Post by Kiwithrottlejockey on May 23, 2010 19:58:23 GMT 12
Terry Clark's money man: Making money and dodging death
‘It's hard to walk away from large sums of easy money’
By BRITTON BROUN - The Dominion Post | 9:00AM - Saturday, 22 May 2010
"Diamond Jim" Shepherd was the banker for Australasia's most notorious and murderous drug cartel, the Mr Asia syndicate. He handled tens of millions of dollars and is the last man alive to know the intricate details of how the syndicate worked. In his first-ever interview, 30 years later, he tells Britton Broun how along the way he lost his morals, his freedom and nearly his life.
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In the final weeks of the Mr Asia syndicate, Terry Clark was drug-addled, paranoid and desperate. Clark had already ordered the murder of Marty "Mr Asia" Johnstone — the man who started it all off only five years before — and now wanted Jim Shepherd chopped into pieces.
But Shepherd, once his trusted lieutenant, had been tipped off and prepared to take Clark out first.
"I could have disappeared overseas but I didn't like the thought of looking over my shoulder. It was simple. If someone wanted to kill me, I was going to kill them first," he told The Dominion Post.
"I was very upset at the thought a hit was put out on me. I'd never done the wrong thing by the bloke. He'd never lost a dollar with me or one gram of heroin."
Shepherd knew Clark's movements and where he lived in London, and already had his trusty .32 calibre automatic pistol stashed in the city and a mate ready to help with the deed.
But fate intervened. Only a day before Shepherd was due to fly to London, English police arrested Clark for his involvement in the murder of Johnstone, whose body was found, with a bullet in the back of the head, in a water-filled quarry.
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DIAMOND JIM: MAKING MONEY AND DODGING DEATH
“DIAMOND” JIM SHEPHERD: The nickname came
about after a remark about his knack at picking
up attractive women. Later he began wearing
his signature 2.5-carat diamond ring.
Between 1974 and 1979 Clark, Johnstone and their heroin supplier, "Chinese" Jack Choo, had built up a drug empire that brought in tens of millions of dollars and stretched across Asia, Australia, New Zealand and Britain.
The dozen or so New Zealanders at the upper levels lived the high life in expensive houses, drinking Dom Perignon champagne with beautiful women, the pockets in their tailored suits crammed full of cash.
They were using fake names and fake passports and, with corrupt Australian cops paid off, were pretty much untouchable.
Female drug couriers were flying first-class from Singapore with heroin strapped to their bodies or hidden in false-bottomed suitcases.
In his new book Mr Asia: Last Man Standing, Shepherd, now 68, recounts how rooms in his inner-city Sydney apartment were packed with rubbish bins full of cash and heroin.
Already a career criminal who had done time with some of New Zealand's most notorious killers, he became in late 1977 the syndicate's "banker" — shifting tens of millions of dollars in drug money.
He moved it around the world through financial institutions, flew expensive lawyers overseas to set up dummy companies, transferred cash into other assets such as gold or shares and even did direct swaps with wealthy businessmen.
There was money going out of Australia by ship, air and couriers — so much that Shepherd had to lease a bank vault to store tightly packed suitcases full of $50 bills. But then he got "stupid and greedy" — becoming the biggest heroin wholesaler in the Mr Asia syndicate.
It wasn't until he went to prison (in 1986 for drug dealing) that he saw all the junkies and realised what the heroin he sold was doing to people.
He was disgusted to see people, while on remand a holding cell, talking about how they couldn't wait to get back to jail so they could get a fix. "Was I responsible for this?"
In 1998 Shepherd would be freed after spending 15 years in Australian prisons for dealing drugs, haunted by the ghosts of those who were murdered, and his money long gone. But in 1977 heroin was making him up to A$100,000 a week — well over A$600,000 at today's value.
His crew were using kitchen blenders to break up solid blocks of compressed heroin. There was so much heroin that they had to replace six or more blenders every day.
An Australian royal commission of inquiry, completed in 1983, named Shepherd as the "second-in-charge" of the Mr Asia syndicate. The boy who grew up in the then-poor Auckland suburb of Freemans Bay and had to walk to school barefoot was suddenly wearing $500 Italian loafers.
He wore a signature 2.5-carat diamond ring on his finger, a Patek Philippe gold watch on his wrist, and a pistol under his arm.
"You find yourself addicted to the adrenaline rush of crime, the money, the excitement ... It's hard for people to walk away from that and it's extremely hard to walk away from large sums of easy money."
But the flashy criminal lifestyle was not as consequence-free as it is portrayed in films and "fanciful" TV shows such as Underbelly, Shepherd says. It was a vicious, violent world, where you took to competitors with baseball bats and had to be prepared to kill — because the other guy would kill you.
Shepherd credits a combination of his own drunkenness and a hitman's inexperience with saving his life one balmy Sydney night in April 1978. Returning to his apartment after a night out drinking, he was lucky enough to trip on the kerb just as a gunman fired at his head. Thinking the shot had connected because he fell, Shepherd was on the ground fumbling with his pistol when two other shots rang out. They missed and the hitman ran off.
From that day forward, Diamond Jim slept with a loaded .357 Magnum beside his bed.
