And started to draw his gun, and Dad put his shotgun in his face and said, dropped.

If naees, Clive, I'm going to blow your head off.

Clive didn't move.

Clive just stood still and Dad repeated the same comment and thought, oh, yeah, the Intel's right.

His Clive's just going to be.

A bit of a mongrel.

I'm going to have to deal with him.

And his next move was he was just going to hit him with the butt of his shotgun and take him down.

I'm Andrew ruled.

This is life in Crime.

So this is the second episode of the remarkable story of Peter Norris, who's just published his book The Bank Robber's Boy, which I find very striking, and he's been kind enough to share some of his stories with us, and today we're launching the second episode, which takes us from his early days as a little boy to the middle Stages where he heads across the nuther Boar with his father the bank robber find a version of a new life and a new beginning and probably another ending.

Great to be back.

At the end of the first episode, we've got Peter leaving Beltara the State government institution and finally turn up and take you in.

You were escorted into a house with your own bedroom that was much better than anything you'd ever lived in before.

It was amazing.

Where was that, Yeah, that was just in.

It was cue just out.

In a suburb.

Yeah, nothing wrong with it.

I was well to do.

Yeah.

So there was Witch Street.

I don't remember the street, no, No, I just remember walking to the house and everything was perfect, and there was two boys that had all these belongings that they just completely disregarded.

And I was just in awe of the things that they had, all the toys, all the books, all the yeah, all the all the things.

And I was given a copy of a book called The Never Ending Story.

Yeah, by that family.

By that family, by the mother, right, yeah, just as an a.

I think it was Heather, I believe.

Yeah.

I think she was kind to me.

Yeah, so he was her idea.

It was her idea.

Yeah, it was definitely her idea, and I believe he didn't like the idea.

So I was made to sit at a separate little table in the kitchen, not with the family, and when their children got ice cream, you know, I sat there kind of with their expectation I might get something, and I remember him just shaking his head saying he doesn't get any so kidding, so just traded me a little bit different.

That would seem again, sort of oddly.

You'd think even someone who didn't agree with his wife's decision, et cetera, wouldn't do that to a kid.

Yeah, it seems.

Yeah, it seemed a little cruel, but yeah, I just remember, yeah, yeah it was.

And then this this really unfolded, But it was only a couple of days after that.

We went to a shopping center and he was taking the kids to a movie, which again and I was excluded from.

And we're just walking through a shopping center and I saw this man in the distance and just the way that he walked, I walked with this and I've never ridden up, but I have this little bow legged walk, and my dad had the exact same walk.

I saw this man walking away, not towards me, away from me, and I just freaked out and started running towards this man.

I said, that's my dad and the family.

This foster father of mine basically just grabbed me by the collar and dragged me outside and said, you're embarrassing as you're an idiot and it can't be your father he's incarcerated, he's in prison, and I couldn't be any sure that was him.

And went to bed that night and I had a bedroom to myself.

There was a tap on my window.

I can't even recall what time it was, and went to the window and looked down because I was one floor up and there was Dad standing there in the same clothes that i'd seen that right, So we found me.

He was looking for me.

I've got no idea how he knew where I was.

He was in the right subject, but he was in the right suburb.

Pretty good at it, pretty good at it.

A few things.

Yeah, So yeah, I jumped down out of that glass.

Dad caught me in a quick hug, and he just whispered, we need to go.

He just took you, just took me, and you just vanished from that place.

I never saw them.

Again, never saw them again.

How long were you at Heather's.

I would have been there for I reckon about six six weeks.

It was.

It was really her way of doing something for sort of a lost kid.

Yeah, A temporary yeah, a temporary thing, not a that's really a fostering.

Fostering, yeah exactly.

Yeah.

And it was then that you know, Dad decided it was too hot to stay Victoria, so we decided to make our way across an able.

So it was at that time, right, So this is now, you're probably twelve, is nearly still eleven?

Yeah?

Yeah, not quite twelve?

Yeap, your dad, as you've put it, your dad got a car.

You found a valiant unattended someone.

Yes, he did, yep, and that was no problem to him to wire it up.

Where did you leave from?

You remember any of that details?

We were in We're in the city, actually right in the city, and I was in a I remember being in a cafe.

I can't remember the name of the cafe.

But I think the other thing that I make really clear in my book, in my story is just these little moments of kindness, and some of them are really fleeting.

But this was one of them where this waitress, like your dad said to me, I'm going to have to leave you here on your own now.

He was clearly going off to steal this Valiant, so I'll.

Leave you here.

You and this waitress comes over and said, well, you know you want to order you like something to weakness, And I didn't know.

I didn't have any money, and she came back and she had this warm kind of blueberry muffin that she prepared for me.

