03 Mr Big | A bee in the ear

ABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music, and more.

Whenever someone arrived at the Weaven's house, you'd hear them coming because the driveway was made of gravel.

And one afternoon in late 2008, a couple of months after the fire at Mary's house, Glenn's mum heard someone pull up.

Thursday night, I heard

a bit of gravel.

Melody Weaven had been expecting Glenn home and and thought it was probably him.

I thought, oh, Glenn's come back.

But Glenn never came inside.

And when Melody went out to check what was going on, she saw his car was there, but he wasn't.

Glenn's car's in the garage.

So about nine o'clock that night,

I rang Glenn.

I said,

where are you, Glenn?

On the phone, he sounded rattled.

He says, I'm in a police wagon, some sort of police vehicle.

He says, the police think I've had something to do with Mary's death.

Glenn had come home earlier, but he'd been intercepted by police and they'd taken him to the station.

He'd spent a long time cooped up in that interview room with Ron Iddles, the high-profile Victoria police detective.

And now, with the interview over, the police were about to drop Glenn home again.

And he said, we're just about to turn up the drive now.

Melody told Glenn's dad, Tony, to come quickly.

I said, you better get out of bed, Tony.

This sounds terrible.

This is important.

so he comes out to the kitchen in his jarmas and Mr.

Iddles comes in the house not Glenn Mr.

Idles comes in and he says I just want to have a few words

before we bring Glenn in while Glenn waited in the police car Ron Idles told his parents about the investigation into Mary's death and he sat down at the table and we chatted for 15 minutes or so He said there was a post-mortem that afternoon and they found out that Mary had been killed.

Wow, I jumped up out of my chair that quick like I'd been snake bitten or something.

Oh, I just jumped up so quick, I just couldn't believe what he said.

She'd been murdered.

Ron Iddles told them Glenn was now quite distressed and might need medical attention or counselling.

On the drive home, the detective had even offered to take him to a hospital instead, but he didn't want to go.

Eventually, Ron left, and Glenn came in from the police car.

His mum says she'd never seen him in such a state.

He was distraught.

If we had lived, oh God.

If we had lived near a railway line, I think he would have walked on the tracks.

He was just so,

so bad.

And I stayed up with him.

And we were sitting outside on the letterbox, midnight it was,

after he'd been interviewed by Miss Doodles.

Yeah, he was in a really bad state.

And why do you think it affected him like that?

Well, Ron Idles told him he thought he did it, so I suppose Glenn probably thought, well, it's only a matter of time before anything happens, because if that detective thinks he did it,

that would put anyone in the madhouse.

Glenn told his mum that when Ron Idles accused him of killing Mary, he had a kind of out-of-body experience.

I remember him saying he took me right out of me when he said that I might have hurt Mary.

Over the next few weeks, police increased the pressure on Glenn and the whole family.

Melody says she saw officers surveilling the house.

Well, I'd go down there and take car numbers of the cars, the number plates.

She says she even saw Ron Iddles watching the house.

As I walked towards him with my notepad and Byro, it took off.

What do you remember about that moment when you saw him there?

What did you you see?

You just thought he was a cunning bugger.

Then a couple of months later, police did that search of Melody's house, looking for screwdrivers and bloodstained clothing.

I don't know whether we just became paranoid, but I thought, well,

they're probably doing it to other people's homes that knew Mary too to see what they might find there.

If police wanted Glenn's family to feel under pressure, it was working.

Well, I suppose it's what anyone would feel like when you get the law coming into your house wanting to check things.

We even thought the place was bugged.

It might have been, I don't know.

Months passed, but despite the flurry of early activity, police didn't make any arrests.

Glenn's mum had made a statement to police telling them Glenn never left the house on the night of Mary's murder.

More time went past and still no arrests.

The detective Ron Idles moved on to other cases.

The investigation into Mary Cook's death appeared to stall.

And it's at this point, when it seemed like Glenn was basically in the clear, that his life went in a totally new and unexpected direction.

Eight months after the fire, Glenn did something that even now the people closest to him struggle to explain.

The one thing someone in his situation should probably avoid doing at all costs.

Instead of keeping out of trouble, Glenn got involved in some shady activities.

And then he fell in with a criminal gang.

I'm Alicia Bridges, and this is Mr.

Big, the latest season of Unravel.

Exactly why Glenn would make a decision like this, at a time like this, is really hard to understand.

I don't know, it just seems like such a bad call.

But if you ask the people closest to him, like his brothers and mates and his mum, it makes sense Glenn could end up doing something like that.

