The .38 Colt: used by Wild West heroes and bent cops alike

By Philip Cornford

June 6 2002

The .38-calibre, long-barrelled Colt was an ancient, rusting "Wild Bill Hickok" revolver. But it was still a useful exhibit for detectives from three major crime squads.

F7, a confessed crooked cop and perjurer turned Police Integrity Commission informer, got the revolver from an illegal cache of weapons kept by his mates in the Northwest Region Crime Squad at Parramatta.

The Colt went into the "future exhibits" locker at the Major Crime Squad North at Chatswood, awaiting a victim.

Finally, it was given to the South Region Crime Squad based at Surry Hills, where it was used to "load up" criminal suspect A2 with false evidence, F7 testified yesterday.

"Esho [Peter Ehsman from South Region] rang up and said, `We need a gun'," F7 laments in a secretly taped conversation.

"That was a bloody keepsake. Wild Bill Hickok [1837-76] had that one.

"If they needed an illegal exhibit, we would have given it to them."

The "future exhibits" locker at Chatswood was a Pandora's Box of illegal evidence, including masks, balaclavas and disguises. Northwest and South regions "would have had a locker like we had", F7 said.

At Chatswood, it was the property of the armed hold-up squad, to which F7 belonged. But the other squads knew about it, he said. It contained about a dozen firearms, including shortened Ruger rifles and shotguns, weapons favoured by armed robbers.

Illegal hand guns were kept separately, hidden beneath the locker, because they "didn't want them to go missing" because they were "scarce" and "hard to get".

F7 testified that illegal Uzi machine pistols were stowed in the Special Weapons Operation Squad weapons locker, watched over by the squad's top officer, Inspector Kim Dowding, who also had responsibility for the illegal stashes. Inspector Dowding has denied loading up anyone.

F7 said that before he sent his detectives out to make an arrest, the armed hold-up boss, Senior Sergeant Dennis "Doodles" O'Toole, now retired, would read the statements of victims and instruct his team to get matching evidence from the "future exhibits" locker.

In April 1994, it was the turn of the Colt revolver. F7 said he had cleaned it up to make it look more serviceable, but "I wouldn't have been game to fire it".

He said Mr Dowding got the revolver from the stash and took it to Mooney Mooney on the Hawkesbury River where F7, Mr Dowding and M5, a corrupt detective turned informer, met the detective who wanted the revolver, Peter Ehsman from South Region.

They arrested A2 for harbouring a fugitive and took him to Hornsby, where Mr Ehsman and F7 "fabricated" a confession while Mr Dowding and M5 planted the Colt in A2's car and photographed it.

F7 could not recall who had originally given him the Colt, but he wrote down the names of six detectives who were in the armed hold-up squad at Northwest Region at the time. They were all "amenable" to load-ups, he said, otherwise "they wouldn't have been on the squad".

Big laugh, then tears after mate's betrayal

By Philip Cornford

Date June 4 2002

Secretly recorded on tape, big Kim Dowding laughed about bashing a couple of suspects. But yesterday he wept in the witness box because his mate had betrayed him.

A police video of the gun stash being recovered from the Hawkesbury River.

"I considered him my friend," he said of M5, a crooked policeman turned undercover agent for the Police Integrity Commission. "I trusted him ... [it's] a feeling of betrayal."

Inspector Dowding is not alone. M5 has betrayed a lot of mates, with the PIC yesterday suppressing the name of the eighth policeman to "roll-over" after getting the "supergrass" treatment.

Inspector Dowding is on sick leave and he has not rolled. He claims his only misdemeanour was "finding" a dozen or more firearms stashed by fellow officers and dumping them, helped by M5, in the Hawkesbury River.

M5 surreptitiously taped five conversations with Inspector Dowding and the tapes were obviously a bigger shock than finding the guns at Major Crime Squad North's offices at Chatswood in 1995.
Inspector Dowding wiped away tears, lowered his head and fell silent. Three times Chris Hoy, counsel assisting the PIC, offered him an adjournment, which he declined.

But Inspector Dowding's distress turned to anger when Mr Hoy played a tape on which M5 and a couple of colleagues made merry about Inspector Dowding's discovery of the gun stash.

M5 was sprouting a "fair bit or rubbish", Inspector Dowding said, denying he had stashed the guns himself so he and other cops could "load up" suspects.

"It didn't take place," Inspector Dowding declared emphatically, prompting Mr Hoy to wonder about his sudden recovery of his memory. "I didn't plant any gun."

Inspector Dowding's version is that his boss at Major Crime Squad North, Inspector Ron Smith, now a chief superintendent at Crime Agencies, told his men he wanted the premises cleaned of any incriminating evidence.

Inspector Dowding "volunteered" to do "a sweep" and found the guns in the locker room. They were all in unmarked lockers, so he could not identify whose they were.

That night in the Willoughby Hotel, he consulted his mate, M5, who suggested they dump them. The next day, he asked Inspector Smith if he could borrow his boat.

Inspector Dowding said he did not tell Inspector Smith about the guns, saying that he wanted the boat to go fishing. Inspector Smith asked no questions.

That night, Inspector Dowding and M5 sledgehammered the guns, which included two sawn-off Rugers and a shortened shotgun. They collected the boat from Inspector Smith, towed it to Brooklyn, put it in the water and dumped the guns off Long Island.

Inspector Dowding agreed he saw "nothing sinister" about the guns, strenuously denying he had "loaded up" two men with a shortened Ruger and a pistol in an operation Mr Hoy said they called Wogs Out of Work.

The guns did not work, the PIC heard. The men were bashed so badly they took their bruises to court and had the armed robbery charges thrown out.

On the booze with his mate M5 and other drunks with detective badges, Inspector Dowding and his mates had a big laugh. But the joke ricocheted when the tapes started to play.