Executions, extortion, and suspect still at large
AN ordered hit, a biscuit company extorted for millions of dollars, two dead and a man on the run for nearly three decades. This is the bizarre and true story of the execution of SP bookmaker Peter George Wade and his partner Maureen Ambrose, by Ronald Henry Thomas and John Victor Bobak.
WHERE IS BOBAK?
Is he holed up overseas being protected by an outlaw motorcycle gang, as some suggest; has he simply, with age, blended back into society; or is he dead?
He is one of Queensland’s most wanted men, on the run for 27 years for his part in the execution-style murders of SP (starting price) bookmaker Peter George Wade and Maureen Ambrose.
Bobak’s partner in crime and former cellmate Ronald Henry Thomas is still serving two life sentences for the December 23, 1991, murders. The only positive sighting of Bobak since the murders was at Richmond, Tasmania, in 1992. He would be 68 today.
THE HIT
PETER Wade was connected. He had been an SP bookmaker since his teenage years in Sydney and it is believed a Sydney lawyer had hidden away an illegal fortune for Wade, thought to be upwards of $2 million, and would dole out cash to Wade as needed.
In 1989 Wade moved to the Gold Coast and had gone into semi-retirement. It is thought that at the time of his death, aged 50, he had up to three people taking bets in hotels and reportedly took up to $70,000 in an afternoon.
Police would later claim the lawyer in Sydney decided to keep Wade’s money and hired Bobak and Thomas to kill him for about $50,000 each.
The pair were career criminals. Thomas was 18 when he first killed a man in 1968. His mother, Joy Ellen Thomas, planned an armed robbery on a postal depot in Newtown in Sydney and was thought to have been directing the crime through a two-way radio when her son bashed an elderly nightwatchman to death. The mother and son received life sentences for the murder.
Bobak met Thomas in jail in the late 1970s and the pair got together after release in 1990.
On December 23, 1991, Bobak and Thomas took the contracted hit on Wade.
The night before the execution, Wade and Ms Ambrose had been drinking together at the River Lounge Bar late into the night, before returning to their Del Rey Waterfront Resort unit in Whelan St, Surfers Paradise.
The complex had security cameras and a security entrance.
Thomas, unable to get past security, climbed a groundfloor railing, leaving behind finger and palm prints. Bobak had climbed on the roof directly above unit 34 where Wade and Ambrose slept.
Thomas was standing guard outside their front door.
Bobak was trying to cut a hole in the ceiling with a bayonet and fell through into the apartment. It is believed Wade woke up and scuffled with Bobak, before being shot.
Wade was shot three times, the last shot was fired through his left temple.
Ambrose was shot once in the face at point-blank range.
Hearing the gunfire, Thomas shot out the lock on the front door and as he came into the unit, Bobak accidentally shot him in the face.
Thomas left behind a significant blood trail, as well as a number of false teeth.
Four witnesses saw two people leaving in a hurry.
It is believed the pair then drove to Bobak’s home at Bilambil in northern NSW where they woke his partner, Amanda Jade Teasdale, who had trained as a dental nurse.
A phone call was then made to Thomas’s mum, Joy Ellen Thomas, who arrived at the home at 8am and picked up her son.
It is understood Thomas got word police were looking for him in the days after and so handed himself in to police on January 20, 1992, in Sydney. Bobak is still on the run.
RONALD THOMAS
THE twists kept coming for years after the brutal slaying of Wade and Ambrose.
During his murder trial, Thomas contested the charges.
He claimed he had fallen asleep at the couple’s home after drinking heavily with the pair and woke when someone fell through the roof.
“The next thing, I distinctly heard one shot coming through the door,” he told the court.
“I got to my feet and, at the same time, someone’s foot started coming through the ceiling, then two legs appeared and a man dropped from the ceiling to the floor.”
Thomas said the man from the ceiling jumped to his feet.
“He raised both hands, he had a gun and he shot me.”
Thomas claimed one of two gunmen in the house recognised him and they spared his life.
In the Supreme Court, Thomas refused to name the man.
“I believe that if I tell you his name, something similar would happen to me or my family,” he said. “He told me that I could never tell anyone what happened or give his name, even to my own mother.
“I was told that if these people couldn’t get me, they would get a member of my family.”
The jury did not believe him and he was sentenced to two life sentences behind bars.
THOMAS LEFT BEHIND A SIGNIFICANT BLOOD TRAIL, AS WELL AS A NUMBER OF FALSE TEETH.
THE ARNOTT’S LETTERS
SIX years after the killings, six people across Queensland and
NSW received threatening letters and a packet of Arnott’s biscuits. The letter stated the biscuits had been poisoned and the writer threatened to put packets of poisoned biscuits on supermarket shelves.
The extortionist sent the letter and a small cardboard box containing poisoned Arnott’s Monte Carlo biscuits to the then NSW Police Commissioner, Peter Ryan, the Queensland Attorney-General, Denver Beanland, the offices of the parliamentary committee of the Queensland Criminal Justice Commission and a Queensland newspaper on February 3, 1997.
