JOONAS SUOTAMO THERE’S A NEW FURBALL!
In jail for fraud, mum-of-two Kerry Tucker found herself on dangerous turf with a mass killer’s wife
Finnish pro basketball player-turned-actor Suotamo, 31, was a body double in 2016’s The Force Awakens for the original Chewbacca, Peter Mayhew. Now the 2.1m Suotamo is on his own inside the Wookiee suit for Chewie’s biggest outing yet. “I spent time in front of the mirror before shooting, trying to get that looseness and that Chewbacca-style walk,” he says. The voice, however, he can do on command. “You start by learning how to do the tongue trill,” he says. “I started the day before I met Harrison Ford. I wanted to impress him!”
In custody, awaiting sentencing for stealing $1.96 million from businesses she worked for between 1997 and 2003, in what was then the worst case of white- collar crime by a female in Australia, Melbourne mum Kerry Tucker made a silent pledge to her two young daughters, Shannyn and Sarah: “One day I will leave this place and you will be proud that I am your mummy. I promise.”
It was no easy task. Over the four years she was incarcerated, Tucker, who after her release was a consultant on prison TV series Wentworth, became a source of inspiration at the Dame Phyllis Frost maximum security prison (DPFC) in outer Melbourne. She helped uneducated prisoners write correspondence and apply for parole, challenged the prison’s bullying culture, and obtained a university degree—all while sharing space with notorious criminals such as Roberta Williams, the wife of slain Melbourne gangland boss and murderer Carl Williams. In this edited extract from her memoir, The Prisoner (co-written with journalist Craig Henderson), Tucker, who lives in Melbourne, reveals how she came to blows with the wife of a mass killer. Brushing up against notoriety is par for the course in prison. Almost everywhere you turn you’ll bump into someone who has made headlines for all the wrong reasons. Still, it’s strange to think I shared a couple of close links with the late mass murderer and notorious gangland boss Carl Williams.
Firstly, Carl and I were both investigated by the ladies and gentlemen from the famed Purana Taskforce. Secondly, we both at one time or another had to put up with Carl’s ex-wife, Roberta. When Roberta arrived at Deer Park after being charged with creditcard fraud she had yet to be immortalised on the small screen in Underbelly. She was, however, already a household name in Victoria thanks to her maniac ex-husband’s penchant for slaughtering people in order to stay atop the state’s bloodsoaked drug-dealing pile.
Melbourne’s gangland war was the biggest story in the country and its cast of shady characters was plastered across the pages of The Age and the Herald-sun almost daily. Everyone knew who Roberta was. Although she didn’t require protection, she was a high enough profile crim that she was kept in the slot until management figured out where best to place her.