Why Was This Melbourne Businessman Publicly Executed?

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He joins us now.

>> Adam Shand, thank you so much for joining us on True Crime Conversations today.

We are big fans of your work.

Thank you so much for giving up a bit of your time for us.

>> My absolute pleasure.

Thank you for having me.

>> Well, today we’re talking about the really quite intense story of John Ferlin.

I think not many Australians, especially maybe not younger Australians, would either remember this case or would understand just how unique it is in Australian criminal law because we just don’t do car bombing very often in this country, do we? >> We don’t.

We don’t.

The other really notable one was the Russell Street Police Headquarters getting bombed back in March 86.

And usually our killing is a lot more targeted.

This one was uh very public u incredibly violent uh one that was just a miracle.

No one else was killed or even injured in this.

It was just pure luck rather than the uh planning or calculation of the bomber.

I’d love to start off with just first asking you who John Ferlin was because when you’ve investigated in talking to his friends, he’s one person, but then when you talk to his business associates, he seems to be another.

So, he seems to be two separate characters.

Can you give us an idea of who they are? >> Well, he was a very typical sort of guy you meet in the motor trade in Melbourne.

Uh he’d had a car wrecking business.

He’d um bought and sold uh cars, particularly VWs and Subarus.

He I mean I can’t even say he had a checkered past because he had no criminal history whatsoever.

He was steeped in the normal little disputes you have in the car industry about you know the condition of vehicles uh money here and there.

Um, and that was really that that’s what make made his murder so remarkable that he wasn’t the sort of person that would engender such fierce hatred to do him away with in such a um public way >> cuz his friends really describe him as a bit of a you know a fun character.

He liked a drink.

He liked the ladies and he seemed to be quite you know especially amongst his friends like well loved.

Now, he was a party boy for sure and uh he certainly showed that face to his friends and he liked to drink.

He liked to go out with his friends on boats.

Um he had a wide circle of friends, loved fishing, uh loved to travel to Tasmania, go fishing in particular and he had two children.

He had an estrange wife.

He had a string of girlfriends.

Um he definitely liked the ladies and that was certainly looked at as one of the possible motives in his murder, but it certainly wasn’t a crime of passion and but there was this slightly dark underbelly.

We’ll touch on that in a sec, but let’s talk about the day that the bomb exploded because I’ve outlined that John was a particular creature of habit and did the same thing every day.

So, investigators found that that was actually a pretty easy way for someone who wanted to commit a crime like this to commit this crime, right? >> And it really shows that he wasn’t expecting this to happen because he was following his normal routine.

the 3rd of August 1998, early in the morning, he drives out of his driveway on Sydney Road, Coberg, and follows his normal route on the way to his auto wrecking business.

He gets around the corner and um a bomb explodes.

So, he was about to get out of his vehicle to get his normal coffee in his newspaper and he gets blown to smitherines instead.

Uh, in fact, the the in the the initial thought was that that this was a an LPG tank that must have exploded in his vehicle, but his vehicle didn’t run on gas, the Subaru Liberty he was driving.

So, it took a little while for them to realize this was a very powerful bomb that had been placed under the passenger seat of his vehicle.

What I thought was really quite compelling in the episode that you made about this crime, you actually go and see the wreckage of the vehicle, which is still part of police evidence because this is an unsolved crime, so it hasn’t been disposed of.

What was it like to stand in the room with that car and see the damage that was done that day? >> You’re right.

It was a visceral feeling of being back on the scene again.

And you could still smell the explosives within the vehicle even though it was so long after that.

And the twisted wreckage, you could barely see what model or or make the car was.

And you realize he had absolutely no chance of surviving that.

And that was the aim of the bomber.

And um it it uh I think that was part of um our drive to try to look in this case again is is to once we saw that vehicle, you think, boy, people are going to know what happened and people would have been shocked by the ferocity of this.

And these sorts of killings tend to be about sending a message.

Putting a bomb in a car like this showed to other people who might have been in that circle that the people who did it were very very serious characters and they also didn’t mind the possibility of collateral damage.

>> Let’s talk about that because as you mentioned the bomb went off on a pretty busy Melbourne street and yet nobody else lost their lives that day, only John Ferlin.

Do you think that was pure luck or do you think that was somewhat by design? >> It was pure luck.

I mean, we understand that the bomb was detonated by in line of sight with a mobile phone from a distance of probably 50 to 100 meters, but they but they had only one chance to do it.

his car was moving along that that street there uh in in Merlinston and there was a group of school children close by.

There was a bus.

There were other vehicles.

There was a lady starting work in the hairdressing shop directly adjacent.