The letter claimed Ronald Henry Thomas was innocent and that four Sydney police officers had framed him.
At the time detectives were focusing on trying to find Bobak as they believed he was behind the threat.
The letter read: “We always thought Ron would never get found guilty of murder, maybe a lesser charge for not helping the police and not telling on me, but not for the murders.
“I know that four Sydney police gave evidence and these four lied in their evidence. We are now going to prove this.
“You would have noticed along with this letter you have received one packet of Arnott’s biscuits. DO NOT OPEN THEM. (They) are poisoned.”
The letter demanded that the Sydney police officers be taken to Brisbane and undergo lie detector tests about their evidence.
“Failing to comply to our demands, a rush of Arnott’s biscuits will hit stores throughout NSW and Qld,” the letter threatened.
“This is not a one-off event, it will be a campaign of attacks until this is resolved.”
The letter concluded: “Meet the demands and requirements of this letter in full by Monday the 17th February, or the (food item) will go to the stores.”
At the time Arnott’s went into damage control and pulled all of its products from 3000 supermarkets in what was one of the nation’s biggest food recalls. In total one million packets of biscuits were withdrawn.
One hundred casual workers in Adelaide were also stood down from Arnott’s.
At the height of the threat, then Arnott’s managing director Chris Roberts described the situation as “every food manufacturer’s worst nightmare”. He said an extensive product recall was essential for consumer safety.
“The reality is the threats are a threat to our customers, and Arnott’s concern for the welfare of our customers is paramount,” Mr Roberts said.
Investigators turned their attention to a former Sydney solicitor turned drug dealer, Justin Birk Hill, who Queensland police wanted to talk to in relation to the double murder at the centre of the extortion.
Hill was sentenced to a maximum eight years’ jail for his role in a major drugs racket.
The Adelaide Supreme Court heard he financed and set up contracts for an Adelaide Hills factory producing amphetamine and ecstasy.
But it is the double murders of Wade and Ambrose, and Hill’s admitted contacts with a number of bikie gangs, which now interest police.
Two weeks after the public was made aware of the extortion attempt, Thomas – who was still locked up for the double murder – issued a statement through his Gold Coast lawyer, Chris Nyst.
“My name is Ron Thomas. I was wrongly convicted of two murders and now I am serving life imprisonment for them,’’ his statement said.
“I have been told all about the threats that have been made to Arnott’s, apparently on my behalf or in an attempt to somehow change the injustice that has been done to me.
“I want everyone to know that I had no part in these threats. I don’t know who made the threats and I have never asked anybody to make them. But I do understand how people feel about what was done to me and I want to thank those people for trying to do something.
“But this is not the way. I want to make that very, very clear ...
“I want to make the strongest possible appeal to whoever has done this not to take these threats any further and to withdraw the threats immediately. I don’t want any innocent people harmed in my name. If anything were done with these biscuits, innocent people could be hurt and I don’t want any part of that.”
THE DNA
YEARS went by until March 1999, when police thought they made a DNA breakthrough. Information began to swirl that DNA had been lifted off the back of a stamp and an envelope of one of the extortion letters. It was thought to be a woman’s DNA.
On May 29, 1999, Joy Ellen Thomas, Rodney Thomas’s mother and a convicted murderer, briefly appeared in Murwillumbah Local Court where her extradition to Queensland was ordered.
The following day Thomas was charged with four counts of extortion in Brisbane Magistrates Court.
The court also heard the Arnott’s company lost an estimated $22 million in sales because of the extortion threat.
On the first day of Joy Thomas’s committal hearing in December 1999, prosecutor Paul Rutledge told the Brisbane Magistrates Court a stamp on a package sent to Brisbane solicitor Andrew Boe yielded DNA material that was matched with Ms Thomas.
“The statistical probability of such a match is one in 2900 billion,” he said.
Mr Rutledge said police found bottles containing the same poison detected in the biscuit.
Also found was the address of lawyer Andrew Boe and the names of two of the police officers who had given evidence against Ronald Thomas.
Mr Rutledge said police found letters written by Joy Thomas that contained the same spelling mistake as the Arnott’s extortionist.
“Among those letters the word received appears ‘R.E.C.I.E.V.E.D,’’ he said.
“That spelling mistake is consistent with the spelling of the word received in the demand letter.’’
Mr Rutledge said pale-coloured, fine dog hair found inside the demand packages was consistent with the type of animal found at Joy Ellen Thomas’s home.
Ms Thomas was committed to stand trial, although denied any link to the extortion.
Years passed again and then in April, 2002, the case against Thomas began to crumble. There were concerns about the DNA evidence.
On April, 26, 2002, the case against Joy Ellen Thomas was dropped and she walked free from court, after the court was told a forensic biologist, acting for the Crown, had changed his opinion about key DNA evidence.
The last time Joy Ellen Thomas was heard from, she was attempting to get compensation and an apology from the Queensland Government.