Barrenjoey Road 06 | The Unholy Relationship

This is an ABC podcast.

Just a warning before we start: this episode contains some pretty strong language.

Also, if you haven't listened from episode one, this is going to make a whole lot more sense if you go back and start from there.

Jason, how are you?

Ruby, hi.

How are you?

Neil Merriman, right?

Come on in.

Jason McLeod's got a story.

It's taken a decade, but now he's ready to tell it.

It starts when he was a detective at Manly on Sydney's northern beaches.

At first, Jason loved being a cop.

I lived and breathed it.

I loved it.

It was great.

Loved it.

Absolutely loved it.

Despite all the dramas and all the retrospect and

the tears and whatnot, that's part and parcel of the job.

And I think it was fantastic, to be quite honest with you.

So more for me, perhaps, but I loved it.

Jason's not a detective anymore.

And the reason for that, well, it's all linked to Trudy Adams.

Four years before the inquest into Trudy's death, Jason was given a brief for a cold case.

Not Trudy's case.

It was the disappearance of a guy called Anti Yelovich.

Anti was a handsome, manly boy in his late 20s.

He was also a drug dealer.

He was a known drug importer and distributor.

He wasn't necessarily tied up in any major organised crime gang.

He seemed to float around a little bit, from what I could gather.

Anti went missing from Sydney's northern beaches in September 1985.

On the night he disappeared, he told his mum and dad that he was heading to a friend's house to watch the footy.

But it turns out that night Anti was actually on his way to meet someone dangerous.

One of Anti's friends was interviewed and he actually said that he was aware that Antie was going to meet Neville Tween that night.

So it was quite clear that that was a problem.

Jason starts digging into Neville Tween's file and he soon discovers that Tween has formed.

So I double-checked on the case management system known as Eagle Eye and that's where I got a result.

that homicide were looking at him as a suspect for Trudy Adams' murder.

Then Jason discovers a third person is also missing, Auntie's girlfriend, Andrea Wharton.

Everywhere I looked, the matter was just growing.

I'm finding Anti Yelovich, but then there's Andrea Wharton, then there's Trudy Adams.

How many other bodies or how many missing persons were out there linked to this particular

people?

It certainly was rattling me a little bit as to what I was up against.

This is Unravel Season 2, Baron Joey Road.

I'm Ruby Jones and for months I've been trying to find out what happened to Trudy Adams.

The main suspect in her murder is Neville Tween.

Back in 2007, Jason McLeod investigated Tween.

But that investigation would incinerate Jason's career and leave him fearing for his life.

Jason's never spoken to the media about any of this until now.

It was a hornet's nest.

The whole thing was a hornet's nest.

Something really, really wrong.

Really wrong.

I mean, words can't, for me, I can't describe.

When Jason McLeod starts to investigate Neville Tween,

one of the first things he does is set up an alert.

He arranges to get a notification when anyone else searches the police system for Neville Tween

or his other name, John Anderson.

Jason also applies to get a bigger team on the case.

He can't take this on by himself.

It was pretty clear that this was something that needed a large task force to address competently.

Jason wants to join Anti Yelovich's case and Trudy Adams' case into a single high-powered investigation with Neville Tween as the main suspect.

And he also wants the New South Wales Crime Commission's help on the case.

The Crime Commission is a powerful and secretive law enforcement body.

It can get things done that normal cops can't.

So Jason makes contact with the Commission's top investigator, Mark Standon.

I recall that I faxed the investigation plan, faxed it to Mark, and that was followed up with a number of phone calls and other emails clarifying where we're headed and what we're going to do.

To Jason, Mark Standon seems pretty keen to take on the case at first.

He wanted in on the job.

He made it very clear that he wanted to be in on the investigation, made it very clear that he was going to support it.

According to Jason, Standon even provides some intel about Neville Tween.

I said, so, you know, what's the makeup of this fella?

What are we dealing with?

What do you know about him?

And he said, oh, he's lightened up over the years.

I recall him to, he did actually say that to me, he's lightened up over the years, he's a bit more mellow or something like that.

Was that a surprising remark?

Oh, it made it very clear to me that he knew him.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Okay, he knows him in some form or another, or he's had some dealings because the Crime Commission have dealings with many, many, many high-calibre criminals.