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NZ'S WORST SERIAL KILLER
Though Terry Clark looked nondescript and did not seem dangerous, Shepherd has no doubt he is the worst serial-killer this country has seen.
He was always polite, was never a bad or obnoxious drunk, and could be charming at times. But then he would snap.
"Clark was like a lot of psychopaths I've met," Shepherd said. "He was the sort of bloke you'd never turn your back on — a cold, calculating and an extremely dangerous man. But you would never get that impression when you first met him "
In early 1978 the pair were having a leisurely lunch at Eliza's restaurant in Sydney's Double Bay, when Clark coolly began recounting the gruesome details about the six people he had murdered to date.
It including gunning down two men in New Zealand around 1975, while 1977 was "a busy year" with four more dead.
Swearing through his teeth, Clark recalled shooting two crew of the ship Konpira, which was bringing 400 kilograms of heroin into Australia from Asia for the syndicate. They had asked for more pay.
He also put a bullet in the back of the heads of Kiwi Greg Ollard and his girlfriend Julie Thielman. Ollard, who had served time with Clark in New Zealand, is believed to have been the first member of the syndicate to die at Clark's hands.
Clark said he later returned to where they were buried to chop off their heads.
"I've never had anybody tell me about half a dozen murders before," Shepherd says.
"I found it very hard to believe the man, but you can tell when people are talking the truth to you by their body language. His eyes were shining, you could see him reliving the whole thing."
Before Clark was nabbed by police in London, Shepherd is sure he killed at least 12 people, including giving a fatal heroin overdose to his second wife, Norma Fleet, in New Zealand in 1975.
Clark went on to execute another syndicate member, "Pommy" Harry Lewis, in 1978 on the suspicion that he ratted to the police. Clark even paid Lewis' $5000 bail to get him out of jail, just to kill him.
And in early 1979 a hitman took care of drug courier Doug Wilson and his wife Isabel, after Wilson spilled the beans to the Brisbane police. The conversation was secretly recorded and sold to Clark for at least A$100,000.
Shepherd told The Dominion Post there was also a "strong possibility" that Clark had killed Sydney model and drug mule Maria Hisshion. Her weighted-down body was pulled out of Sydney harbour in 1979. Shepherd believes she had wronged Ollard, and Clark was brought "on board to do the dirty deed because [Ollard] wasn't capable."
Then there was the disappearance in 1976 or 77 of Tibor Banfy, who had worked with Lewis running cannabis between Bangkok and Singapore.
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AN EXTREMELY CUNNING AND GREEDY MAN
TERRY CLARK: Jim Shepherd admits his own
moral compass was twisted, but says Clark, a
ruthless killer, did not seem to have one at all.
More than just a particularly nasty killer, Terry Clark reached new heights of duplicity, cunning and greed.
Shepherd admits his own moral compass was twisted, but says Clark did not seem to have one at all.
In New Zealand, Diamond Jim was no innocent when it came to crime.
He had a big reputation as a tough guy, had been an accomplished safe cracker, skilled at using explosives, a bookie and had run illegal gambling operations.
He had done time in a short-lived wing of Mount Eden Prison, where he says the inmates got only one hour of natural light a day, and which made Paremoremo maximum-security jail look like a luxury hotel.
Though Shepherd had studied university accountancy in Mount Eden, it was under the tutelage of the charming international fraudster Robert "Skip" Gardiner in Paremoremo that his creative accounting skills blossomed.
Gardiner spoke six languages, had a beautiful Swiss girlfriend who was living very comfortably off their ill-gotten gains, and used to pay off the prison guards to bring in gourmet cheeses — some including parts of a gun — and caviar.
To get his sentence reduced, he spread rumours about a gun being in the prison then "found" it to hand over to the authorities.
Gardiner taught Shepherd about the intricacies of hiding money but also about the importance of dressing well, correct diction and enjoying the finer things in life.
"Skip showed me there was another world I could aspire to, another [criminal] level I could go up to."
But Shepherd says he always stuck by the criminal code: you never rip off other criminals you work with; never talk to the authorities; and never, ever give anyone up.
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TERRY CLARK'S MONEY MAN TELLS ALL AT LAST
Though others involved in the Mr Asia syndicate were offered indemnity from prosecution — including Clark's former lover, kindergarten teacher and drug courier Allison Dine — Shepherd refused on principal to co-operate.
His heroin-dealing "crew" never did time and in return they made sure he was looked after in jail, regularly dropping off envelopes containing $1000.
Clark, on the other hand, had been a police informer earlier in his criminal career in the late 1960s, had no qualms about killing women, and seemed to have no problems ripping off his business partners.
He had always told people Ollard — a fellow inmate when he was at what is now Rimutaka Prison in the early 1970s — was killed because he was about to talk to the police.
But Shepherd believes the murder concealed a much larger crime. Of the 400 kilograms of heroin brought in to Australia on the Konpira, only about 100kg made it to shore, apparently lost at sea.
The shipment was supposed to net Johnstone, Chinese Jack and Clark $12 million each, but they ended up with only $2m.
Through handling the syndicate's finances, Shepherd realised Clark was selling a lot more heroin than was being brought into Australia by the couriers.
