In post-war Melbourne, the young Peter Lawless was an ordinary son from an average family.
His housewife mother, Isabel, and his house painter father, Claude, knew their boy was a little wild, but they could hardly guess what the future would bring.
By the age of eight, the boy at Tooronga Road Primary School in Malvern had learned the benefits of records.
"I had an
exercise book that listed all the houses I could raid for fruit in the district."
By the time he arrived at the Spring Road Central School in Malvern as a twelve year-old he was ready to rebel.
"I had a lot of trouble with the boss cocky teacher. I couldn't understand why we were learning
Latin and French. I though it was ludicrous and I didn't try," he was to explain.
While he was less than impressive in the classroom, failing seventh grade twice, he loved sport,
even though he was small for his age.
Reputedly an A-Grade tennis player as a teenager and a keen footballer and cricketer, he spent more time playing sport than i the classroom.
Lawless left school at fourteen when he was asked to repeat grade seven for the third time and became a motor mechanic.
Then he joined his father in a painting business.
He painted during the day but at night he was learning a trade from an older man: how to be a thief.
Between 1960 and 1962 the pair pulled a series of safe breakings and burglaries.
"In two years we did all the TABs. He said 'that's enough for me' and bailed out. He's now a successful
businessman."
Lawless became a prolific thief from 1962 to 1964.
"I worked everyday, seven days a week, full on. I made a hundred pounds a day."
He broke into shops, supermarkets and cafes and stole cash, cigarettes and coffee.
He had two men on retainers who would check out likely targets, examine alarm systems and observe security
guard movements, "I paid them every Friday."
When he was finally arrested in 1964, Lawless said, he owned a house in Noble Park, an interest in two car yards and forty thousand pounds in two safety deposit boxes.
"Police asked me if the money was mine. I said I couldn't help them, so I lost the lot."
Lawless then decided to familiarise himself with the laws that he had so much trouble obeying.
He completed three years of law degree, ended up with a $4000 legal library and went on to become one of the best jailhouse lawyers in Australia.
"I was arrested thirty-nine times between 1964 and 1969 and lost two cases."
Lawless didn't always represent himself however and his relationship with his lawyers was always delicate.
He sacked several barristers and actually punched one in an interview room.
The unlucky silk was Peter Faris, QC, who went on to head the National Crime Authority before he resigned after being caught by police outside a brothel.
Faris can now be heard on 3AW's Sunday morning program.
Between 1969 and 1972 Lawless went through twelve trials and won eleven.
"The only time I went down I had a barrister. I sacked him during the trial but it was too late."
In 1972 he was charged with the murder of Christopher John Fitzgerald, who was shot dead in Noble Park.
On September 24, 1972, Fitzgerald was shot dead, the prosecution alleging he had argued with Lawless in a car before being murdered.
Lawless was found guilty at his second trial after the first was aborted, and formally sentenced to hang, a sentence commuted to a life in jail.
The star witness in the case was Rayma Joyce, his lover and the mother of his daughter.
She gave two statements to police, one clearing and the second implicating Lawless in the murder.
He swore he was innocent and fought the conviction for ten years all the way to the High Court.
He lost four to one.
In 1975, Lawless was a star witness in the Beach Inquiry into the Police.
He was one of several criminals whose complaints of alleged police illegality resulted in the Inquiry being undertaken in the first place.
In 1982 Rayma Joyce signed a statutory declaration stating her evidence implicating Lawless was false.
But a month later she changed he mind again and withdrew her declaration.
Lawless later said that he did not blame Joyce for her actions.
"She was under enormous pressure. They would have taken her children if she did not co-operate. She's changed her story so often that it would be impossible for anyone to believe her now, one way or the other. I get on all right with her. we have a daughter and a grand daughter together."
While inside he followed his twin obsessions of the law - in a decade-long fight for a retrial - and sport, running marathons and playing visiting teams at football.
He lined up on North Melbourne rover and VFL President, Allen Aylett, for one game inside
Pentridge.
He spent four years inside the top security H-Division in Pentridge during the so-called 'Overcoat Gang' war involving prisoners bashing and stabbing
each other.
In his book, Chopper - From the Inside - Mark 'Chopper' Read says that during the prison war, Lawless sat on the fence trying to be mates with both sides.
Read also wrote that Lawless was a 'non-tubber', meaning that he rarely, if ever, bathed.
In 1986, Lawless suffered an aneurism.
This left him with limited use of his left side.
In 1987, a change of law enabled him to apply for a minimum jail term.
Still suffering the after-effects of his aneurism, he was given a minimum of fourteen years by the Supreme Court, leaving him eligible for almost immediate release.
He was taken to the Governor's Office and asked if was ready to be released.
"When I said yes he just told me to fuck off."
