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The Maria James Murder – The Cover-Up.

The previous instalment in this series, The Catholic Mafia" can be viewed by clicking on this live link.

Maria James' Bookshop circa 1980


Source

It is often the case in history that the crime that brings an institution down is not the original transgression but the subsequent cover-up. The initial crime is often perpetrated by one or more individual members of an organisation but the cover-up, usually rushed and ad hoc, exposes the whole hierarchy as complicit in criminal activity.

Over the last twenty or so years, we have been watching the ongoing exposure of the cover-ups engaged in by that slow-motion-train-wreck otherwise known as the Catholic Church. The Church's co-conspirator organisation in what has become known as The Catholic Mafia, Victoria Police, is now undergoing its own not-so-slow-motion-train-wreck.

The Maria James murder has remained unsolved for nearly 38 years now because of police cover-ups on at least three occasions starting in 1980, then again in 1998 and finally in 2017. It might be argued that all the evidence pointing to multiple cover-ups could be due to incompetence but the incompetence would be so spectacular and so consistent that the odds of it being so approach impossibility.

We will cover only some of the peculiar events and failures that point to a massive cover-up . There are so many things wrong with this investigation that it would take a book to list and explain them all.

We will also briefly look at what the point of all this cover up is: the clear and obvious guilt of two Melbourne Catholic priests of murder.

All the following information comes from the Trace podcasts except in a couple of instances where links are given. It is presumed that the reader has listened to the podcast series and has read the previous instalments of the Maria James Murder on this blog. (Start here)

The ABC's Rachael Brown has done an excellent job of digging up and bringing together a lot of valuable information. The opinions and conclusions from that now publicly available information in the following article are those of this writer.

1980 - Murder Investigation 101

John James arrived at Maria's shop minutes after she had been murdered and called the police. The homicide squad duly arrived and one of the first things that happened is that Sen-Sgt Rowland Legg took himself off to interview the assistant parish priest, Anthony Bongiorno, at the presbytery around the corner from the shop.

This is the strangest thing. No explanation for this has ever been offered except that Legg thought that the priest might know something about the murder from a confession from Maria or another parishioner. But that does not explain why it was the first thing Rowland Legg thought to do. Did he know Maria was a Catholic? You might think to do that days or weeks after if you have no leads but to seek out a priest straight away, as the Trace program remarked on, is very odd indeed.

It is especially odd when you understand that Legg only sought to interview one of the two priests resident in St Mary's Presbytery who ministered to the Thornbury Parish.

The previous instalment in this series, "Paul Delianis - The Golden Greek", can be read here

THE CATHOLIC MAFIA - The Honourable Society (with apologies to 'Ndrangheta)

The "Catholic Mafia" were/are a co-ordinated group of police officers who are organised around the principle of protecting Catholic priests from criminal charges and prosecution of their criminal behaviour. This behaviour ranges from traffic violations to the raping of children and, as we will see in further episodes, the murder of a Melbourne mother.

What is clear is that the Catholic Church leadership has for decades controlled the Victorian police force when it suits their purposes. The evidence for this is laid out in the following article.

THE POLICE

Denis Ryan was a detective at Mildura in Victoria in 1972 when he was forced through circumstances contrived by Victoria Police leadership to resign. He had the temerity to want to charge and prosecute serial child rapist, Monsignor John Day, Catholic parish priest for Mildura, for his many offences over many years.

Ryan first came across Day when he was a Constable at St Kilda, a suburb of Melbourne known widely as the 'red light district' of Melbourne. Day was found in his car in the company of two prostitutes with his pants around his ankles and paralytic drunk. Constable Ryan took Day to the police station and was shocked when he was not charged and was instead released into the company of two young priests who came from the Cathedral after Day managed to make a call to the Cathedral for help. Ryan thought that priests should be held to a higher standard rather than a lower one.

Later that evening, when Ryan approached the senior officer in charge, Tom Jenkins, saying, “Tell me, what's the drill when we lock up priests?”
Tom replied somewhat chillingly, “We don't lock them up. We let them go. Once you've been around for a while, you'll start to learn that the Catholic Church carries a good deal more clout than the local church on the corner.
It's a political organisation. It has wrapped itself around every layer of government. This happens everywhere. All across Australia and probably all over the world. But nowhere does the Catholic Church have more power than it does in the Victorian police force. Short of a murder blue, he'll walk every time.
Nothing would happen to Day. This goes all the way to the top. It's just not the police. It's the judges, lawyers, politicians. I don't agree with it but there are forces at work here that are stronger than you or me. I learnt early on in the job, don't pick fights you can't win.”
http://casefilepodcast.com/case-34-catholic-mafia/ (05:50min)

This is in 1956. Welcome to the Catholic Mafia, a group within Victoria Police that would keep the priests immune from being charged for any crime. The priests had carte blanche.