Because according to his mum, to understand that crazy decision, you need to understand Glenn and how easily influenced he could be.

He was

very quiet, was very close to his brothers.

Glenn was one of three boys and as kids back in the late 70s they used to play in the empty paddocks around where they lived.

The thing is where we lived there wasn't any other kids.

We didn't live on an estate.

They really just had themselves to play with.

Back then Narriwarren was almost rural.

It was right on the outer edge of Melbourne City.

They'd go over the paddocks and

pretend to catch a rabbit by putting a wire snare on a fence because we were on half an acre and there's plenty of room to build stuff and they had wheelbarrows and bikes.

Melody says as a family they'd often go away on weekends.

We would all go and we'd go fishing and I loved fishing and camping.

But there's one trip they went on when Glenn was three or four years old.

that's kind of entered into family folklore.

And in Melody's eyes, goes some way to explaining the kind of man Glenn grew into.

His father would take them away rabbiting for a day or a weekend sometime.

And one day he got pulling bark off a tree and a whole swarm of bees attacked him and his father.

And

his father took off his toweling cap and was belting these bees away from him.

For weeks afterwards, Glenn had a sore ear.

And he just kept rubbing his ear on his shoulder and I put some ear drops in his ear because I thought he was having an earache.

And

then he sort of wasn't talking as good as he should.

So I took him off to the doctor about it and he just sent me off to the, oh,

well, different doctors.

Melody didn't know it, but Glenn was deaf in one ear.

It was only years after the bee swarm attack, when Glenn's learning at school was suffering, that Melody finally figured out what was wrong.

He was probably seven when he had this bee removed from his ear and it was all in one piece, all intact.

He was in there the whole time.

Must have been even more than four years.

Glenn got his hearing back, but never caught up with his peers.

He was less confident than his two brothers.

He was meek and got bullied at school and ended up leaving in Year 11 for a metalworking apprenticeship.

Some people are mature at certain ages and others are way behind.

I'm angry that he hasn't had the sense to stick up for himself.

I don't know why he's like that.

He's not street savvy.

None of my kids ran the streets when they were young.

Sometimes I think that's not a good idea.

Sometimes I think, well, maybe they should have run the streets.

Certainly puts you at a disadvantage, I think, if they don't know things.

Later, in his late 20s, he had a child with his then-girlfriend and moved into a house in the suburb next door to his parents.

Melody says that relationship fell apart and when it did, Glenn's life kind of spiraled.

We asked him where he was living and I didn't like to ask where he was living.

I thought, oh God, he's living in a car.

I said, you better come home.

We'd like to have you home.

There's still plenty of rooms in the house.

So Glenn moved back in with his parents and for a while, things were stable.

Glenn had a job, his daughter would come and visit on weekends and he seemed happy.

But then the house fire on Darling Way happened and Glenn became a prime suspect in Mary's murder.

And after that, everything fell apart.

So you had sort of the same interests?

Yes.

Outdoor stuff, it sounds like.

Sorry, I just gotta do something.

Oh, that's okay.

I had bloody sausage rolls in the oven, I forgot about them.

Not the sausage rolls.

Glenn's mate, Dave Drysdale, had a front-row seat to what happened next, but he burned his dinner before he could tell me about it.

Oh, I just smelled him.

Okay, well, I'm sorry to um

sorry I ruined your dinner, Dave.

That's all right, I should have put a timer thing on it.

All right, well, tell me what, tell me when you're ready to to keep going yeah i'm ready to keep going ready to go okay dave says he and glenn were close and since glenn was living with his parents he would often come over to dave's to hang out or go fishing because he was living with his mum and dad and he was

oh i don't know in his 30s or whatever

um didn't like staying at home much yeah and i lived on my own like a bachelor

And where I live, I had a boat ramp across the road and there's a river and you can go fishing and all that

dave says he and glenn would talk to each other about everything come around

and we'd have a few cans and whatever and yeah

we're like boyfriend and girlfriend

we'd tell each other you know that's what we do us bachelors um so he'd come over at least three to four nights a week

And then he'd spend his Friday nights and Friday with his brother Danny going fishing.

Glenn and his brother Danny had always been close too.

I shared a room with him, grew up with him.

He's one year older than me.

We had a great time.

We were only like

11 months apart

and

we didn't hide anything from each other.

The two brothers owned a boat together and they'd spend hours just fishing and hanging out with Dave.

Together, Danny and Dave were like confidants for Glenn.

We were always really close.

We had good times, we caught a lot of good fish.

It was always the whole three of us would be together.

