really formal.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Yeah, you know, and she's got up and spoke and
yeah it was. And I was sitting there very similar thing,
you know, as you said that the former DPP was there,
who was in charge of it when I was incarcerating
New South Wales.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Yeah, you know, but I thought it was good because
that was it was on justice reform and jailing's failing
and different things about that. It's healthy to have those
people sitting there talking, talking to people like yourself with
life experience, people that have been on the other side
law me as a cop and getting people's opinions. So
it feels progressive.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
You know.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
The solution involves everyone, you know, I don't. You know,
I'm not one of those people. But just because I've
lived experience doesn't I don't believe on an expert in.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Anything by my own life, but it does give me
an insight.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
But you know, I have professional experience, and you have
to take into consideration the different perspectives that everyone brings
to it. If I look at it just from my perspective,
is very narrow and the community is made up of
lots of different people and like you said, most of
the people there were represented different parts of that community.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
And parts of the whole justice system. Yes. Anyway, so Hobknobin,
the next time I saw you was at Parliament House.
It sounds like we lived the good life and that
again was a formal invitation and you did a keynote
there and on the back of that, I thought, I've
got to get this guy on my catch killers you
were very passionate. Do you want to tell us about
what you were talking about there and what that function
(04:42):
was about at New South Wales Parliament.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Yeah, so I was invited there because I'm part of
the Justice reform initiative with Mindy Satory, the amazing Mindisatory.
I think that's how I got the invite to the
first one.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yeah. She's a good lady, she is.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
I've had a bit to do with her.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Over the years and she knows that I've got lived
experience and professional and then I'm very passionate about advocacy
about changing the system. So she, you know, called me
up and said could you speak you know at Parliament
House we've got a couple of lived experience speakers.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Gail was the other one.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
And funnily enough, you know, Gaila and I were in
rehab together seventeen years ago. So when I as soon
as I saw it was Gail and you know, and
our journeys have been different, but you know, we started
in that rehab coming off methadone together, so pretty amazing.
And two and we had had a chat with her
about that while we're in Parliament House, you know, speaking.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
The message you were trying to get across, because again
there was a lot of politicians, senior police there, there
was a whole range of people from the justice system.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Look my take on it, especially you know, having that
sort of powerful people there was. The economics of imprisonment
don't make sense. It's you know, I pay taxes today,
you know, And as I spoke about that, you know,
every time we imprisoned someone, you know, you wait longer
at a hospital because this not a doctor or a
nurse at cost us. And I think it's a really
(06:03):
bad investment. And I don't believe the community has an
understanding of what they the non value for money they
get right.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
I remember speaking to Tim Watson Monroe. I'm not sure
if you know of Tim, a criminal psychologist. He raised
that very issue. He said, look, the amount of money
you spend on having one person in prison, you could
have a full time psychologist assigned to that person helping
them get their life in order. So I think we
do need to look at that, besides all the other
(06:33):
aspects of it. From the fiscal point of view, the
cost of keeping people in prison one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
And I spoke to that on that very day. You
know my service.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
So we get funded by DCJ ninety six thousand dollars
a year to work with four people twelve weeks each.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
And the work that you're doing with those people is
that at where's.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
That at the Rainbow Lodge here in a city of Sydney.
So we work with medium, high and high risk offenders.
So those are few and is a great risk of
recidivision and returning to custody, so we work with them.
And we also work with people on the Wallama List,
which is a new initiative for First Nations people in
the District Court in New South Wales.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Okay, well, I want to talk about that all in detail,
but I also want our listeners to get an understanding
of where you're coming from and your lived experience so
you haven't always hung out at Parliament House and Government House.
It's definitely yeah. So tell us about your upbringing.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
So I come from Melbourne originally. I grew up in
a big Catholic family. So I'm number five of six kids.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Good Catholics.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Yeah, good Catholics, you know, believe it or not. Altar
Boy forced religion. And when I look back on my childhood,
what I understand now that led me on the path
that I went on was that the message I got
really early was that the adults in my life were incongruent.
(08:04):
What they said and what they did were two different things.
And I'm talking six seven years old. I'd work this
out and I found that, for whatever reason, really damaging.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Was sending you mixed messages.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
As a child, it was, Yeah, I didn't know where
my safety was.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
You know, I say to people, you know, I could
behave the same way in two days and get two
different outcomes. And as a child, I understand now as
an adult and the work I do, how damaging that
is because it doesn't have any safety.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yeah, when you break it down, I'm just thinking, in
that strange world that you live in as a child,
if you're getting inconsistent messages from parents or people in authority.
It's acceptable to do that one day and then next
day you're in trouble. Yeah, yeah, I can see how
it plays with.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
You and LinkedIn with the Catholicism.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
You know, because my parents were from that where you
had to go to church and you know, and I
had to be an older boy, and you know, the
memories I have from that. I remember where I was
an altar boy. On the Sunday, my team played AFL
football over the fence and I had to sit in
the church and miss the first quarter every week, and
I could hear my mates yelling out to me, and
(09:13):
that was just such a painful thing because I hated.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
I didn't want to be there.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
I didn't.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
I wasn't an alder boy because I wanted to. I
was forced.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
And the other thing was that I saw in my
community that you know, on a Sunday, everyone went to
this church and dressed up and pretended the world was perfect.
Yet you know, during the week, they're sleeping with each other,
they're bashing their wives, like like I remember going into
a mate's house to pick him up one Sunday to
go and kick the footy.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Or whatever you do with kids.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
The door was off, there was a knife in the wall.
