I Catch Killers book extract: Gary Jubelin opens up on informant Rocco and how he brought down the Perish brothers

When Gary Jubelin meets ex-bikie Rocco during the investigation into the Terry Falconer murder it marks the beginning of a fascinating relationship between a police officer and his informer. WARNING: GRAPHIC They get on well enough to arrange another meeting, at which Glenn introduces me to Rocco, sitting inside an unmarked car parked near a servo in southwest Sydney. He’s big and physically imposing, somewhere in his thirties and with a menace about him — as well as a manslaughter conviction, over his part in a fatal brawl. That’s good, I think. He’s the real deal. He’s only going to know about what happened if he is a genuine crook, not someone who’s pretending. Rocco says little at first and I guess that he is also working out what to make of me. It will take a long time and many meetings to gain his trust and hear everything he has to tell us. After all, as he points out, the men who kidnapped Terry were dressed as cops. What’s to say they weren’t the real police? Both of us remember Roger Rogerson and the royal commission into police corruption. What if I’m another corrupt cop, who’s coming after him? I CATCH KILLERS PODCAST - The Cop and the Snitch: In this explosive bonus episode a criminal informant who risked his life to help homicide Detective Gary Jubelin catch killers for 22 years speaks for the first time. The informant speaks in the second half of the episode. I Catch Killers: The Life and Many Deaths of a Homicide Detective, is published by HarperCollins Australia on Thursday, August 20 in paperback, e-book and audio. Pre-order your signed copy at Booktopia. After every meeting, Glenn and I complete a formal investigator’s note and a contact advice form, documenting what Rocco told us, and entering the details into (police computer system) e@gle.i. As his story emerges, what I like most about it is that it isn’t perfect. It doesn’t try to answer all our questions, which makes it more convincing. It won’t solve the case alone. Rocco says he was approached by a woman, someone he knew to be the girlfriend of one of the Perish brothers’ associates. She gave him $1000 in cash, telling him to buy some decent clothes to wear for dinner. A few days later, Andrew Perish picked up Rocco and drove him towards the city, saying they were heading for Newtown. When they got there, Anthony was waiting. This in itself is a shock. As far as we knew, Anthony, the elder brother, is a ghost. Known by his nickname, Rooster, he’s been on the run for 14 years over a drug offence, without the police catching him. Rocco knows little about what Anthony got up to all that time, except it was unlikely to be good, and the idea of him sitting openly in an inner-west restaurant, inviting people to dinner, is disturbing. The close relationship between the brothers is also concerning. Word has it Anthony was the first person in Australia to produce ice, and made himself a fortune. Andrew, the younger brother, runs an agricultural goods store in the city’s southwest suburbs and is an apparently legitimate businessman. We have no evidence these two businesses are linked. Rocco says the three men sat and talked. Anthony ordered wine. During the meal, he raised the subject of his grandparents, asking Rocco if it was true that Terry Falconer once told him in jail that he killed them. Rocco said he hadn’t. Later, Anthony wanted to talk business, asking, ‘So, Rocco, what can you do for the company?’ — meaning, Rocco thought, the Perishes. ‘What would the company have me do for them?’ he asked, testing the waters. ‘You’ve got a boat?’ Rocco did, but said it needed fixing. ‘If the boat was fixed, would it make it out to the shelf and back?’ Rocco guessed he meant the continental shelf, way out in the Pacific Ocean. He said it would. ‘I want you to put the boat in,’ Anthony continued. ‘Come up the Karuah River to Bulahdelah.’ Bulahdelah is a town on the Mid North Coast, an hour and a half’s drive south of Port Macquarie. ‘There’s a wharf up there. Come up to the wharf and I’ll be waiting for you just like a fisherman with a couple of Eskies because the c..t might be in a few pieces.’ ‘Who is the c..t?’ asked Rocco. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not you,’ but Rocco was still uncertain. The more we learn about him, the more we realise how deep his suspicions run. He insists on meeting us at 10pm in isolated parks around western Sydney suburbs like Mount Druitt and Blacktown, where Glenn and I will go and talk with him, while Jason Evers and Luke sit in a nearby car, worrying about our safety. Or Rocco will call late at night, saying he’s seen a car go by and wanting us to check it out. We also learn that he is right to be paranoid. He’d fallen out with different members of the Rebels over time and, underneath his leather jacket, carried the scars of seven stab wounds he got while serving time in prison. The Perish brothers offered Rocco $30,000, as well as the cost