In the next minute, Dad runs in the door pretty much says, we've got to go right now.

So I'm leaving the muffin and running on the door, but she's this waitress runs out with us and hands it through the window of the hot car, of the hot car as we're driving away.

And so it's just these little moments.

That's that kind of stick and that's lovely.

And so you're headed west.

Remember that road out to Balleradu Spaces.

Yeah, yeah, I guess, and then out into the Nulla ball where you had some some beautiful moments but also some tough conversations with Dad.

This was a really, probably a pitiful moment in our relationship.

You were old enough and intelligent enough and thoughtful enough to have sort of come to a few conclusions at this age.

Yeah, what what was that pivotal conversation?

Yeah?

Look, part of it just came out of me being curious and wondering why we were always on the run, And I think my mind had ticked to the point, will it's got to be more than just minor discrepancies.

You know, all minor crimes.

We're constantly moving states.

When I said to Dad, you know, just to me about one of your crimes, and in some ways I was just trying to get e gauge on one of the person he was and the things that he'd been up to.

And this particular conversation, he told me about a bank robbery that he performed in Sydney and his role was to take care of a particular security guard.

Clive was his name, and Clive was known to be a real mongrel and was going to be the problem security Together, they thought the rest of them would just lay down when they're told to, but the feeling was that Clive was going to be a problem, and Dad was given the job in his crew to take care of Clive.

And yeah, so Dad just tells it as a you know.

They walked into the bank battle clovers and shotgun as expected.

The other two security guards I believe, straight down on their knees put their guns aside.

Clive, as expected, refused to do so and started to draw his gun, and Dad put his shotgun in his face and said, drop to your knees, Clive, I'm going to blow your head off.

Clive didn't move.

Clive just stood still, and Dad repeated the same comment and thought, oh, yeah, the Intel's right, is Clive's just just going to be a bit of a mongrel.

I'm going to have to deal with him.

And his next move was he was just going to hit him with the butt of his shotgun and you know, take him down.

But then he noticed that Clive's eyes were kind of rolling into the back of his head, and then Clive pissed himself.

And then it was that point that Dad he kind of flicked his hand across and hit me on the shoulder in a kind of a jokingly.

Way when he's telling you this story.

He was telling me this story, and he said, yeah, and you know, and Clive wasn't so bloody tough after all, and a bit of a laugh, and yeah, that was a really pivotal moment in our relationship because I just couldn't laugh.

I didn't see it.

In fact, all I felt was just this dread in the pit of my stomach and thinking one about it.

And I was quite a deep thinker, even an eleven, that this is a man who's pissed himself in front of his peers and also has a family to go home to, and the lasting implications of that experience for him and his family could have went on for years.

Awful life and his dad laughing laughing about.

It, And that was a moment of insight by a half grown boy into the realities of what his father was and was.

Yeah, and I'd seen enough.

I think i'd seen enough by eleven, well, and truly seen enough by eleven and experienced my own horrors at that age to know that that's not what I wanted for myself.

I wanted far better.

So this was a point where there was a realized that I loved Dad and I would do anything to spend another day with him, but I would now do anything that I could to not become him.

You go to Perth and this is the start of the rest of your life in some ways right now.

But you go to Perth.

You live in a house in Perth and sometominals.

Dad does the best he can.

What happened in Perth.

Yeah, so Dad says, look, I'm on the run.

I can't earn any money.

You're going to have to get a job.

Yeah, no worries.

There was always no worries.

By this time.

I've kind of manage to deal with stress quite well as well.

Things just didn't worry me.

So, yeah, that's okay, what do we have to do?

So we walked into the local k martin in Port Headland.

We were right now, we've made.

Our way up now and the underworld is they used to call.

It up Yeah, yeah, exactly right.

So the two people that we were sharing a house with were hiding away from something, so and yeah.

Dad got the store manager and told them that I was fifteen, despite being only eleven.

Again, with his charisma, said, oh, yeah's his birth to he gets packed away in some things we've just moved across from the East.

I bring them in as soon as I can.

And I was given a job, and you know, initially I just worked, yeah, just as a shop assistant, filling shelves and helping customers.

And I made the decision to make the most of that opportunity for Dad and I and put my head down and worked really hard and sort of didn't get caught up in any of the you know, the bullshit between workers and all the other stuff that was going on, and would have only been I think five or six weeks, and I got called into the office there was an announcement across the lad speakers, the Peter Reynolds yep to come into the manager's office, Warren's office, and I walk in and Warren said, I've got all this, all these feedback forms, Pete, and they're all just amazing.

And he said, you know, I haven't sort of seen anything like this for a very long time.

How do you feel about taking on the management of one of the departments.

You'll have some staff and there'll be an increase in your pay, and so yeah, absolutely, I'd love to take that.

