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".