He firmly believes that Ollard — who often talked about being Clark's business partner — and Thielman were killed because they were involved with the multimillion-dollar heroin theft.
"Why would [Clark] have as a partner someone who had no money, did not put up any money for the Konpira importation and was a fat, slovenly drug addict? There's only one answer that makes sense."
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COCAINE NIGHTS: TERRY CLARK LOSES THE PLOT
By May 1979 the syndicate was unravelling, and so was Terrence John Clark.
On the 13th one of the syndicate's drug couriers was busted at Sydney airport, which lead the authorities straight to Dine.
With police in Australia and New Zealand well aware of the syndicate, a week later the Wilsons' bodies were found in a shallow grave near Melbourne. Then Lewis' handless corpse turned up as well.
With too many bodies for corrupt cops to hush up, and with the police hot on his heels for questioning, Shepherd fled Australia for London, where Clark was living with his lover, Karen Soich.
But the man he met there was becoming a heavy gambler, while his massive cocaine habit gave him delusions and paranoia.
Though only 35, Clark looked 10 years older and, according to Shepherd, he was no longer "taking care of business".
"It got to the stage where Clark thought: ‘If I've got a problem, I'll just kill someone’."
"He was taking out people he thought might cause him problems down the track. His thinking wasn't like when I first met him. He was doing so much cocaine, he wasn't the sharp drug dealer I first met in 1975. At the end he was a mess."
However, Clark was still deadly.
Although Shepherd knew what Clark had done to "friends" such as Ollard, Lewis and Doug Wilson, in late May he told Clark he wanted out of the syndicate.
Shepherd did confirm his suspicions about the threat against his life until November — he was told by his old friend "Aussie Bob" Trimbole, whom Clark had asked to organise the hit — but he came very close to being killed earlier.
After going to Clark's sister's wedding in England, about July, Clark invited him out for a morning's rabbit hunting. Just the two of them. With a bad hangover clouding his judgment, Shepherd foolishly agreed.
The only saving grace was that a woman he had spent the night with saw them go off together.
Making the mistake of turning his back to the armed man, Shepherd remembers the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end.
Although he turned around to see Clark with his .22 rifle pointed at the ground, he knew there had been a lucky escape.
"I still believe, if someone had not seen us go out that morning, I would not be here today," Shepherd tells The Dominion Post. "As I found out, he already had it in mind to take me out. There must have been a very strong temptation to put one in my back."
When police pounced on Clark in November 1979, he was so scrambled by cocaine it was two days before they could question him about Johnstone's murder.
Even that was a shambles. While the key to getting away with it would have been to involve and tell as few people as possible, at least 12 people knew about it, including a female Jehovah's Witness who contacted police. The woman was the mother of the girlfriend of Johnstone's best friend — the man who had put a bullet in the back of Johnstone's head: Andy Maher.
Tools used to disfigure Johnstone ended up with someone who thought they were too good to destroy, while one accomplice kept driving around in the car used to transport the body — because he wanted to impress the neighbours.
Clark, Maher and three other people went down for the murder and by 1983 the brutal Mr Asia boss was dead.
Though he technically died of a heart attack in Parkhurst Prison, on the Isle of Wight, the coroner's report shows his heart exploded.
Shepherd says he heard from a very reliable source that Clark had been big-noting about being involved with the IRA. "The IRA is not an organisation you lie about because they just did not deal drugs. I heard they ran in with a mattress and smothered him. The guards just stepped aside and let them do it."
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RUDE BUT HARMLESS — THE REAL MR ASIA
MARTY JOHNSTONE: He had a taste for three-piece
suits, French shirts and first-class travel and was
a bit too “nouveau riche”, Shepherd says.
Martin Johnstone did not deserve to die in the "horrific" way he did, Jim Shepherd says.
The flashy Auckland menswear store worker who graduated from cannabis to heroin dealing was not a violent man and would have disappeared if told to.
But he owed Terry Clark and "Chinese Jack" a lot of money.
Based in Singapore — which earned him the sobriquet Mr Asia — Johnstone had spent millions to grease the palms of Indonesian generals in a fruitless search for oil.
Then there was the $300,000 of Clark's money he lost when a drug deal turned sour in Thailand.
The former Takapuna Grammar boy was called over to England on the pretence of doing a drug deal when, on a layby off the A6, his best friend Andy Maher put a bullet through the back of his head.
According to court documents, Maher — who had worked with Johnstone in an Auckland menswear store — was so upset at the gurgling coming from Johnstone's body that he repeatedly stabbed it in the stomach. Then the hands were cut off and a hammer used to smash the face.
The corpse was dumped underwater in a quarry where two recreational divers, who thought it was a mannequin, found it.
Christopher Martin Johnstone was only 29 years old. Shepherd remembers him as always social and smiling, a little arrogant perhaps, but harmless.
Unlike Clark, he was not violent, though Shepherd recalls the pair laughing together over a large pile of cocaine as Clark recounted the brutal murders of Doug and Isabel Wilson.
Johnstone had a taste for three-piece tailored suits, French shirts and first-class travel — he flew on Concorde's inaugural flight to Singapore for the hell of it. Shepherd, who had seen how rude Johnstone could be to waiters, describes him as a bit too "nouveau riche".
