Decades of drinks & death threats
My 30 years with Rogerson
jailed in 1990 for perverting the course of justice over false bank accounts involving more than $100,000. After his release, Rogerson earnt a living running a scaffolding business but was still very much involved in criminal activities, giving advice to crooks and acting as an unofficial adviser to some of Australia’s best-known criminals.
The Wood Royal Commission in 1996 and an ICAC investigation in 2002 exposed that Rogerson, while a Darlinghurst detective, was at the heart of a small band of corrupt cops which took thousands of dollars in bribes a week from drug dealers and criminals so they could operate in Kings Cross, referred to then as the Golden Mile.
In 2005, he was jailed for 12 months for lying to the Police Integrity Commission.
After his release, he found a new career – this time as a speaker on the pub and club circuit. He joined AFL star Mark “Jacko’’ Jackson and notorious
Melbourne criminal Mark “Chopper”’ Read on tours, where he constantly belittled the NSW Police Force for being soft on crime. All these years later, he continued to protest his innocence.
It was only after Rogerson was found guilty of murdering a young Sydney drug dealer, Jamie Gao, in 2014 that the full list of his crimes was revealed.
Questions still remain over his alleged involvement in the disappearance of Sydney model Lyn Woodward and a plot to kill former NSW Police Assistant Commissioner Clive Small.
“For Roger it wasn't really about the money, although he was greedy in that department. It was about the power and control,” a former police colleague of Rogerson’s said.
“He thought he could get away with anything because as far as Roger was concerned, he was the smartest person in any room, especially a courtroom.”
NSW police officer Michael Drury (above) is shot and almost killed at his home in Chatswood, with Drury alleging Rogerson was involved in his attempted murder because he
refused to tamper with evidence to protect a Melbourne drug dealer.
Rogerson is suspended from the police during the investigation into the Drury shooting. He is later acquitted of attempting to bribe Drury and is also found not guilty of conspiring to murder him.
Sallie-Anne Huckstepp – the former girlfriend of Warren Lanfranchi – is found dead in a pond in Centennial Park (right). She had signed sworn testimony that Rogerson was trying to extort Lanfranchi and murdered
The first time I saw Roger Rogerson, he tried to run me over in his old Ford Falcon at his Condell Park home.
The last time I saw him was in the NSW Supreme Court when he threatened to kill me.
In between those two incidents – 30-odd years apart – there were 10 years where you could say we were associates of sorts, having the odd long lunch and regular drinking sessions in various Sydney pubs.
The Roger Rogerson I met was charming, full of colourful stories about the good old days and how NSW cops had gone soft on crooks. It was well after his glory days when he was pictured strutting Sydney crime scenes with a shotgun in his hand and a NSW Police Force badge in his wallet.
He was working hard at rebuilding his image after a couple of stints in jail – the stench of corruption was all around him – but he was doing a pretty good job of it.
A lot of people, myself included, swallowed the narrative that back in the ’70s and ’80s controlled corruption kept him. Her death has never been solved.
Sacked from the NSW Police.
Found guilty of perverting the course the streets safe. The cops knew who the bad guys were and could control them.
Roger left out the part about the cops lining their own pockets and killing people, some of them totally innocent who simply dared to speak the truth, like Sallie-Anne Huckstepp and Lyn Woodward.
He would never talk about the attempt to kill undercover cop Mick Drury who refused to be drawn into the web of corruption and deceit that Rogerson wove throughout the force.
The look in his eyes when I asked about it and the silence meant I never asked it again.
Rogerson’s death is one of the last links to a Sydney where money and intimidation bought police, politicians and judges. When word broke that Rogerson, at the age of 73, was wanted for murder again, I, like a lot of other people, couldn’t believe it and later kicked myself for being so naive.
The old man in the camelcoloured jacket, who spent his time having a few beers and telling stories of the past, was a cold-blooded killer whose legacy of murder and corruption will now be buried with him. of justice over $110,000 hidden in bank accounts under false names. Serves three years in jail.
FEBRUARY 17, 2005
Rogerson convicted of lying to the 1999 Police Integrity Commission alongside his wife and is sentenced to 12 months’ jail.
MAY 27, 2014
Arrested with ex-cop Glen McNamara over the murder of drug dealer Jamie Gao, 20, in Padstow.
JUNE 15, 2016
Rogerson and McNamara found guilty of murdering Gao (left), with Rogerson sentenced to life in jail.