But I thought, okay, he's got...

potentially got an informant here or he's got some exposure to him.

That's why I jumped at it.

Standon seems enthusiastic, but according to Jason, he doesn't do anything.

In my view, it was stalling.

It was unusual.

He was offering excuses as to why we couldn't come in and meet,

competing jobs, Crime Commissioner wasn't available or so forth.

Jason is slightly concerned by the delay, but he thinks, well, it's probably just some red tape.

He tells one of his mates at the Commission what's happening, and this mate says the sort of delay Jason's experiencing, that's not normal.

Then Jason gets a message.

It's an alert from the police computer system.

Someone in the force has searched for Tween,

or his other name, John Anderson.

The weird thing is, Jason can see that the search is being done by someone in the department that hires new police officers.

I got a notification that an individual from the recruitment branch had looked up Neville Tween and it was a young constable, which so nothing gelled there or made any sense to me.

Jason says he immediately calls this young constable and asks him why he's looking up the name Neville Tween.

And at that point that's when he told me that Neville Tween had been nominated on the job application by Matthew Standon as a a referee, as a family referee, for Matthew to join the New South Wales Police.

It takes a moment to sink in because at first Jason doesn't recognise the name Matthew Standon.

But of course the surname and then the mere mention of Neville Tween,

so I was quickly able to deduce that there was possibly a very big problem straight away.

Jason realises that Matthew Standon is the son of Mark Standon.

Mark, the top investigator at the New South Wales Crime Commission.

Mark, who he's just handed his whole investigation plan to.

Mark's son, who's clearly unaware of Neville Tween's criminal history, has just listed Tween

as a reference on a job application.

Or at least that's what this young constable is telling him.

The constable was good enough to read to me verbatim what was written on that job application and it was making making reference to the fact that Neville Tween was going away on family weekends with the Standon family and they were diving, diving trips, scuba diving trips.

That was the nature of the relationship.

Jason struggles to make sense of what he's hearing.

Neville Tween,

the number one suspect in two missing persons cases, suspected of involvement in 14 rapes, seems to be friends with Mark Standon, one of the most powerful law enforcement officials in the country, the guy who needs to approve his investigation into Tween.

Mark Standon denies his son ever mentioned Neville Tween on a job application.

It's also worth pointing out that even if Matthew Standon did put Tween down, Matthew hasn't done anything wrong.

We'll come back to Mark Standon's version of events, but for the moment we're going to stick with Jason's story.

Jason says that when he first heard all this, it rang serious alarm bells about Mark Standon.

So before Jason finishes the call with the young constable at the recruitment branch, he asks them to keep Matthew Standon's job application, put it in a safe, treat it as an exhibit.

Straight away, Jason runs another search.

I then got off the phone and went straight onto the New South Wales Police System, again, the COPS system, and did a location inquiry with regards to Mark Standon and where he resided.

And I was able to instantly see that at an occasion, Neville Tween had nominated that address as a residential address on an occasion over the years, the same address as where Mark Standon was living.

So now Jason's thinking, how did Mark Standon come to be living in Neville Tween's old house?

I just recall being quite faint, to be quite honest with you.

I was seated, but I felt quite dizzy at that time.

Straight away, I felt dizzy.

I knew what something was really problematic at that time.

Neville Tween's criminal record runs through Jason's head.

Firearms, explosives, assaulting police.

And so immediately I realised that there were some very serious concerns with what I was up against and the investigation has been compromised, my safety has been compromised.

It was very clear to me that there was bigger problems than what I was already up against.

What Jason's discovered is huge and he knows what he needs to do next.

Jason reports everything that he's found out to his superiors.

But nothing happens.

Day after day passes.

There's no phone calls, no interviews.

He keeps expecting someone to ask him about what is uncovered.

But he doesn't hear anything.

Yeah, there's a lot going on in my mind and so forth, but I didn't sleep for two weeks.

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

To him, it looks like the whole police system is ignoring this relationship between Tween and Standon.

And that means he has no one left to turn to, no one he can trust.

He's no longer sure who is on what side and he starts to realise

maybe he should leave New South Wales Police.

And I think at the time

I always become very aware that I think that my days were

getting numbered extremely quickly.

