Prideaux was a stick-up merchant.

He was known to hoard weaponry and nursed a strong hatred of police.

Driving late and armed around commercial districts was pretty much the Prideaux lifestyle.

In their book One Down, One Missing - Inside the Hunt for the Killers of Silk & Miller, Det Sen Cons Joe D'Alo and David Astle wrote that Robert De Niro, playing Neil McCauley in the crime flick Heat, may well have pinched a leaf from Prideaux's book.

While less sophisticated than the Hollywood version, Prideaux was a meticulous robber, casing a bank for months before he opted to visit in a more threatening capacity.

In January 1998 Prideaux was the prime focus of a police operation named Albers.

Albers was formed after a string of banks in Melbourne's south-east were robbed netting the offender/s close to two million dollars.

All six crews in the Armed Robbery squad were hell-bent on a result.

By then Prideaux had spent over tens years of his forty-five behind bars, serving time for numerous armed offences ranging from bank jobs to assault.

He was on parole and had apparently slipped into his old ways.

Detectives believed Prideaux was running with a second ex-con named Leigh Torney and enlisting a third top-drawer crook named Fatty Smith as the getaway expert.

Shifts around the clock sweated on Torney and Prideaux.

One day detectives sat in an unmarked car watching Prideaux and Torney step through a dry-run on a Keilor bank.

Prideaux and Torney did everything but commit the crime, double-checking drop-off times, shutters, alarms, escape routes.

Surveillance detectives followed the pair back to Moorabbin.

Several weeks full-time, several crews full-time - but the pressure had not pinned the bank-job run on Prideaux and his associates.

The Albers team had more than a hunch that Billy was behind the bank heists but hunches don't convince judges.

During investigations into the 1998 shootings of Sgt Gary Silk and Sen Cons Rodney Miller, police had Prideaux high on their list of suspects.

They were hunting two armed robbers who they believed had been involved in several raids on restaurants in which diners were bound before being robbed of their valuables and cash while the establishment's tills were emptied.

Prideaux also came under the microscope because he lived a stone's throw from the scene of the shootings in Cochranes Rd Moorabbin.

On August 25, 1998, Armed Robbery Squad detectives, in league with the Special Operations Group, swooped on Prideaux's household at day-break.

Prideaux was less than cordial as the place was tossed for weaponry.

Cisterns were checked, air ducts, guttering.

Seized in a wardrobe cavity was a 9-millimetre pistol, plus rounds, a serious breach for a convicted felon.

The suspect was interviewed and processed at Moorabbin Police Station.

His alibi, later corroborated, would clear him of the murders.

Ironically, while Prideaux would do time for illegal possession of a firearm, he'd never serve a sentence on the Albers bank jobs he was hotly suspected of committing.