Roger Rogerson The killer cop’s wife stands by him
The wife of disgraced former detective Roger Rogerson still visits him in the prison where he will die
It’s hard not to notice the immaculately groomed woman waiting patiently outside Long Bay jail. With not a hair out of place, Anne Melocco doesn’t look like your typical jailhouse visitor.
The second wife of Australia’s most corrupt cop, Roger “the Dodger” Rogerson, insists she will stand by him until the end, despite rumours he was planning to divorce her in a bid to secure her financial future.
“She lied for him, stuck by him and, to the shock of friends, hung in there,” explains Duncan Mcnab, a former police officer, who wrote the biography Roger Rogerson.
“I have no doubt for the rest of her days – and his – she will continue to stand by him and I doubt she’ll ever stop visiting him. She’s obsessed with him, something I believe will always be the case until the day one of them dies.”
Before he was uncovered as a cold-blooded killer, Rogerson, now the subject of TV miniseries Blue Murder: Killer Cop, was one of Australia’s most decorated police officers, wielding justice against Sydney’s crooks and
underworld figures – but he was playing both sides of the fence.
“Before the fall, he was lauded as the best we had, the bloke you’d turn to for the toughest cases when the job had to be done by any means,” Duncan says.
SPLIT PERSONALITY
“Roger was a real charmer. I’d seen him work a jury like a fine actor who made everyone in the audience feel as though he was talking only to them.”
Rogerson had two daughters with first wife Joy – Gillian and Melinda – and enjoyed a stable family life. But in the late ’80s, Joy started to realise that he wasn’t all she thought he was.
“Joy realised she had two husbands: the dedicated father, good neighbour and great copper, and the bastard he really was,” says the detective sergeantturned-investigative reporter.
“One hint might have been when he introduced her to Sydney underworld figure Neddy Smith. He brought his work home, which was a major no-no!”
At work, his actions became more and more reckless.
“I was at Internal Affairs when hen [undercover drug squad officer] Michael Drury was shot in 1984. Weeks later, Drury took a turn for the worse and they thought he’d die. He gave a dying deposition, which implicated Rogerson in his shooting,” reveals Duncan. “Coppers don’t arrange the murder of other coppers, or so we thought. My boss shook his head and said, ‘It can’t be Roger, he’s too good a bloke.’”
His secret life, however, was fast catching up with him and it wasn’t long before Rogerson was sent to jail for attempting to pervert the course of justice after hiding his ill-gotten gains in a false bank account.
Joy divorced him in the early 1990s, and she and their daughters distanced themselves from the now-disgraced detective. ctive.
“I understand one daughter ughter doesn’t have anything gmuch much to do with her father andnd the other does her duty but not with enthusiasm,” Duncan uncan says.
Rogerson’s successesuccesses and his eventual downfallwnfall impacted heavily on hisis family.
‘He was, in fact, a homicidal sociopath’
“I reckon ckon it was devastating on Joy and his kids,” Duncan says. “Imagine Imagine finding a man idolised by you and his peers, a bloke beloved in the neighbourhood as a good Samaritan, was in fact
a corrupt, thieving, homicidal sociopath. “The only Rogerson left is Owen, an honest copper who had his career prospects destroyed by his brother’s notoriety.”
Rogerson’s story was the focus of the original 1995 drama Blue Murder starring Richard Roxburgh, but little did the filmmakers know he was yet to provide thehe ending or second instalment ent – in what was to be the strangestangest twist yet.
HIS FINAL MURDER
On his releaseease from jail, he tried to make good and carve out a newew life for himself after meetinging second wife Anne. But the lure of ill-gotten gains soon suckeducked him back into a world of drug dealers, criminals and other corrupt cops. Rogerson was implicated, along with fellow ex-detective Glen Mcnamara, in the 2014 murder of Jamie Gao in a drug deal gone wrong.
In 2016, the pair were both sentenced to life imprisonment, and it is unlikely Rogerson will ever taste freedom again. Anne still regularly visits him, and he is said to be “respected” among the other criminals.
“He’s a charmer all right – in prison he’ll target the most susceptible and move in,” Duncan says. “Roger is a predator, hunting for opportunities. He will offer advice, spin yarns. That old charm and wealth of experience will insulate him against the brutality of a prison.”
Duncan’s book Roger Rogerson (Hachette, $19.99) is out now.