While this is going on, Neville Tween is in jail.

He's locked up for trying to import $7 million worth of cocaine.

But it's clear to Jason that Tween's connections extend far beyond the prison walls.

Jason starts to wonder how bad things could get for him.

Yeah, these guys were explosive experts and they had no qualm about taking somebody out if they needed to.

I was obviously concerned about my own personal safety.

Every morning Jason's waking up at five for his drive to work.

It all happened around the middle of winter.

It was June, so it was pitch black and freezing cold in the middle of winter.

And my car being parked on the road, so it was quite accessible obviously obviously to anybody.

There was occasions obviously going to work, starting in the car and waiting for a boom.

You say to yourself you're being paranoid.

So

that went on for

a couple of mornings and look there was just not much I could do about that.

What Jason didn't know is that behind the scenes a major investigation into Mark Mark Standon was about to come to a head.

Tonight, a top cop charged.

Police chiefs are in shock.

Oh, it's a very damaging blow to the Crime Commission.

Mark Standon, a senior investigator in the New South Wales Crime Commission, has been charged with being part of an international drug syndicate.

In a career spanning 30 years, Mark Standon put many criminals behind bars.

But today it was his turn to be handcuffed and driven away in the back of a police car.

Mark Standon was arrested for trying to import pseudoephedrine, which is used to make the drug ice.

Turns out, he was a corrupt cop.

Standon used his knowledge of law enforcement to help import the drugs and avoid detection.

And his trial uncovered a web of corrupt relationships.

Secret phone taps played in court were thick with these kind of badly disguised code words.

Not only was Standon about to import drugs, he was also relying on his co-conspirators for money.

Standon was in debt, despite his nearly $250,000 taxpayer salary.

This guy had been living the high life for years.

There was an affair with a younger colleague, designer handbags, nights at luxury hotels, and though Standon has denied it, there's also claims of problem gambling.

Standon had arranged the deal to import pseudoethedrine with a criminal called James Kinch.

It emerged that Standon had helped get Kinch off drug charges a few years earlier.

Standon had urged the prosecutor to go easy on Kinch, claiming that he'd become a valuable informant for the Crime Commission.

So it seems if you're an informant, you're kind of a protected species.

And here's the thing.

We know that Standon had plenty of other informants.

Back home now, and the New South Wales opposition is calling for all of the cases which were investigated by disgraced crime fighter Mark Standon to be reviewed.

Mr.

Standon has also been jumping up and down saying here you have the number two in a very, very powerful organisation doing drug deals and helping criminals.

What else was he up to?

They say that every case Mark Standon was involved in should be scrutinised immediately.

But as far as I can find out,

That was never done.

There's been no public scrutiny of Standon's past cases or his other informants.

And that's disturbing

because we've been told that another one of Standon's informants was Neville Tween.

According to a well-placed source, Standon registered Tween as an informant around 1994.

And that's not all.

We've been told Neville Tween was paid.

That's right.

The The man suspected of involvement in Trudy's death.

The man suspected of involvement in 14 rapes.

We're told he was paid by our law enforcement authorities.

Paid more than $100,000 of public money.

Jason McLeod remembers the day that Mark Standon was arrested.

And I recall my phone was just constantly ringing and I was ignoring it and when I finally picked it up and received that particular news, it

didn't really...

it didn't make it,

I felt vindicated, certainly there was vindication, but

I didn't really have a reaction I think.

He already thought Standon was dodgy.

And so the drug charges didn't really surprise him.

By the time Standon was arrested, it seems like Jason was kind of numbed by everything that he'd gone through.

He'd already lost faith in the police system that he worked in.

So he quit.

To this day, Jason is frustrated that there seems to have been no scrutiny of Standon's relationship with Tween and what it could mean.

I think the unknown is what is very bothersome.

A lot of agencies seem to think that, oh, he's arrested for drug importation, that we walk away from that.

There is so much that's just not known.

I don't know

if anything has been going on in the background, but like I said,

I believe what I had a very detailed knowledge and in-depth knowledge of

a certain part of this matter, and I've not been contacted by one agency or one person.

But it would indicate to me that nothing's been done.