It was like it was and I didn't think anything
of it, and I just walked down to his room
and kicked it, you know, banged on the door, grabbed
the footy, and walked out, you know. And I think
about even that talking about it, and I just go, well,
that's just so insane.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
But that's what it was like.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
I remember on one occasion going down the street read
and I saw a few of the people I knew
from church carrying the priest out into the car because
he was so drunk. Because they would drop around your
house in those days, you know.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Yeah, I look, one thing I don't like in life
is hypocrisy. And I don't want to attack the church
or agen or whatever, but let's just call it for
what it is. Yeah, I don't like the hypocrisy of
present one way, but then the real fact you're a
completely different person.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
I think that fed into the you know, the incongruence
of the adults. And then I saw all these and
I was like, so the message that I understand now
that I got was that the world was hostile. Fuck everyone.
You get what you can anyway you can get it,
you know. And I started stealing money from my parents
when I was seven eight years old to go to
the tuck shop and you know, and it just led
(10:49):
me down that path.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Yeah, And it's interesting you say that, like stealing. I think,
as kids, well I can put my hand up. We
all go through that stage where he's an opportunity and
you take it. But then you get caught and you
think of the consequences, and then you start as you
get older, you realize it's wrong. But as a child,
you can go off track pretty easy.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
Cant I did, And you know, I know went off
track because you know, I two of the primary schools
I went to, you know, I was expelled from.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Yeah, I saw you. You managed to do two primary
schools and two high schools.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
I did the high schools.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
I can understand, you know, Like I look at my daughter,
she's ate, and I just go, how do you get expelled?
Speaker 1 (11:32):
How did you get expelled from a primary school?
Speaker 3 (11:35):
So the first primary school was the one I'd gone
to from prep and was close to my house. I
was just so chaotic, you know, my behaviors. I wouldn't
do what I was told, and in those days there
was corporal punishment. I'd have to sit up the front
of the room with my hands on the desk, and
he had one of those big wooden meter rulers, the teacher,
(11:56):
and it didn't matter who did it, but he turned
around and hit me, you know, and like so I
just you know again, it was that message, it didn't
matter whether I was doing right or wrong. I was
getting punished. Our males will do wrong. So you know,
they thought, we'll go to school somewhere else and believe
it or not. So I went to another school because
my mum was a primary school teacher.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Just break this down, that thought. You always get interesting
facts on my catch killers, but you got to expelled
from a primary school that your mum.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Was a teacher at I did. I did, so my
mom's a big effort. Yeah, it is a very big effort.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
So I lived in Franks there's not a pretty tough
place to grow up. But where my mum taught and
where I played footy and went to school was a
place called the pines, you know in New South Wales
equivalent to eds or man draw to case housing commissioned
like you know, when all the houses were pink blue
or yellow and lots of burnout cars. And she taught
in the school there and it was a tough school.
(12:51):
So she went there and it was you know, I
just met a whole heap of kids like me, you know,
and I and I still can't remember the up to it,
but I put the remember the old Galvi and I
steal binge.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
It had at school.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
I put that over the vice principal, mister White and
hit him with a cricket bat.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
That's pretty good going, how are we?
Speaker 2 (13:12):
I would have been like nine or ten.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
Yeah, yeah, I look again, like I look at my
daughter and I just go, well, what was going on that?
I was willing to do that and there so we
didn't get the rule there. We got strapped with a
thick leather strap called Freddy. And I was so you know,
and I led this. I did this into my thirties.
(13:35):
But I would go to the principal's office and then
go Robinson, what are you doing here?
Speaker 2 (13:39):
And I go, well, let's just get it out the way.
I drive him nuts, you know, because I thought it's coming.
You know, I'll get a couple on credit.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
But punish me now because I'm going to do something stupid.
When I walk out. But yeah, it's interesting when you
look back at school because I went through an era
where corporal punishment was there. It was the cane, and
there were certain teachers, and I can see it had
to be stopped because certain teachers enjoyed it too much.
There was teachers that any reason they could think of,
they would cane you. And it's a little bit creepy
(14:07):
standing in the in the room with some man with
your hand out and he's and you get sentenced I
think six with the maximum. They could give you the
six strokes and you'd be warming your hands up before
you went in, but you'd come out with blood, blisters
and all that. But when I say it didn't hurt,
it was a bit of fun. You walked out like
it was a badge of honor. Actually, and I look
(14:28):
what I got.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Yeah, And when I look back, you know, the things
I remember from then aren't the physical scars, you know,
it's the message, the lesson the emotional, you know. And
when I tell my story, one of the things that
I believed happened for me was you know that I
went too you know at home that you.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Know I got in trouble. I was tired. I was bad.
I went to school. I was tired. I was bad.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
You know, becomes a self fulfilling profit.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
So does the police told me I was bad? I
went to the courts. They told me I was bad.
I dow up in prison. See, in the end, you
just couple everyone's says it your males or that's.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Yeah, you do. I think if you get that negative
reinforcement in you, it's almost like you just follow the
path that your lack of self worth. You got locked
up by the cops when you were ten or in
trouble with the cops.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Yeah, in the ninten soo again, you know where I
grew up, as it was a pretty tough place. So
I'd hang out with older kids. And so we're break
into cars at night. And yeah, this particular time I
break into this and this. You know I must have
been so this has been nineteen eighty, you know, so
(15:34):
a long time ago. I in those days, you used
to be I can't remember the make of the car,
but they get me. I could stand on the roof
and pop the yeah pop, the things would pop out.
