Ryan's mother is the third child and first daughter of crime matriarch Kath Pettingill whose criminal history includes convictions for prostitution, assault, firearms, drugs deception and harbouring.

Pettingill's other children included Victor Peirce and Dennis Allen.

Ryan is notorious for breaking the criminal code and giving evidence against family and friends over the 1988 shootings of two policemen in Walsh Street, South Yarra.

A court later forced Dennis to send Jason to stay with esteemed VFA footballer Fred Cook.

Cook was later charged and jailed several times for trafficking in drugs and stolen goods.

Ryan quickly disobeyed the court order which had placed him in the care of Cook and he began to run away and turn up at his uncle Dennis's place.

"I did a lot of bad things," Ryan told the Herald Sun, "I had to earn respect. I would do anything.. I was always confident because I had Dennis and my family there."

"Dennis realised he'd found what h wanted in me. He virtually said I was his young apprentice."

Bashings led to burglaries and armed hold-ups.

Ryan claims that, only months before the Walsh Street shootings, he had earned enough trust to commit his first armed hold-up with another uncle, Victor Peirce.

In 1984 Ryan saw his first murder when Dennis Allen killed Wayne Stanhope.

Allen, Stanhope and several others were drinking at one of Dennis's homes in Stephenson Street, Richmond.

"Dennis was playing his music loud as normal," Ryan recalled.

Allen told Ryan to go to his room before he pulled out a gun and shot Stanhope six times.

"I had a gun with me at the time, a .25," says Ryan, "it was an instinct thing."

"Dennis looked at me and grabbed the gun. He gave Stanhope another seven from my gun."

Dennis then took a knife to Stanhope's dead throat before smashing is head against the floor tiles.

"Within that half hour I grew up a lot," Ryan says.

"I was told to ring Victor (Peirce) and from then on I had nothing to do with it.

Stanhope's car was later found burnt out in bushland, his body was never found and no one was charged over his murder.

In November 1984 Ryan saw Dennis kill again.

This time it was a prostitute named Helen Wagnegg.

Dennis believed she was talking to police.

Wagnegg had been in jail and upon her release she went straight to Dennis's house where he gave her some shots of what he said was speed although traces of morphine were later found in her system.

Her body was then dumped in the Yarra River.

Ryan remembers Dennis telling him to "grab a bucket and go down the Yarra."

"I went to the river and got half a bucket."

Allen then immersed Wagnegg's head in the murky river water until she drowned.

Dennis believed that if he drowned the doped out Wagnegg in the Yarra water, then had her body dumped in the river, a pathologist at autopsy would deduce that she had fallen in and drowned.

Toxicology reports would reveal the heroin in her system and her lungs would be full of foul Yarra water.

Ryan was caught up in many police raids on the Pettingill clan in the mid-eighties.

During one, a pistol was found under Ryan's pillow.

On July 11, 1988, a security guard was killed during an armed robbery at the Coles warehouse at Barkly Square Brunswick.

Armaguard employee Dominic Hefti was carrying around $30,000 cash through a store room behind the supermarket when he was confronted by a gunman.  

Shots were exchanged and Hefti was fatally wounded.

The gunman, also wounded, escaped through the supermarket and commandeered a car from a woman at gunpoint.

In October 1988 Graeme Jensen, a very close friend of Victor Peirce, was shot dead by police after detectives had planned to arrest him over the Coles robbery.

Only a few hours later two policemen were shot dead in Walsh Street in what was seen by many police as an attempt at revenge by Jensen's family and associates.

The following afternoon police raided Victor Peirce's Chestnut Street home where they found Jason Ryan and his friend Anthony Farrell.

Farrell and Ryan were taken away for questioning and Ryan falsely implicated his uncle Victor over the Hefti shooting.

Farrell later said, "They took us back to St Kilda Road (Police HQ) and got an alibi statement of what our movements were for the last twenty-four hours."

"They asked me a couple of questions about Hefti," Ryan explained to the Herald Sun.

Ryan lied and told detectives he had seen Victor and Jensen with the spoils from the Coles hold-up.

He claims he lied because he "copped a flogging" in the interview room.

Peirce (left) was subsequently charged with Hefti's murder and locked away on remand.

Police began raiding the homes of Peirce and Jensen's associates and rattling the cages of many underworld figures in their search for the Walsh Street killers.

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 Task Force 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 crucial, but ever changing evidence in the Walsh Street trials.

He was placed under witness protection.

"There wasn't many barbeques, I can tell you that," Ryan said of his trip, "they tried to put the wind up me."

