Pat Ritter. Books

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'Dream Angel' - Page 59:

When he followed them to the back-yard Brown grabbed him around the shoulders whilst Black punched him in the stomach. Black stole money from his pockets and both left him lying on the ground. It was a sad and disgusting case to investigate. Our complainant was known in the town as mentally retarded which made the investigation more difficult than it would usually have been plus there were no witnesses to the assault.
I immediately saw a change in Darryl’s behaviour which I had never noticed before. He was steamed up about this investigation to the point he expressed in no uncertain terms, ‘Tex, I don’t care if we have to chase these pricks all over the countryside we’ll get them and send them to jail for what they’ve done to this poor bugger. It’s criminal.’ His reason for being so irrational was because the person who was assaulted was ‘set up’ by two no-hopers of the community. Black was recently released from prison whilst Brown was a local. It was going to be a tough investigation.
Compassion seeps into the souls of investigators especially when a defenceless community member, while minding his own business, is set upon by two no-good members of society who pretended to befriend their prey under the pretence to coax him away from any witnesses and then punch him with such force as to ‘take the wind’ out of him. Not only did they punch him but stole the only money he had in the world, $7.50c. My partner was fired up and wanted these fellows in jail.
By the time we finished our interview with the complainant, it was late at night. An All Points Bulletin (APB) was broadcasted to all police stations to be on the lookout for Brown and Black.
It was well into the night when we heard over the police radio, they were apprehended some three hundred kilometres north. I saw a sigh of relief on my partner’s face when he heard this news. ‘Have you got them?’ He called on the radio...

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‘Yeah, we found them near a car. What do you want us to do with them?’ Came the reply.
‘Can we meet you half-way. We can travel north and you south and we can meet you.’ The message came back affirmative. We had been awake almost eighteen hours.
One of the many disadvantages detectives had with investigations was sleep deprivation. After eighteen hours of continuous ‘rattle of the brain’ the mind grows dull. For a reason I could never understand, the mind becomes alert and away it goes again. The body ignores the mind and screams out to stop – have a sleep - but adrenin pumps through the body to work overtime. Suddenly the mind and body are working as one again. It was likened to a roller coaster ride with your body going up and down from dullness to alertness.
By the time we meet the other police half-way our minds were alert and our body looked for more punishment. Brown and Black were handed over. We returned to our office and did not speak to either of them on the return trip. ‘Silence is golden’ was a secret weapon deployed by investigators before interrogation.
At the office I interviewed Brown and afterwards Darryl interviewed Black. In a layman way of telling it – Brown sung like a bird to tell his story of how he and Black drank at the hotel and run out of money. Black came up with the idea to tell the mentally retarded person they had a girl out the back of the hotel for him. ‘You should have seen him when he was told he was going to meet a girl. His face lit up like a Christmas tree. It was a terrible thing to do to him. I’m sorry about it now. We had a few grogs and things got away on us.’ He told us.
I was totally satisfied with Brown’s story corroborated with the story told by the complainant. They’d spent the money on fuel in the car when they left town shortly after the assault.
It was now Darryl’s chance to interrogate Black. This was a different interview than with Brown...

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He had been interviewed many times before and knew his rights and didn’t want to answer any questions. ‘He knew his rights.’ he kept saying. My partner kept his cool, which I found most extraordinary for anyone to keep his or her cool under such circumstances. Black denied all allegations put to him.
He even denied being with Brown at the hotel and didn’t even know why he was being interviewed. When he was shown a copy of the ‘Record of Interview’ signed by Brown which implicated him, he said, ‘he’s a liar. I don’t know what he’s talking about.’ They were arrested and charged with ‘assault and robbery’ and remanded in custody. Bail was not granted as it was thought they would abscond and not appear at the next court hearing.
It was another six months before they appeared in the Supreme Court in Brisbane before a Judge and Jury to the charge ‘assault and robbery’.
On the morning of the court hearing we travelled to Brisbane to give evidence in the court. The complainant travelled with us. When we arrived to pick him up at his home he was dressed in a pair of shorts, a dirty tee shirt and a pair of rubber thongs. These were the only clothes he owned.
When evidence is given before a Judge and Jury the dress code is nothing short of a suit, shirt, tie, a pair of socks and shoes. Our major witness in this case was not dressed correctly. When we arrived in Brisbane, we visited an opportunity shop and dressed our witness almost as good as we were dressed.
All through the court hearing Black denied any wrongdoing. Brown on the other hand took his punishment on the chin. At the end of the hearing, the jury returned a verdict of ‘guilty’ on both Brown and Black. Judgement for their deed was they each received a term of imprisonment of four years with hard labour...