You didn't even need a cay to get into them.
And or you could have a budget. They were quite easy,
you know, back in those days. But they'd get me
to walk up and jump on the roof and.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Top the things, break into the car, break into the
cars and.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Generally, you know, most of the time we're looking for
five bucks or smoke source, you know something. And this
particular day, for whatever reason, this guy left his paypacket
on the seat and I got the paypack and I
think it had six hundred dollars in it, which was
a lot of money, a lot of money. I didn't
know that he lived in the local sergeant.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Right, So a lot of money and six hundred dollars
are going to investigate that, it's probably not too hard.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
Well, I remember it because and I split it up
with these guys and I think maybe I took one
hundred dollars, which is a huge amount of money. And
it was we have the Royal Melbourne Show and it
was around that time, because I know because I went
with my mate the Royal Melbourne Show and came back
with you know.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Yeah, where'd you get all that clock?
Speaker 2 (16:47):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (16:47):
So, yeah, there was no criminal genius involved in it,
and so you know I had to with in back
those days, you didn't get in trouble.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
You didn't go before the courts at that age, so.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
I juvenile caution would have been what we can hear
a police officer, you've got to gether. The superintendent speaks,
you realize what you've done is wrong, Claude, you say yes,
and yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
This is where you're going to end It's funny, you know,
this is where you're going to end up if this keeps.
And you know, I just thought, yeah, And it was
not that I I wasn't rude or disrespectful to him.
And my experience with the police that was, I was
never I never had that relationship with him.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
I just they were doing their thing. I was doing mine.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
You know, when did drugs start to become into your life?
Speaker 3 (17:34):
So do you know, due to my family situation, my
first escape was sport yep, So I played a lot
of sports. I was really good at tennis, you know,
I played baseball for Victoria. You know, I played AFL
with you know, Nathan Burke, Robert Harvey.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Like really, so you have a potential career path. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
I played all those sort of sports.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
And because I did everything to get out of the house,
to not be at home and you know. One of
the things I've learned because I have you know, I'm
an adict of have addiction.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
I get obsessed or focused, so.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
That can be beneficial for you.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
So, yes, I was really whatever I set my mind.
I was really good at you know, you know, I
played tennis. I was a really good junior and you know,
and that worked for a while, and then me and
my mate.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Every when we were grabbed.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
This is like in the early eighties, everyone had you know,
cooler bar wine cast in the fridge, so you know,
we'd be stealing his mums whatever at mosal or whatever
and drinking that and then and I stilled it to
this day. I don't know why, trying to hold the
thing open and pour water back in like they were
going to know that we've taken two glasses out of it.
(18:44):
It seems crazy now, but you know, as a kid,
you know, we did that, and you know it gave
me the sport was good and all that, but I
had to practice and train, you know, and put effort in.
And you know, I remember the first time I drunk alcohol,
I got that same sense of feeling.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Okay, what age were you around then, twelve something like that?
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Quite young at that time. It's a crucial time in kids' lives,
isn't it. I see it that a lot of kids
you can serve and they're fine, it's that, but they
can go off track very quickly. Yeah, just by perhaps
being exposed to alcohol or access to different things. Definitely.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
And I think, you know, I grew up in the seventies,
this is the early eighties. And you know another thing,
My grandmother was the Catholic patriarch, you know, and on
Christmas Day, Christmas night we go day, we go to
the other grandma's, but we go to my father's mother's
house on Christmas Night. And I still remember you'd park
(19:45):
the car and walk down to her house, and she
had like a car port, very rudimentary one back in
those days, and all the men would drop the eski's there,
go inside, kiss the matriarch, get there lotto to get
everyone got for Christmas, and walk outside and drink. And
the women would stay in there and drink tea and
(20:07):
eat scones, and the kids and you know, I always
when you're about ten or eleven, you're allowed to go
outside and have a shandy or a beer. And you know,
I still have all I ever wanted to do, was
you know, go outside and drink with the man and
what would happen was you know, my uncle's and that
would all get drunk and fight and argue, you know,
was it like? And I thought I was attracted to
(20:30):
that back then.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
The role models there, the people you're looking up to
at the time. It's just a lifestyle of culture that
is easy to fall into. You played in some bands
or you been in the music as well.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
I did so I after I started drinking and you know,
smoking pot, because that gave me the sense of being okay.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
I didn't want to do sport anymore because that took
hard work.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
So I got into music, you know, because I had
some mates who are into music. And again, you know,
because with that addictive personality, I set my mind to it,
you know, and we did pretty well, you know, for
how young we were. When I look back now, you know,
we were playing in pubs at sixteen and seventeen to
three or four hundred people, and well.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
That would have been a bit of a high for
you at that stage.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
It was it was you know, getting up on stage,
it was an adrenaline rush.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
And you know, I smoked pot from that pot. I smoke.
This is normal. Everyone did, and you know, and then
we drink, and I think that was the other thing though, So.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
You know, when I drunk, I've never would have beer
in the fridge, like I would never come home and
have a beer like I drunk to get pissed.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Yeah, it's interesting that we'll speak more on the addiction
and your understanding of it. But I see people like that.
I have friends, yeah, throughout my life that, yeah, I
can go home and have a drink all each night
and it's not like it's why I say, it's not
an addiction, but it's not a problem in any way.
