Walsh Street police shootings
Tynan and Eyre were responding to a report of an abandoned car when they were gunned down about 4:50am in Walsh Street, South Yarra, Melbourne, on 12 October 1988.
[1] Four men, Victor Peirce, Trevor Pettingill, Anthony Leigh Farrell and Peter David McEvoy, were charged with murder and later acquitted by a jury in the Supreme Court of Victoria.
[4] During the period of the 1980s, prior to the Walsh Street killings, there had been a number of random acts of violence committed against members of the Victoria Police.
[4] In the early hours of 22 November 1984, officers, Sergeant Peter Kearon, 34, and his partner, Constable Graham Fletcher, operating a divisional van, were conducting licence checks in the vehicles on Beach Road in Beaumaris.
[5] The gunman, 19-year-old Kai "Matty" Korhonen, was a former army recruit from Clayton who was recently dismissed from his job at a car yard, an hour before shooting at Sergeant Kearon and Constable Fletcher.
Korhonen shot and killed security guard Peter Poole outside of the Boral Melwire factory in Clayton South.
[5] After shooting at Kearon and Fletcher, Korhonen took off on foot, cutting across nearby Banksia Reserve back towards Tramway Parade.
On the night of 18 June 1985, two officers, Constable Peter Steele, 26, and his partner, Sergeant Brian Stooke, 40, were sitting in an unmarked patrol car outside of a warehouse in Cheltenham where a burglary had occurred days earlier.
[7] At 3 am, three hours after shooting Stooke and Steele, the gunman's Fairlane was spotted by a patrol car in Oakleigh, operated by Sergeant Ray Kirkwood and Constable Graeme Sayce, resulting in a high-speed chase.
[7] Thirty minutes later, the gunman shot police dog handler Senior Constable Gary Morrell, who was saved by his police-issued ballistic vest.
[7] As the tactics used in the manhunt for Marinof was causing concerns and attracting criticism from the Eastern European community, the manhunt team included Detective Sergeant John "Kappa" Kapetanovski, who was a fluent speaker in both Macedonian and Yugoslav languages, to establish a public trust between police and the Eastern European community.
[7] Marinof (dubbed in the media as Mad Max) went on a crime spree, committing various robberies and thefts in which he stole a machine gun and several rounds of ammunition from an army base.
[7] As the vehicles came to a stop, Marinof produced a firearm and opened fire on Sergeant Kapetanovski and Senior Constable MacDonald, seriously wounded them.
The Russell Street bombing on 27 March 1986 and the death of Constable Angela Taylor from her injuries 24 days later, had heightened fears within the Victoria Police that any officer on duty elsewhere could be considered as a target of a criminal attack.
[8] This period of the 1980s saw a high number of armed robberies being committed throughout Melbourne to a point where they had become a problem for police forces across Australia.
[3] Upon hearing reports from residents on Walsh Street about shots fired, the police communications officer attempted to contact Tynan and Eyre, but got no response.
[4] A South Melbourne unit was the first the scene who found Tynan and Eyre's divisional van parked behind the abandoned Commodore in the middle of the road with the engine running and the driver's side door open.
Detective Inspector John Noonan was the Officer in Charge and it was the biggest investigation Victoria Police had ever undertaken at the time and also the longest running, spanning 895 days.
Members of the gangs responsible for the robberies were believed to be Victor Peirce, Graeme Jensen, Jedd Houghton and Peter David McEvoy.
The trial of the four men accused, Victor Peirce, Trevor Pettingill, Anthony Leigh Farrell and Peter David McEvoy, began in March 1991.
The prosecution alleged six people were involved in the planning of the shootings: the accused, Jason Ryan, and the late Jedd Houghton.
Police were told the party of killers were Jedd Houghton, Peter David McEvoy, Anthony Leigh Farrell and his uncles Victor Peirce and Trevor Pettingill.
The Walsh Street shootings and the people responsible for them inspired the fictional 2010 feature film Animal Kingdom and the 2011 television docudrama Killing Time.
They were also mentioned several times in the 2011 docudrama Underbelly Files: Tell Them Lucifer was Here (which concerned the 1998 Silk–Miller police murders in Melbourne).