If nothing's been done to look into the relationship between Tween and Standon, I'm keen to make a start, along with crime reporter Neil Mercer, and Jason suggests that we begin with some documents that he's dug up.

Here's some files and an open source documentation that I've retained over the years

just with relation to the matter.

Yep, what's this?

He only rediscovered these documents a couple of weeks before we interviewed him when he was preparing to meet us.

The documents are about an import company that was established in the early 90s.

What concerned me and jumped off the page to me was the fact that the directors was Susan Anderson and Neville Tween.

And also there were some former directors being

a Glenn Standon.

Glenn Standon is Mark Standon's brother and Susan Anderson was Neville Tween's wife.

This document from Jason suggests that Standon's brother was in business with Tween in 1993.

It was called Jags Wholesale Imports.

When I get back to the office, Neil and I do some more research into the company.

So, this is the results of an ASIC search on the company, JAG, which Jason mentioned to us.

Registered in 93, deregistered in 2002.

And if you go to the records,

you can see directors.

What's of real significance for us, I think, is that Glenn Thomas Standon is a director in 93 to 95 and at the same time John David Anderson, also known as Neville Tween,

is a director.

So what is this company doing and why is Mark Standon's brother

a director of a company with a career criminal?

And that's around the time that Neville Tween becomes an informant to Mark Standon.

And so, you know, that tells us that there was already a significant relationship there, I think, before he became an informant.

It is very

unusual to me that Mark Standon's brother would be in business with Neville Tween, the career criminal.

And it's as early as 1993, which suggests that the Standon family and the Tweens knew each other for a considerable period of time before they set this up.

To me, at this suggest it goes back back at least to the early 90s, maybe the late 80s, but we don't really know, but it is extraordinary to me that you'd have this family relationship with one of Australia's worst criminals.

Tween's wife, Susan Anderson, didn't want to speak with us.

Neither did Mark Standon's brother, Glenn.

We should be clear, though, there's no suggestion that Glenn knew about Tween's criminal history, but Mark Standon certainly did.

The big question is, did Mark Standon protect Neville Tween from police scrutiny over the disappearance of Trudy Adams?

We know way back when he was a junior officer in 1979, Standon did actually do some work on Trudy's investigation.

And then decades later when he was at the Crime Commission, Standon seemed reluctant to pursue Trudy's case, according to Jason MacLeod.

It's not so easy to ask Mark Standon about all this because he's still in jail.

He's been locked up for the past 10 years.

Behind the walls here at Long Bay Prison, Mark Standon is a marked man.

He spent much of his career locking up some of the state's worst criminals, so for his own safety, he's being kept in protective custody.

He can't talk to any other inmates, instead, spending his days alone.

His cell is three by four meters meters with a kitchenette and a small exercise yard.

He's let out for just a couple of hours a day.

Standon will call it home until 2024.

We decide to send Standon a letter to give him a chance to respond.

We don't really expect anything back.

Mark Standon hasn't spoken to the media since his arrest in 2008.

But then something incredible happens.

We get a reply.

I ran in.

Yeah, I'm just dying to read this letter.

Okay, so it's one, two, three, four, five,

six, seven, eight pages long.

Wow.

Dear Neil and Ruby, thank you for your letter.

I'm appreciative that you have sought my comments on the matters you have raised.

Several people before you have chosen to write and speak about me based only on rumours and, in some instances, deliberately untrue stories.

So we've sent a couple of letters to Mark Standon now and we've received a few back.

Neil and I asked Standon what he remembered about the initial investigation into Trudy's disappearance back in 1979 when he was a junior detective at the Narcotics Bureau.

And his response is surprisingly detailed.

It was suspected that Trudy had been involved in bringing cannabis into Australia from Indonesia.

Several search warrants were executed

and nothing, there was no information or no evidence.

Standon says as far as he knew this drug theory was the only lead that police had.

But it wasn't.

Neville Tween was also a suspect.

But Mark says he didn't know about that until the 90s.

Okay, so what about the more recent investigations?

Remember, our Manly cop, Jason McLeod, requested help from Mark Standon to investigate Tween in 2008, and Jason felt like Standon was stalling.

So we asked Standon if he blocked this investigation into Tween.

Your letter states you've seen documents show that in early to mid-2008, I was approached by police for assistance.