And when you look at the spray of debris that emanated from that bomb, it there’s just shrapnel everywhere.

And you can still see it to this day.

You can see um dings and and marks in walls and it was just a a ferocious explosion.

It was heard many many uh kilometers away.

It shook the ground.

The car was was pushed 15 meters down the road.

Um and the bonnet flew off and it was just absolute luck.

I mean it was uh yeah absolute luck that no one else was killed or even injured.

You mentioned before that a chrome like this is sending a message.

So what message does it send when you strap a bomb of that size to kill just one man? >> Yeah, it’s it says don’t come after us.

We’re very serious people.

Um, this really set a tone in Melbourne, not for car bombing, but for a for a series of public executions that we call the gangland war that went all the way from 98 through till about 2010 when Carl Williams was was murdered.

I’m not saying that Carl was involved in this.

He was involved a lot of other things, but not this one.

But it just sent a message to the underworld that all bets were off, that people were going to go after each other with with ferocity and and and a and a real thirst for revenge.

And as I say, the a car bomb like that says, “Don’t mess with us.

The consequences will be dire.

” And uh I think it certainly sent a shock wave literally through that suburb, but also the Melbourne underworld.

Well, let’s get into that because at this point when John Ferland dies only is I think it’s an Gangitano is the only one who’s actually been killed execution style sort of publicly to a point where we think okay the Melbourne underworld is starting something is starting and brewing and then we you know 15 years we travel across and see maybe 40 people die in similar circumstances in quite public ways some of them and so why do start to tie John Felen who has no criminal past who’s running a seemingly legitimate business who seems to be like a fun party guy maybe a little bit rough around the edges in you know conducting his business why do we start linking him to this Melbourne under >> well I think it’s more because it’s an unsolved but that that’s really the first reason but it also sets this tone for public killings in Melbourne we’ve kind of always had a bit of a ponch for that in Melbourne actually but this was a concentrated period of of public executions and um [ __ ] and bad manners get you killed in Melbourne.

And that was certainly a theme right through this period.

You didn’t have to do that much to get killed, cross someone in business, disrespect somebody, threaten somebody else, lag on them, this type of thing.

So this [ __ ] and bad manners was often a motive enough.

And this was the baffling thing for police.

Where was the motive here? Where was the motive for killing Gangatano? Where was the motive for killing another 25 30 people in this period? There was just a bloodlust that that was quite astounding.

And I don’t think any other period of killing in Australia.

We’re seeing a lot of killing at the moment in Sydney and Melbourne for different reasons, but nothing seems to reach this level of paranoia and fear and revenge, this cycle which was incredibly uh intimidating.

I mean, I was covering all this through this period and you just didn’t really know who was next or why.

And it took a lot of burrowing into the whole thing uh to actually understand that all bets were off that if you cross these people, they were going to exercise their power and they were going to, you know, when in doubt, kill them.

And that was kind of kind of the the idea because if because if you didn’t they might come back at you to affect your underworld business, threaten your family, this type of thing.

So the Ferland bombing, even though most of the underworld people I’ve spoken to who are actually involved in it said, “Oh, there’s nothing.

It’s not connected with us.

” But it just set a tone.

I think >> we do find out that John Ferlin does have some kind of loose ties to the Melbourne underworld through his business dealings.

Can you talk us through the business that he’s leased to a guy who sells cars and what his family legacy ties into potentially maybe bringing John Ferin a little bit into the darker side of Melbourne’s crime world? >> Well, indeed.

I mean, he he lived on Sydney Road, Coberg, and right next door he owned a block of land which was a caryard.

And he leased that um that caryard to a fellow called Dominico Italiano, whose grandfather of the same name, Dominico Italiano, was probably uh Melbourne’s first godfather, Calabrian Mafia.

His uncle, Michelle Screver, was an underworld hitman.

Uh other people in his family were steeped in the underworld as well.

But Mick Italiano as he was called Dominico um was not of that ilk.

He had the big name.

He [snorts] had the antecedance but he was not regarded in the same way.

He was more of a con man really if anything and he found himself in the motor trade and he leased this uh this cary yard from John Furland and he also leased a carard just around the corner from my house I discovered later.

So Mick is not doing that well on the rent.

He’s behind.

And uh this is this is starting to bother John.

John loved a dollar.

He was and he was always looking for a dollar.

He never had enough.

So tension began to rise between Italiano and Ferlin.

Um to the point where Italiano offered him an opportunity.

Mick was running these dodgy raffles under the youth motorsport banner where he purported to be raising money for charity while raffling off these cars.

In reality, it was a fraud and it was just a way of moving cars to people while avoiding sales tax and doing it on the Dodge.

