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Home»In Depth» Article
Trouble in the ranks
From left: Former detective David Waters, murdered prostitute Shane Chartres-Abbott anddetective Peter Lalor, who was suspended this week.
Pictures:
 Joe Armao, Andrew De La Rue, Rodger Cummins
 Nick McKenzieSeptember 15, 2007Shane Chartres-Abbott was a 28-year-old father of one. He was also a prostitute whospecialised in sado-masochism. And, at the time of his murder, he stood accused of raping andbashing a female client. It was an unusual life, and it would be an unusual death.Chartres-Abbott left his Reservoir home just before 9am on June 4, 2003, a slight, baby-facedman in a sober suit, accompanied by his pregnant girlfriend and her father. Two men appearedon the footpath. One assaulted the girlfriend and her father. The other shot Chartres-Abbott inthe neck. The assailants bolted down a lane, through a car park and disappeared.Police would say this was no random killing but a carefully planned hit. They called for publichelp, but there were few leads, and the salacious headlines soon faded. For almost four years, itwas just another unsolved murder.There it might have remained, but for evidence now emerging, not only about the identities of the murderers but about who else might have been involved. One of the killers, a brutalcriminal now in prison for unrelated underworld murders, has rolled over. Not only has headmitted the crime, but he has alleged that a serving police officer, detective Peter Lalor, islinked to Chartres-Abbott's murder. He has also claimed that a former detective, David Waters,was present at the meeting when the plans were discussed. Information gathered byinvestigators suggests the pair knew that the prostitute was a marked man and that Lalor mayhave aided the hitman.In May, Victoria Police set up a secret taskforce, known as Briar, to examine the Chartres-Abbott murder because of its possible police links.Around the same time, a second taskforce, codenamed Petra, was created to investigate thebetter-known murder of Terence Hodson and his wife, Christine, in 2004. Hodson was a criminalwho turned police informer, killed after agreeing to testify against officers accused of drugtrafficking.
 
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Two secret taskforces, two extraordinary stories of possible police links with underworld figuresand murder. Two challenges to the persistent assertion by the State Government that itsstrategy to tackle corruption deserves the confidence of Victorians. That police can slowly formties to underworld players suggests, at least, a system failure. Internal probes sometimes fallover through lack of resources or will. Attempted reforms can peter out. The police union canbe a help, or a hindrance.Victoria Police has now conceded for the first time that there is an alleged and credible linkbetween police corruption and organised crime killings, but Commissioner Christine Nixon andDeputy Commissioner Simon Overland insist the strategy to tackle it is in place. Experiencedcorruption experts, including former deputy police commissioner Bob Falconer and formercounsel assisting to Queensland's Fitzgerald Inquiry, Gary Crooke, QC, disagree, arguing thatthe state deserves better. Victoria's approach has been unique.In NSW, Queensland and Western Australia, a royal commission was the precursor for a trulyindependent crime and corruption commission. Because Victoria Police maintained for so longthat it had "not found an evidentiary link" between police corruption and underworld murders,the two were dealt with separately.Under pressure, the Government in late 2004 created a new police watchdog from theOmbudsman's office, the Office of Police Integrity. But its hasty creation left it handicapped andit remains so, according to its critics. The OPI's assistant director, Graham Ashton, says theallegations now under investigation are "precisely why the OPI was set up". Overland backshim."We need to give this model a chance to see what it can do. It is much too early to say if theOPI is or is not working. I think it is," he says.Whether a stronger commission against corruption could have prevented what has alreadyemerged about police links with criminals is unclear. But secrets hidden for years are beginningto come to light.