Though Johnstone made out he was an international businessman and was always talking about his grand schemes — including running a fishing fleet in southern Asia — he lacked the basic organisational skills and patience to make it work.
"Marty just had no idea business-wise. When you're smoking pot and doing coke, your brain is not functioning as clearly as you think it is. No wonder he lost all his money.
"But for all his shortcomings, he didn't deserve to die like he did ... it was horrific."
Shepherd says Johnstone would have been smart enough to walk away from the syndicate if given no other choice.
The irony was that it was Johnstone who started it. He had brought together a group of investors to buy the 18-metre yacht The Brigadoon and 450,000 cannabis "buddha sticks" in Thailand.
In 1975 the boat picked up its cargo and, despite a disastrous trip back to New Zealand that included some of the crew being arrested for shoplifting in Noumea, eventually made it home, months late.
But the delay turned out to be a stroke of good luck because the police had closed down their surveillance operation by then.
Clark, on the run for a failed heroin importation at the time, had his associates onsell the buddha sticks. One of these was Peter Fulcher, who survived the syndicate but was sentenced to 14 years in Paremoremo in the 1980s on drugs charges.
The sale of the buddha sticks, bought for 10 cents each in Asia, earned Clark and Johnstone about $3 million. The Mr Asia syndicate was born.
With Chinese Jack — who may be related to an opium warlord in the Golden Triangle — sourcing uncut heroin, it was passed through Johnstone in Singapore and couriered to Clark in Australia.
From there the drugs were sold on to wholesale buyers such as Shepherd in Australia, and Fulcher in New Zealand, then down the chain of dealers. Everybody took their cut.
According to Auckland Star reporter Pat Booth's book The Mr Asia File, by 1978 the heroin import bill for Auckland alone was more than $34m. The markup from importer to dealer was 400 per cent.
Johnstone's death, however disturbing, was not unexpected. Shepherd believes part of the reason Clark wanted him dead was to take over his heroin distribution network in Sydney.
Johnstone had also established a network in England. "By taking Johnstone out, Clark automatically took over. It's what he had done most of his career. People would set up markets, he'd kill them and take over."
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VILLIANS I MET IN JAIL
Jim Shepherd on some of New Zealand's most notorious criminals:
John Gillies
An American-style gangster who murdered two men in the infamous Bassett Road machine gun killings of 1963, he was freed in 1987. He escaped briefly from Mount Eden in 1964, by taking a guard captive with a sawnoff shotgun. Shepherd describes him as a "dangerous psychopathic killer", but says he began feeding a visiting mouse and became very fond of it while they were all in maximum security. One night a prison guard jumped on it, which sent Gillies into a rage, screaming out, "You f*cking murderer!" at the guard.
Ron Jorgensen
Also convicted of the Bassett Road killings, he learned to paint in prison and became an artist. Shepherd says he was a "frustrated entrepreneur", a quick-witted man who was an excellent cook and a good friend. Released from jail in 1983, Jorgensen befriended property tycoon Bob Jones. He has been missing since December 1984, when his car was found at the bottom of a cliff in north Canterbury. Shepherd believes he was murdered.
George Wilder
New Zealand's best-known prison escaper, he was a burglar who left thank-you and apology notes for his victims and became a folk legend for numerous escapes from prison. In the early 1960s he escaped from New Plymouth Prison for 65 days and from Mount Eden for 173 days. In 1964 he again escaped Mount Eden, this time with Gillies. They holed up in a Mount Eden house, taking two people hostage. Though the pair gave themselves up, they got through a bottle of whisky first. "He was always out in about six months with his escapes, he used to go bush. He was a character."
Bruce McPhee
Murdered two policemen during a domestic dispute in Lower Hutt in February 1963. Shepherd says he was brutal but, like Mr Asia syndicate boss Terry Clark, he did not look like a killer. "[Bruce] was the most inoffensive guy you would ever meet, very quite, a lovely bloke. But he shot two police officers in a car stone cold dead. You'd never pick that guy in 100 years."
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THE LIFE OF ‘DIAMOND’ JIM SHEPHERD
ON RECORD: 1983, an Australian commission of
inquiry named Shepherd as “second-in-charge”
of the Mr Asia syndicate.
July 25, 1941: Born to Maori mother Kataraina Rutene and Pakeha father James Shepherd in Auckland. Raised in Picton and the then impoverished Auckland suburb of Freeman's Bay.
February 1958: Beat up a man "for no reason" and robbed him while out drinking with friends.
March 1958: Sentenced to three years in the rough Invercargill Borstal, aged 16. His deeply ashamed father died a few months later.
Early 1960s: His crimes escalated from burglaries and car thefts to armed robberies. Reached the "pinnacle of NZ crime" by becoming an expert safe-cracker.
1963: While in jail at Auckland's Mount Eden Prison he helped with a number of high-profile escape attempts.
July 1965: An attempted escape turned into the two-day Mount Eden riots in which the prison was severly damaged by fire. As a result, the first maximum-security prison at Paremoremo was commissioned.