(22:04):
But then I have friends that don't know, I don't
want to drink, I don't drink all week and then
have an absolute blind They're on the weekend and just
once they've had one, they need another one, another one,
until they basically write themselves off. And yeah, it becomes problematic.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Well, I you know, I realize looking back that I
drank it for the effect, not for the enjoyment. Yeah,
you know, I would rather have a water or a
coke or something if I wanted to drink, So I'd
buy alcohol and I'd drink it all.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
For the effect, for the effect of it.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
So yeah, and I did music, and I don't want
to put a picture across that. My parents were all
bad and neglect you know, you know that shit teachers,
and they did their best. You know, I was five
or six. I think by the time I came along,
they were tired and worn out. They're always working, you know,
six kids, like I got like one at home and
an older one.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
I think, Yeah, six is a lot.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
It's easy unless you've walked that path. I've got to
that stage. It's easy to look back at life and
go why didn't they do that? But quite often your
parents are products of their upbringing and plays on. What
about the hard drugs? When when did that? When when
did you realize that it was becoming a problem in
your life?
Speaker 3 (23:13):
I probably should have, you know, when I smoke pot
every day, but still you know, and again grown up
in Australia. And I'll jump forward just a little bit
before I go back. You know, when I did get
into hard drugs and i'd get clean and stop using them,
my parents would you know? If I was smoking pot
and drinking that was acceptable in Australia.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
You know what most definitely I've got friends of known
the whole life of the Yeah, poth hits. Yeah, they
like a smoke, That's that's what they do and they
and they get functioned in life, per fact.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
So that wasn't my take. So you know, my parents,
you know, if I wasn't using heroin and I was
just doing that, you know, I probably they probably thought
the better of two evils, you know. So I think
I got in the music industry that you know, and
I got introduced to speed. You know, in the lay
eighties we had ecstasy and acid coming along. But I
(24:04):
think my life it started to change. Then I got
introduced to some people who were large scaled drug dealers
that when I look back, that was one of those
pivotal o It was like the next the next stage,
because so I knew lots of people and I'd go
and you know buy, I'd get ecstasy or trips or coke.
(24:28):
And I was living in Frankston and suddenly I had
access to you know, coke and like drugs. Yeah, we're
in Frankston at that time. You know, you might have
the old truck of speed and drink and smoke.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Pot. I suddenly had access to this.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
So you know, lots of people would ask me, and
I'd begun with these people and you know, buying drugs
not to make money, just because I knew people. And
I just remembered this guy who became my friend, you know.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Just said ah fuck. You know, he said, I'll just
give you some and just sell.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
It and then you It's a path that you see
so many people walk down. Yeah, I was just taking drugs,
taking and then I wake up. I'm actually a drug dealer. Yep,
And I didn't realize it, got the.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Keys to the candy shop.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
And thankfully, you know, that guy doesn't do that anymore,
and he's amazing mental health nurse changed his life in Melbourne,
you know, and he didn't go the same path as me,
but he certainly got out of it.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
And it's funny. There's a number of us and we
all work in helping fields.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
You know, when did your life get to the point
where you realize it was tipping that Okay, this was innocent.
I shouldn't have done that. But I've done this, but
I'm still a good person. When did you realize, okay,
I'm living the life of a criminal.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Well, that same guy when he came after me, with
a gun. Okay, when I eyed him seventy grand Yeah, okay,
well I'm sticking a gun down my throat.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Tell us about that. What happened there?
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Well, because I had access to the drugs, but I
was using too many, so I was what a bit
was profitable.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
It had become a Pyramids game.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
So it was going to crash at some stage.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
But so you know, I could get drugs off this guy,
a couple of pounds of pyton sell and get money
and buy drugs and you know, rob Peter to pay Paul.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Sooner or later, you were going to be short.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
The pyramid. Yeah, came crashing down, and.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
You know he came after me in that instance, and
you know, wanted his money back, and it was it
was a really difficult time.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Because there's two areas of my drug use and drug dealing.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
There was that period and I say it's different because
I was selling drugs to people who didn't do crime
to buy them.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Okay, you know, okay, so you're mixing in a circle
of just that's social.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
I would do it.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
I used to do the court run in Melbourne to
all the barristers, you know, so it's quite prevalent, so
most of the people. And I was selling drugs to
people in TV, the music industry. So though my actor
was criminal, the people I was dealing.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
With weren't, so you weren't call in that criminal.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
So it was a much safer way to do things.
But my user was getting getting out of control and
I was using I had news heroin at this stage.
I was like nineteen twenty and I you know, but
I was out. I was using drugs all the time, cocaine, ecstasy, marijuana, drinking.
You know, it was totally out of control. The money
was all and I remember this. I had a friend
(27:22):
who was actually a heroin addict who I used to
sell speed to and it was funny because you'd always say,
I'll never sell it to you know. It's terrible him
and his wife, you know, they were and I saw,
you know, what it had done to their lives.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Though they owned a house and were manageable, that it
cost them. And you think, I'm not going to be
like them.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
And I was with my girlfriend at the time and
we've been on the two day coke bender, and I
was like, yeah, I thought I was having a heart attack,
you know, And I still remember she said to me,
I forget some heroin, it'll take the edge.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
I think we can have some more cake. And I
thought it's a.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Rational yeah, And I wrung my mate, the one who
said he didn't never sell it to me.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
I'm laughing, I shouldn't know. It's interesting. I think you've
got to look back at the logic at the time
and what.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
I thought that was really, you know. And I rang
and he said because I bought her and got heroin
off him before, but for other people. And he said, oh,
you know, who's it for, you know, like he's got
my moral dealer. It's you've got to laugh about it
because it's just insane.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
And I said, no, no, it's for me.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
And he's like, oh you know what you did it,
you know? And I said, no, no, it's all right.
