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Welcome to Real Crime with Adam Shand.

I'm your host, Adam Shand.

Let's talk about a.

Murder mystery Today.

August third, nineteen ninety eight, a small businessman in the motor trade, Gianni John Ferlan, was on his way to work in Melbourne's North.

The forty eight year old was driving his white Suberu Liberty sedan north along Lawrenceon Avenue near Merlinston Railway station.

When it exploded.

The force of the explosion killed John instantly, catapaulting his vehicle fifteen meters down the road, shattering nearby shop windows and spraying debris over three hundred meters away.

The power of the blast breaking windows of houses and shops along the quiet street.

But miraculously nobody else was physically injured.

At first, it was thought to be an accident, an exploding LPG tank perhaps, but Furlin's car didn't run on gas.

He'd been killed with a huge car bomb.

A deadly car bombing in Melbourne's North remains one of Australia's most baffling unsolved mysteries.

That murder is still unsolved all these years later.

Victoria Police have recently increased a one hundred thousand dollars reward to one million dollars for information about who was responsible.

Senior police say they're refusing to give up until those responsible are brought to justice.

In twenty eleven, Arson and Explosive detective Tina Kemp reviewed the case and knows more about it than anyone else who wasn't involved in it.

It's a case that she can't let go, and I'm pleased to welcome her into the real crime studio, can I?

Tina?

Adam?

How are you good?

Thanks?

Of all the cases you covered in your career, this one I think is the one that you've always felt was left incomplete, correct.

Yeah, there are so many more avenues of inquiry to cover some of the bases.

It's just one of those ones that doesn't have a clear motive, and that's been really tricky to navigate through that.

Yeah.

I think you once said that it was like being given a book without the final chapters.

Correct, And even some of the chapters in between are missing as well, and you just have to find which Well, sometimes you've given chapters are not even relevant, so you've got to work out which ones belonging the book and which ones don't even so.

It's quite a bit to this one, but it's really interesting and I was thoroughly engaged and enjoyed working on it, and at times I thought, God, I can't believe I'm getting paid to do this is fabulous.

Yeah, it would have been nice if you were able to put some people behind bars.

There's still a possibility of it, because there are still suspects out there in this murder, and it is a very tricky one because the motive is not clear.

John Ferlin was not an underworld figure.

He was a small businessman.

He had his normal range of disputes and issues with people, but nothing that seemed to amount to a motive for murder.

And there is this sort of cast of characters we really should work through before we get too much further.

The main suspect that you were presented with was a fellow called Domenico Italiano, who was a half pied gangster from Carlton.

His grandfather had been reputed to be the head of the Italian mafia back in the fifties, but Domenico was not of the same milk whatsoever.

He was more of a con man and he was operating what I believed to be illegal car raffles back in the day where there would raffle a car in a bogus raffle, and really it was a way of selling a vehicle to somebody at a cheap price and pretend that it was the winnings of a raffle.

Have I got that right?

Yes, from I didn't delve in too much into the raffle side of things that had already been written off earlier.

But in your previous inquiry so that you pinpointed that John had actually been offered a car in amongst that to pay a debt back to Dominica Taliano.

So that sort of changes things in that respect as well.

Because John had a car yard next to his house there on Sydney Road in Coburg, and Italiano was leasing that car yard, and of course he fell behind in the rent and there was a dispute over that.

And the theory that you investigated was that this bogus raffle was going to be he was going to become the winner John was in lieu of the rent that he owed, at least Taliano owed.

Yes.

I believe that specific aspect was something that you uncovered when you were looking at it yourself a while back.

We certainly did look at the raffles, and we looked at the broken lease on the car yard next to his place.

There was a whole.

Host of things that we did look at, and to me, it seems with Dominique Taliano, it wasn't perhaps just the one thing, but it was that Furlan had become a bit of a thorn in his side in a number of ways.

He owed him money, you know, they'd broken Carli's, he was trying to get another caryard.

Maybe that raffle came into it.

And yeah, so I think he'd just become a little bit of thorny's side and thought that perhaps life was easier for dominic if John Ferlan.

Wasn't in it, well if he killed him.

And I think that was the problem for police, that none of these things seemed to amount to a substantial enough motive for murder.

And there were other issues apparently that Ferlin had given up Italiano to fair trading over these raffles, and also some other dodgy stuff that Italiana was doing in the car trade.

Yes, that's correct, and John Ferlin had been charged and find himself.