of fixing his boat. They gave him a prepaid mobile phone so they could contact him without the call being traced and, after their meal, both of them visited him in person to check on the repair work. Rocco, who still worried he was being set up – or worse, he might be the real intended victim – tells us he filmed these visits. Hearing that, my first thought is exultation; it would mean concrete evidence to back up what he’s saying. Then Rocco’s paranoia starts to infect me. Is he trying to set us up? Could he have faked the tapes? We can check the dates of the recordings. It’s now over a year since the meetings he describes took place. How likely is it he would plan a conspiracy over that length of time, just to ensnare some cops he doesn’t know, who turned up at his door one morning uninvited? Rocco shows us a tape of Anthony’s last visit, which took place a few days before Terry’s abduction on Friday 16 November 2001. In it the two men are walking together to the gate of what looks like a rural property, where they stop to talk. There’s no sound, but Rocco tells us Anthony was saying: ‘You’ll come up, you’ll pick up a couple of Eskies, you’ll go out and take them out to the continental shelf, you will empty out the contents over a big hole using a depth sounder. On the way back, wash those Eskies out halfway back and throw them over the side. When you get back, wash the boat out with ammonia.’ ‘Huh?’ Rocco replied. This wasn’t the plan that they’d discussed. ‘If you wash it out with ammonia, they can tell there’s been blood in the boat but they can’t tell whose it is. It f...s the DNA.’ ‘What, you’re not coming with me?’ ‘Nah, that’s what I’m paying you for.’ Playing for time, and with his mind now twisting with worry that he was being set up, Rocco said his boat was fixed but still needed to be run in before it could make the journey. ‘Get on with it,’ said Anthony. ‘Hurry up because this c..t goes Friday regardless.’ Rocco says he had to get out. He wasn’t going to go through with it. After Anthony’s visit, he switched off the prepaid phone. He says the Perish brothers didn’t visit him again, although rumours started going round that the Rebels were demanding his colours back, meaning the patches worn on a bikie’s leather vest identifying them as a gang member. Handing your colours back could also mean the gang forcibly burned or cut off your identifying tattoos. Rocco was too ballsy to go into hiding, but his paranoia grew. Among the strike force, we also asked ourselves how much we could trust him. Running an informant is common practice in the cops, but it is rarely easy. To start with, they’re criminals and their world is an extreme one. I try to look past that background. The real question is why they’re helping you. Often, an informant only offers information to get themselves out of trouble. That makes it difficult to respect them, because informing is un-Australian. It means dobbing on your mates. Informers get called dogs, and are treated worse if the people they inform on are able to catch them. But Rocco isn’t asking us for anything. We know he’s not an innocent —– he tells us stories about armed robberies, drive-by shootings and drug dealing — but when I ask him why he wants to go down this path, he says he needs a change of direction. He’d only recently got out of jail when the Perish brothers approached him and hadn’t planned on going back to his old life, but being a crook is like smoking: I’m gonna give it up, but I’ll just have one now and then I’ll give up later. Rocco needed something to make him quit for good. Informing on the Perishes will do it. He knows what that decision means. At the least, he’ll have to abandon his old life and cut the connections to everyone he knows. But fail to take that step and his old life will likely lead him somewhere fatal, he says, either dead in a fight or back in jail where he was stabbed before, and neither prospect looks attractive. We decide to trust him. I ask Rocco to wear a wire and approach the Perishes again, recording the conversations. The risks are huge, but so are the rewards if we can pull it off, and keep him alive. At the least, it will help to check the truth of what he’s told us. At best, we might gather more evidence. At first, Rocco refuses. Wearing a wire goes beyond simply telling us what he knows about the killing. I tell him that it’s only one more step along the path he’s chosen. Eventually, he says that he will do it. Rocco sets up a meeting with Andrew Perish for 30 September 2002. The two men will meet in Andrew’s store on a dusty stretch of highway outside Sydney. Rocco’s cover story will be the inquest that is soon to hear evidence about the deaths of the Perish brothers’ grandparents. This inquest will later prove to be inconclusive, but at this moment, we think, the Perishes must be uncertain about what it will find, particularly if Terry Falconer’s murder is related. We tell Rocco to say he’s received a summons to appear as a witness. I like the plan, but we run into a problem. It