Um, and and his friends or business associates would magically win the raffle and get the car for a for a much reduced price.

So he was doing that quite successfully for quite a while and I through my investigation I I I discovered through a friend of John’s that John had been offered this as well uh in lie of the tens of thousands of dollars that he was owed whether he we wanted to know I’m not really sure but at the same time uh John Ferlin was putting in reports to fair trading about Mkataliano >> because John himself had actually been in the spotlight from fair trading himself, had >> Oh yeah.

Yeah.

And then this I think this is derigger for people at that end of the uh of the motor trade.

You know, we’re winding back odometers and we’re changing compliance plates and we’re we’re bringing in vehicles that shouldn’t be in Australia and we’re doing all kinds of things um like that.

So yeah, he he’d had his moments where where he’d he’d uh he he’d caught the eye of the Fair Trading um uh bureau.

So, but I think as I say that’s probably the best motive we have to include Italiano in the in the list of suspects and police did look thoroughly at all this and um I know the homicide detective is an excellent detective Jeff Mah concluded it just doesn’t didn’t seem enough.

Um, even though the the revelation of these raffles led uh the police to charge Italiano for running these raffles and he was he was actually jailed over them along with some other things as well.

All low-level stuff, but it never really seemed to to to reach the level of a motive.

um and particularly with the inability to link the bomb to a bomb maker to a killer and then to find a connection between that killer and Italiano.

These were the issues that police faced and unlike most of the other murders in in this period there weren’t informers stepping up at least in the beginning >> to to help them.

It did happen later.

I’m sure you’re going to ask me about that a bit later on.

Well, how about we ask you that question now? So, a young man walks into the St.

Kilda police station some years after the bombing occurred and says it was me.

Like completely stuns the investigators and says, “I made the bomb.

I planted the bomb.

I was part of detonating it.

” Who is this man? Do we believe that he actually did it or was he confessing for other reasons? >> That’s a really, really good question.

It was six years After the death of Ferland, young Philip Matthews, who’s then in his early 20s, turns up at St.

Kilder Road police headquarters and asked to see detectives.

He wasn’t on the radar uh and says, “I killed John Ferland.

” He didn’t he couldn’t tell them who had ordered the murder, only that he’d been in jail for a previous bombing as well, >> which he also confessed to.

Right.

>> This guy likes to confess.

>> He loves to confess.

That’s that’s always a red flag for investigators that as much as this is a walk up start and you love it and you think you want to believe it.

We have a history of informers here in Melbourne who give stories the police like and they lead them down the garden path.

That’s another podcast though.

And Philip Matthews seems to know a lot about the bombing, but most critically he had a physical appearance that matched a witness description of a young man driving a red Nissen patrol seen at the time of the bombing and also days before.

And he had a distinctive tattoo on his right arm of an eagle.

It matched.

he had that tattoo.

From there though, there were other issues that didn’t match and it led it led police to doubt his story.

He also talked about storing other bomb maker bomb making supplies detonated and so forth in a country location where he’d also detonated bombs in trial runs.

He also talked about having been approached by these guys in jail who we established did have connections to Italiano about other bombings and he actually set a device in Flemington in Melbourne’s north to send a message to somebody else where someone when they opened up their their roller door it detonated an explosive there.

He confesses that and goes to jail for it.

So police were faced with a choice between here is someone who’s got a a rush of conscience and honesty or he’s a wannabe and an attention seeker.

>> So that’s the question then is like is he confessing for clout? Does it get him up the criminal ladder a little further or is he legitimate in all of this? >> Very hard to say because unfortunately spoiler here a few weeks later he takes his own life.

There’s no suggestion of suspicious circumstances that he was murdered.

>> Surely that would be questioned though in this particular case.

>> Well, it was and the investigator who reviewed this later on looked at all the statements, looked at all the circumstances and also his demeanor in the interview that he did do.

He was a troubled young man and he was coming forward out of conscience.

He wasn’t he didn’t want he didn’t want to put the finger of suspicion on Italiano.

He didn’t know who had ultimately ordered the bombing.

So this was purely out of his conscience that he was speaking.

And who knows maybe the killing of Ferland did weigh so heavily on him that uh he decided to do this.

Mind you, he’d also put his brother in for a murder, his twin brother, no less.

So, he liked to confess.

And sometimes it was true, maybe, sometimes it wasn’t.

And I know police are desperate to speak to Philip Matthews girlfriend at the time that he was living with.

And because she may be able to shed further light on on his activities at the time, we actually door knocked the whole street in our hunter’s um episode and spoke to people who’d been there for a long time and they said, “Yes, some strange going on next door.