I didn't think it was a massive amount, maybe eight hundred dollar fine or something thereabouts.

I think nineties.

I'd have to go back to the file if I had it.

In ninety six ninety seven thereabouts, it was reported who particularly annoyed that others such as.

Italiano and other people were still.

Doing similar sort of things and getting away with it, and that rubbed him the wrong way.

So apparently became quite a nuisance by ringing almost weekly or perhaps even more to make complaints about these people, and subsequently charges.

Were laid or fines.

There was one I'm aware of that.

Italiano had somebody else to take the fall for him on that one, and that was worth about fifteen grand.

So we're talking, you know, late sort of ninety so that's a fair wack of money back then.

And his own company, Moldenfield Proprietary Limited, they were also fine.

And if you look through the list back then, there are a few companies that italianas associates were involved in those companies, and so I think that's sort of another area as well.

Well.

I try and you mentioned that Ferland was a thorn in the side of Italiano.

I think Ferloon need though he wasn't a crook, but he was a bit of hotthead, wasn't he?

What sort of person was he?

My understanding was a bit of a hot head and a hard businessman, very loyal to his friends.

But you know, there might be some smallish kind of issues with he might sell something that was reconditioned as perhaps better condition or knewer than it was.

You know, nothing overly massive that wouldn't go on in a lot of those kind of businesses.

I did look into, and other investigators looked into whether he did have some sort of criminal activities going on.

I know the registration of the vehicle that he was killed while striving was registered in the country, and it kind of seemed a very back door way of getting it registered because it was an imported car from Japan that shouldn't have been registered in Australia because it didn't comply with the standards here.

But somehow at this country vic Rood's office, the number of the engine the number vehicle identification number was entered with a number of digits that suited Australia's system.

But if it had been entered in I think there were seventeen digits in one or the other can't remember which way it went now with nine digits were required, but he's had seventeen or vice versa.

So that ended up allowing the car to be registered here when it really shouldn't been.

It should have only been used for parts.

So then I was looking at did he have a little bit of a scam going with that kind of thing?

He also is a drugs involved I mean that's also always a thing we look at, you know, are they importing drugs inside these vehicles?

Because dominicantly, Taliano and Ferlin used to both be at the car auctions.

They would see each other at those sort of locations as well, so I thought, well, are they up to something more that is behind the scenes that we.

Just don't know about.

But I could never really find.

That he was up to anything illegally in that way that could have cost.

Him his life, because I think there was one avenue of an inquiry where I know in Melbourne there was a lot of heroin dealing going on through used car lots where people would deliver heroin around Melbourne using cars from lots, and I think that was looked at at one moment, but it didn't seem to pan out.

Correct and also rebirthing vehicles that was pretty big back then as well, stolen vehicles that would be altered and you know, in a chop shop sort of thing, and whether he had been involved in that sort of thing as well, But we couldn't really establish anything like that.

So in the end, it seems that he was just a small businessman.

That wouldn't be like anybody else that walks down the street that you would probably meet not thinking twice about.

So that part is really puzzling.

The motive and whether it's just that whole mixed bag of things that really annoyed Italio and getting focus on him when if he was up to something dodgy himself.

He's not going to want attention from anybody.

And that was the challenge for investigators, wasn't it, Because massive facts, some minor motivations, no conclusive evidence, so very difficult to proceed.

And when you look at the circumstances of the bombing, the car had been parked at Ferlin's house on Sydney Road, Coburg over the weekend while he'd gone to Tasmania for fishing, so one would presume the bomb was planted at that time.

I believe so they would have had easy access to the vehicle at that point.

Nobody was staying at the house while John was in Tasmania, and there's a lane way at the back of the house that I would think would be fairly easy access to get over that.

And I'm aware that one of the back doors wasn't locking properly either in the vehicle, so they wouldn't even need to break in as such, they just try the doors.

And they had been doing surveillance, so maybe they might have even been aware of some of that minor.

Detail as well, so they once so inside the yard.

The yard had a really high fence at the front and still to this day as far as I know, high fence, high gates or timber so you can't see through, So they would have had a nice little protected area from anybody.

Seeing what they were up to.

And there was a number of cigarette butts found at the scene, which I believe that you discovered in the exhibits, and I think they've been compared on DNA databases and so forth and really haven't come up with any matches.

That's great.

Well, as far as I know, two of them have John Fillin's profile were matched to two of them, and maybe some partials on some of the other.