relies on Rocco going alone into Andrew’s South Western Produce store, where he’ll be out of sight. MORE GARY JUBELIN EXCLUSIVE EXTRACT: How Tyrrell case brought down Gary Jubelin JUBELIN SHOCK: I’d rather go to jail than pay a fine A listening device normally has both a recorder and transmitter, so we can listen to the conversation as it happens, but Rocco says Anthony is wise to this and always carries something in his pocket that vibrates if there’s a transmitter near him. We don’t know if Anthony will be at the meeting. ‘If I walk in there and that goes off, I’ll be a f...ing dead man,’ says Rocco. I tell him we have his back. ‘You know as well as I know if they wanted to do me, they’ll do me and you’ll only get in there after I’m already done,’ he says. He’s right. The risks are getting bigger. We send him in alone, with just the recorder, and wait nearby — just close enough to be able to hear a gunshot. *** ‘Bullshit, isn’t it?’ we hear Andrew saying when we play back the recording later. This is the first time the two have met since Rocco switched off his mobile phone, but so far Andrew doesn’t seem suspicious. Rocco is playing his part well. When he mentions the summons to give evidence at the inquest, Andrew says, ‘Did you get it today?’ ‘Yeah, about 11 o’clock at my girl’s –’ ‘F...ing can’t, mate,’ Andrew interrupted. ‘You go there and f...ing …’ ‘Yeah, they’re going to ask me that shit and what do I say, man? What do you want me to say?’ ‘F..., just something like –’ ‘Want me to say that f...in’ Terry told, told me that he’d done it or what?’ ‘No, no. Don’t f...in’ –’ Andrew replies. ‘Well, I dunno, that’s why I’m asking. That’s why I’m here to f...in’ see ya, Andrew.’ Listening, we have to give Rocco credit. He has balls. It seems like Andrew’s trying to calm him down: ‘I know they’re not going to want you to say nothing about knocking the other thing. They’re not going to learn nothing.’ ‘Knocking’ means killing, I think. That’s good, but it is not nearly enough to use as evidence. Hoping to hear more, I’m disappointed when the conversation veers off into more general discussion of bikie life, filled with rivalries, conspiracies and violence. After a quarter of an hour or so, Andrew says, ‘I gotta let you go, mate, all right?’ ‘All right.’ ‘Have a good afternoon.’ Throughout September and October, we send Rocco back half a dozen times to talk to Andrew. To get it on tape that the Perishes did give him money in connection with his boat, we get Rocco to say that he wants to repay it, and give him $1000, which he gives to Andrew to pass on to Anthony, saying, ‘Give that to him. I promise to round off what I owe him.’ Andrew says he’ll talk to his brother. Rocco says he’ll pay it back in stages. ‘Yeah, no worries,’ Andrew says. Meeting by meeting, recording by recording, we are getting closer. But whether Andrew trusts Rocco or not, he never actually admits to any illegal activity. By mid-October, the strain’s getting to Rocco. He is smoking cones to help him sleep as well as giving the amphetamines a decent going-over. One day he finds four Jatz crackers floating in his swimming pool and says they’re evidence that someone has broken into his property. When a car with the rego plate HSV-DNA goes past, he believes it’s part of a plan to break into his house and harvest his DNA. Another time, Luke and I are at his place when he tells us, ‘Here you are, you can have this’, and hands me a metal pipe about 30 centimetres long, just too wide to get your hand around, and heavy. ‘What is it, mate?’ I ask. ‘A pipebomb. Rigged it up in case some f...er breaks in,’ he says. Then, seeing my expression, he adds, ‘It’s all right, I’ve disconnected it.’ Luke and I look at each other in silence, then leave, carrying the bomb back to our car. If we call the Bomb Squad, they’re going to block off the road and it will be on the evening news, but we don’t want anyone to know we’re talking to Rocco. So we put the bomb in the car boot and drive away, hands sweating on the steering wheel, to a deserted oval. When I call the Bomb Squad and explain what we’ve done, they royally abuse me. On 16 October, as Rocco prepares to head into the South Western Produce store one more time, I can see the stress he’s under. It’s not just his paranoia, and his legitimate fear of being found out by Andrew Perish, it’s like he’s also wrestling with his conscience. I have to respect that. Rocco’s been living by his outlaw code since he was a teenager, meaning it’s what’s guided him all his adult life. It’s like how, in the cops, you always have your partner’s back. For Rocco, even talking to police means going against the code. Wearing a wire is a complete betrayal. *** Glenn and I wait in our unmarked car while Rocco is inside the store, coiled tight with the tension of not knowing what’s going on, half expecting to hear the shot that means Rocco’s been found out and has paid the price, something for which we’ll ultimately be responsible. Each of us is lost in silent thought. Is it right to ask someone