Farrell and Ryan had first met in their early teens and developed a strong bond.

But it was a bond destined to end with the two hating each other with a passion.

"My mum went out with Dennis Allen (another member of the Pettingill family) for a few years so I met Jason like that," Farrell told Paul Anderson, a journalist with the Herald Sun, during an interview at a South Melbourne hotel in 1998.

The Pettingill family were the prime Walsh St suspects and many police believed that the murders were payback for detectives killing Graeme Jensen, a close friend of the Pettingill clan, on the previous day.

Police had Jensen under surveillance after security guard Dominic Hefti was shot dead during an armed robbery some months before.

The investigation that followed Walsh Street was the biggest ever conducted by the Victorian police force.

Police began raiding the homes of Pettingill family member, Victor Peirce and rattling the cages of many underworld figures.

Jason Ryan started to fear for his life as he believed that police had made it known that he had given them information regarding the Hefti robbery.

It was then that he hinted to police that he was willing to give them information about Walsh Street.

He gave a statement, the first of many, on October 21 and Jedd Houghton, a family friend, was one of the first people he implicated.

On October 24, 1988, police took Ryan on a trip to the country (Bright, north-east Victoria).

Ty/Eyre (the taskforce investigating the Walsh St shootings) head, Det John Noonan escorted Ryan to the small town and there the accusations against the four charged, as well as others involved, were born.

Ryan gave Noonan up to half a dozen accounts of the events on the night of the double shooting, including re-enactments at the death scene.

In earlier versions Ryan even placed himself in Walsh Street, saying he broke into the Commodore which was used as 'bait'.

Having admitted to aiding and abetting in the shootings, he was the first to be charged over the murders.

Ryan arrived back in Melbourne after his four-day trip, and gave a litany of lies and false interviews to Det Noonan.

On the last day of October - Melbourne cup Day eve - a Supreme Court judge acting after hours bailed him into the care of his police minders.

On the same day Ryan gave a statement implicating friend Anthony Farrell and another friend, Emmanuel Alexandris, in the killings.

Ryan implicated five men he claimed set off with shotguns for Walsh Street.

He listed the party of killers as being Victor Peirce, Jedd Houghton, Trevor Pettingill, Peter McKevoy and Anthony Farrell.

Farrell was charged with murder the following day.

"On Melbourne Cup Day I rang me mum and she said, 'Look, the coppers have just been here and taken some of your clothes," Farrell said.

"I had newspaper clippings over Graeme (Jensen) and they took them too. I rang St Kilda Road and Noonan got on the phone and I asked, 'What's going on?' He said, 'We want to see you again and show you some photographs.'"

The two met on neutral ground in Clarendon street, South Melbourne.

Farrell said Det Noonan told him it would not look good being seen speaking openly with police, so he hopped into the detective's unmarked car.

Instead of showing him photos, Noonan drove Farrell back to the Homicide office.

Farrell thought the TyEyre taskforce detectives were bluffing him as, after interviewing him, they drove him to the watch house where he would be charged and remanded in custody.

Farrell sat in jail on remand for two and a half years before he came to trial.

Detectives saw Farrell, 20 at the time of his arrest, as the weak link in the chain.

Fraser urged him repeatedly to 'keep his mouth shut' and to  'keep strong'.

Police bugged a cell during a meeting between Fraser and Farrell. Fraser's profanity-laden advice for Farrell to keep quiet would, after Farrell and his co-accused were acquitted, make him a career-long enemy of the police.

Farrell later gave his version of the events of the night of the Walsh Street shootings to Paul Anderson.

"We were at a pub in Carlton and ended up back at Jason's that night," Farrell claimed.

"Jason stayed there. His mum was there. I can't remember seeing if McEvoy was there or not but I do remember seeing him there that night. At the end of the night me and (mate) Manny Alexandris were downstairs in the lounge room. I fell asleep on one end of the couch and he fell asleep on the other."

(Alexandris, falsely implicated by Ryan early on, would not prove a reliable witness.)

Victor Peirce, McEvoy and Farrell faced a committal hearing starting on October 31, 1989, during which Ryan, Wendy Peirce (Victor's wife) and several others gave their evidence. Wendy's evidence included statements alleging Victor's anger after Jensen's shooting and his pledge to "knock the jacks". She said her family booked into a motel hours before the murders and told how Victor left on the night of October 11, 1988, and returned early the next morning saying he and others had killed two policemen.

Ryan stuck to his guns and placed his implicated five at the flat in Gordon Grove, off Walsh Street in South Yarra, referred to otherwise as murder headquarters. He detailed the alleged conversations and motives. The court was told the murders were revenge killings - a two-cops-for-one-crook kill bid as payback for Jensen.