Do these documents indicate they were sent specifically to me or were they addressed to the Commission more generally?

They were specifically to him.

I'm confident in saying there'll be no emails from me as described in your letter.

Well,

we have them.

We have the emails sent directly to Standon asking for assistance and we have a reply from Standon apologising for the delays and listing reasons why it's difficult to proceed.

When it comes to his son's job application, Mark denies that Matthew put down Neville Tween as one of his his references.

Although I had no doubts about that since receiving your letter, I've confirmed this with my son.

Okay, so he's digging in, he's saying it definitely didn't happen.

I again state that this is an absurd allegation that beggars belief.

He goes on to speculate that someone in the police force might have sabotaged his son's job application, because by this stage, Standon was under investigation for corruption.

We give Jason a call, ask him to go over it one more time.

We want to know exactly what the young constable at the recruitment branch told him about the job application.

Just on the reference, the whole idea of Standon using Tween as a character reference, do you think that there's any possibility that the young constable could have gotten that particular detail mistaken in any way?

No, no.

Because what had happened was, well, firstly,

he actually went and got the application and read it out to me over the phone.

And the details were very specific.

There was no reason for the constable to

tell me anything other than what, he had

no skin in the game

to tell me what he told me.

I took that on face value.

And then obviously I made those inquiries.

And as I said, it seemed to confirm

to a degree what he told me.

So Jason's sure about it.

And Mark Standon is just just as certain that it's not true.

I've requested the application itself from New South Wales Police, but they don't want to give it to me.

But you know what?

I'm not sure that the job application matters anyway, because it's clear that one way or another, Jason became aware of a link between the Standon and Tween families.

And in his letters, Mark doesn't deny this at all.

In fact, he does the opposite.

He provides a lot of detail about this relationship.

So remember, this is a relationship between one of the state's highest-ranking law enforcement officials and a career criminal.

Tween's been convicted of sexual assault.

He's suspected in multiple murders, including Trudy Adams.

And the way Standon describes their relationship, it's like it's this good-natured, community-minded, neighborly thing.

Standon says their relationship all started because of their their dogs.

Between our respective homes, there was a dog-friendly reserve where my kids and I exercised our German shepherd.

The Andersons used the same reserve to exercise their dog.

My kids and I also frequented the public tennis court

that was only 100 meters from Anderson's home.

Socialization was unavoidable, and as I perceived no threat to my family from Anderson, I merely compartmentalised my work and social interactions.

I formed the view that he was a retired, old-school criminal looking for a quiet life on the coast.

It's just...

it's just bizarre.

I mean, I'm all for separating work and personal life, but can you really do that when you're the second in charge of the Crime Commission and living right near a criminal like Neville Tween?

Standon says that his family didn't know anything about the work aspect of what was going on, but Standon knew of Tween's past.

He was using Tween as an informant, and yet yet he let the two families get so close.

They did go diving together.

Standon, his son, and Tween's wife, Susan, all went diving with the local club.

Standon says that was unavoidable because there was only one dive club in town.

But there are even closer links.

Standon describes how he became a sort of mentor for Tween's son.

And he also writes about how his brother Glenn operated a business with Tween's wife, Susan.

According to Standon, the company was a lingerie home party business.

Glenn is quite a character and got on well with the Andersons, Susan in particular.

At the time, she was in the early stages of starting a lingerie home party business.

And she, Glenn, and Anderson attended a meeting with an accountant and business advisor.

As far as I know, it got off to a good start, but when Anderson was later arrested for growing cannabis, Glenn walked away and had nothing more to do with the lingerie business.

And then there's the explanation of how the Standons came to live in the same house as the Andersons.

It goes back to the dog, again, not the German Shepherd, a rottwheeler.

The dog needed lots of space and a secure yard.

The Andersons had purchased a new home and were preparing to vacate the rental property.

Susan knew of our dog problem, and as the property had a large yard and a six-foot colour bond fence, let me know the house would soon become available for rent.

I went to LJ Hooker and submitted an application.

It was successful.

Standon goes on to say that at no time did the two families live under the same roof.

And he believes there was nothing wrong with this relationship.

Neil and I decide that we need to speak with someone else about the nature of this relationship.

I want to know if it's normal for a police officer to let a criminal informant get this close to his family.