THE MURDER 
The two men waiting for Chartres-Abbott had been planning for a while. They knew his address,and they knew when he would be leaving home on his way to court. Chartres-Abbott specialisedin rough sex for a suburban escort agency, and he was accused of a gruesome crime: the rapeand assault of a client at the Saville Hotel in South Yarra in 2002. It was a bizarre case,described by Chartres-Abbott's lawyer as "a story worthy of Bram Stoker and a mystery worthyof Agatha Christie".Chartres-Abbott's alleged victim, Thai-born woman "Lily Chi" (not her real name), was found byhotel staff at 5am, with black eyes and bite marks on her thigh. She had been raped vaginallyand anally and was missing part of her tongue. She was bleeding and only partly conscious.Chartres-Abbott had a booking with Chi hours before she was found, and it didn't take policelong to seek him out and charge him. The court later heard that Chi's blood was on his clothingand her mobile phone was in his bag. The prosecution's case included Chi's claims that, at aprevious rendezvous, Chartres-Abbott told her he was a 200-year-old vampire. Chartres-Abbottdenied he had anything to do with the assault, claiming it was he who was the intended victim.He claimed that he was to have been unwittingly cast in a "snuff movie", a film whose climaxwould be his murder. According to Chartres-Abbott, Chi had tipped him off about his impending
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fate, and he left the hotel well before her assault. He was reportedly upbeat about the case, buthe was also fearful.On day four of the trial, Judge Bill White ordered the removal of any reference in court papersto Chartres-Abbott's home address after a request from his lawyer. It didn't help. Within 24hours he was shot dead. "It appears somebody did find out his address," Judge White saidwhen discharging the jury. Months went by. The assailants had left few clues, and theinvestigation stalled. It would take police years to learn, but one of the killers was a brutalcriminal, "Jack Price" — his real name is suppressed — who claims to have witnessed his firstmurder as a child. Price is a notorious gangland figure now in jail. In the late 1990s, he saw anopening for himself in Melbourne's underworld as a gun for hire. Information from court files,police documents and several sources suggests how Price came to murder Chartres-Abbott. Aclose friend of the rape victim, Lily Chi, wanted revenge for the assault, and some time afterthe rape, Price was sought out. He had no personal connection to Chartres-Abbott or Chi — hewas just a crook with a track record for killing.He agreed to do the hit, but he wanted to minimise the chance of being caught. So, Priceclaims, he called on a couple of contacts, men who knew the system even better than he did.He called them by their nicknames, "Docket" and "Stash". Their real names are formerdetective sergeant David Waters and Detective Sergeant Peter Lalor.
DOCKET AND STASH
David "Docket" Waters became a police cadet in 1974, aged only 16. The son of a postal serviceworker, he was loud, loved a laugh and a drink and, to some, was immediately likeable. Even afellow officer who describes him as a "big-noting dickhead" acknowledged Waters' early desireto have a crack. And catch a few crooks he did, later receiving commendations for his work. Yetit wasn't long before Waters' behaviour caused concern.He earned his nickname, "Docket," as a 22-year-old off-duty constable. A "docket" was an old-fashioned charge sheet, and someone on the wrong side of the law was, in street slang, knownto have dockets. In a court case a few years ago, Waters explained how he got his nickname: "Iwas involved with a girlfriend and another policeman; we were off duty and we were attackedby 15 people in Lygon Street, Carlton, and, as a result, a fellow was stabbed."Waters was charged with causing grievous bodily harm, spent two nights in Pentridge Prisonand was later acquitted by a jury. He returned to the force with a new nickname and areputation as a bit of a wild man. "Suddenly blokes wanted to take him for a beer," recalls aformer detective.Stints at Collingwood, Hawthorn and Malvern police stations followed, and during this period hewas the subject of at least two internal investigations, including one in the mid-1980sexamining claims that police had shot up the house of a local crook. Waters denied involvementand the investigations went nowhere.Waters knew how to get noticed, and he landed a job with the later disbanded major crimesquad. By 1992, he was a detective at St Kilda, a suburb swamped with illegal prostitution,wannabe crooks, wild nightclubs and tough pubs. Already there was Peter "Stash" Lalor, thegreat-great grandson of the famous Eureka Stockade hero of the same name. Lalor wasinvolved in several notable investigations — he was one of the first on the scene of the QueenStreet Massacre, when a homicidal gunman opened fire in the Telstra building in 1987. He was
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