WHEN I DROVE UP to the quiet suburban house in Kalamunda in the eastern hills of Perth, Western Australia, I was already aware of some of the devastating history of its owner. It was 28 June 2007 and I was about to meet for the first time Frederick Wooltorton Smith. Fred is a slightly built man, 69 years old but still retaining a handshake of toughened steel and the rare ability to look you straight in the eye. He showed me and my associate, Mary Prichett, into his office. Hanging on the wall was a uniform adorned with three Australian military medals, including the National Service Medal. With my knowledge of the appalling background from which the man arose, I considered that another medal he really deserved was missing from its rightful place on his wall: Australian of the Year. Whilst many of our current bunch of politicians and their friends were running around planting bombs in the National Service offices in that Vietnam era and spitting on the returning soldiers, albeit young men sent to the theatre of war by the politicians of that day, not by choice, Fred was in the firing line again.
It was as though his past had come to haunt him, for Fred was once more serving the powers of the day, again by lottery.
At one stage Fred was so affected by his past that he turned to a life of crime in the night-time streets of Perth. Naturally he came to meet a number of cops and got to know some of them well, in particular Owen Leach, who eventually became Commissioner of Police, Bernie Johnson, actually stating to me Bernie’s full name which was how he travelled at the time, Bernie that is. He knew the Commissioner at the time, O’Brien, Max White and certain others. All of these bar O’Brien had given him a good thumping at one time or another.