And so we meet up with Mick Kennedy, one of Neil's old sources.

How would you describe the relationship between Mark Standon and Neville Tween?

I think the relationship was an unholy relationship.

I think that it was born out of ignorance and naivety on Standon's part.

And I think that in the end, it was a relationship of fear on Standon's part.

Mick's now a professor of policing, but he used to be a detective and he's made it his business to know the ins and outs of the policing world.

He's very well connected and he actually investigated Tween for drug offences back in the 80s.

So he's well aware of Tween's reputation and the reputation of Tween's criminal associates, people who Tween hung around like Ray Johnson.

I wouldn't have wanted Tween and Johnson as informants for all the money in the world.

And I don't know why anyone else would want them.

They They have a history that is just spiteful and it is violent and it's bound to end up in tears if as a cop you start using people like that because all they're going to do is trade down.

They are never going to trade up.

So you're never going to find out who they're dealing with unless it's a competition.

And that's a very dangerous area to buy into because what you're doing is you're locking up their competition.

Mick Kennedy has some strong opinions about the relationship between Standon and and Tween,

and I'm not sure that everyone would agree with him.

His theory is that it might have been Tween who had all the power, not Standon.

What chance did Standon have?

Tween would have seen him coming and would have played him completely off a break and it would have been a long-term investment for Tween, and that's what it's proved to be.

So what do you think Tween got out of the relationship?

He manipulated Standon.

He had someone he could fall back on.

To Mick, the most outrageous part of the story is how Mark Standon allowed Tween to become close to his family.

From an investigator's point of view, it'd be as clear as this, and pretend you're Mark Standon.

Mark, what the fuck do you think you're doing recruiting Neville Toyne as an informant?

Where did you think this was going to end?

You know who he's associated with, you know what he's done, and yet you deny it all.

How can he possibly be a family friend?

How the fuck could you even let him in your house knowing what he's done?

And that would have been the average copper's response to Mark Standon trying to explain why he's friendly with Neville Toon.

And Standon would know that.

He would know it.

According to Mick, the reason all this hasn't been thoroughly investigated is because it's in the police's best interest to keep a lid on things like this.

If you start digging into a corrupt cop's career, who knows what you might find?

What happens is when police get investigated for these historical matters, it's never about the actual incidents themselves, it's about the cover-up.

And the cover-up is not necessarily about criminal activity, it's about competency, it's about misconduct, it's about all sorts of insinuations.

And this sort of stuff is referred to within policing circles as a career fucker.

And if you take it on,

you've got to accept the fact that your career is fucked.

For Jason, the manly cop who found himself in the middle of all this, it took time to sink in.

It was only in the months after he quit the police that the gravity of the whole experience really hit him.

And when he talks about it now, the emotion is all still really close to the surface.

It was so short and condensed and intense that I brushed it aside and just did what had to be done.

It was afterwards where it is where it hidden.

Sorry.

The baggage is quite heavy.

So I need to move on.

That's what it is.

Jason has moved on.

He's got a different career now, a different life.

But he still thinks about this case a lot because there are still too many unanswered questions

and too many victims who never received justice.

You know, the rape victims, particularly, living with this on a daily basis, the trauma they went through, they deserve justice, absolutely.

Absolutely.

Do you think they've had it?

No, they haven't had it.

I don't think they've had a fair go.

No, they haven't had a fair go.

And even Trudy Adams and the people who knows the circumstances and Auntie Illovich's as to how they may have met their end, whether it was quickly or otherwise we don't know, but yeah they all deserve

better than what I think they were afforded.

In the next episode, the final episode of the season, we reveal a brand new lead on Trudy Adams' case, one that's never been investigated before.

And Trudy Adams comes up.

Trudy Adams comes up.

And you and I just sort of looked at each other, I think, and neither of us really knew what to make of what he'd just said.

And

he proceeded to tell us a story which was tantalising to say the least.

Neil and I are continuing to look into Mark Standon and Neville Tween.

If you know anything more about this or anything else relating to Trudy's case, please get in touch.

You can remain anonymous.

The email is unraveltruecrime at abc.net.au.

Don't forget to to subscribe to Unrivaled wherever you get your podcasts or download the ABC Listener.