With his possessions in two cardboard boxes and $38 in prison savings he found himself in a pub in Bell Street, one hundred metres from the prison.
His then girlfriend, Diane, later to be his wife, came to pick him up by Taxi.
"That about chopped out the money. I was shovelled out of the jail with no
preparation, I tried the best I could."
On March 4, 1988, a woman in the Ringwood shopping centre
carpark noticed a man who appeared to be dress oddly for what was a sunny early
autumn day.
He was wearing gloves and a pair of thick pants over a pair of
jeans and was carrying a blue duffle bag.
The man walked from his car to another and climbed in with
several other men.
Shortly after, both cars sped out of the carpark, one turning
left, the other right.
The woman noted the registration of one of the cars and
contacted police.
Police later formed the view that the men had a police scanner
in their possession, were about to commit a robbery at one of several banks in
the area but heard a call on the scanner which asked police to check on an alarm
a short distance from where the men were parked.
After hearing the D-24 call, the group of potential armed
robbers fled the area immediately.
The car was discovered soon after in the vicinity of the home of
career criminal Rodney Charles Collins.
Police began to tail Collins and several days later they
spotted him leaving the Broadmeadows police station after
reporting for bail.
Collins was reporting everyday due to drug offences he had been
charged with months earlier.
After signing the bail book he
climbed into a green Ford F-100 which they discovered was
registered to Peter Lawless.
Investigators made inquiries as to Lawless'
recent movements.
The best description the woman in the Ringwood carpark provided of any of the men
was the one who looked like her stepfather.
Lawless fitted the description.
Police discovered that Lawless owned a factory in Dandenong,
the base for his painting and decorating business.
Surveillance officers watched the premises intently.
In mid-March Rod Collins confronted a woman outside a public
swimming pool.
She noted the car's registration and contacted police who
discovered that the car was registered to Peter Lawless.
At 4.15pm on March 18, 1988, police followed Lawless as he
left the factory.
He drove to a nearby supermarket and met up with Rod Collins and
an unknown man.
The trio left in separate cars and drove in convoy towards
Ringwood.
Police were certain a heist was about to take place but
something seemed to scare the potential armed robbers and their job was
apparently aborted.
Investigators were now certain that the Lawless/Collins team
were going to pull off a major armed robbery on a Friday.
The following week, police lined the route from Dandenong to
Ringwood and lay in wait.
Shortly after 2pm, Collins, Lawless and two unidentified men met
up in Springvale and drove off in two cars.
One of the cars was parked in a Ringwood side street before the
men continued their trip together.
The group returned to Lawless' factory to collect a motorbike
and drove back to Ringwood at 4pm.
Police watched them dup another stolen car. Several officers
waited with the vehicle for when the men returned to it.
The robbers forced their way into the Ringwood branch of the
National Australia Bank through a rear door.
Detectives had set up a camera focussed on the bank and the
robbery was recorded for prosperity.
Traffic congestion had meant that the men were late and by the
tie they had entered the bank it was closed, the staff relaxing with Friday
drinks in a room upstairs and the cash safely locked away in heavy steel filing
cabinets.
A sledge hammer was not enough to open the cabinets and although
dented, they refused to open for the robbers.
The bandits gave up and fled carrying duffle bags, but no cash.
They climbed into a van and roared of towards the getaway car.
When the robbers arrived at the vehicle police pounced.
SOG officers trapped the men while they were changing cars and
trained their shotguns on the offenders.
Lawless and Collins were thrown face down onto the road and
cuffed with plastic restrainers before hoods were placed over their heads.
One of the unidentified men was Larry Mauldon, a man well-known
to police who was from the Frankston area and had a string of criminal
convictions.
When arrested, Mauldon hit the side of the curb with his head.
His skull was later found to be fractured.
When the four men stood trial in February 1989 they all
pleaded guilty to aggravated burglary.
They were originally charged with armed robbery but the DPP did
not press ahead with the charges for several reasons.
It was made clear to the DPP that the men would fight the
charge, a resulting trial costing an exorbitant amount of tax-payers money.
It was also thought that the men might not even be convicted.
For an armed robbery charge to stick a person is required to be
threatened or put into fear, and there was sufficient doubt that any of the bank
staff were directly threatened by the bandits.
Mauldon was sentenced to five years jail. He received a lesser
sentence to the rest of the men as the judge took into consideration his
fractured skull.
Lawless, Collins and the fourth man were each given seven years.
He said he had "introduced" two of the stick-up men and was only roped in at the last minute.
"I didn't want to be in on it but I didn't want to let them down".
The last policeman to arrest Lawless, Peter Butts, then an experienced sergeant in the armed robbery squad, does not buy the last minute inclusion excuse.
"We had the crew under surveillance and they regularly met at Lawless's house.
They took off to do the job from his house."