1965-68: Considered one of the ringleaders behind the riot, he was kept in solitary confinement at Waikeria Prison, near Te Awamutu, and in Mount Eden's escape-proof "security block" — where inmates saw daylight for only an hour each day. In there with him were the country's most dangerous prisoners, including Bassett Road machine gun murderers John Gillies and Ron Jorgenson.
1969: One of the "first customers" at the newly built D block in Paremoremo — where he learned the art of setting up dummy companies and shifting money.
1971: Freed from prison, he became a rugby league player in Auckland — where he picked up the nickname Diamond Jim. Though it was a remark on his knack for picking up gorgeous women, he eventually started wearing a 2.5-carat diamond ring.
1975: Met Mr Asia drug syndicate boss Terry Clark at a party in Auckland but declined to work for him. Over the next few years he was a successful bookie in a pub in the Lower Hutt suburb of Taita and had a stake in nightclubs in Auckland.
1977: Joined the Mr Asia syndicate as their banker, laundering their millions and hiding it overseas. Over the next two years he also became Clark's biggest wholesale buyer of heroin, selling it on and pulling in up to A$100,000 a week.
1979: With the heat on after the discovery of the bodies of Kiwi drug couriers Doug and Isabel Wilson near Melbourne, Shepherd began cutting ties to the syndicate.
November 1979: Fled to the United States after Clark was arrested for the murder of Martin Johnstone.
1984: Arrested in San Francisco and extradited to Australia to face drug charges.
June 1986: Jailed for 25 years after being found guilty of conspiracy to import heroin into Australia.
1990: Involved in the riots at New South Wales' Parklea maximum-security prison.
December 1998: Freed from prison after serving 15 years and currently leads a quiet life in Sydney.
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My lunch with a deadly psycopath
An edited extract from the Terry Clark chapter of Mr Asia: Last Man Standing by James ‘Diamond’ Shepherd. Here Shepherd tells of how Clark gleefully confessed his murderous deeds at an upmarket lunch in Sydney's Double Bay.
ALTHOUGH Martin Johnstone was the man identified by New Zealand journalists in the mid-1970s as the original Mr Asia, there was absolutely no doubt that it was Clark who ran the drug group that would come to be known as the Mr Asia syndicate.
A ruthless, cold, unfeeling psychopath, Clark was perfectly suited to the requirements needed to succeed in the violence-ridden world of heroin trafficking.
He had both the capcity to organise large shipments of heroin into New Zealand, Australia, Britain and the United States as well as the willingness to kill friend or foe to protect himself and his distribution networks.
A willingness to kill is an advantageous mindset in the heroin trade. Heroin trafficking is a particularly nasty business and, in such a violent and treacherous environment, Clark was in his element.
The question I have most often been asked about Terry Clark is what type of person was he?
I remember sitting in a legal room at the old Supreme Court at Darlinghurst in Sydney during my trial in April 1986, when my barrister asked me that question. My answer was the answer I give everyone. Terry Clark was not the type of person you would walk a metre in front of.
In May 1979 I inadvertently ignored my own advice and nearly paid with my life. The man had no compunction about shooting friend or foe in the back.
Before his release from Wi Tako in 1974 [after a jail sentence for attempted burglary], Clark got married in the prison chapel for a second time, to a long-time drug addict named Norma Fleet.
I first met Norma in 1967, when she was involved with a good friend of mind, Ray B*****. Norma was an attractive woman when I first met her, but heavy heroin use over a long period of time can slowly erode any woman's good looks. Norma was no exception to that sad fact.
Besides heroin, Norma loved a drink and was always the life of the party wherever she went. The cynics have said Clark only married Norma so that he could gen an entree into New Zealand's heroin market. I tend to disagree with that theory, simply because after his release from Wi Tako, Clark gravitated towards the buddha sticks market and not directly to the heroin market, which is what would have happened if that theory was correct.
Whatever his motive for marrying Norma, it is common knowledge in the New Zealand underworld that he gave her a “hot shot” of heroin in 1975 which resulted in her death.
Most heroin addicts who buy their drugs directly from street dealers are sold very poor-quality heroin. As a result, they get used to injecting very weak heroin into their veins. A hidden consequence of addicts injecting so much weak heroin over a long period of time is that their bodies cannot physiologically cope if they suddenly inject a much stronger dose.
The outcome of injecting this stronger heroin usually results in a deadly overdose. Countless addicts have been murdered by someone administering a lethal hot shot to them. Accidental overdose is the usual coroner's finding.
A very convenient outcome for anyone wishing to get rid of a troublesome addict or, as in Clark's case, a troublesome wife.
I believe Norma was one of Clark's early murder victims. By my count, he either murdered, or had murdered, at least 12 people. Three of those victims — Norma Fleet, Julie Theilman and Isabel Wilson — were women.
Many people have asked me over the years: “Jim, how could you have become involved with such a psychopath?” Don't worry, that is a question I have asked myself on more than one occasion.
I can honestly state, from the first time I met him in Auckland in 1975 until a few months before his arrest in London in November 1979, Clark always presented himself to me as a cool, intelligent, switched-on drug dealer.
On only one occasion did he ever mention killing anyone and that was during a lunch I had with him at Eliza's restaurant in Double Bay, Sydney, around March 1978.