to risk their life to help you solve a murder? What if you end up with two bodies here, not one? What price are you prepared to pay? Any price. Murder cannot go unpunished. This is my job. This is my role as a Detective to sit here, hands sweating, inside a dusty car making these calls. Rocco’s job is to go into that store, one crook talking to another, and risk his life. If we are lucky, and we get it right, we’ll one day go to court where a jury will listen to this evidence and decide on their verdict. A judge in a white wig and black silk gown will pass sentence. Everyone has a part to play, but neither judge nor jury has to make these real, life and death decisions. This never gets easier, no matter how many times I do it. A text message arrives. It’s Rocco. ‘U love me don’t you? … Don’t you!! … I do believe that I have admis.’ I breathe out, sinking my head back into the car headrest. I’m just happy he’s alive. F.... Yes, Rocco, I love you. We see him turn into the car park and get out of his car, face hidden in the shadow of a baseball cap, head turning from side to side to see if anyone is watching. He approaches us and tells us what happened. He says that he and Andrew had another quiet conversation about the inquest, which starts next week. Andrew said, ‘Yeah, you don’t know nothing, right.’ Rocco said he was worried about a police running sheet Andrew had once shown him, which the Rebels had got hold of and which suggested Terry was working as an informant for the cops. If this document exists, it would confirm the rumours about it which Jaco heard at the start of the investigation. Rocco was worried the paper would still have his fingerprints on it and this would come out at the inquest, linking him to Terry’s murder. He tells us, Andrew whispered, ‘Rocco, nobody knows we done it.’ A smile cracks the toughened bikie’s face as he waits for our reaction. We look at him and then we’re high-fiving, ecstatic. ‘Great mate, well done! You’ve got it,’ I say, thinking, Thank f..., I can relax now. It’s over. But it isn’t. We take the tape back to the Homicide Squad office and listen to the recording. To my horror, the listening device Rocco was wearing has failed. A backup device, less well positioned, picked up part of the conversation, but at the moment Rocco says Andrew admitted his involvement, a whirring air compressor starts up in one of the nearby store fridges, drowning out what he says. What the f...? I think. A man risks his life and this happens? The lesson is that listening devices can fail you. For one, final, attempt, Rocco goes back into the store at the end of October, telling Andrew he’d heard Anthony might be in Sydney. This time the wire works. It records Andrew making a phone call, saying, ‘Hey mate, how you going? … Uh yeah, I got someone here, OK … Have a little talk you know. Are you there? Yeah, he’s here now, yeah.’ Listening, to the recording later, we can hear Rocco take the phone, ‘Hey buddy, how ya going? What’s happening. Ah, f...in’, f... all mate.’ The other voice on the phone call is not recorded, so we only hear Rocco’s half of what is said, ‘So we f...in’ need to have dinner, mate … f..., just give Andrew a ring and organise it with him and he can let me know yeah, pick us up or whatever.’ That dinner never happens, though, for weeks, Jason, Luke, Glenn and I take our guns and Kevlar vests home with us every night, in case we get a call from Rocco saying it’s on, meaning we’ll need to rush across the city to seize Anthony. As the months pass, I have to accept the Perishes must have decided to cut contact. Rocco gets worse. He insists on meeting other crooks, saying he’ll be able to judge by their reaction if his cover is blown. One time, he calls me up saying he’s been asked to get involved in a beating. Someone owes one of his mates some money. I tell him, ‘Mate, you can’t do that. I can’t have you getting involved in illegal behaviour.’ ‘But if I don’t go, they’ll know I’m off.’ In the end, the debt gets paid, meaning the beating doesn’t happen. But keeping Rocco in check is exhausting. In December 2002, he calls Glenn, saying a helicopter has been circling his house and demanding to know why. He thinks it’s the police checking out his place before launching a raid on it. He crashes his motorbike and the uniform cops who respond find $20,000 inside his panniers, along with videotapes of his meetings with Glenn and me at his house, filmed using a camera hidden inside his television. He says he was worried that we might betray him after everything he’s done, and the tapes are his insurance policy. *** In November, we finally convince Rocco to sign a formal witness statement in relation to Terry Falconer’s death and Glenn, Luke, Jason and I spend a week of 10- to 12-hour days holed up with him in a rented house north of Sydney, getting his account down on paper. It runs to 87 pages and he is at his worst throughout this time, his paranoia crawling up the walls. It’s taken us so long to get this done because Rocco understands that this is