And you know, and that meant that the little yellow envelope that I took home to dad every week had a bit more cash in it, which gave us some more choices.

You're about to turn twelve.

I was about to turn twelve.

Yeah, I hadn't turned twelve yet.

This is interesting and not interrupting the story too much.

When you think about children at Children's Court until I've saw something the other day, they've clearly got whiskers and they're driving there, some of them.

And you was a twelve year old offered your own department run.

Were you really a little child or were you a self sufficient independent thinker?

No, I was very yeah, self sufficient, independent thinking at that time.

I didn't really bounce anything off any even doubt at that point.

I just made my own mind up and you did and went with it, which is probably why I succeeded in this role.

And even with the management of this department, I just did exactly the same thing.

The thing that I found was and it really hasn't today.

He's just a bit of kindness and good customer service to people.

And that put me above everybody else who just was there going about their day, not really having a crack, really not really trying.

I was able to unload a palote you three times as quick as anybody else and get back to my job.

And so again, it was only four weeks later and I was handed another two departments as some of the other staff had either been fired or had left.

So I was running three departments before my twelfth birthday.

The whole team of people underneath me.

This is the got it, honest truth.

Where on the yep on the bank robber's boy yep?

Yeah?

Absolutely?

And what sort of shop was that.

It was up?

Yeah?

Wonder so And again you know there's a store manager, Warren, who's at the time whilst I was eleven, May been in his mid thirties, so Warren could still be around as well, so that'd be unround.

Remember, no, I don't well from port Headland, from Port Helen.

And how did that end up?

Well, you can guess end up with the low catching up with dad, Yeah it does.

How did that happen?

Why did it happen?

So what had happened was one of these criminals that we lived with from time to time would come across and pick me up from work and walk me home.

I was really wary of this particular person.

I'd just been paid with my little yellow envelope and Dad always said to me, I was a lad to buy a couple of comic books.

So at the time I used to buy the Archie and Richard rich comics, and so I bought one each of those and I had them under my arm.

And this individual came to pick me up.

And we used to have to.

Walk across this sort of red dust paddock to get to the house, and he stopped me and grabbed me on the arm and just I just had this weird kind of gut feeling, and he was asking me about But there was a girl just Center at Kmart, who was nearly sixteen, who took a liking to me, who thought I was fifteen, and she kept inviting me to parties.

I kept saying no anyway, he said, oh, you know, have you done it with that Justiner yet?

And I just felt disgusted by that, and I said, just you know, don't speak to her about that.

And then we walked for a little bit more and he grabbed me in again, and I said, what do you want and he said, you know what I want.

And it was just it hit me that this was a sexual thing.

So I threw my comic books down and ran.

And I was a really good runner as a youth, despite sort of not having much school, but you know, I could run like the wind.

So I ran home and Dad wasn't home yet in this house.

So I barricaded the bedroom that Dad and I shared, just with an old wardrobe and laid in there until Dad got home.

And at first Dad could tell I was not myself, and I didn't tell him, and you know, a couple of hours later I told him what had happened.

I drifted off to sleep and woke up to the sound of breaking glass and sort of walked out into the lound room and the two males that we shared a house with, one was unconscious cross coffee table.

The other one might as well have been unconscious.

He was not moving.

He was on the ground and in a pull of blood.

So Dad had obviously dealt with that.

And then we hopped in a car, found somewhere else to stay, and I went back to work the next day and again had this call over the over the speakers, Peter Ronald Peter Reynolds to the manager's office and went, oh, jeez, am I getting another department.

Well, this is great.

Walked into Warren's office and there was what ended up being there was two detectives flinking his desk.

Yeah, the two guys had dabbed at in.

I can't say for that for sure, but yeah, it seems that that was what had happened.

And their code wasn't that strong.

Their code wasn't that strong.

No, No, And then yeah, so Warren sort of came out from around the desk, and yeah, I expected him to be angry, but he sort of just looked at me and just I've just got no idea how you've managed to do this as a as an eleven year old, and then I was taken out to the police car.

So I sat in the car waiting with one of the police and the other one was and one of the detectives.

The other one was obviously dealing with whatever had to be done.

And Warren came out and he handed me my payslip and he said, you've earned this, So he paid me for the work that I'd done.

And it wasn't until later on that night that had opened up that that pay slip there was two extra weeks paying there for me cash and a little note which I detail in my book, had just said, you know money, disappointed that our journey has to end, and you'll make a great leader one day, signed off by Warren and you know today, which is again because of hip, not because of his kindness, but it certainly helped that you know, CEO and leader to him of one hundred today.

So that's quite nice.

So Dad's been arrested yet again.

Yep, you've been bustarded as a kid doing a man's job.

And so where did you go and who took you there?

