The Dark Side by Clive Small & Tom Gilling

Author:Clive Small & Tom Gilling [Clive Small & Tom Gilling]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2017-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

Family friends

James Kinch was not the first criminal befriended by Mark Standen. In 1994 Standen moved to the Central Coast and bought a house not far from Neville Brian Tween. The pair became friends; they visited each other’s homes and would go away together on ‘family getaways’. During the early 2000s Standen and his family lived with the Tweens. But Standen’s relationship with Tween was not just social. Tween was a violent career criminal who used at least eight aliases and Standen was a police officer who, over several decades, had investigated him. Tween was said to be one of Standen’s informants. Both men were active in the drug trade.

Born in 1940, Tween spent his early childhood in the Western Australian gold town of Kalgoorlie before the family moved to the Riverina in New South Wales. By the age of ten Tween had a record for at least seven break, enter and steal offences. After leaving school at fourteen, he was sent to Mount Penang Boys’ Home on the Central Coast and later to Tamworth Juvenile Justice Centre. He spent the next few years living off crime while trying to keep one step ahead of the law.

In the early 1960s Tween went to New Zealand where he committed numerous burglaries, some of which involved the blowing or cutting of safes. In late 1963 he was arrested, convicted and jailed for five and a half years for burglary and possession of burglary instruments. On 2 June 1964 he escaped from Christchurch Prison and fled to Victoria. Five months later he was arrested in Melbourne in possession of explosives, firearms and some partially burnt banknotes that appeared to have been salvaged from a blown or cut safe. Tween was convicted of possessing the explosives and jailed for three years. Released in 1967, he was returned to New Zealand to serve the balance of his 1964 sentence. He was also convicted of escaping from custody. Tween remained in jail until 1970, when he was deported to Australia.

Back in Australia, Tween settled in the northern beaches area of Sydney before moving to South Australia, where he changed his name to John David Anderson; the name he still goes by today (for the sake of consistency we will continue to call him Tween). In July 1971 he was arrested and jailed for three years for breaking into hotels, theft and related offences, including possession of firearms. While in jail he married his probation officer. South Australian police noted, ‘This is considered a marriage of convenience for the purpose of influencing the Parole Board and to have someone “on the outside” to run errands for him.’ On his release in October 1974 Tween and his wife settled in Terrey Hills, near Sydney’s northern beaches, where they had two small children.

Tween’s principal partner in crime was Gary James Batt (also known by the name Charlie Brown), whom he had met in 1955 while at Mount Penang Boys’ Home. Batt is believed to have been an accomplice in the South Australian jobs committed by Tween in the early 1970s.

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