the moment he loses control of the whole process. Before now, when he agreed to work as an informant and even during the meetings when he was wearing a wire, there was always the slim chance that, if discovered, he could try to talk his way out of it. Signing a witness statement means there is no such explanation. He can never go back. If we take this to court and the Perishes are not convicted, he’s a dead man. ‘If you f... this up, I’ll kill you,’ he tells me. ‘Mate, I always knew that was the case. I’m not gonna f... it up,’ I try to reassure him. Rocco refuses to take part in WitSec, the witness security program, because he doesn’t trust it, so instead the police force pays for a one-way flight out of Sydney. The cops on the strike force also chip in what we can out of our own pockets, so Rocco has about $2000 when he gets on board the plane. It makes me deeply uncomfortable, after everything he’s been through, that this is all he gets in return. Should this case get to court, the barristers involved will make more than that much daily. Yet Rocco doesn’t think that. The day before his flight, he comes to our offices in Strawberry Hills, and when we hand over the plane ticket, he looks at it like he can’t believe it. ‘Mate, I didn’t think you were going to do this,’ he says. ‘I didn’t know if I could trust you but you’ve given me a shot at it.’ He reaches beneath his shirt and produces a loaded automatic pistol with a laser sight. ‘I suppose you can have this now,’ he says, laying it on the table. **** By the time we get to court, for a committal hearing in June 2010, it’s been eight years since we first spoke to Rocco, our key informant. His evidence that the Perish brothers wanted to use his boat to dispose of a body is going to be critical; it could mean the difference between murder and manslaughter. In those eight years, he’s met someone and settled down. He’s started a family. When we visit to ask if he’s still prepared to give evidence, Rocco says, ‘f..., I put my life on hold for you guys, but now I’ve got my life in order, I’ve got kids, you’re going to drag me right back into this shit again?’ He’s always been difficult at times. I remember when, in 2008, I got a call from him one night, asking to meet in a deserted car park. When I arrived, his car was parked on its own, with the lights off and Rocco sitting on the back seat. I got in the front and he asked me: ‘How do I know I can trust you?’ My mind raced. This bloke had been charged with murder once, and convicted of manslaughter. MORE GARY JUBELIN TYRRELL CONTROVERSY: ‘Jubes, I need you to sort out this mess’ BETRAYAL: The mentor who failed Jubelin I stared straight out the windscreen, and hoped my voice would hide my fear. ‘You’re asking me how you can trust me?’ I replied. ‘F... me, you’re sitting behind me in a car at night in the middle of nowhere, you’ve probably got a gun pointed at me as we speak and you’re asking me how you can trust me?’ Now, two years on, Rocco is working and paying taxes. He says he’s enjoying a settled life, without having to look over his shoulder. It means that he’s got more to lose — and plenty of time to worry about things now. We talk him round. He tells me how it was his manslaughter conviction that put him on the road leading to this point. Years ago, Rocco was part of a bikie gang who set out to bash a bloke, only someone pulled a knife and their victim was killed. It didn’t sit right with Rocco to be a part of that, even if he wasn’t the one who did the stabbing. He needed to get out of the bikie world for good and co-operating with us is one way of making sure he can never go back there. But he’s nervous. I tell him to trust me. But even with him on board, the court process is slow, particularly as the prosecution barrister gets sick and has to be replaced, and it is another year before we get the Perish brothers to trial in July 2011. Not long before the hearing, I get a call from Rocco, asking for my address. ‘Mate, I can’t give you that,’ I tell him. Home is my safe place. Cops don’t publish their addresses, because catching crooks means that we can be targets. I’ve seen it happen, when Reg Irish was threatening my family years ago. It’s not just our own safety we’re protecting, but our loved ones’. ‘I’ve put my life in your hands,’ Rocco says. ‘I could and probably will get killed because of this. You want me to trust you? You’ve gotta show that you trust me.’ Could I trust him? I tried again, ‘I am a cop, Rocco. I can’t have bad guys turning up at my place.’ ‘If you don’t give me your address I won’t be coming to court.’ ‘F... it,’ I say, and give him the details. A week later, I receive an envelope containing scribbled notes of the rego plates from cars he thought were following him during the investigation, and of the different times he saw helicopters overhead or footprints in the earth outside his place and feared people were coming for him. His paranoia isn’t news to me, but it’s impressive to see it written out, like a record of his fears over the years that we’ve been working together. I call him and confirm what he has sent me, so he knows the address I gave him was correct. ‘See you in court,’ he tells me. *** Shortly before the trial begins, Anthony Perish offers to plead guilty to manslaughter but not murder. Tactically, I think his offer is a dumb move; it shows us that he thinks we’ve got him, but I’m so tired and beaten up by the pressure we’re all under, I am tempted to take it. The Underbelly writers are still following the case, getting material for the series, and it feels like half the strike force are trying to hide their private lives from them while the other half are desperate to make it onto television. Glenn and I are managing to keep it civil while we work together, and I hope our friendship will repair itself once all of this is over. Every day brings another bust-up to be refereed: at one point I have to deal with a complaint that Rocco has been showing the female cops a photo of himself in a spa with a beer bottle in front of his penis. Glenn and I talk to the prosecution barrister, Paul Leask, about Anthony’s offer. He’s a good, switched-on and intense lawyer, which means, right now, he is absolutely what we need. ‘No, f... it, let’s run with it. We’ve got him for murder,’ Paul says. The guilty plea is rejected. The case runs on for months, through the winter of 2011 and into spring. As a witness, I have to wait outside the courtroom until I’m called to give evidence, meaning I sit there wondering what’s going on inside. The division between Glenn and I has also seemed to spread through the strike force and I hear whispers other cops are calling me a media whore because of the TV series. It gets so bad, the lawyers representing the Perish brothers invite me to have lunch with them because they see me sitting out there on my own as they walk in and out of the courtroom. Not that they go easy on me when I make it into the witness box. Instead, Andrew Perish’s barrister, a terrier called Winston Terracini SC, focuses on the failure of the listening device when Rocco claimed that he’d got a confession. ‘Did you get a report from the scientific and technical branch about this?’ asks Terracini loudly, in a disbelieving tone that tells the jury ‘Look at this performance’. I reply: ‘No, I didn’t.’ ‘It must have been so frustrating and disappointing that, out of all the tapes, that it just malfunctions when the confession is tumbling out?’ he wheedles. ‘It’s happened to me on other murder investigations, and I was as frustrated then as I was on this occasion,’ I deadpan. ‘Can you tell us one?’ he asks me, turning to the jury, as if saying, He’s making this all up. Now watch him twist himself in knots. ‘Yes, I can. The murder of Bob Ljubic,’ I say. ‘The device failed in that case too and we still got a conviction.’ That shuts him up. Terracini is too smart to let his reactions show in court, but he drops off the line of questioning. When it is Rocco’s turn to speak, I realise how impressed I am by him. He’s risked his life by giving evidence, and turned his life around in the time I’ve known him. I can’t excuse what’s in his past, but that was then. I’ve trusted him with my life now. He knows my address. Redemption’s a huge part of being a cop. Sometimes we’re solving cases and helping punish crooks, and sometimes we’re helping the criminals to turn their lives around. It is a privilege to play a part in someone’s absolution. Anthony Perish declines to give evidence. His version of events, according to his lawyer, is that he only wanted to kidnap Terry Falconer, but arrived at the property at Girvan and found the journey there inside the box had killed him. Paul Leask, the prosecution lawyer, challenges this account. The case, he says, comes down to the evidence of Rocco. As Paul says, when Rocco first told us his story, back in 2002, neither he nor we knew anything about the significance of Girvan, where Terry was dismembered. Girvan is over 170 kilometres south of where Terry’s body parts were found in the Hastings River. Yet Rocco said the Perish brothers wanted him to bring his boat up the Karuah River. A tributary of the Karuah flows close to Girvan. That shows the plan was always to kill Terry, Paul argues. Accept Rocco’s evidence, he tells the jury, and you have to find this was a case of murder. The jury believe him. After a week’s deliberation, in September 2011, Anthony Perish and Matthew Lawton are found guilty of murder, while Andrew is found guilty of conspiracy to murder. Anthony just stares at me as the verdict is read out, so I stare back. But, inside me, relief wells up. For one thing, this vindicates Rocco. For another, it means that he is surely safer with the Perish brothers in jail. Join Gary and Claire Harvey for an exclusive live event online at 6:30pm AEST on Wednesday, August 19 at True Crime Australia on Facebook.

I Catch Killers book extract: Gary Jubelin opens up on informant Rocco and how he brought down the Perish brothers

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