” There was one witness in particular who said, “Yes, we saw people coming and going.

There was cars being worked on.

There was materials going back and forth.

” So something was going on there and he had too much information uh to to not have some role in all this.

Just how far he was involved, I’m not sure, but I think he the witness statement puts him on the scene.

I think that’s reliable.

He may have been the one who actually physically detonated the bomb, but he didn’t do it on his own.

And this is the focus of the current police investig or the reinvestigation actually where they’ve announced a $1 million reward is because rarely these things are done on one’s own.

Um in fact there are striking similarities with the bomb that killed Ferlin to the bomb that killed Don Hancock and Louis Lewis in Perth in 2001 September.

The same similar sort of device uh placed in the same way.

Um and um if you remember that story that was allegedly um in retaliation for the killing of a gypsy joker biker at in Oraanda in 2000 in Western Australia and there had been efforts to kill Don Hancock with fairly crude bombs, Molotov cocktails, things like that.

Um but this one was a step up.

So, I know police have the identity of potential people who could have been the bomber and those sort of individuals are pretty dangerous characters if they’re able to source and and construct and be part of criminal conspiracies because the the risk to public safety is unbelievable.

So, I think that’s the focus of of the current police investigation.

Hence the desire to speak to Matthew’s girlfriend to see if they can u I guess recreate the circle of associates he was dealing with back then.

>> What about the DNA evidence, Adam? Because they are investigators are going off the idea that John Felen was away on a fishing trip in Tasmania the day before on the days before he was killed and his car was parked behind a fence at his home.

a pretty easy way for someone to get in and out without being seen, jump the fence.

H, and there were cigarette butts around where he would park his car.

A lot of the DNA obviously belonging to John himself, but there were some that didn’t.

Do we know whether that ever shed any light on who potentially could have been in his yard at that time? >> Well, they have looked at all that DNA in the months since our show, as I understand it, and they can’t find any match to criminals.

But of course in Victoria, we’re not using the latest forensic genetic investigation techniques.

So if you haven’t got a criminal record, then you can’t match that that DNA.

Um, it could well be that it’s friends of John’s.

I mean, he had a lot of visitors.

It was easy to get into that yard.

It’s actually this exactly the same way today as it was back then.

Um, and it would have been fairly simple for someone to climb the fence, as you say.

Um, but yeah, that that that that DNA could still yield potential suspects and we we have to use the latest techniques.

And I’m sure the investigators are lobbying their bosses to uh to use the same sort of techniques that have been used in Western Australia and New South Wales to unlock the identity of people who aren’t on criminal DNA databases.

And that could that could hold the answer to this whole thing.

>> What then happens with Italiano? Because as you mentioned, he did go to jail for his dodgy raffle dealings and there is potentially links between him and the bomb maker in prison that have not been ever confirmed.

But then what happens to him? Is he still under a cloud at this stage? And what does his life then look like from that point on? >> Well, he ends up underground actually before before his time.

He he goes to jail.

He actually appeals some of his convictions and he gets released on bail to celebrate.

He gets a uh some some drugs and some Viagra.

He meets the girlfriend of a prison cellmate.

Don’t Don’t you love the loyalty? Who’s also um a lady of the night, should we say? And they have an afternoon of wild sex and fun.

And he dies on the job, has a heart attack.

>> So another potential suspect or source of information is uh is departed.

So, which makes the the the case for investigators all that more difficult.

>> Other than the alleged bomb maker’s girlfriend, is there anyone else still left alive you think has the information that could lead to this case being solved? Because when we talk about these gang land murders, this one really is the only one still left open, right? That there is an understanding that the rest have been solved, just not this one.

Is someone still alive that still has the information that we need to solve it? >> Oh yeah, absolutely.

Police know the identity of people that could have supplied components, electronics.

I’m not going to say I know the name because I’ll be checking under my car uh after that, but police certainly know those names.

>> And the associates of Matthews um they also have fortunately Matthew’s twin brother.

So if they wanted to match the DNA to what they found on those cigarettes to see if it was linked to Matthews, they have an avenue there >> that’s been suggested to them by the investigator who reviewed who’s now left the force.

I’m not sure if it’s happened, but that’s certainly an avenue.

And I think also you’ve got other other people who were who were speaking to Matthews in jail and could provide those links, the circumstantial links to to bring it home to Italiano.

So I I wouldn’t put it out of the realms of possibility that a wink and a nudge uh was enough for Philip Matthews to to motivate himself to do this.

Um but that but that can be established uh by the associates who are still alive and I know they are because I’ve know those names.