Flemington armed robber Gary Abdallah became a suspect on the evidence of Jason Ryan put forward on October 27.

Ryan claimed that Abdallah's part in the killings was to provide and drive the getaway car. 

Abdallah was shot in a police raid shortly after.

"I told them bits and pieces and told them bullshit because I didn't trust them," Ryan says.

"They threatened to throw me back on the street and tell certain people that I said this and that. Because I had been gone for a certain amount of time (on the country trip), maybe people would have believed it. I was only seventeen and confused. I didn't know what was going on. In the end I got to meet John Noonan. He said to me, 'Listen, what you're telling us is bullshit. Some of it's true and some of it's not.' He said them other police were not having anymore dealings with me. It was just him and me from there on."

Ryan speaks highly of Noonan saying he slowly grew to trust him and eventually told him the truth.

"I was still hesitant and told him a couple of lies at first," Ryan claims.

"He kept coming back to me and saying, 'This just doesn't gel.' I got to trust him and eventually told him the truth."

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.

Noonan told Paul Anderson, a journalist with the Herald Sun, he understood Ryan's reasons for telling several different versions before he settled on his final statement. 

"By telling five or six stories meant he was a liar at first, but you have to understand he didn't trust police," Noonan said.

"He trusted the police no more than he trusted his family and their criminal associates. Police used to actively assist Dennis in his activities and Jason was privy to that. He was worried his information would get back to the family and there were times when he gave us false information purely and simply to see what was going to happen to it." 

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.

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 for a few years so I met Jason like that," Farrell told Pul Anderson during an interview at a South Melbourne hotel in 1998.

Ryan would finally implicate five men he claimed set off with shotguns for Walsh Street in the early morning of October 12.

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 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 he said the TyEyre taskforce detectives were bluffing him as, after interviewing him, they drove him to the watchhouse 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.

If they could break him and get a confession, they believed they would be well on their way to exacting justice.

Two weeks after Farrell was arrested, Jedd Houghton was shot dead by police at a Bendigo caravan park.

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.)

Ryan had actually implicated his uncle Trevor near the end of 1988 - about eighteen months before he would be eventually charged. A couple of weeks after being implicated, Pettingill was kidnapped by a gang of masked men who told him to "tell the police the truth about Walsh Street".

His attackers stabbed him in the back and buttocks and sledge hammered his knees, hands and ankles. The Clan claimed the assailants were police, a claim investigated by the Internal Investigations Department and never substantiated.

The masked gang claimed they were fellow criminals wanting an end to the TyEyre investigation, as "the jacks" were cracking down hard on the underworld in an effort to gather evidence. More than a hundred police raids had turned the criminal world upside-down.

As Ryan worked towards his final statement, he agreed to testify and the charges against him were dropped. He was granted indemnity from any further prosecution. Wendy Peirce, among others, also agreed to act as a prosecution witness. It appeared Ryan would not have to stand alone against his family and friends.

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.

The defence lawyers laid assault on Ryan's credibility. David Ross, QC, for Farrell, painted the picture of Ryan's upbringing to question his honesty and veracity of his evidence.

During cross-examination ,Ryan denied he had been a "messenger" for Uncle Dennis but agreed he knew of several murders his uncle had committed. Ross put to Ryan that he handed Dennis a loaded pistol that was then "emptied into the head of Wayne Stanhope". Ryan refused to answer the question for fear of incriminating himself. Ross the alleged that on Dennis Allen's birthday in 1985 the drug kingpin killed Anton Kenny.

In his final submission, Ross described Ryan as a cunning "little street-wise urchin". "The lies he tells about Anthony Farrell and others are indiscriminate and without reason," he told the court. "We (the entire defence panel) suggest to your worship that you have never come such a lying person as Jason Ryan."

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.

Ryan later moved interstate and reverted to a life of crime.

The ongoing battle with heroin won the day, and, from his own admissions, he was soon committing burglaries and robberies.

Kathy Pettingill says she has now forgiven him.

In October 1998 Ryan contacted Paul Anderson.

Anderson flew interstate to meet Ryan the following month and he desperately wanted to tell his story with the provisos being no photographs or revelations of the state in which he was residing.

The pair met at a seaside hotel and Anderson described Ryan's appearance as being clean-cut with a thin-frame and aqua blue eyes but sinewy and hungry-looking.

Ryan was also described as being extremely paranoid and he suggested to Anderson they go somewhere else because "the walls have ears."