Rather an incongruous spot to be discussing murder, in those days Eliza's was a pretty trendy place to eat or have a drink at. The restaurant was always crowded with affluent customers and plenty of attractive women waiting to be noticed. The latter being the reason I liked going there.
On this particular afternoon, Clark and I were seated in a secluded area of the restaurant enjoying a glass of wine after a nice meal, when Clark broached the subject of murder.
“How do you feel about killing, Jim?” he asked.
before I could answer, he threw in another rhetorical comment: “If you are not prepared to kill, Jim, you should not be in the drug business. I have already killed six people.”
My first thought on hearing this startling confession was, Is this guy for real? My second thought was, If he is for real, what the f*ck is he telling me for? It's none of my f*cking business what he's done. I'm not a f*cking priest!
Old-school criminals who I had modelled myself on back in the 1960s used to operate on a need-to-know basis. To a man, all the major criminals I knew back then rarely spoke about what they had done.
Clark must have mistaken my surprised silence for acquiescence, because he started to recount all the murders he had committed up to then.
IT IS amazing the number of people Clark confessed to over the years about the murders he was responsible for, particularly to women. He seemed to have a morbid compulsion to tell others about the horrendous crimes he had committed.
At the time I was very sceptical about his uninvited confession to killing six people: frankly, I did not believe him. But history has shown through evidence presented by numerous witnesses at trials and royal commissions that my scepticism was definitely wrong.
Clark almost certainly killed the number of people he told me he had.
I have a theory as to why he made his extraordinary confessions to me. Apart from Wayne S*****, who helped Clark carry the bodies of Greg Ollard and Julie Theilman deeper into bushland after he murdered them, no one else knew about all the murders he had committed up till then.
So an old-school criminial like me, whom Clark knew as a man who had done hard time, and even more importantly for him, a man who knew how to keep his mouth shut, I would have been the ideal person for him to boast to about his murderous deeds.
Clark must have been longing to tell someone, anyone, about all the murders he had committed.
The man was very egotistical, and that is clearly evidenced by the number of people he told in 1978-79 about what he had done.
Now that I know he did commit all those murders he told me about, I wonder why I ever doubted him. I can still see him sitting opposite me in that restaurant 30 years ago, a tight smile on his face as he started to tell me in a calm, unemotional voice, about all the poor souls he had murdered.
He told me the first one was the most difficult. The guy he shot was a drug dealer from Tauranga — though I'm not sure whether the guy was from there, or he killed the guy there.
According to Clark, this guy had ripped one of his dealers off and had to go. I could detect the sudden animation in his voice as he told me how he took his first victim up to some nearby hills and shot him in the back of the head.
He said after he shot him there was blood everywhere but he did not die straight away. Because he was moaning as he lay on the ground, Clark said he shot him four more times. I can remember Clark's face was reflective as he told me how calm he felt afterwards, looking down at the man's dead body.
The second guy he killed owed some people he knew in Auckland a lot of money so, according to Clark, he took this victim up to the Waitakeres on the pretext of helping to solve his monetary problems.
He told me that when the prick saw his gun he begged for mercy, but he shot him once in the head and twice in the chest. He then went on to tell me that, after shooting the second guy, the thing that really struck him was just how easy it was to kill someone.
It has been my experience, having met numerous multiple killers in my lifetime — mainly in prison — that some men get a taste for killing and suffer no remorse or conscience after they have murdered someone. I would definitely place Clark in that horrific category.
While he was unburdening himself to me, he never confessed to giving his second wife, Norma, a hot shot. Perhaps the knowledge that I had known and liked Norma precluded Clark from admitting to me what he had done to her.
Despite his not admitting to being involved in any foul play as far as Norma was concerned, I'm still crediting him with killing her.
The afternoon shadows were lengthening as we sat there drinking a high-priced bottle of imported wine, both of us wearing expensive, well-tailored suits, our pockets full of $50 bills, but both of us morally bankrupt.
While I was more interesed in getting an after-dinner drink, Clark was just getting warmed up. I remember him leaning towards me as he started telling me about his next two victims.
The next two killings he told me about are open to debate, as his version of events is contrary to what indemnified witnesses told Justice Stewart at the royal commission hearings into the Mr Asia syndicate. But I'll recount here what he said. He began by telling me that the previous year, 1977, was a very busy year for him as he had to kill four people.
According to Clark, the first two were crewmen aboard the trawler Konpira, which had brought 400 kilos of smack down from Thailand in March for the syndicate. When he went on board to collect the smack, Clark said he was told two of the crew wanted more money for the trip.
In an aggrieved voice as he was telling me, Clark said “two of the c*nts came out on deck and started rambling on in broken English about wanting more money”. After listening briefly to their complaints, Clark told me that he said to both men: “I'll give you c*nts more money all right.”
I distinctly remember him laughing as he recounted how “f*cking shocked” everyone on board was when he pulled out his gun and shot both crewmen. He then told me they threw the two crewmen overboard.
The reason I am conflicted about Clark's version of events about what happened onboard the Konpira is the simple fact that a couple of Australian crewmen from that trip gave evidence at the Stewart royal commission and they never mentioned anything abouot Clark killing anyone.