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Black was handcuffed. When he was being led by the prison guard and walked past me, he called out in a loud voice so all the people in the court would hear, ‘you wait till I get out. I’m cumin after you, you’ll pay.’ I felt a shiver go through my bones at the threat made by Black. It’ll be at least four years before he’s out of prison, he might have cooled off by then, I thought.
Our self-confidence grew after the results of Brown and Black being sent to prison for their hideous crime upon a person who didn’t deserve being punched in the stomach and robbed of the only money he had in the world. It wasn’t fair any person would want to do such an act on another human being. Our job was to catch the wrong doer and see justice is done.
The next investigation was one of extreme sadness for us. A nineteen-year-old bank clerk who worked at a bank since she left school stole $40,000.00. She worked herself into a position of trust within the bank’s operations and was responsible for the collection of child endowment payment to the bank’s customers. It all started when she was fifteen years old.
Accidentally one day she realised when she collected the payments of child endowment, she deposited the amount into the customer’s bank account. This payment was a small amount of $15.50c. Instead of depositing the full amount of $15.50c she deposited $15.00c by mistake. She noticed her error and to make the ledger balance at the end of the day’s business she deposited fifty cents into her own account. After committing this crime, she noticed how easy it was for her to steal 50c from each transaction.
Whenever a customer came to the bank to inquire about the mistake, she, herself would speak to the customer to reassure the customer the matter would be corrected immediately. She corrected the error and transferred the missing money from her account into the customer’s account to satisfy the customer. She played this game for almost four years. As her self-confidence grew and trust by the bank manager grew, instead of taking fifty cents the amount gradually grew to $1,000.00...

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My partner knew exactly what to do. I was the student to watch and learn. It was an investigation taking months of hard work to uncover each date, and time the employee stole money from her employer. It was a stroke of good luck how her network of deceit was uncovered.
Over four years she had been swapping money from one account to the other. The local police sergeant banked his child endowment money at the same bank and implicitly trusted the teller with his money over the time he’d been with the bank. On this occasion the teller was absent on holidays.
The police sergeant went to the bank and asked staff to check his bank account. After it was checked a bank staff member who replaced the clerk while she was on holidays found a discrepancy in the police sergeant’s account. It wasn’t long before the true facts were uncovered. The clerk never returned to her job at the bank.
When we interviewed her about the discrepancies of the accounts, she admitted to first finding the mistake of fifty cents to be fool proof. No one checked her work and at the end of the day the ledger balanced. It was too easy. After she collected fifty cents for a couple of years with only less than a handful of customers knowing what they saved in the bank, she wanted more money. ‘It was too easy to do. Only I shouldn’t have got greedy.’ Was her final comment?
Her father repaid the total amount before she appeared before the court on three hundred charges of ‘stealing as a servant’. Because the total amount of money was repaid, she was placed on a good behaviour bond, which meant if she didn’t steal again a conviction wouldn’t be recorded.
This investigation taught me ‘how’ to investigate a major crime...

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I still had a long way to go and I knew with time, patience and working with competent investigators I would one day be as good as them.
Olga and I had been married five years by this time. We had two wonderful children, Kaylene and Geoffrey. Kaylene was three years old and Geoffrey twelve months. Alcohol had been a part of my family for as long as I wished to remember. Each afternoon after work I went to the hotel across the road from work and drank until closing time. I drove my car home and hoped it was on automatic pilot. My world was work, drink, and home.
It was the morning of 13th January 1977. I awoke after sleeping on the lounge. I was still dressed in the clothes I wore to work the previous day. I had no idea what time I arrived home only to hear Olga scream, ‘You’re not sleeping here. Get out.’
Kaylene stood in front of me, ‘Daddy if you come home sober tonight you might be able to sleep with Mom.’ Her words pierced my heart like a spear thrust from her tiny hand. She had guts.
Olga prepared breakfast. I went outside to vomit. I felt awful. I didn’t know what to do. I walked into the kitchen and Olga said, ‘You’ve got to do something about your drinking. You’re a drunk. I never married a drunk. I never know where you are or when you’re coming home. If you come home drunk tonight, the kids and I are leaving.’ She was serious.
‘Is drinking a problem in our marriage?’ I muttered.
‘What do you think?’
‘If that’s the case, I promise you now I will never drink again.’ I was serious because I didn’t want to lose my family.
‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’ She said.
I honestly didn’t know I had a drinking problem, sure I drank like the other fellows, but I never thought for one moment I couldn’t control it. How strong a character had Olga? How was I going to stop? I had to, there was no other answer...

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Lately, I’d remember, or at times I couldn’t remember the time past so quickly. At eight o’clock I looked at my watch and next minute the barman called out, ‘Last drinks gentlemen.’ The only way I was to take control over my drinking was to stop drinking alcohol all together. I was twenty-eight years old.
At the time I didn’t think I was an alcoholic for my idea of an alcoholic was a person found drunk in the gutter. A real alcoholic who drinks all the time and cannot stop was my impression of an alcoholic. There would be months when I didn’t drink, like the time when I was training to be a detective in Brisbane.
I stayed off the grog for four months until one night a senior detective asked what I was drinking. When I replied ‘lemonade’ he said, ‘go down to the factory down the road. They’ve got gallons of it. We’re drinking beer.’
When the first taste of beer touched my lips my mind echoed, ‘you’re a fool, you haven’t tasted this stuff for four months and now you’ve got to catch up with four months’. I made up for the time I missed out drinking.
I was a drinker commonly called dipsomaniac, who can and does go for long periods of time without touching or wanting a drink. This time I was going to go the rest of my life without a drink and it was a promise I made to Olga. I am pleased to say I have kept the promise. Drinking alcohol wasn’t the only issue in our marriage; I enjoyed work more than I enjoyed the family. It probably wasn’t I didn’t enjoy my family for I loved and cherished them; it was my love and desire to learn to become a competent investigator. I needed to take a good look at myself.
I don’t know if it was fate or destiny for shortly afterwards, I was sent to relieve in the position of Detective Sergeant at Charleville Police District. I saw this as an opportunity to see ‘if I could handle the tough stuff’. It was an experience...