Um, and so, yeah, I think it’s it’s still very uh solvable this case, and I know police um are extremely eager to get new information on this because a a killing like this is a is a is a big moment.

And the fact that you’ve got people with the capacity to carry out these sort of killings, every single one of them is important to get off the streets because they could go back into business at any time.

And I think it just and it shattered the piece of that suburb.

And there are people still suffering the effects, the trauma of that.

It’s not just John’s family, but those in the area.

I mean, it was a shattering moment literally.

You’ve kind of touched on this a couple of times, Adam, about you’ve been doing this for a long time, reporting on crime in Melbourne, where, as you mentioned, people were killed for very little.

I imagine that having their stories plastered in the newspaper or told via podcast or on TV shows like Hunters, some people would not be overly happy with that.

How have you fared in amongst all of this? Have you ever threatened or ever felt unsafe, you know, dealing with the people that you have to deal with to tell these stories? >> Yeah, it’s a good question.

I get asked this quite a lot.

Um the thing about when people threaten you is that the serious people in life don’t call you up, don’t ring you up, don’t leave notes, they just come and do it.

So really and I have had threats over the years and I tend to I had some advice from my uh my old mentor Brian the Skull Murphy, one of the most notorious police in Victoria.

He said he said just that.

He said, “Don’t worry about the people who ring you up, you know, and and when they when they do ring you up, just give them a good burst.

Give them a good burst because they’re cowards, you know, and they want they want you not to write this stuff.

” But but, you know, ironically, I think a lot of the gangsters in Melbourne, they liked being written about.

They did.

>> They’re elevated and glamorized.

Do they’re pretty some pretty tordy characters involved in awful trades, doing terrible things to each other, suddenly are celebrated in books and movies and TV shows and all this sort of stuff.

So, I mean, Chopper made the back end of his life all about that, right? >> He really did.

Chopper did.

My goodness.

And um >> you know, I was part of that mythmaking as well.

You know, I was part of Chopper’s um greatest heist ever, you know, where [laughter] where he claimed he’d killed four people.

And uh yeah, that’s that’s a story for another day.

But yeah, I think there’s a lot of a lot of mythmaking goes on and people like to as much as they like to complain about the media attention, >> it makes them relevant.

It makes them makes them and to their enemies seem to be something more formidable than they might otherwise be.

>> So, what are you working on now, Adam? I mean, been a fan of your work for a long time.

I’ve followed a lot of the stories that you have investigated over the years.

Can you give us an insight into what else might be coming our I’m doing a a [clears throat] series called Real Crime at Adam Shander podcast series and it’s about the cases that I’ve been looking at for some time.

Um, including the Cheryl Grimmer case from Fairy Meadow that’s on the on the site this week actually.

Um, and those sorts of stories.

But what I’m really motivated by is the number of indigenous women who’ve been murdered in this country for whom there’s been no justice whatsoever.

And I’m looking to a case in South Australia where uh a lady Daphany Enid Sanssbury was murdered by her partner who never faced justice and spending time within the Sanssbury clan which also includes Adam Goods by the way that’s he’s part of that whole family.

Um and just to understand the impact on them and how that relates to so many cases of indigenous women being murdered u and there’s no justice.

So I’m finding this I’m stepping outside of my comfort zone if you like a little bit um sort of you know carton you know sunshine all those sort of things to actually understand that and I think it’s um yeah it’s been a real pleasure and and great educational value and the quiet dignity that that that these people have when they’ve suffered such injustice.

Uh I’m not really wanting to get involved in these in these new gang lane wars.

for some reason that they just don’t seem to reach the heights of that that that conflict back >> doesn’t excite you anymore.

>> Yeah, I’m I’m sure I’ll never say never, but um you know, I’m leaving that to the news guys at the moment, as you know, in podcasting.

It’s a little more historical.

>> You you’re not so much on the on the bleeding edge of stories.

Um but no, I think and and the problem is I just get so many people sending me messages saying, “I need your help.

” And I’m a sucker for that.

I I love to be needed, you know, so I really do and it gets I get excited.

Um, and I, for instance, had a a lady approach me recently whose father was a very very notorious sex offender in Melbourne who had information about some murders which he wanted to impart and no one would listen to him because of who he was.

And of course, you got to think twice about platforming someone like that.

That’s certainly, you know, but I think stuff it >> if you’ve got information, but also the human drama of of a daughter who reconnects with her father of this heinenous background and believes in him and tries to tell the story.

I can’t resist that sort of yarn.

And I guess I’m prepared to cop whatever issues come my particularly if it if it assists investigators to resolve some pretty heinous crimes.