‘Old man’ of crime hits back
What a notorious villain and suspected killer told lawyer about murder rumours before his death
Out of the blue, a wiry pensioner with trimmed white whiskers and riding a bicycle turned up at the Jervois Rd chambers of Auckland barrister Gary Gotlieb.
The unannounced visitor needed no introduction: it was Leslie Maurice Green, a professional criminal who had spent 30 years in prison for a long rap sheet that included a 15-year sentence for a spree of armed bank holdups with an enormous .44 Magnum pistol.
Green had been a client for many years. Gotlieb first represented the notorious bank robber after his arrest in 1993, then successfully got the 20-year sentence reduced to 15 years in the Court of Appeal.
They kept in touch and, years later, Gotlieb helped Green get parole by exposing the flimsy credentials of the psychologist who recommended he serve every day of his sentence.
Gotlieb became one of the few people Green, who was somewhat of a loner, trusted, so every now and then he would turn up without an appointment to chat with the veteran lawyer.
Never one to say much, let alone on his criminal past, on one occasion Green mentioned he was aware of “rumours” circulating in the criminal underworld that he was responsible for several unsolved murders.
“He said they were based entirely on speculation and gossip and that ‘all the gossips just backed up each other’s b ******* ,” Gotlieb told the Weekend Herald.
“That’s when Les asked me to stick up for him ‘if they try this b ******* when I’m gone’. It’s easy to slag off someone who is ‘a crim’ and is now dead. He was indeed a criminal, but he was not a murderer.”
Gotlieb is referring to a recent Herald story, based on police and coronial files, that revealed Green was nominated as a suspect in the deaths of six people in the 1970s and 80s: Marion Granville, Anna Fiore and Bernard Gray, Ronald Jorgensen, Mervyn Rich and David Wilkins. Green was never charged with murder and died in 2019 at the age of 82.
“There is some evidence connecting Green to some of these disappearances. However, it is also true Green exaggerates his involvement to promote his own image among criminals,” according to a police briefing.
The rumours about Green being a killer had made his time in prison much easier, he told Gotlieb, because “everyone treats me with respect”.
Whether this fearsome reputation was deserved, Gotlieb never saw anything in Green that made him doubt his claims to innocence for the unsolved murders.
“When Les was charged for the bank robberies, he didn’t want to defend it. His attitude was ‘I did it, I got caught, I’ll plead guilty’,” Gotlieb said.
He pointed to the Court of Appeal decision that cut Green’s 20-year prison sentence to 15, which quotes Green as saying he was a “villain, not a liar” and describes him as a “gentlemen bank robber” who would not swear if women or children were present.
Lord Cooke, president of the Court of Appeal, also noted that while Green’s .44 Magnum was loaded during the robberies, he never fired a shot even at the police who eventually caught him.
It was for that reason that a senior police officer who headed the nationwide manhunt for Green, Detective Inspector Harry Quinn, refused to swear an affidavit opposing any reduction in sentence.
“Les Green had some kind of moral code as a criminal,” Quinn previously told the Herald. “He could have shot those young police officers chasing him, blown them away. But he chose not to, he did the right thing.
“If I argued to keep him inside longer, as the police officer with the most knowledge about his crimes, what message would that send to the criminal underworld? That there was nothing to be gained from not shooting police officers.”
Despite Green’s moral code as an “old school villain”, the now retired Quinn is still convinced Green was a killer.
“There is no doubt in my mind [Green] killed that couple from Australia [Anna Fiore and Bernard Gray]. We knew he had murdered five or six people but there was simply no evidence.”
As befitting of his long standing in the law, the final word on the matter goes to Gotlieb.
“There is a reason that people are told not to speak ill of the dead . . . the dead cannot defend themselves.”