But after Mary Cook was killed, Glenn soon came under suspicion for her murder.

His daughter was no longer spending weekends with him, and both Danny and Dave noticed he wasn't doing so well.

And, about five months after that, he injured his wrist, so he was out of work too.

And it was at this stage, when Glenn was at a real low point, that he came over to Dave's place with a story about some kind of cash-in-hand job he'd been offered by a bloke down at the Berwick Springs Hotel?

He had a broken hand, he had a task on at the time, and some man bumped into him and asked him, What do you do for a job?

And he replied, He wasn't working at the time, I think he was on work cover.

The bloke introduced himself to Glenn.

For legal reasons, we'll just call him Rob.

Rob started talking about this thing he needed help with.

Would you like to make some money

by taking some photos of a guy,

like a surveillance sort of a job?

This was not the kind of work that Glenn had done before, but he was short on cash and the guy was offering what sounded like easy money.

So Glenn went outside the pub, took some photos of a number plate and got paid $200.

He was happy because he had no money

and yeah, I suppose he was happy because it was easy.

All he had to do was take a photo.

And what was your reaction when he told you that that's all he had to do to make that money?

I was amazed.

Glenn had only gone to the pub that day because there were prizes on offer as part of some kind of beer survey.

But meeting Rob that day would change his life.

Rob said he might have more work down the line.

Glenn wasn't working at this point, so that sounded pretty good to him.

Before long, Rob contacted Glenn again about another job he needed help with.

This time it was some sort of blackmail situation.

Glenn told his brother Danny about this one.

So we were sitting around the table and Glenn told me about doing a job that he got hired to take a photograph of a lady having an affair.

So they investigated the lady.

with the boyfriend

and they the two had a kiss and he had to photograph the kiss and when that was done they approached the lady and sold the photographs to the lady.

I think it was just a bit of blackmail I think.

With Glenn's broken wrist stopping him from going to work the money from these jobs couldn't have come at a better time.

He just said it was easy money and I agreed with him and I didn't think nothing much of it.

Glenn started hanging out more with Rob.

They talked about fishing and looking after their kids.

Rob introduced Glenn to his associates and the jobs kept coming.

Yeah, so they used to take him out like

two or three times a week.

Like to lunch specifically or just to jobs?

Jobs and lunch, I think.

It soon became clear that Rob and his mates weren't just interested in using Glenn to blackmail people having affairs.

They were a part of some kind of organised crime gang, and they had bigger things in mind.

And with each job Glenn did, he fell deeper and deeper into a world he knew nothing about.

Soon, Glenn was asked to help collect thousands of dollars from brothels and markets and other businesses around Melbourne.

Often it was Glenn's job to count the money, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars in a single day.

Dave and Danny started losing track of the sheer number of jobs he did.

Glenn told me about a ute load full of cigarettes.

I don't know where they come from and I've got no idea where they got distributed to.

Over time, the amounts of money he saw changing hands got bigger.

He collected 85 grand in an exchange at the arrivals lounge of the Melbourne International Airport.

This was during mid-2009, around the peak of Melbourne's gangler wars, when rival gangs sprang up and vied for a slice of the city's drug trade.

Glenn had started out doing low-key blackmail outside a suburban pub.

Now he was up to his neck in serious organised crime.

I think he just knew it was just illegal what was going on now.

So it was a bit more than just moving money around or taking a photograph of someone's license plate.

Yep.

That's when I think he started to worry about what he was getting into.

And I think he realised at that stage it was getting a little bit too heavy and a bit too deep in the organised crime.

Glenn's old friend Dave was starting to worry too.

He'd mixed with people like that before and he'd been arrested once or twice himself.

I sort of know a few people like that.

Not so much really bad, but you know, shady people.

So I know

a bit more about it than he does.

As to the extent that you don't know who they know and stuff like that and what they could possibly do.

Yeah, right.

So you thought it could be more serious than maybe he realised?

Yes.

Glenn hadn't told Dave exactly what kind of gang he was working for, but from what Dave had heard, he could tell they were serious players.

Once they sort of started doing these heavier jobs, we'll say,

they were picking him up.

He wasn't driving anywhere.

And I think, I don't even think he was from the start.

They were always picking him up from his house.

And it was like...

two guys in suits in the BMW or Mercedes, you know, luxury cars and stuff like that.

Dave didn't think his friend was cut out for this kind of criminal life.

At one point, Dave even offered to step in and help out.

And when it didn't happen, he tried to warn Glenn instead.

I was urging him not to cross them or upset them because they already know where your mum and dad live.