After hearing the prosecution case, ending on February 22, 1990, Magistrate Hugh Adams deemed there was insufficient evidence for the three to stand trial.

Adams said there was "no doubt" in his mind that Jedd Houghton played an "active part" in the slayings.

He also said there was insufficient evidence for him to direct Trevor Pettingill be charged, and suggested the Director of Public Prosecutions may wish to "address his mind to the matter".

All three defendants maintained their "not guilty" pleas. Peirce's alibi had him with wife Wendy and their children at the Tullamarine motel.

McEvoy claimed he was sleeping in his room at Ryan's mother's Brunswick flat. Farrell maintained he was in a drug-induced sleep on the couch at the very same flat.

On the order of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Pettingill was charged in July 1990.

Without a proper committal hearing, he was presented to the Supreme Court to stand trial with the three others.

His plea was also "not guilty", his alibi being that he was in a sedative-induced sleep at the time of the shootings.

Weeks before the trial, during a voire dire, Wendy, reunited with her husband - a man who once shot bullets at her feet and broke a finger as a punishment - recanted and turned hostile witness.

She claimed investigators, or "gangsters with badges" as she called them, had forced her to tell lies about her husband's involvement.

That despite her having told the Magistrates' Court: "Rumours that I am being hypnotised, tortured and bashed are not true. I am here of my own free will."

At rial, under the watchful eye of Justice Frank Vincent, Ryan was left to bear the weight of the prosecution case on his shoulders. He was now the Crown's star soloist.

Nervous and intimidated, Ryan gave detailed evidence against the accused just as he had at his committal.

He told of the gathering at the Gordon Grove flat and how the five had argued over the shotguns before heading out. He said he stayed behind to guard the flat while the others set up a car as bait and shot the constables.

He said he heard shots before one of the accused returned with blood on his tracksuit pants.

Ryan also said he was told that if he said anything about that fateful night he would share the same fate as the shot policemen.

The defence lawyers hammered Ryan's credibility during cross-examination. If his testimony proved doubtful, the jury would have a difficult task settling on a guilty verdict.

Ian Hayden, for Farrell, described Ryan as a burglar, liar, thief and cheat. Geoff Flatman, for Peirce, played the jury several of Ryan's re-enactments in which the young Crown witness continually changed his story.

"He ingenious at picking up snippets of information and using them," Flatman told the jury. "It's kids playing silly games. He's playing God."

Chris Dane, QC, for Pettingill, said Ryan has "verballed" his client and he asked the jury to do with the evidence "what the jury in the Birmingham Six case should have done with the verbal confessions presented to them - treated t with the contempt it deserves".

Bob Vernon, for McEvoy, told the jury they were being asked to convict his client on "tainted, suspect and manipulated testimony" given by "court-room rehearsed witnesses, harassed and frightened witnesses and self-confessed liars".

"There are witnesses who have changed tack more times than a yacht in a twelve-metre yacht race," Vernon said.

"These witnesses have poisoned the well of justice. They said Adolf Hitler was the difficult son of a difficult mother, and one can but wonder if Jason Ryan is not the difficult son of a difficult mother."

Crown prosecutor James Morrisey, QC, conceded Ryan had a black background. "You are not going to get the Archbishop of Canterbury or Mother Teresa from within the group," he said.

Forensic evidence linking the four accused to the murder scene was next to nothing.

Circumstantial evidence had linked the main murder weapon - the Japanese-made KTG shotgun - to an armed robbery crew allegedly including Houghton and Jensen. It is believed the bandit crew had used the gun during a series of hold-ups before the police murders.

After more than six weeks at trial and six days of deliberation, the all male jury came back on March 26, 1991 and acquitted Farrell, Peirce, McEvoy and Pettingill.

Kath Pettingill was ecstatic. Detectives who had sacrificed all investigation the case were shattered.

"The Walsh Street four have been acquitted. All units stay under control," was the D-24 broadcast to all police cars on the road.

Noonan said the result was one of disbelief and total disappointment. He added that the jury had found the accused not guilty but had not found them innocent.

The acquitted immediately called for a Royal Commission into the investigation. Noonan welcomed the call, saying it would vindicate the police decision to charge them by revealing evidence inadmissible at trial.

When Paul Anderson spoke to Farrell in 1998, Farrell said the acquittal was the happiest day of his life.

He said he still held fears for his safety having been branded forever by the police murder charges.

Farrell, a heroin addict, has been jailed twice for drug offences since the Walsh Street trial.

He was among the two hundred and fifty or so mourners to attend the funeral of Walsh Street co-acquitted, Victor Peirce, in May 2002.