Or, for that matter, his even being aboard the Konpira. According to their testimony, he never even came on board. As they had indemnities from prosecution, it is logical to think that they would have mentioned something as significant as that. But then again, those two guys might have worried that their indemnities did not cover murder.
All I can say about Clark is this: as he was recounting the killings, his eyes were shining. It was almost like he was reliving the whole experience again and enjoying that feeling.
For what it's worth, if I had to choose between the Konpira crewmen's evidence and Clark's, I'd be inclined to believe Clark's version of events.
Dusk was falling as he started to tell me about killing Greg Ollard and Julie Theilman. He tried to justify the killing of his former Wi Tako prison associate and friend, Greg Ollard, by saying he had received information from the police that Ollard was ready to roll over and give him up. I doubt if that was true, but any excuse is better than none.
Those two killings were still fresh in Clark's mind, as they had only happened six months previously, around the middle of September.
His reason for killing Greg, he told me, was predicated by the fact that Greg had become a “f*cking liability”. Clark said he offered to buy Ollard out but “the c*nt refused my offer”.
Because Ollard was using heavily and shooting his mouth off all over town, Clark thought he had become a loose cannon. Apparently Clark had received some information from the narcs — drug squad detectives — that Ollard was ready to roll.
By Clark's warped reasoning, this meant he had no option: Ollard had to go.
Being a cynic, I don't suppose all the money Ollard had coming to him from his share of the business with Clark had anything to do with his death.
If you are a drug dealer, letting people run up huge debts with you can have fatal consequences. Rather than paying the debt, it is not unusual for a debtor to kill the person he owes money to.
I sense that is what happened with Greg Ollard. Using the pretext of showing him where he had some heroin stashed, Clark lured Ollard to a location on a dirt road just off Cottage Point Road in the Ku-ring-ai National Park, on Sydney's northern beaches.
To highlight how devious he was, Clark had not only buried a thermos flask full of heroin at the site, but had also dug a shallow grave nearby.
He told me that, as Ollard bent down to pick up the thermos flask, he shot him in the back of the head. I remember him having a little chuckle as he recounted the fiasco that followed. Because he had forgotten how fat Ollard had become, Clark could not move him.
He told me that, after killing Ollard, he had to find a phone box and call Wayne S***** to come over to help him clean up the mess.
After meeting Wayne S***** at Church Point wharf the next morning, he said he took him out to where he had shot Ollard. Between the two of them, Clark said, they managed to drag “the fat f*cker” over to the hold he had dug for him, covered him as best they could and left.
After telling me how he disposed of Greg Ollard, I recollect Clark sitting opposite me with a pensive look on his face. It was as if he was remembering something unpleasant. No doubt he was also wondering how I would react to him confessing to killing a woman.
Back in the 1960s, women were sacrosanct, you did not involve them in crime and you certainly did not harm them. The guy was definitely an aberration there.
No criminals I knew at that time, myself included would ever have killed a woman, no matter how desperate the situation.
After taking a few sips of his wine, Clark started to tell me in a cold, detached way why he had killed Julie Theilman.
Obviously with the amount of time that has passed since that long lunch all those many years ago, my memory is not as accurate as it could be. Despite my scepticism at the time as to whether or not Clark was telling me the truth, however, his chilling confessions to me, particularly the brutal way he murdered Julie Theilman, have remained seared in my brain ever since.
To the best of my ability, I am recounting what I remember of that conversation at Eliza's restaurant. I have been able to confirm much of what Clark told me from reading Justice Stewart's report.
The guy who was with him when he shot Julie Theilman — Wayne S***** — gave a detailed account to Justice Stewart of what occurred on the day Clark murdered her, and it corresponds to what I remember Clark telling me.
This witness, by the way, was given an indemnity from prosecution for his part in helping Clark murder Julie Theilman. He also got an indemnity for selling large amounts of heroin every week for 18 months. No wonder they lined up to get indemnities!
I have often wondered what Julie Theilman's family felt about Clark's accomplice in her murder getting off scot-free. I'll wager they were not happy.
SHOOTING Julie Theilman must have weighed on his conscience a little more than shooting his male victims, because once again he tried to justify to me what he had done.
He began by telling me that he did not want to kill a woman, but she was a bad junkie and could have brought us all down by going to the police and telling them Greg was missing.
Using his twisted logic, Clark opined that, once he killed Greg, he knew that he could not leave his girlfriend, Julie Theilman, alive. It was his opinion that she would have become “a f*cking nightmare”.
So the next morning, after burying Greg Ollard, he said that he and Wayne went over to Greg's place at Avalon. According to Clark, they told Julie Theilman that Greg was waiting for her at Parramatta and wanted them to take her over there to meet him.
Before they left, Clark said he gave her a couple of snorts of A-grade smack. After that she did not know what was happening. He said they then drove up to an area in the Blue Mountains where he used to plant smack; a very remote spot, well off the road.
She was pretty wasted with the smack he gave her, he told me, so “I just pulled her out of the car, and shot her in the back of the head”.