Do whatever to keep them happy.

Glenn's mum, Melody, knew very little about any of this.

She'd heard from Glenn about that first job where he took the pictures of someone's number plate outside the pub and she'd warned him not to get involved.

After that, Glenn had mostly kept the work he was doing to himself.

So the next time Glenn's new mates came around looking for him, she decided to do some sneaking.

They went out and Glenn didn't say, see you later, or I'm going somewhere or anything.

He just went with this fellow and no words spoken.

Tony and I were out near the wood heap and then I raced around the edge of the house and I followed him and I stuck me, I got to the

boundary fence where we used to have a lot of, well we've still got the conifers there, but they used to be quite down to the ground and quite bushy.

And I got through my way through there and I was watching this man walk down the street, down the court with Glenn, and getting into this light coloured car, this light grey, blue coloured car.

I thought, wow, this is

really unusual.

It's not like Glenn at all, not to say where he's going or when he'll be back or anything.

You know, he's just not raised like that.

We used to leave notes where we were going and what time we'd be back.

We'd leave them on the bench.

It's just not like him.

Is that why you follow?

Why did you follow him?

Yeah, because it was so unusual for him to just go with this man.

So it must have been the same man who you met at the Berwick pub.

And did you sort of confront him about that?

Yeah, yeah.

When he came back, he said, oh, the fellow's going to offer me a job.

I said, doing what?

And he said,

learning how to drive a bulldozer.

And from then on, that's the story Glenn stuck with.

Yeah, he'd been

out bulldozing.

Is that what he said?

And did you believe him at the time?

Not really.

Because,

oh,

you're out bulldozing.

It was a pretty dusty sort of a job, you'd think.

Melody told her husband Tony about her worries, but he didn't seem concerned.

Tony died in 2020.

I don't know if he ever spoke to Glenn about it or I don't think he would.

Glenn wouldn't have spoken about stuff that we wouldn't have agree, like we wouldn't have approved of.

After a while, though, Melody says she started to notice Glenn getting less enthusiastic about this new job.

She says he started getting reluctant to go with the men.

One night he was at home with Melody and his phone started ringing, but he didn't want to pick it up.

Yeah, well, um, he said he didn't want to do this anymore, whatever it was, and he didn't want to take any phone calls from this person,

and he wasn't answering his phone.

And

the fella came to the front door.

He hadn't done that before, and knocked.

So and Glenn, oh I suppose he thought he had to go.

I don't know.

I don't know what Glenn thought, but he didn't really want to go.

So Glenn went and after that things would escalate even further.

I just don't understand his way of thinking sometimes.

It's just

perhaps he didn't want to involve us in anything.

I don't know.

I don't know.

Does it feel to you like everything life changed

when

Glenn

started hanging out with them.

Yeah, I did.

To begin with, Glenn didn't know much about the people he was working for.

It was just Rob and his mates, a few odd jobs and some easy money.

But as the jobs got bigger and more serious, Glenn started to get to know more of the gang's senior players.

One of them would hold regular meetups at this restaurant restaurant on Ligon Street.

We'll call him Bruce.

Glenn was told to hand over cash to Bruce time after time inside this Italian restaurant.

Whatever Bruce was doing for the gang, it seemed to be valuable.

He was tight with the gang's big boss.

It took a while, but eventually Glenn realised why Bruce was so crucial to the gang's success.

It turned out Bruce was also a cop.

If they were corrupt cops, like what did he think they were going to do?

I'm not quite sure.

I don't know if they threatened him at all.

Did you get the impression at that time that he was scared or just a little bit concerned?

Like, how worried was he?

I think he did start to get a bit worried about it.

But I think every week he was earning more and more money.

Glenn was torn.

Despite the money on offer, he told the people close to him that he was looking for a way out.

One story he told his brother Danny made him really worried.

He was somewhere out in...

I don't know where it was.

He must have been around people.

And he's carrying a big duffel bag and he knew there was guns in the duffel bag.

Inside the bag were two Uzis, an AK-47, an assault rifle and two handguns.

And he purposely dropped the duffel bag to see if someone would turn around and he was hoping for the bag to split open.

And why did he want it to split open?

Because he wanted to see what was in it or he wanted to see what they did?

He knew what was in it.

He wanted the public to see it and just be done with these people.

So do you think, was he trying, was he kind of trying to make a mistake so that they'd be like, really?

He wanted the bag to fall apart.

He told me he dropped it on purpose, that bag of guns, and he wanted the public to turn around.

But obviously, the bag never split open.