And I did request further testing, and I think Jeff Marr recently mentioned that they were sort of being retested again, and I had tried to and it might be that they regularly do that run that through anyway on these sort of major unsolves, but nothing of interest as far as.

Who might have been in the yard.

But I had always wanted to perhaps.

Put out a call, and you know, this is not something that I'd run past the bosses as far as put out a bit of a call to his friends and family who would have been in the front yard smoking.

They knew that they were in the art smoking and volunteer their DNA so that they could be identified at least and not one hundred percent eliminated.

They could be involved who we don't know, but at least it might narrow down who contributed to those cigarette butts on the ground, right.

And Jeff Marr was your senior sergeant back at Arsenal and Explosives.

He's now working at the Academy, still involved in this case, helping out.

And again it's one of those cases that just defies solution.

It stays in people's minds.

Now.

The interesting thing about the way the bomb is detonated is I understand it was that it wasn't a timing device, it wasn't a pressure device.

It had to be detonated manually with a line of sight.

And there were two vehicles, one red land cruise I believe or missing patrol that was seen in the area before the day and on the day, and there was a guy driving it who had a very particular eagle tattoo on one forearm.

This was seen and I guess it was believed that this one might have detonated the bomb.

Yes, that's correct.

And he does appear throughout the investigation and turns up again after as far as the inquiries goes.

He even inserts himself into the whole inquiry by attending at St.

Kildo Police Complex, which was the headquarters for the crime department back then.

Yet very interesting character.

I didn't get to meet him, unfortunately.

He committed suicide a few weeks after his last contact with Jeff mar And he would confess to all sorts of things then sometimes retract that.

But then if he did scratch around and have a bit of a look to try and corroborate things.

Sometimes some of the most amazing things that he was confessing to were actually real.

I give you the main example was he put his hand up for a bombing that he did at a house in Flemington that I think was probably requested or orchestrated by these same people.

Behind this bomb.

But he also someone very close to him had committed a murder and he helped dispose of the body as in this particular fellow, and he phoned police and said, if you go out to this particular freeway on the side of the freeway, you'll find a body.

And in the end they had to have a couple of looks and they finally found it.

He ended up getting charged for well, the other person got charged with murder and he got charged with helping dispose of the body.

So you can't just sort of dismiss any of his claims because sometimes they were really good information.

You're talking about Philip Lander, also known as Philip Matthews, and he was a young man I think he was nineteen at the time or twenty when this car bomb detonated, And you're right, it comes in two thousand and four to the police unannounced and says I killed John Ferland and this doesn't happen.

A walk up start to a confession like this just simply doesn't happen.

And Jeff Maher it was your boss, interviewed him and some parts of his evidence were very compelling.

Others were doubtful, and it led them to overall have doubts about him.

You were reading about him in the file and when you mentioned the murder there, of course, this was a murder committed by his twin brother.

Correct, Yes, so he ends up giving up his twin brother for a murder.

This boy liked to confess.

And I don't know if that was something that he would be involved with these things, but then he'd be a little bit at odds with himself on what he'd done and what to come clean.

It was with this one.

With John Ferlan's murder, it was like he wanted to get it off his chest.

And you know, I don't know his motivation for committing suicide where this was part of it and it was just the guilt factor and maybe other things that he'd done.

But I also think he and his brother were raised in the school of hard knocks, so that I think there's a lot of demons in there.

For him, and it's funny, but I kind of got to like him a little bit, almost like he was the underdog, which is kind of weird.

I've not really felt that towards anybody else that I've investigated, or certainly.

That's got a criminal history like his.

But it was almost like I wanted him to sort of be able to offload this and succeed.

But you know, already by the time I was anywhere near the file, he was long gone.

Well, it's interesting because he does commit suicide weeks after he turns up and kill or rode police headquarters, and even the manner of his death if you're a conspiracy theorist, could get you excited because he attaches a hose from his car exhaust into the vehicle and gases himself like that, you know, I mean, if you're a conspiracy theorist, as I say, you might say, well, maybe he was killed to cover up his confessions, to stop him giving more d tale.

Yes, And that's something that would have been looked at it at the time, given the involvement that he'd had in this matter, and just is you know, in other matters that he'd been involved in and the type of people that he mixed with and mingled with.

He could easily have been the target of somebody, but there was nothing established in that respect.

It was a non suspicious action that I believe he committed suicide.

Yeah, the toxicology didn't show any sedatives or anything else.

He might have been compelled to kill himself, not that.

