Chapter 14 argyle - State Law Publisher

FINAL REPORT
Thoy’s transfer, and whether it was achieved corruptly, will be dealt with in greater detail
later.
On one occasion, during a meeting at Sorrento Quay, at which Roddan, Crimmins and
Mrs Crimmins were present, Mrs Crimmins told the Commission that “Roddan came up with
he was going to ‘burn’ Thoy”. She explained “in burning him it was … he couldn’t be bought
and it was to discredit him, and it was actually my interpretation … that he was to be
dismissed from the Police Department, discredited to such an extent he would lose his
employment”.
Mrs Crimmins recalled that Roddan had said that he wanted to “Burn the C”. She said that
these discussions occurred on more than a dozen occasions at a variety of locations.
Roddan indicated that it was police officers who would “burn” Thoy, and they would be
paid. She said “… he had a term … coppers in his back pocket who were actually working
on burning Thoy. They couldn’t come up with anything with him and it was going … and the
greedy bastards … they started off with 20,000 and the greedy bastards had put it up to
40”. At one time, it was discussed that “they had enough on him” to “burn him”.
Mrs Crimmins said that she received a call from Roddan to say that the job had been done
and that they had “burnt” him. Crimmins later called her to say that he had not been
“burnt” because he was in uniform. Crimmins knew this, she said, because he had seen
Thoy on the television in uniform being interviewed about an unrelated matter.
Roddan’s advice to Mrs Crimmins was that her husband should not be concerned about
Thoy: “Tell him to keep cool. He’s under the magnifying glass” or “under the microscope, he
can’t move. He’s fine. He can’t do any harm”. This, she understood, was a reference to
Thoy.
Towards the end of 1990, or the beginning of 1991, in respect of Thoy, Roddan told
Mrs Crimmins “that if he couldn’t get him one way he’d get him another, and … that one
was … to torch the place, like, burn the … deli, terrify his wife, and even if it meant taking
out his wife and kids”. It is, in fact, the case that Thoy’s wife did operate a business at this
time that met this description. It was a delicatessen in Swan View, which Crimmins also
knew about.
Mrs Crimmins told the Commission that Roddan asked her for $40,000 in relation to the
“burning” of Thoy. She obtained this money from Mr Stephen Gorman. She asked him for
the money, and said that it was to “burn a cop” and that Roddan later collected it. She
explained that, initially, she had asked Gorman for $10,000 or $20,000 and then it went up.
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