The next time Denis Ryan would knowingly come into contact with the Catholic Mafia was after he had became a detective in 1958. Det Sgt Fred Russell approached him to join their ranks saying, “There is a group of us who at the request of the Cathedral look into instances where priests have been charged with offences to see if we can have these matters dropped or dismissed so the church's good name will not be brought into disrepute. We know your strong belief. We'd like to invite you to join us.”
A group of police keeping a look out for and protecting priests; the Catholic Mafia.
http://casefilepodcast.com/case-34-catholic-mafia/ (08:30min)
Ryan declined to join.

If you haven't already, go read the three excellent posts in our 'The Maria James Murder' series. Author and WPC Blogger, James, presents proof based on the readily known facts of this case that Thomas O’Keeffe and Anthony Bongiorno brutally committed the murder of Maria James. He introduces the crime, analyzes and solves it and recreates the logistics of a likely crime scene - here, here and here.

After having read these posts you may find it puzzling that in 37 years, the investigation of this murder by Victoria Police has produced little to no results. And you may find it even more than suspicious that the investigation was recently sent back to square one after revelations of a missing bloodied quilt and a ‘DNA bungle’ involving a bloody pillowslip used as DNA evidence that police say was only recently discovered to be from a different crime scene. How could this be?

Early police reports described the brutal murder as ritualistic. It was reported to Victoria police in 1997 that the pedophile priest Fr Thomas O’Keefe was a member of a satanic cult and that he had been witnessed participating in four ritual murders. At the time of the Maria James' murder, he was the Parish Priest at St. Mary’s and Fr Anthony Bongiorno’s boss. O'Keeffe was never considered a suspect by police nor even a person of interest. He should have been when Bongiorno was questioned as a suspect in 1998. By then, evidence of O'Keeffe's murderous past was in police files. As far as we know, he was not even on their radar until after the ABC Trace broadcasts in 2017 - and notably, just before the official announcement of their missing evidence and incorrect DNA sample. [In a later instalment, we will show how this 'DNA Bungle' could not be the result of "human error" as the heads of Victoria Police have asserted at every opportunity. The latest example is here.]

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Assistant Commissioner Stephen Fontana announcing the 'DNA Bungle'
Photo: Joe Armao 13 July 2017 The Age

This post is being included in our series to lay out the background to the Victorian police investigation at the time of the murder. It is a brief look into allegations of crimes and improprieties surrounding the force and specifically the questionable behaviours of Paul Delianis, then chief of the Homicide Squad, in the years around the time of the murder. Delianis was known amongst his colleagues as 'The Golden Greek'.

It follows on from James’ bonus post on the role that psychopathy played in the murder of Maria James as well as the role it played in the institutionalized corruption surrounding the crime.

As you will read below, corruption was endemic within the Victorian Police in 1980. Indeed, corruption within institutional environments was rampant Australia wide. Not only was it endemic in law enforcement but within government itself and within religious, educational and governmental institutions. It is not possible to convey in this short blog post it’s breadth and scope but as an example I was able to find 22 official investigations into crime and corruption that were held in Australia between 1970 - 1989 [see the table at the end of this post]. These included, Royal Commissions, Boards of Inquiry, Ombudsman’s Inquiries, Police Task Forces and Internal Police Investigations into institutional corruption as well as organized crime. And yet, for all these inquiries, nothing seemed to have been achieved in terms of reforming corruption within the Victorian Police. The most notable achievement during this time may well have been the strengthening of the power of the Police Association to protect and support officers charged with crimes or corruption and in the association's ability to put pressure on government NOT to institute reforms.

In further posts, we will show how the widespread corruption within the Victorian police force provided a fertile ground for a group of corrupt catholic policemen, known as the Catholic Mafia, to flourish and how this, in turn, allowed criminal behaviour within the Catholic Church clergy to flourish. The church hierarchy and their Catholic Mafia within the police protected pedophilic priests including Anthony Bongiorno and Thomas O’Keeffe.

The previous instalment in this series can be read here

For the reader who has been following this series of articles on the Maria James murder, and whom I would not expect to know much about psychopathy, I will briefly outline some major points of this condition.

My intention is that this "Bonus episode" will help in understanding the brutal murder itself and in understanding the systemically corrupt institutional environment (subject of the next instalment) in which it happened and facilitated the covered up.