He could not hide is disdain as he told me how that “weak c*nt Wayne whimpered and spewed everywhere” after he shot Julie Theilman. As they were dragging her body into the bush, just behind a big tree, he told me that a shocked Wayne S***** said she was still alive, so he put two more bullets into her chest.
After covering her with rocks, he said they left. He then told me that, a few days after he killed them, he and Wayne went over to their house at Avalon, packed up all their belongings and put all their stuff into a storage spot he had in Artarmon. After he finished telling me about Julie, Clark just shook his head as he said to me: “It's just f*cking business Jim, just business.”
Those cryptic words have stayed with me for all these years. Before we left the restaurant we both had an Irish coffee. As we were drinking our coffee, Clark looked at me and casually said that, about five months ago, he had returned to where Greg and Julie's bodies were and chopped off their heads. He said if their bodies are ever found it will be hard to identify them.
He was chuckling as he told me how he went and buried their heads in another spot. It was the casual jocular way he told me about chopping two people's heads off, even allowing for the fact that they were already dead, that really caught my attention.
When he finished imparting this additional gruesomeinformation to me about what he had done to Greg Ollard and Julie Theilman, I recollect looking at Clark and thinking to myself once again, Is this guy for f*cking real? I have to tell you, whether I thought his story was real or not, it put me off my Irish coffee and I left it unfinished.
It was dark as we walked out of the restaurant into a warm March night, looking for all the world like two businessmen who had just enjoyed a good meal at Eliza's, instead of two men who had spent most of the afternoon discussing multiple murders.
As I stood on the street outside Eliza's waiting for a taxi, I clearly remember thinking to myself, I do not know if you were telling me the truth or not, but from this moment on I will never turn my back on you again.
For those readers who are wondering why I did not bolt out of the restaurant as fast as my legs would carry me after Clark started confessing all those murders to me, the answer is simply this. At that point in my life, I was completely desensitised to violence.
Since I was 16 I had been imprisoned in extremely violent prisons. The security block at Mount Eden Prison not only hardened me, it destroyed a lot of my humanity, and I left part of my soul inside that place.
Unless it was my immediate family, what happened to others did not concern me in the slightest. So when Clark started to tell me about what he had done, he was talking to a man who was already morally and emotionally crippled.
During my time in the NZ prison system I had been around numerous homicidal psychopaths: men who were multiple murderers, men who had killed police officers, men who had machine-gunned people to death, men who had killed their parents, men who had killed their wives, their children; men who had killed their victims with machine-guns, shotguns, pistols, rifles, knives, machetes, axes; men who had strangled or drowned their victims, even one guy who had used a spade to kill his neighbour. So death and violence in its many guises was no stranger to me.
I took the view with Clark that many businessmen take: you do not have to like or love the person you are doing business with. Business is business.
MY BUSINESS with Clark was earning me up to A$100,000 a week. That type of money can make a man lose his morals very quickly.
To my everlasting shame, that's what all that money did to me. My greed destroyed any last vestiges of decency or common sense that I had left.
The amount of time I have spent on Clark is a fair indication of how important he was to the Mr Asia syndicate. In fact, Clark was the Mr Asia syndicate. Without his drive and organisational ability, the Mr Asia syndicate would never hage gotten off the ground.
Although I have highlighted all his many defects and psychopathic tendencies, Clark did have a few redeeming features. For one, he loved his children, particularly his son Jarrod — whom he had with Maria Muhary.
Like many psychopaths, Clark could be charming when he wanted to be. On the few occasions I went out and had dinner with him, he was always polite and well behaved; he was not a nasty drunk.
From the first time I started working with him in mid-1977, until about July 1979, I found Clark to be very professional, particularly where drugs were concerned. What Clark did not know about hard drugs was not worth knowing.
I found the guy to be surprisingly punctual in all his dealings with me. For a professional criminal, being punctual is a much desired and very necessary trait, especially when you are handling large amounts of illegal drugs. Clark was always on time, and always ready for business.
Unlike my friend Skip Gardiner, Clark did not have a charismatic personality. when the guy smiled there was no warmth in his smile or his eyes.
I guess killing more than six people can do that to you. Clark always tried to dress well, but he was one of those men who could make a $1000 suit look second-hand.
The three women he was involved with when I knew him — Maria Muhary, Allison Dine and Karen Soich — all loved the man, so he must have had some endearing qualities for them to have loved him like they did.
It most certainly was not his good looks, as Clark was not a handsome man. Maria, Allison and Karen were all attractive, intelligent women. Karen Soich was a solicitor when she met Clark, and Allison dine a schoolteacher. That old saying “love is blind” certainly fitted the bill with those two ladies.
Over the course of four years between July 1975 and July 1979, it was compelling to watch Clark slowly disintergrate before my eyes. From the switched-on drug dealer I first met in 1975 to the incoherent cocaine addict he became in late 1979 was one hell of a journey for both of us.
It was drugs that took him to the top, and it was drugs that destroyed him. I guess some people would call it poetic justice.
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• Mr Asia: Last Man Standing, ($39.99), published by Pan Macmillan, goes on sale in New Zealand on 11th June.
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www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/national/3724651/Terry-Clarks-money-man-Making-money-and-dodging-death