Life And Crimes Of A Career Hunter Thief

Newcastle Herald

Saturday November 24, 2007

By DAN PROUDMAN Chief Police Reporter

RIC Anson was the quintessential career criminal handy thief, violent armed robber, tough drug dealer, hopeless gambler and unpredictable drug addict.

He could also be described as being mildly successful. In the last few months of his life, his drug dealing brought in several thousand a week, not to mention the $300,000 he got in a series of violent heists on pubs and clubs in a busy four-month period.

But throughout his life, Anson had attempted to keep his two chief money-making enterprises the sale of amphetamines and armed robbery distant from one another.

He was at pains to keep his drug associates well away from the boys who helped him tie up unsuspecting bar staff while pointing a gun at them and robbing them of tens of thousands of dollars at a time.

But it was when his two worlds collided that Anson met his fate.

A Newcastle Supreme Court jury this week convicted three men over Anson's at his Toronto home on January 11, 2005.

Kirrlie (Kyle) Wilson was found guilty of murder and one-time bikie enforcer Owen Frazer and Anson's flatmate William Spencer were convicted of manslaughter.

The trio had conspired to rob Anson of the $19,000 he got from holding up the Mount Tambourine Bowling Club in Queensland two days earlier.

Spencer had got to know Anson through drug dealings on the Central Coast and also knew of his successful hit in the Queensland hinterland.

Anson was shot in the head and was found slumped on the bed of the Awaba Road house that had been leased to him by the Department of Housing as part of his assimilation back into the community after another extended jail term.

It was a violent end to a violent life. A fitting finale, according to some observers.

His funeral could also describe the life Anson had led. Just three people turned up to show their respects during a service on the Central Coast. They were all family.

Anson had been in and out of trouble since first being institutionalised when he was just 13 for a string of burglaries.

For the next 42 years he was in and out of jail, only enjoying his freedom for a few months before his criminal ways got him in trouble again.

His life as a burglar quickly turned violent and as soon as he turned 18 he was in the "big house" with the other adult criminals for a series of thefts and assaults.

Anson clocked up convictions in several states over the next few decades and was even jailed for a month on drug charges in New Zealand before being deported in 1977.

But it was in Adelaide that Anson really got his name as a hardcore criminal.

Although he was to boast in the years after that he had shot a cop during a bungled raid on a house, his tale was exaggerated.

In the late 1980s, two officers disturbed him breaking into a house at Williamstown, north-east of Adelaide. He turned on them, bashing both before stealing their guns and escaping in the patrol car.

He was later convicted of armed robbery and he never looked back.

Anson spent most of the next 20 years behind bars. When he was released in August 2004, he quickly set up life again as a drug dealer on the Central Coast.

But after being charged with being on a suspected drug premises, Anson succeeded in getting other digs and moved to the Toronto town house.

Then he started to get busy.

By December, Anson is thought to have been the mastermind behind 11 gun-toting armed robberies of small clubs throughout the Hunter, Mid-North Coast, Central Coast, Sydney and Queensland.

They included hits on Stroud Country Club, Dungog RSL Club and Branxton Golf Club.

Each time Anson and his mates would pick and chose their target always small clubs with no close circuit television and remote enough to get in and out without too much fuss.

They were armed with guns and several times tied up frightened employees and patrons and locked them inside coolrooms or storerooms.

It was incredibly lucrative. But the money went as quickly as it went in.

Anson wasn't shy of throwing it around. Together with paying bills, including solicitors' fees, Anson was also a hopeless poker machine addict.

But it is suspected most of the money was spent on his fondness for heroin and amphetamines, or speed.

He was a massive user. Tests conducted after his death showed Anson had a toxic amount of heroin and speed in his system when he was shot.

The drug levels had been enough to kill most people.

But he wasn't a drinker. He might have stolen a bottle of rum from the Mount Tambourine job but he gave it away as a present.

Police found just $1200 in his house when investigating his death. The rest had gone through the slot machines, in his arm or up his nose.

Easy come, easy go.

Anson's golden run was probably coming to an end anyway.

Just days before his death, forensic police got a hit on a DNA swab taken from the Dungog robbery. It matched Anson's profile.

An observant employee had remembered a suspicious bloke walking into the club on the day of the robbery, buying a bottle of Coke and quietly drinking it.

The worker found it odd that the bloke walked out of the club still holding the bottle before discarding it in a bin outside.

It wasn't until the next day after the robbery that the penny dropped and he told police.

They retrieved the bottle from the bin, sent it away for testing and, bingo.

But the detectives from Strike Force Brickwork, set up to investigate the robberies, never got to interview their suspect.

Anson's life was centred around crime and those involved in it. He knew nothing else.

As Sergeant Jerry Bowden, who led Strike Force Mercer into Anson's death, said: "There wasn't one of his friends or associates which we spoke to who wasn't a criminal.

"That is all he knew."

Wilson, Frazer and Spencer are awaiting their sentences.

© 2007 Newcastle Herald

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