Another Dirty Dozen by Paul Anderson

Author:Paul Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
ISBN: 9781742734569
Publisher: Hardie Grant Books
Published: 2010-11-05T00:00:00+00:00

Stephen Raymond Crome was born 14 April 1976. During his adolescence he spent time battling with the blackboard at high school and technical school before transferring to a special school for difficult children in Prahran. “He wasn’t an academic sort of kid. He was good at the practical things though,” his stepfather, Peter, says. “He left school when he was about fifteen years old and never had a permanent job after that. He had a lot of jobs for about three or four weeks at a time doing all sorts of things – working on farms and labouring type work.”

Police were also told that Crome, along with two mates, was trying to make an extra quid selling dope to kids outside a suburban high school. Police received an anonymous tip one day in October 1993. “The caller went on to say that the cannabis would be concealed under bandages strapped to their legs, under their clothing,” a police report states. “He further stated that he believed Stephen Crome would be carrying a pistol.” Police sat off the school but never sighted him.

Crome’s criminal convictions dated back to 1992 and included assaulting police, resisting arrest, burglary, drug possession and theft. In June 1993 he crashed a stolen car and killed his passenger, a mate by the name of Ricky Carpanedo. Crome suffered head injuries that left him with slight intellectual impairment and a limp. He was charged with theft of a car and traffic offences and bailed to appear at court.

Police believe Crome’s last offence before the attempt on Finning’s real estate agency was an armed robbery at an Ampol service station in Springvale Road in late April 1994. Crome had bragged about the stickup to two friends and was later identified on security video footage. One of the women to whom he confessed – a motherly figure who had taken him in for a while – told police Crome was prone to bragging and telling stories.

“On or about the twenty-fifth of April, Stephen turned up at my house and told me he had done an armed hold-up in Springvale at a service station. I just turned around and said, ‘Sure Stephen’, or something like that. At the time I did not believe that he had done it. I had just finished reading about it in the local paper and I thought that Stephen had read the article and had got the story from there. On this same day, Stephen told me that they were going to do another one. I asked Stephen who ‘they’ meant and he said himself and Paul. I asked Stephen who Paul was and he told me Paul Skews. I basically did not believe him and said, ‘Sure Stephen.’ He told me that he was going to get a sawn-off shotgun. I asked him where he was going to get a gun from and his answer to that was, ‘Paul can get one.’ I did not believe a word Stephen was saying and I just put it down to him talking bullshit.

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