I'm aware of.

I did read the autopsy results in that, but I don't recall anything other than just the whole situation with the car.

Yeah.

I think if there had been anything that suggested foul play, your bosses would have been strayed on too.

I mean, Jeff mar being one of the best homicide detectives in the state, he would have been right onto this.

But nothing was found, so that had to be so frustrating because there the evidence seemed to stop.

And for instance, he did talk about other explosive detonators at a property up in the country.

He did talk about bearing detonators, explosives and other items in the country somewhere there yet to be found, and that could be critical evidence to standing up what he did tell police in the past that he was the bomber.

Absolutely, and I believe that that those items were there at some stage.

I mean, the investigations earlier did establish that he went out to a particular location near where he lived many years ago, and he spent time at that location, and we did I was involved too with a search.

We had ground penetrating radar, we had drug dogs, explosive dogs to try and establish where that was.

And at one stage I got very excited because I found this nice area there and we thought, oh, we're onto something here.

But in the end it was just pushing and mounding for where they bopped off the track for vehicles.

But I was so hoping that we would find something there.

But it's often crossed my mind just to go out as a little bit of a you know, a member of the public and just have a bit of a poke around if it's not there.

I think it was, and that's where some people will know.

The friends of his and I think even his brother were aware of what was there, as Phil Matthews himself said that there were things in there, like maps of where he was supposed to do the surveillance on Ferlin.

There were explosive leftover Balaclavi's and you know, all sorts of things.

A good little crooks kit and that'd be magnificent to be able to find.

Well, because you'd probably have DNA on there as well.

And you could, of course, you've got his twin brother who's still alive.

You could compare the DNA to him and say, well, this is Phil Matthew's little cachet.

Yes, And that was going just briefly back to the cigarette butts.

That was something I thought, Oh, I wonder if any of these cigarette butts were Phil Matthews and thought, oh, only he had an evil twin brother who already had his profile on the system.

And I was like, oh, okay, maybe not evil.

That's probably well, I don't know, he's committed.

For so I think we can call him out.

He's committed murder, so he's probably not squeaky clean, and you know, he's an identical twin And unfortunately there there was no match there.

So that was always the challenge to connect Philip Matthews with Domenico Italiano, who the theory went, had ordered the murder.

And as I talked to people when I've been looking this case over a number of years, I started to get a profile of Matthews as someone who was incredibly willing and wanted to do this wasn't seeking even there's no discussion of money, And I wonder whether there's a discontinuous link between Matthews and Italiano, whereby some people talk to Philip Matthews while he's in jail and say, you could make a name for yourself by blowing up this individual, he goes and does it.

It may not have been directly ordered by Italiano, even though he benefited from that.

Do you think that's possible.

Part of the investigation did look at whether there was talk and we never could quite confirm it whether he actually did the Flemington bombing A is a bit of a run up to this one to show that he could do it and then he would do it, and also that by also confessing to that that was another situation where he's gone in and said, oh, you know, I did that bombing and he ended up being locked up as a result of that.

But there was some suggestion that that was so that he could be inside to have the discussion with these two particular people that were already inside, to have that approach made through them.

So it's a little bit of an obscure kind of way of going about it.

But I did look at those people and they were in prison at the same time, and he gave a location in the prison where that conversation took place.

So I checked those units and the floor plan and everything to see if that could have taken place at that location.

So we did have a look at that.

I've actually corroborated that with another sawce who knew both Ferl and Italiano.

Those individuals did have links to Italiano and could well have been the organizers and the urgers for Matthews to do what he did.

So it's fascinating and of course we should just go to Italiano to ask him what happened, but we can't because, as luck would have it, he was jailed.

In fact, Jeff Maher when he was looking at these dodgy raffles as part of the film and investigation that well, here's some offenses here, and Italiana was charged, went to jail, and when he came out, he decided to visit the wife or girlfriend of his former cell mate, which is a bit cheeky.

What happened then, well.

My understanding is there was a little blue pill involved with a session with this lady and he died in the process of having an enjoyable afternoon or evening with her.

So that was the end of Dominique.

Taliano died on the job.

Yes, this is a case that just keeps on giving.

There some things in it that you you know, it's like stranger than fiction sort of thing.

You couldn't make some of this up, or if only an egle twin brother, or this sort of death of the main suspect.

So it's like somebody's written it for a TV series, but it's real.

And what struck me when I was in Perth, I had a good look at the killing of Don Hancock and he's mate Louis Lewis ex Coppers.