I'm on a coke ben, I just need to take
the edge off to take more coke. And he's like,
and I heard it. I remember yelling to his wife
and oh yeah, yeah, all right.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
So they sold me. Then.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
I remember I was living in East Melbourne near the
mcg in this giant townhouse and it was funny because
my sister lived in America and for a long time,
and my parents had picked her up. I don't know
if your parents are naive or they just don't want
to believe.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Yeah, sometimes a combination.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
And I remember hearing back, you know that she they
driven past my house, you know, and it was this
is like ninety ninety one or something. It's like fourteen
hundred dollars a week, you know, and.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
The CD he's doing well for himself, young Claude.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
Don't have a job, you know. And my sister was
like rock what you know. She sort of thought or
there's something going on here. But so, you know, I
came back that night and I remember sitting in his
house and I snorted some heroin, you know that time
I talked about having the drink and that feeling it
was that this was the real next one level. And
(29:33):
I remember standing at the back door. She was sitting
on the couch. I was at the back door, power
spewing as you do on heroin, smoking a cigarette, feeling
like the best.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
It was like.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
Every orgasm you'd ever had, but your grant, all the
people that ever loved you were like it was just
and I just remember thinking, I'm going to do everything
in my power to feel.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Like this for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
That's the day you offer, isn't.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
And that was it?
Speaker 3 (30:01):
Yeah, you know, and drugs took over, you know, and
you know, within you know, six six months of you know,
snorting that hair and I was shooting up and I
shot up my whole recording in studio and every everything.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Lost it, everything everything, just for that fix.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Just for that fair I just never had.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
How old were you then?
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Twenty twenty one? You know, the Chinese call it chasing
the dragon. You never get it that first time. That's
you spend the rest of your.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Life seeking that seeking that you know, and.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
It's you know, there's some poems, but you know, everything
it offered in that moment, it took away one.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Hundred So what did your life become?
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Then?
Speaker 3 (30:41):
You know, all anyone who was in my life really
disappeared really quickly. I was a liability, you know, all
those guys who were in the access to drugs just
you know what I mean. You would know with the police,
you don't want junkies around. Annoying junkie yeah, bad for business,
you know, like you know, were the people we didn't
deal with.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
And I became, you know, in my group.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
At least ten of us used heroin in you know,
two of us became addicted and my mate who you
know is now the psych nurse and threatened me with
the gun and that, and we lived in that big
house in East Melbourne, you know, and within a couple
of years, you know, we slept in a tree on
Gray Street in the parking, Melbourne in winter.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
What was going through your mind that that stage, Like,
were you looking at hating yourself? What? I'm just curious
what the psychology of what goes through your mind when
you've hit bottom like that.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
I think I had a huge amount of denial when
I look back at it. You have to, you know
what I mean, because it's shit like I'm living in
sleeping in a tree that night, and my memory of
that was that and God bless the Salvos. They ran
the needle exchange there on Gray Street and their policy
(31:59):
was winters called him out, you got one great blanket
and they gave us to that night, which is really
important because the pivotal moments, you know, with the drink,
the snorting, the heroine on my journey, that person and
I don't know who they are, and they don't they're
that humanity when you can make it of any I
remember those those acts of kindness.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
We're huge.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
So I just I think it just became so all
encompassing that I just I didn't think about it and
I just tried to guess smashed as I I could.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Okay, what are the crimes you started committee for?
Speaker 3 (32:37):
I thought it was a legitimate crime. I was a
good forger, so I could do signature. So I would
steal handbags, get check books, checkbook or the credit card
because in those days you didn't have pins, you know,
you used to put them in and sign it. And
I had it downpacked so much that even if it
(32:58):
was a female's, they'd put the card in swiper and
I just turn it upside that sign and all they
wanted to see was the signature side and didn't say anything.
And I remember, because i'd go to when I did,
I'd go to Cole's and it was all desperate, but
I'd go to Cole's and buy cartons of cigarettes and
walk across the road and sell them at the Lebanese
(33:20):
seven eleven. You know, I think in those days, I
was getting to come for fifty bucks and they'll give
me twenty five you know, so two of those and
I could.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
Get okay, so you fraudently get the cartains taken.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Across and this day, you know, she picks it up
and she says, oh it's a famous said.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Oh it's my wife.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Oh yeah, not worry about Yeah, it.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Was different back then, you know.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
That's how I got caught because we were staying in
a hotel and I was quite careful, and I remember
the detectives and I don't know how it come, but
I was back at my parents as separated. I was
back at my dad's place, maybe on methadone, I think
at this stage. And I remember the detectives came to
arrest me because that was that just luck because that
(33:57):
was my last address and I was actually back there.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
And they might have been good police work.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
You don't know that, yeah, but in this insin shadow,
the rock up, my dad comes to the door, the
detectives are there. I'd been sloppy, I'd put my fingerprint
on the bit, you know that the carbon bit.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
They just got me on that. And I remember thinking,
I really is sure, you know, because I thought I
was always so so careful.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
When did you do your first stint inside?
