The Unluckiest Crim
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday December 2, 2000
True to form, a notorious Sydney tea leaf is caught, Panama and all, and must live with the shame.
CAUGHT on a phone tap moaning to his wife that he didn't know anyone ``unluckier than me", Norm Beves's breathtaking ineptitude in matters criminal was played out before the Police Royal Commission during 1996.
So incompetent was Norm that at one stage his criminal record, known as ``Norm's form", was used by trainee detectives as a classic study in recidivism.
However, Beves, 57, struck a patch of good fortune yesterday when he received an 18-month suspended sentence in relation to a bungled newsagency robbery four years ago in which he and an accomplice stole $9,435. This matter was examined at great length by the royal commission in September 1996, five months after it happened.
During the robbery, not only did Beves, a disqualified driver, use his white BMW as the getaway car, but he crashed it in the shopping centre's car park while trying to escape the owner of the newsagency who was beating his car with a windscreen wiper he had broken off. As well, Beves managed to wear such distinctive clothing, including a Panama hat, that numerous witnesses were able to identify him.
Graham Lloyd, the newsagent, told the court last week that he chased Beves, whom he described as being smartly dressed, ``a class above stuff people normally wear in Earlwood", to his car after seeing him run away from his shop stuffing something in his pockets. The newsagent's assistant Alan Lim, in evidence, added: ``I noticed a gentleman who was sort of running. And Earlwood is a small little suburb. We don't see too many people running, especially wearing good outfits."
Not only did the newsagent have a good look at Beves, but he was also left holding Beves's windscreen wiper, side mirror and, most importantly, his registration details. That was in April 1996.
Unbeknown to Beves, the royal commission had been tapping his phone for months and listened as he frantically rang round his friends and police contacts to help him fix the matter. Of particular interest to the commission was his call to a former officer, John Davidson.
Audacious and confident, Davidson is nicknamed the ``Kentucky Fried Colonel", not just because of his resemblance to the fast-food king, but for his propensity for donning a red suit. Davidson became quite a fixture at the commission.
On one occasion, after learning that a former colleague had rolled over and given evidence against him, he said he wished to revise a part of his evidence. After a theatrical pause he said, ``I think I stated that [Sergeant YM2] was a friend of mine. Well, I no longer consider him as such."
Another time the former police inspector remarked that he had spent the past 15 years sleeping with a shotgun by his bed and, for relaxation, he made his own cartridges. And he made no secret of his friendship with certain criminals, one of whom was Beves, although he showed a degree of discernment by pointing out he had never been able to ``warm" to heroin dealers or rapists.
Questioned by counsel assisting as to whether he asked his son (Constable Mark Stuart Davidson) to access the police computer to see whether Beves's car had been linked to the robbery, Davidson denied this. Instead, he was simply giving his son a potted criminal history.
Davidson said his son had wanted to know why Beves, who worked on the waterfront, was rich enough to also live on the waterfront. ``Then I said, ``He used to be an SP [starting price bookmaker]. He used to be a tea leaf [thief], a pretty good thief and I suppose he's brought it out of those mistakes I don't know of. He is one of the old-style crooks. He used to be a friend of George Freeman's and various other guys and I, in fact, used Mr Beves as a shakedown [introduction] to Lennie McPherson."
On another occasion, phone taps were played revealing Beves arranging a meeting with a serving officer, Alan Conwell, after Beves was questioned by Rocks police about the theft of perfume worth $8,000 from a duty-free shop.
Conwell admitted he'd known Beves socially, but denied he had ever helped Beves out of any of his criminal scrapes.
During his evidence, Beves denied on oath that he robbed the Earlwood newsagency on April 17, 1996, with Mile ``Bonecrusher" Popovic. Beves seemed at a loss when asked to explain why a group of people, including the newsagent, surrounded his car in the car park and his windscreen wiper and side mirror were pulled off.
And as for his friend Bonecrusher (named after the racehorse rather than because of any propensity to violence), who was observed fleeing the vicinity, why, he was only in hot pursuit of the real robber. ``Mr Popovic was driving me to Marrickville to have a golf lesson," Beves told the commission. ``We pulled up at a newsagency and next moment I seen him running up the road ... and I run to the end of the car park and then I run back to the car and got in the car to drive after him."
Tapes played to the commission show that after this incident Beves rang Davidson in a panic wanting to know what he should do as he thought a friend used his car in a ``hoist".
Commissioner James Wood pointed out to Beves: ``If you and Mr Popovic are on a lawful activity in your car in which you were sitting and neither of you carried out any hold-up or robbery or anything of that kind, why would you tell Mr Davidson that you thought that someone had borrowed your car to do a hoist?"
Beves: ``It was just a way of putting it, I think."
When the matter came to court last week, the evidence was that Popovic went into the agency three times pretending he had $1,200 and wanted to get a midweek systems entry in Lotto, which the staff kept telling him was impossible without registering. While he was distracting the staff, Beves stole the money and the newsagent and his assistant pursued him.
At the commission, Beves said Popovic was running up the road because ``he thought he knew the chap".
Which chap?
The chap that was getting chased.
When Norm's friend ``the Duck" (aka the late Peter Teudt) was called to the box during the commission to be questioned about a false alibi for the time of the robbery, which phone taps revealed he was helping Beves with, he told the commission that he, Beves and Popovic just did a bit of ``thievin"' together now and then.
And what did he understand by the word ``alibi"? The Duck said that was when someone said they were in certain place, but they weren't there.
``That is actually a false alibi," the counsel assisting said helpfully.
In some ways, Beves should count himself lucky. During his sentencing yesterday, in which he received a suspended jail term, Judge Greg Woods commented on the embarrassment of the royal commission for Beves. ``Rehabilitation has been affected by a measure of public shaming," he said.
© 2000 Sydney Morning Herald