For the last year or so, I have been dealing with professionals whom, in turn, deal with corruption in varying ways and in varying occupations. I have been staggered at their lack of knowledge of psychopathy and their disinterest in the subject. A knowledge of psychopathy is essential to understand the corruption, the criminals and their networks. It is also essential to know about to guard against being continually 'blind-sided'.

"Know your enemy" is the first rule in any contest.

Understanding psychopathic prevalence is also necessary to understanding our society and its institutions and to have a chance at successfully navigating your way through them. The estimates of the prevalence of psychopaths vary depending on the researcher and their criteria, but there is a consensus around 5% of the adult population. 1 in 20 will be a psychopath of one sort or another.

The odds shorten considerably from there when dealing with a power organisation and shorten further still when dealing with a person high up in that same organisation. So you are going to meet and deal with them whether you know it or not and whether you like it or not.

It is this 5% that creates 95% of societies' problems. They are our only true enemy. Therefore, it is essential to know and understand them.

"The rules of logic are like the rules of mathematics. They are an inherent and immutable property of existence, not opinions." The Rules of Logic

THE MARIA JAMES MURDER: TWO MURDERERS - PART 2

That headline should read "Police Centimeters Away From Murderer"

Yes, that is one of the murderers talking to police within a couple of hours of murdering Maria James inside. He got away with it through a cover-up and an extraordinary run of luck.
The article below from The Age June 18th 1980 accompanied the photograph above-

In Part 1, we introduced the fact that Allan Hircoe's testimony to Victoria Police in 2014 made 3 conclusions logically clear:

1. Fr Anthony Bongiorno was guilty of the murder of Maria James.
2. There were two murderers.
3. Given the first two facts, Fr Thomas O'Keeffe was far and away Bongiorno's most likely accomplice.

The fact that Victoria Police since 2014 could not or would not put these conclusions together and present them to the public raises some important questions. We will be addressing these questions in the following instalments.

This instalment will look further into the logistics of how the murder took place and the movements of the principal characters before and after the murder and what these movements mean. The logistics and the logic behind them will also shore up the case for the three conclusions listed immediately above and that were established in Part 1

THE MARIA JAMES MURDER: Two Murderers - Part 1

This is the second in a series of articles. If you would like to read the background to this murder mystery and perhaps take up the challenge of working out the solution to the murder and read the source material linked to, go back to the first article here. There are resources including diagrams and 'street scene' photographs there.

Regardless, this article is written on the presumption that you, the reader, have listened to the TRACE series of podcasts by the ABC. You can access them at this page or through iTunes. Search iTunes for "ABC Trace" and you should have no trouble finding the series. Spoiler alert ahead!

The podcast series leaves the question, "Who killed Maria James?" unanswered though it implicates two Catholic priests, Anthony Bongiorno and Thomas O'Keeffe as suspects. I propose to show that it was indeed these two priests and it could not be anyone else based on all the information we have.

While I will be referring to much of the material covered in the audio series, there is much that I won't be and I will presume that you are aware of what I leave out as background and contextual information. You may find placing some of my text in this article difficult to contextualise if you haven't absorbed the audio programmes first. It is an engaging series and you should have no trouble in following along, the nature of the content notwithstanding. So go have a listen if you haven't already.

In 2014, Mr Allan Hircoe went to the Victoria Police to tell them he saw a man with blood on him approach the Thornbury presbytery of St Mary's Parish shortly after midday on Tues 17th June 1980. This was the very time of the murder of Maria James three shops down High St. from the St Mary's property which included a school, church and presbytery.


Street map of the immediate area

http://www.winterpatriot.com/files/images/%20Street%20map%20with%20track...

St. Mary's property bounded by High St, the main thoroughfare through Thornbury, Mansfield St and Rossmoyne St which runs parallel to Mansfield St and the walkway shown behind Maria's shop at 736 High St across Mansfield St from St Marys property. Click here for a larger, higher resolution picture. Click here for an aerial view of how the area looks today. Note: Building additions to the school in front of the Presbytery were not there in 1980 (See Allan Hircoe's hand drawn map of the area in 1980 below.)

Mr Hircoe identified that man as Catholic priest, Fr Anthony Bongiorno. From that moment on, Victoria Police should have realised that the cold case murder of Mrs James was carried out by two men and not one. At least three witnesses had seen another man flee from the shop by its front door on High St and run across High St, nearly being run over by a car in the process, and running off down Hutton St to the west; the opposite direction to the St Mary's presbytery where Bongiorno was seen at the same time covered in blood.

It is impossible for one man to be running away from the crime scene in two divergent directions at the same time. So it is beyond dispute that there were two murderers. That Anthony Bongiorno is one of them should also be beyond dispute. The following lays out why that is.