Speaker 3 (34:26):
So there I spent a lot of time, you know,
in the three days four days, because you've got to remember,
so this is the nineties in Victoria. It's not like
it was now. If you got caught and you weren't
a dickhead like that kicking in the ass and then
you want the paper, you know what I mean? They
throw your drugs down the drain because I knew that
they cause more pain than any and so I was
(34:49):
very lucky in.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
A couple of times. You've been given a little bit
of latitude.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Oh I remember one time in Melbourne. It's three times.
We used to call them bluies. Blueis feel Kans. I
think they call them here, but they were blue easy now.
And I remember the third time and like the sergeant
just gone like mate, fucking go on the train and
get away, like you're a nuisance, you know. So I
did that, and so I went in and did a
(35:16):
couple of small stints in there.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
But when was the first time you got a heavy
sentence and you thought, shit, this is really.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
So the first one was when I came to So
when I was twenty nine, my mum was diagnosed with cancer,
and you know, she was dying and she was in
a lot of pain and you know, she needed to
have morphine.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
I was like twenty nine and i'd come back home.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
I'd actually been one of the first twenty people in
Australia on the bupern orphine trial.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
So there was this amazing thing. You took this thing.
You didn't hang out. And so I was on this trial.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
So my parents, as my family, would let me come
home or I would come home if I wasn't using
and causing chaos. So I came home, but Mum was
sick and she didn't want what She wouldn't have morphine
in the house because I was there and I was
doing all right, and I you know, I just got
to this point and I just went, fuck, I cause
them enough pain, Like you know, twenty I just need
to go. Like, you know, my mum, you know, she
(36:08):
had non Hodgkins slim fomer. She was going to die,
and I just thought, you know, fucking I need to
do something adult, something decent. So you know, I left
and I went to Cans backpacked and you know, drank alcohol,
holy smoke, pot was dealing in bowen within you know,
(36:30):
like you know, it's sad thing. Wherever I went Unfortunately
I got off the plane with me, you know, and
quickly I ended up in Sydney in late two thousand
in place with some backpackers in Crown Straight, right near
the Cross.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
Late twenties ings Cross drugs. So what did you get done?
Seven years in prison? What did you get locked up? So?
Speaker 2 (36:52):
I was dealing, yeah, straight away.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
So what was the first big sentence you got?
Speaker 3 (36:56):
So the big the biggest one I got was the
last one I did. So I got six years eight
months for ongoing supply heroin and well I was on robbery,
but I got it downgraded to robbery.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
I went to trial on that.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
Okay, who'd you rob again?
Speaker 3 (37:13):
It's a sad story. It was funny I was thinking about.
I was thinking, fuck, you don't want to tell that.
It's embarrassing.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
But this is to understand it.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
Yeah, I was on bail, believe it or not, for
ongoing supply of heroin. I don't know if people understand that.
You've got to sell it three times. And I knew
that I'd sold it to the coppers. But if I
didn't sell it to him, I knew they were This
is the insanity. I knew the moment I stopped selling.
I'm going to kick my daughter down. I couldn't use,
so I fucking kept putting you my off and so
(37:41):
I sold it.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
Over it, kept selling it so you could keep using.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Knowing that they were coming.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
They had to great playing cord. Yeah, and that's the insanity.
That's the best plan I had, you know. So I
ended up I was out on bail. I was with
my girlfriend.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
I had it.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
They used to call me because my name, so my
dealing name was Corey because you couldn't have you know.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
So what a decent dealer would be called Claude.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
So I was leaving up there with her and I
don't even know. I think she'd done a job and
someone to give her a ton of ice. So I
ended up on ice for three days and I just said,
I'm going to get some milk or some smokes.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
So I go up the street and for some.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Reason I thought, fuck, I feel really sick, and you know,
and then I just had this moment.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
I was in Crown Street.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
And fuck, I'm a heroin addict. I haven't used. I
couldn't even remember. I fucking need heroin. I need to
shot a heroin. And I saw this lady closing up
her shop. I don't k't even remember what it was,
and I just thought, I just I'm going to rub her,
which I did, you know, and I stole her.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
I didn't know what that.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
I had no idea, but it was I think that
the handbag was worth more than any of the money.
It was like Louis Vatan or something something. So I
stole that. And my dealer at the time was at
the other end of Crown Street, so I thought, fuck,
I haven't got far to run. I can't make out
the shop because she was screaming.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Of course, and got hit by a car. That's only hard.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
So I get hit by a car, and of course,
you know, I'm on adrenaline, so I just get up
and go and I'm bowlding down cramps. I've still got
the bag, and then I hear this, and I thought,
oh no, I know that that's the Cobs And you know,
believe it or not, the car that hits me, the
two behind me are two undercovers, just you know.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
So they chase.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
So I cut down through the back laneways because I
think I know how to get to this guy's house
through the back laneway. They pull up and set chase
to me, and I look back and one of them
is like this fat sort of copper. I thought, fuck,
I've got hear me and I got a hope, and
the other ones like this twenty year old girl out
of the fucking academy. You're down, she's you know, I
(39:44):
probably would have got away because she obviously didn't know
all the lame ways. But I tend down a dead
a dead end lane way, so I end in the
lame way. There's me and her, and again the insanity
al of it, and.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
I thought, fuck or robber.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
I rob her too, you know, and you know she
I don't know whether I did, but she believed I
was going for her gun.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Okay, you know, things are starting to get serious.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
It was pure, you know, and all I wanted to
do was get to this guy's house to have a
shot of heroin, to fucking fix it all, you know,
to work it all out. And I'm sitting, you know,
we have a scaffle and all that, and you know,
she pulls back and pulls her gun on me, you know,
and I'm like fuck, you know, and still even then,
I thought she's not going to fucking shot She really
(40:29):
not really just fucking run off, still got the bag
like just insane. And then by this stage, you know,
fucked her every like they were.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
They came pouring in, so.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
You got locked up and you get sense to six
years eight months.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
So first off I was unfortunately there was it was full.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
So I spent two weeks in SPC.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Which is it's like twelve weeks anywhere else.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
It's horror.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
You know, it's underneath the Surreel's police and it there's
no window, there's one shower if you're lucky to get it.