Did he ever talk to you about trying to find a way out?

Yeah, he wanted out.

He did want out.

Me and Dave said, mate,

you need to do away with this business.

Glenn was a law-abiding citizen and he was never into that type of stuff.

Whatever Glenn's concerns were about his new life, when his new friend Rob calls with more jobs to do, he keeps going.

And over time, he and Rob start forming a closer bond.

Glenn tells him how he was bullied as a teenager and assaulted when he was working as an apprentice.

Rob replies that he's had his own mental health struggles and that if Glenn needs someone to talk to, he can call at any time.

Within a few months, it seems like Glenn's a trusted member of the gang, because the next job he's asked to help with is one of their biggest and riskiest jobs yet.

They were going to bring in some drugs from Papua New Guinea

or somewhere and have him landed at Leongatho Airport.

Leangatho is the regional airport where it's supposed to happen.

It's about an hour's drive from Nari Warren.

Specifically, the plan is to bring in 300 kilos of hash through that airport.

And one weekend in September of 2009, they do a test run, a kind of recce.

Glenn and another guy drive out to the airport to meet the pilot of a little fixed-wing plane who will be doing the job.

It's around this time, as Glenn is helping with preparations for the big job, that he realises just how far the gang's power and influence goes.

One morning a gang member picks him up from the house in Neri Warren.

They go from place to place, with Glenn collecting cash from people who want in on the hash import job, as much as tens of thousands of dollars from each.

Then they take some of that money somewhere unexpected.

They pull up outside the Supreme Court building.

While Glenn waits in the car, a gang member delivers a bag to someone inside.

Glenn knows the bag has cash in it.

The gang member doesn't say who the court official is receiving all this cash.

But Glenn knows now that he's dealing with an organization far more powerful than he'd initially imagined.

It seems like the gang has contacts everywhere.

They're giving money to police officers and court officials.

Glenn suspects that they could be some of the most dangerous people in the state.

But they're promising him something that could change his life forever.

They've told him that if he does his part importing these drugs, his share of the spoils will be $100,000.

Everything is going smoothly with the preparations, until one day Glenn and the gang are asked to assemble at the Hilton Hotel, opposite the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

In the fancy surrounds of the hotel, the gang gives another $40,000 in cash to the cop Bruce.

for the upcoming PNG job.

But Bruce wants something from Glenn before the job goes down.

He wants Glenn to write his full name and date of birth on a piece of paper.

He wants to check Glenn's background before they start.

If the check comes back clear, he's in.

But almost a week goes by, and there's still no word on how the background check came back.

The gang members say it's taking way longer than usual, and they don't know why.

They tell him that normally the boss wouldn't allow someone in the gang's dealings like this before getting a clean check.

Ten days pass and still nothing.

He's told that for the time being, he's no longer needed for any jobs.

Glenn says he's struggling to sleep and he's scared.

Another week passes without any word and then suddenly he gets a call from Rob.

Rob says the boss is in town.

The group's Mr.

Big.

the man at the very top of the organisation.

And he wants to talk to Glenn.

The meeting will take place at a hotel room in Melbourne's Crown Casino and when Glenn Weaven meets Mr Big their voices will be recorded and that recording is the tape that kicked off my whole investigation.

So you've got a bit of a problem with the coppers on your ass at the moment, all right?

I can't have any police sniffing around any of the people that are working for me, right?

Because if that's going to happen, they're going to end up sniffing around me at some stage, aren't they?

On this tape, Glenn will say that he killed Mary Cook.

It should never happen.

Why did it happen?

Stupidity.

But this conversation goes on for hours and it's peppered with lies.

I don't just need it under the carpet.

I need it to be fixed so that it never comes back.

Okay?

Once this recording was made it would pass through many hands and those seeking justice for Mary Cook would need to sort through the lies on the tape to find the truth.

Let's just get the truth.

Okay?

Close.

That's next episode on Mr.

Big.

This season of Unravel is hosted and reported by me, Alicia Bridges.

We've been making this story on Gadiguland and Woojuk Ngunau land.

This story was developed in collaboration with the ABC's investigations team.

Our supervising producer is Alex Mann.

Producer and researcher is Ayla Darling.

Theme by Martin Peralta and Ashley Cadell.

Additional music by Ashley Cadell.

Sound design and additional music by Hamish Camilleri.

Monique Bowley is our manager of podcasts, and our executive producer is Tim Roxborough.

You've been listening to an ABC podcast.

Discover more great ABC podcasts, live radio, and exclusives on the ABC Listen App.