investigation, when Parrington was promoted to the breaking squad in 1978 the Mackay file went with him. Any calls to the homicide squad on the murder were simply transferred to Big Joe.
As Parrington climbed the New South Wales police managerial ladder he remained in charge of the controversial case. By the end of 1981 it had stalled and would have remained unsolved if not for a split-second decision made by a policeman far away from the grass castles of Griffith and the political intrigue of Sydney. Which is where Trimboleâs old pal Frank Tizzoni was forced into a starring role.
IN 1981 the New South Wales police and their federal counterparts agreed to run a risky stratagem that would effectively allow the Griffith Mafia to grow massive crops of marijuana in the hope that police would be able to gather enough evidence to arrest the principals.
The operation, code-named Seville, discovered the group would produce up to ten crops at a time because it worked on the theory that some would be discovered.
In March 1982 police watched as their targets met some unidentified men in Canberra and transferred nearly 100 kilos of marijuana into a vehicle.
But instead of heading to Sydney as expected, the men headed towards Melbourne in two vehicles. One was a gold-coloured Mercedes sedan; the other a van. Once they crossed the border into Victoria, the New South Wales police would have no jurisdiction.
Dismayed surveillance police made frantic calls to the Victorian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence with a request to follow but not intercept the vehicles.
An experienced Melbourne detective, John Weel, was instructed to tail the two vehicles as they reached Melbourneâs northern outskirts. But because it was close to evening peak hour the policeman feared he could lose the targets, so he took a punt. He took it upon himself to pull them over â and found a bale of marijuana in the boot of Tizzoniâs Mercedes, as well as more of the illicit crop in the van, driven by one Robert Enterkin. (A third man, Tony Barbaro, one of a notorious Griffith family, was a passenger in Tizzoniâs car. Tizzoni said later it was Barbaro who had asked him to pick up the marijuana from near Canberra.)
Some cynics would later wonder why the careful Tizzoni would use his own car to carry part of the haul. But it was a different era: things were done differently then.
After his arrest, Tizzoni used a private investigator to discreetly inquire if Weel could be bribed. When he realised Weel was an honest cop, he knew he was in trouble. Tizzoni, Barbaro and Enterkin were charged and bailed but Tizzoni â neither Calabrian nor a sworn member of the Honoured Society â started looking for ways to trade his way out of trouble. A former debt collector and private detective, he saw himself as a businessman, if a shady one. He had been in partnership with Bob Trimbole in the pinball machine business since 1971, and had become increasinglyinvolved in wholesaling marijuana in Melbourne for Trimboleâs Griffith connections. The easy money had appealed to Tizzoni but the outwardly respectable middle-aged family man from Balwyn, who had invested his drug earnings into several properties, had never been the sort of criminal who sees prison as an inconvenient occupational hazard. Somehow, he wanted to covertly negotiate his way out of a prison sentence without the risk of actually telling all he knew about the Honoured Society.
Two respected Bureau of Criminal Intelligence members, Bob Clark, an expert on Italian organised crime, and John Mc-Caskill, an intelligence specialist, turned Tizzoni into Australiaâs most important informer.
He eventually told them the story of how Trimbole had used him to recruit a hit man to kill Mackay and, later, Isabel and Douglas Wilson.
To provide a cover story for the fact that police dropped drug charges against Tizzoni, Weel pretended to be corrupt and to have been bought off.
The story was so
As Parrington climbed the New South Wales police managerial ladder he remained in charge of the controversial case. By the end of 1981 it had stalled and would have remained unsolved if not for a split-second decision made by a policeman far away from the grass castles of Griffith and the political intrigue of Sydney. Which is where Trimboleâs old pal Frank Tizzoni was forced into a starring role.
IN 1981 the New South Wales police and their federal counterparts agreed to run a risky stratagem that would effectively allow the Griffith Mafia to grow massive crops of marijuana in the hope that police would be able to gather enough evidence to arrest the principals.
The operation, code-named Seville, discovered the group would produce up to ten crops at a time because it worked on the theory that some would be discovered.
In March 1982 police watched as their targets met some unidentified men in Canberra and transferred nearly 100 kilos of marijuana into a vehicle.
But instead of heading to Sydney as expected, the men headed towards Melbourne in two vehicles. One was a gold-coloured Mercedes sedan; the other a van. Once they crossed the border into Victoria, the New South Wales police would have no jurisdiction.
Dismayed surveillance police made frantic calls to the Victorian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence with a request to follow but not intercept the vehicles.
An experienced Melbourne detective, John Weel, was instructed to tail the two vehicles as they reached Melbourneâs northern outskirts. But because it was close to evening peak hour the policeman feared he could lose the targets, so he took a punt. He took it upon himself to pull them over â and found a bale of marijuana in the boot of Tizzoniâs Mercedes, as well as more of the illicit crop in the van, driven by one Robert Enterkin. (A third man, Tony Barbaro, one of a notorious Griffith family, was a passenger in Tizzoniâs car. Tizzoni said later it was Barbaro who had asked him to pick up the marijuana from near Canberra.)
Some cynics would later wonder why the careful Tizzoni would use his own car to carry part of the haul. But it was a different era: things were done differently then.
After his arrest, Tizzoni used a private investigator to discreetly inquire if Weel could be bribed. When he realised Weel was an honest cop, he knew he was in trouble. Tizzoni, Barbaro and Enterkin were charged and bailed but Tizzoni â neither Calabrian nor a sworn member of the Honoured Society â started looking for ways to trade his way out of trouble. A former debt collector and private detective, he saw himself as a businessman, if a shady one. He had been in partnership with Bob Trimbole in the pinball machine business since 1971, and had become increasinglyinvolved in wholesaling marijuana in Melbourne for Trimboleâs Griffith connections. The easy money had appealed to Tizzoni but the outwardly respectable middle-aged family man from Balwyn, who had invested his drug earnings into several properties, had never been the sort of criminal who sees prison as an inconvenient occupational hazard. Somehow, he wanted to covertly negotiate his way out of a prison sentence without the risk of actually telling all he knew about the Honoured Society.
Two respected Bureau of Criminal Intelligence members, Bob Clark, an expert on Italian organised crime, and John Mc-Caskill, an intelligence specialist, turned Tizzoni into Australiaâs most important informer.
He eventually told them the story of how Trimbole had used him to recruit a hit man to kill Mackay and, later, Isabel and Douglas Wilson.
To provide a cover story for the fact that police dropped drug charges against Tizzoni, Weel pretended to be corrupt and to have been bought off.
The story was so
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