You know, they heat the pies so hot that it
burned your mouth.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
You know, it's a horror show.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Yeah, you're not the first guest on my Catch Killers
that has complained about that.
Speaker 3 (41:14):
So then I went from M double RC to Paramatta.
But I got stabbed at Paramatta.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
What in there? If correct me? If I'm wrong, You've
been shot once yep, and stabbed twice, SA twice, Yeah,
tell us about those events.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
Well they're stabbing happened at Paris. I was on ramand
I was in four wing at Paramatta and in those
days so it was C and B CLASSO ramand prisoners
one two and three wing was I think it was
weekend prisoners and the laundry. So I ended up being
the become the laundry sweeper with.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
My cell mate.
Speaker 3 (41:53):
So you know, we had all the blankets and all that,
and they used to come with this white string around them,
So our job was to give about the blankets and
all that and keep all the strings so people couldn't
use it as weapons.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
So we had all this string in our.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
Room, and my cell mate knew the guy who was
the laundry sweeper, so we would pack it all up
and he would take it over to one, two and
three and his mate lived down the road who had drugs.
So in those days, at three point thirty, when they
locked you in the guard tower above four wing, he
would go inside. So this guy would whistle and we
would tie all the bits of string together with a
(42:29):
pan and a finger off a glove and make a
slingshot and shoot the wire of the fence and he'd
tie the drugs too, would bring him over.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
We got half and the other.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
Half went to the guy whose drugs they were, so
we did that. But to do that it's not as
easy as it sounds. And then the dickhead bloody put
a phone on it. So when sal mate goes to
pull it back in over the wire, it gets cart
and falls into what we call the steriles, are in
between the wall and the building. And fuck but my
(43:01):
mate at the time was the sweeper for the steroll zone,
so I had to wait till the morning. So as
soon as we got let go in the morning, I
ran to my mate and said, fuck, you know, I
don't know, we'll give you. You've got to get out there.
And you know, he just bolted. He didn't get.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Halfway down and wah wah.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
They'd seen it. So there was our cell and below
us was the Lebanese The guards went straight to the
Lebanese blakes and you know.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
Blamm and all this sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (43:30):
But I'm in my cell because I because I was
a sweeper with the laundry, I could stay in my
cell when you got let out into the yard, I was.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
I was doing something.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
And yeah, the next thing you know, ate Lebanese blake's
walking to my cell, and you know, this fucking blake's gone.
You know, you've got to go and tell me what
you And I'm like, okay, fuck yourself, let it. Not
telling them fucking anything, you know, and then I just
felt this in my guts and you know, and they
started attacking me.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
How many times? What were the ship they.
Speaker 3 (43:57):
Got with a sharpened toothbrush. No, I only let them
get at me once. Yeah, luckily because it sort of
got stuck in there, which in hindsight was a good thing.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
And I just, you know, I hit him Australia.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
I thought, I need to just fight fucking for your
life here. And I didn't know at the time, but
one of the guards had seen them, so they were
on their way up. So you know, they the guys
had a lookout and they yelled and they all ran
and you know, they came out in these blood everywhere,
and I just pushed my way past the guard and
went straight back out into the yard and they're calling
(44:32):
for me, you know, Robinson, you need to come to
the office. And I'm like, I'm not going to the office. Well,
I'm going to trial. Fucking I know, I've got a
big wacking ahead him. You're like, I'm like, this is
not good, you know, And you know, the Asian boys
come out and give me towels and all that, you know,
and you know, I just didn't go. And in the
(44:53):
end they sent the squadding and they just extracted me
and took me up to the sick bay and then
the deputy governor down. He's usually had a security or intel,
he said. I said, I slipped on my coffee, he said,
he said, have you seen yourself?
Speaker 1 (45:10):
When did you get shot?
Speaker 2 (45:12):
That was when I was younger.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
We were going to a house to so the guy
was dealing drugs. There was three of us. We knew
he had a twenty two and I, you know, we
just went, fuck, he can't shoot us all and we
know he's got money.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
And you know, claud do you look back at some
of your logic and think maybe drugs are another good thing?
Speaker 2 (45:35):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (45:35):
It's hands why I don't drink or any drugs. I
haven't for nearly seventeen years. Yeah, like when I sometimes it's.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
Hard to actually like even make sense of the You think.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
How logic?
Speaker 2 (45:51):
How the fuck do you get to that?
Speaker 3 (45:52):
But it seemed so you got's gotten to do a
drug group off, he's got the gun, but he can't
shoot all of us.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
You go in there and get shot and.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
We got Yeah I got shot, but we got drugs
on the money.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
Did you get shot in the lad?