That was in two thousand and one, first of September, and the bomb in that case was very, very similar to the bomb that was used to kill John Ferland.

The large amount of explosives set under the passenger seat, slightly different mechanism for detonation, but I think there was enough similarities for police and Victoria to go Matt's notes with Western Australia to see if there's still a bomb maker at large somewhere.

That's correct.

Yeah, it certainly didn't go and noticed the similarities and our expert here, John calliher very very experienced and very intelligent man, is probably one of my.

Most favorite people in the world.

He and his equivalent in Western Australia, they did compare notes a lot.

I think Western Australia learned a lot from the way that the investigation was conducted here, and some of those similarities are very very similar that if it's not the same person, you have to think that they had knowledge from that person or some sort of extension of it, because it's there are too many similarities just you know, even to the placement location in the car to be completely coincidental that we just don't have that many of the bombings for it to be too.

Out of two kind of thing.

And car bombings are very rare in Australia.

And if you have skills like this and other people will want to hire you, I think that would be a very reasonable line of inquiries.

So that's one of the interesting things.

Like Matthews is dead, obviously, Furland's dead, Italiano's dead.

Who do we charge now if there's anything coming forth, and you've got a couple of options.

If there is the technician who supplied the materials knew how they were going to be used.

There's an accessory.

And what I find fascinating is that we still have Philip Matthew's ex girlfriend, and we actually doorknocked the street where he used to live and talk to the neighbors who'd been there for a million years, and they said, yes, there was all kinds of funny goings on at that house.

There were people coming and going, there was cars, and there was equipment going in and out.

So it seems like there was something criminal going on there.

And Matthew's girlfriend, while not being involved in it in any way, she was never a suspect, but she will have information that could eventually close this case.

Absolutely, and it would be wonderful as she would come forward and even Phil's twin brother to finish off what seemed to be trying to do, to offload it from his conscience.

And his girlfriend at the time was very staunch, and even after they split up, she still wouldn't divulge much in.

The way of information.

And there's various reasons that we know she knew more.

She was already talking about it being a bombing before it was known to be a bombing.

Initially, it was thought to be an LPG tank that had exploded in the vehicle, but the car wasn't fitted with a vehicle.

It didn't come out till later in the day.

As far as I'm aware that it was actually a bomb that had occurred, but she apparently had been referring to it as a bombing prior to that being known in the public, so that I thought was very interesting.

But you know, this has not really come directly from her, but she would be able to provide a lot of information.

And also the associates.

There's an associate that Phil had back at the time I think would be able to help with some information about Phil and what he was up to, what he was capable of with as far as putting where could he put a bomb together?

Would he have known?

Would he know where to go and get the resources or get the components that he needed for the bomb?

And I think that person is it's probably pretty key as well.

The girlfriend, his twin brother, and this particular person I've got in mind, I think could really advance investigation well.

And there's one million reasons to come forward now I'd like to keep working out so I can claim the rewards somehow.

If there's a way of doing it.

And it's funny how there are quite a lot of these million dollar rewards in Victoria.

They're very rarely paid out, but I think this one is something that is one that could be paid out.

And what would your advice be.

Sometimes people are too close to crimes they and they fear that they might be prosecuted as well.

But I think if they're lesser offenses, there's usually something that can be done so their information can be used and they can avoid prosecution.

That's my understanding of it.

I mean to be honest, I get most of my information on that from just TV shows myself.

I don't know that much about what is on offering that respect, but I believe they'd be able to come to some agreement and understanding where they'd either not be prosecuted, or there might be lesser charges, or there'd be some trade off where the information that they could provide be more valuable to investigators than them staying silent.

So it's certainly something.

That would be good for them to discuss and then they can make that informed decision whether they would want to take it any further or not.

We'll leave it there, Tina, Thank you so much, for your time today.

You're very welcome and good luck with it all.

That was Tina Kemp, the detective who reviewed the murder case of John fernand blown up in a car bomb back in nineteen ninety eight.

There is a million dollars on office, so if you can help in this case, maybe send me an email first, but you can also call the police.

A crime stoff is one eight hundred, triple three, triple ero.

Your information will always be treated as confidential, but you can also email me if you like as well.

I'd like to know what happened to myself as with Tina, So Adam Shand writer at gmail dot com, thank you for listening.

This has been real crime with Adam Shanmed.

This is Adam Shand signing off.

Thanks for listening.