It was just after the tenth anniversary of the Walsh Street shootings and Ryan said that the pressure of being in the witness box during the subsequent trial became unbearable but he said he persevered because "those two policemen (Tynan and Eyre) had nothing to do with Jensen's death".

Ryan told Anderson he was still in fear of being "knocked".

He was dealing with a serious heroin problem and had just been charged with firearm offences.

"When I moved to a different state, I had no one. All I had was a girlfriend and she didn't understand. I rang John (Noonan) and told him I was having a hard time. He ended up coming here and taking a gun off me because I was going to kill meself. Maybe I harp on John, but who else have I got to go to? Who else spent three years of their life just on the Walsh Street case? He's the only person who understands these things because he's been here all the time."

Ryan, then 27 and working as a labourer, said he was stripped of his false identity after being convicted over a $35,000 interstate theft in 1995.

"I was brought up in an environment where I only knew one way to get money," he said. "I had one kid at that time and there was no work and I needed the money."

But other sources said Ryan lost his false identity because he decided to use another name not issued to him as part of the witness relocation program.

Ryan said fear forced him to stay on the run across the country while separated from de facto wives and two children.

"I'm just trying to get on with my life and get it together with very little help from the PSG (protective services group)," he said.

"(One of my uncles) gets out of prison next year. He's passed on a message that he would come after me. The PSG said if it happens, I'd have to ring my local police. I think that's a bit unfair."

Ryan said he had tried to stay clean, but had run foul of the law in the past few years. He blamed his fear of being killed and a troubled childhood for the indiscretions.

"I've been done for possession of firearms, and I told the police they're only there for my own protection," he said.

"Even though (members of my family) are getting on in their days, their money is good to give to other people to come and get me.

"I can't even stay in the same house for six months at a time. I'm on the move all the time and trying to hold down two jobs.

"My lifestyle has caused me to break up with two women. I have one child to each of them but I can't even see them because everyone's too scared."

In a candid interview, the politely spoken Ryan reflected on his upbringing and the ripple effect it has had on his life.

"It was far from the perfect upbringing but Dennis was like my dad," Ryan said.

"When I lost him, I lost everything. He used to look after me like his own kid. I can't help the way I've been taught."

Speaking for the first time in eight years, Ryan said he offered information about Walsh St because police threatened to charge him in relation to the Stanhope, Wagnegg and Kenny murders.

That decision to become an informer has left him an outsider with no family and few friends he can trust.

Some of his uncles have asked him to return home, but he is sceptical of their motives.

Ryan said more than anything he would like to see and speak to his mother, Ms Vicki Brooks, who also gave evidence at the Walsh St trial.

"I'd love to keep in contact with her," he said.

"I am lonely. How would you feel if you lost your family? I'm even too scared to let people know who I am. All I do is go to work then come home then go to work again. I'm just trying to live."

On May 17, 1999, the Herald Sun reported that Ryan had been serving weekend jail time after a series of interstate crimes.

It was believed Ryan had overdosed on heroin at least once that year.

Speaking exclusively to the Herald Sun, close friends said they had not heard from him for several weeks and feared for his safety.

Ryan's apparent fall back into the criminal world came after he vowed to live a happy and peaceful life "away from the old days" during an exclusive interview with the Herald Sun late in 1998.

According to a close friend of Ryan, it was mid-1998 when warrants were issued for his arrest over a series of charges for which he was convicted after failing to appear in court.

Police arrested him in December 1998 for driving an unregistered car and he was remanded on the outstanding warrants.

Ryan was sentenced to several months weekend detention at a low-security jail, and after arming himself with a knife during a suburban incident, was sentenced to another three months of weekend jail time.

The friend, who did not want to be named, said she believed Ryan was on a path of self-destruction.

"It's all gone downhill for him now. It's such a shame because he can be a great bloke," the friend said.

"He had a good job for a while but he's lost that now.

"No matter how hard he tried to go on the straight and narrow, his past was ready to jump down his throat as soon as he began to integrate into society.

"I'm worried."

On August 5, 2006, Ryan was released from a South Australian prison.

At 3am on August 21, 2006, Ryan was thrown off an Adelaide-Melbourne bus at Stawell for bad behaviour.

Two hours later he was caught trying to break into a car on the Western Highway, and threatened a woman with a screwdriver when she tried to intervene.

On August 22, 2006, Ryan, 35, faced Horsham Magistrates' Court and was convicted of assaults with a weapon, attempting to commit a serious offence, theft and criminal damage and was jailed for four months.

Ryan, who now goes by the name Jason Brooks, intended to appeal in the County Court.