Yeah, so the police took me there, and just going off to a little restpite center in I believe it was in Claremont in WA and by this time I was starting I've already started, probably earlier, just to get this feeling that I didn't want adults to make choices for me anymore.

You know, even as a state war to Victorian government, the choices they made on my behalf ended up as poor experiences.

So, you know, after I think realizing that I had enough of adults making decisions for me, and I've been shipped away by the police to another restpite center at this time in Claremont, I stayed there for one night and then the next morning, you know, I just grabbed the belongings I had, which again some photo albums you know, Toppen the Turtle, My Teddy Bear, and a few belongings for your clothes, and decided that I was just going to live on the streets for the next few months in Perth, and which I did.

Went to King's Park, obviously a big expansive spot in the middle of a Perth, and interestingly met I suppose, not unlike you know this code that I said Dad had with his criminal crew, there was a whole crew of homeless kids that you normal society wouldn't have wouldn't certainly at the time wouldn't have knowne existed.

And we would steal close off people's clotheslines at nighttime to stay warm.

We wouldn't wait for their bread and the milk deliveries that would arrive at the cafes at five six am in the morning before they open, and we grab those and steal those to eat and drink and whenever there.

Certainly myself and another individual we managed to rob a nightclub safe one evening that was left open and managed to get a heap of cash and took it back to this warehouse we were all sleeping, and woke everybody up and we fed everybody and went in to McDonald's, you know, and we ordered a hundred cheese burgers and fifty cokes and all this.

And you know that I remember the girl behind the counter just looking at me as if you know, I was just having her on and slapped this cash down on the counter, and you know, there was this cheer of these fifty homeless kids behind me.

So there's this code of you know, if one of us ate, we all ate, And to me, that sort of still sticks pretty heavily.

That you know, we looked after each other.

How long were you doing that?

I was doing that for a couple of months.

That was a moment, just a time where I just needed to remove myself from adult decisions and it was an unsafe space to be.

There was lots of.

Moments where we had to run from danger, and I you know, there's sort of lots of different cruiser kids getting around that some many that weren't as were as nice and kind as we were.

They were out to hurt people.

So we managed to talk our way or run out way out of lots of different situations.

And they slept in the park a couple of nights, we did, but we managed to find, yeah, an abandoned warehouse where and they literally would have been fifty of us who just found our little corner and looked after.

Each other and had that end.

I had this pool to get back to family, and I knew that my sister lived in Sheperdon back in Sheperdon.

Or Tina, Tina, my oldest sister, Tina, who almost killed on a motorbike at Indigo before you left Victoria.

Yeah, that's right.

It's a whole other story.

But you telled her thinking she was dying.

Yeah, the priest came and prayers over and last rites and expected to lose it.

But yeah, yeah, so that's sick.

She managed to get permission, special permission to get married.

So I suppose where my escape was to just remove myself from adults, hers was to get married to, you know, a much older man.

I think that was just just a way of trying to find security and safety at the time.

Of course that didn't last, but at the time it was the right thing for her.

Yeah.

I yet decided one day that I would hitchhike from Perth to Shepton.

So I still gent fair way, fair way for a twelve year old.

Yeah.

In fact, I had my twelfth birthday whilst I was hitchhiking.

Really where was that?

Yeah?

Well, I ended up getting caught in Ucla, so I'd made my way.

But again, talking about moments of kindness, I had, you know, one man in his fifties who picked me up and took me a fair way in the direction that he was going, and before he sort of diverted off a different way, he stopped and brought me a bag of all different types of food and bottles of water and things to take on my journey, and just wish me luck.

But anyway, I got picked up in Ukla by the voice.

It was your name on a list of Uh.

No, I actually think at the time it was probably just an eleven year old just walking through town with he shiking and someone had probably found that strange.

Though you did look fifteen.

I did look fifteen, and yeah, yeah, it's quite tall for my age, and anyway I look and then yeah, the police reported that back to the Victorian government obviously, where I was a state ward, and they decided then to return me to Victoria anyway, to my sister.

To your sister Tina, the married one, where was.

At sap in shepherd And yeah, so they actually allowed me to live with her temporarily, so I got what I wanted at that stage.

And that's the end of our second episode with Peter Norris the bank Robert Boy.

Next week, in our third and final episode, we will find out what happened when Peter got back to Victoria and was reunited with his big sister Tina in Sheperdon, which was actually the beginning of another beginning, which was probably the real big one in his life.

Thanks for having me back again, Andrew, and yeah, look forward to coming back and having another chat.

Thanks Peta, thanks for listening.

Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun production for true crime Australia.

Our producer is Johnny Burton.

For my columns, features and more, go to Haroldson dot com dot au, forward slash Andrew Rule one word.

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And if you want further information about this episode, links are in the description.