Speaker 2 (46:03):
So it was lucky I turned. It could have been
much worse. So you know, things like, yeah, it's just insane.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
So so your time in prison, like just you did
that was your longest stint six years?
Speaker 2 (46:16):
Yeah, I did, so.
Speaker 3 (46:16):
I did four and a half, been over four and
a half years. I got out from Goldburn actually came
to Rainbow Lodge where I'm now the manager, believe it
or not. And so when I was in prison, my
mum died at the start of that prison sends.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
I never got to say goodbye or go to the funeralround.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
How did that make you feel?
Speaker 2 (46:36):
You know, it's on.
Speaker 3 (46:38):
Like I still you know, since I've got clean, I've
been to their grave site, you know, with my baby
daughter at the time. And I just think the circumstances
of because both my parents died when you were in prison,
I was in prison in that stint that.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
It's so far locked away, you know, And I don't
blame anyone else, that's really you know, it's not it
wasn't the courts or the police or the prison guards.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
You know.
Speaker 3 (47:10):
I've you know, in the process of changing my life,
I've taken responsibility that I was in jail because I
used dougs and I did cry. Now I don't agree
with the system, but that's the system that I lived in,
so I accept that, you know. And the consequence of
that was I was in prison and they weren't going
to let me out to see that, so I never
got to speak to her. And then at the end
(47:32):
of that sentence, I was in Golben and I was
in the the maximum security section.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
You were released from Golben.
Speaker 3 (47:42):
I was released from Golben in two thousand and six.
Speaker 1 (47:48):
How long had you serve there?
Speaker 3 (47:50):
So I've been in Golben nearly three years. So once
I got sent to Golden, I didn't go anywhere else. Yeah,
it was horrible. I still remember everywhere I went. I
was handcuffed and two guards everywhere.
Speaker 1 (48:04):
Well, you got your papers marked when you've sold the
prison office, Yeah, definitely, for the rest of your time
in prison.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
Definitely.
Speaker 3 (48:12):
So I arrived at Goldben and Big Bernie he's dead now,
died on the muster and the boys cheered.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
But he was a tough.
Speaker 3 (48:20):
He was an asshole, but you know, he was the
old style, you know, when Goldben was tough.
Speaker 1 (48:27):
And he was sure services.
Speaker 2 (48:28):
Yeah, and they brought me in.
Speaker 3 (48:30):
And he said to the two guards, take the handcuffs
off and piss off.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
And I was like, what's on, what's going on here?
Speaker 3 (48:37):
This guy was big, Apparently the story goes, his chair
was worth two and a half grand and he's looking
at my file and.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
A spit it officer assault.
Speaker 3 (48:46):
You know, it's it's not pleasant, and you know, he says, Robert,
if I could get if I wasn't so fat, I
could get off this chair, I'll punch.
Speaker 2 (48:55):
You through the fucking wall that was your welcome.
Speaker 3 (48:58):
And he said, you're a Goldman, now I own you.
This is not like any other jail. And then they went.
And so when I went to Gold when it was
segregated on Race, so coury yard was like two yard
was Lebanese, Ossie Islander, Ossi Asian. Then there was the
cookhouse protection and then the filthies, you know, fucking the
(49:19):
Murphy's and fucking right down the end there.
Speaker 2 (49:23):
I went in the.
Speaker 3 (49:23):
Aussi Asian, but I didn't even get there. They put
me in the Cory wing right up the end. And
I was on one hundred and fifty mills a methadone
at the time, so they put me in the end
of the sound. Didn't give me a methadone for three days.
I was fucking so yeah, I was horrifying, you know.
And my mate I just by luck, I knew the
sweeper and he would put because the bars didn't have
(49:45):
any windows, he would put the cardboard box in and
I'd put it up on the window and they'd come
and take it out. And all they had was two
gray blankets and a bible and it's pretty cold.
Speaker 2 (49:54):
I was freezing. I was so sick.
Speaker 3 (49:56):
And then they took me out and put me into
the Assi Visian yard and I remember like it's you know,
it's half a ten. It's called the sixty five blokes.
And you know, in those days, it would take ninety
minutes to empty the wing because they only brought two
cells out at a time.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
And I was like, fucking is going on here?
Speaker 1 (50:19):
You know?
Speaker 3 (50:19):
And I had nothing like I was, you know, and
they knew you don't turn up here for nothing. So
they asked me and I told them what was going on.
You know, by the time I went in might sell
that night at radio books, smokes like of all that,
they looked after you. Yeah, you know, they made sure
you know, I was all right.
Speaker 1 (50:37):
I had some stuff. Yeah, all right, well look we
might card just take a break at this time. We've
left you in the bad spot. We've left you in prison.
We've seen the chaos that is your life. The chaos
is your life. When I think when you're saying that,
I'm seeing here looking at you, are you for real
like some of the decisions you made? But that's the
path of go down with that lifestyle and drugs and
(50:59):
all that. You can laugh at it, but it's sad
and tragic and it's you know, you look back at
it and go, well, how did my life become this?
When we get back in part two, I want to
talk about how you've turned your life around, because you've
been clean now for what.
Speaker 2 (51:12):
Seven seventeen years.
Speaker 1 (51:14):
And by the end of this year, you've been out
of prison for seventeen years, and you're doing some good work,
and we really want to focus on that, focus on
that and get your take on that. How the system
can be you've seen it, how the system could possibly
be improved. All right, it's got good stuff.
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