30 years of service
Detective Senior Sergeant Mark Stringer has had a huge career with the NT Police, working on many big cases
Detective Senior Sergeant Mark Stringer retired on Friday, after 33 and a half years in the NT Police force. He’s had a distinguished career managing bikies, cracking down on drug suppliers, investigating murders and keeping the peace in East Timor. He’s been threatened by hardened criminals and recognised by his superiors. He is the longest serving detective on the force and leaves as the officer in charge of the Drug and Organised Crime Division.
“I t’s quite ironic that one of Darwin’s best known drug dealers is the reason why I became a policeman.”
It was year 11, when students were completing their work experience, when Mark Stringer first considered a career in the police force.
“A few of the other guys had done their work experience going out with the police and they said it was great,” he said.
“You get to drive around in fast cars, shoot guns and chase crime and it was good fun.”
It was off the recommendation from another teen that he eventually joined the force at the age of 21.
“He did the police work experience. Since then I’ve arrested him for dealing drugs.”
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Stringer cut his teeth at cockroach castle — now the TraveLodge Mirambeena Resort.
The former police training headquarters, the property earned its name in the obvious way but in Darwin’s heyday it didn’t matter.
“There was a lot of shenanigans going on there as well, a lot of partying and drinking as we used to do as young recruits,” he said.
“Three days a week we used to have to be there at 6am to go for a run and physical training and quite often you’d only have got home from the nightclub at five o’clock in the morning and rolling up there at 6 0’clock for a 10k run.
“They don’t do that anymore, those days are long gone.”
During the year-long training Stringer was sent to Alice Springs to complete his onthe-road training.
“I graduated and did a couple of years in general duties in Darwin but I was very much drawn towards investigation and wanted to be a detective,” he said.
“After two years in general duties I did my detectives exam and training course and got a job in the drug force in 1989.”
Over the years he’s had small breaks from the drug squad but he’s always returned.
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Some of Darwin’s most gruesome, and most well known, crimes have been investigated by Stringer.
In one, he discovered a man, David Kevin Loader, had
killed a man before eating part of his leg.
Another killed his estranged wife, Edna Angeles, and stepdaughter, Zsa Zsa Vergara.
In this case, Stringer managed to put John Allan Angeles away for the double murder.
But these investigations didn’t come without a mental toll on the detective.
The brutal bludgeoning of the women, and the fact that Angeles made efforts to make the deaths look like sexual assaults, affected Stringer for a long time.
“I was the arresting officer and interviewing officer and that I guess was one of the highlights to be able to put a criminal like that away,” he said.
“While I don’t condone it by any means there’s an understanding about why it’s happened because it’s so common.
“What really got to me was the 14-year-old daughter who had nothing to do with it, who asleep in another bedroom — this evil man came in with an iron bar and smashed her head to pieces just to cover his tracks that he had killed her mother. Why not just leave it at that?
“He’s come in and killed a 14-year-old girl who had nothing to do with anything in a really brutal way.”
While the case had a profound effect on Stringer, there was satisfaction in being able to put the killer away.
During the investigation, Stringer spent hours with Angeles, working his way in to his trust and his mind.
“I had to spend a lot of time with the man to get into his brain and his psyche to get him to confess to that. I have to befriend him knowing what he did and who he was to get that information out of him,” he said.
“It’s a largely a lost skill, the old school detectives that I came up with, we used to pride ourselves on being able to get information out of people, whether it be getting information out of witnesses or offenders.”
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Stringer’s dogged approach to the case of James O’Connell’s murder in late 2006 lead to his Commissioner’s Commendation and eventually the Australian Police Medal.
The investigation took about a year for the Senior Sergeant, because at first police only knew the 24-year-old was missing.
“He (Mr O’Connell) was basically listed as a missing person by his family,” Stringer said.
“There were a lot of conspiracy theories raised by the family even to the extent that police were involved in his murder or had killed him and I was brought in to cover it up as the lead investigator.”
The 24-year-old was eventually found dead near the burnt out shell of his car in a creek bed near Elizabeth Valley Rd.
Philip Mather plead guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to 15 years in jail, with a non-parole period of nine years.
The two had got in to a fight over the disappearance of Mr O’Connell’s $400 esky at which point Mather bashed his friend and then put him into the boot of his car and set it a light.
“It took me about a year of solid investigation to actually get enough evidence to arrest and convict the murderer,” Stringer said.
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In the early 2000s Stringer was seconded to the United Nations peacekeeping force to help bring order back to East Timor after they were given independence from Indonesia.
The tiny country was left reeling after hundreds of thousands of Timorese people were murdered.
“There had been a lot of nasty murders and atrocities committed during the Indonesian occupation of East Timor,” he said.
“I was one of the first contingents to come in as a civilian police officer to help restore law and order. That was a highlight of my career.”
Stringer was posted to a small village towards the border of East and West Timor and spent many of his eight months in the country processing refugees who were coming back across the border from West Timor.
“A lot of them were actually involved in militia atrocities and they were coming back and trying to sneak back in to reintegrate into the community,” he said.
“The community knew who they were. Quite often we had to stop them from being beaten to death.”
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As Stringer walked out of his office for the last time on Friday, he looked to the future.
In his retirement he plans to spend more time riding his motorbike.
The former Senior Sergeant had a reputation of putting away the bad guys, but outside of work he was known for his musical aptitude in several local bands.
Now he’s hoping to find much more time to play.