More than thirty years after the murder of NSW politician John Newman, questions remain over the guilt of the man convicted. Adam Shand with the story.
Convicted murderer Phuong Ngo is either an evil gang boss who killed to protect a crime franchise or the innocent victim of a miscarriage of justice based on racism and trial by media.
Twenty-five years after Ngo was convicted of ordering the 1994 assassination of NSW member of parliament John Newman in the driveway of his home, Ngo’s supporters continue to cry foul. Unfortunately, they lack the fresh and compelling evidence that would enable the 68-year-old to win his freedom.
The police who put him away remain convinced of his guilt, and the scoreboard is on their side.
No more appeals, but…
Convicted in 2001 after three trials, Ngo’s avenues of appeal are exhausted, and he is serving a life sentence without parole. A judicial review in 2008, prompted by an investigation by ABC’s Four Corners, emphatically reaffirmed Ngo’s conviction as sound.
None of this satisfies the true believers in Ngo’s innocence. A book by former ABC Four Corners reporter Debbie Whitmont, The Man Who Couldn’t Wait: The Story of Australia’s First Political Assassination, will be released this month, and a new podcast, A Shadow of Doubt, by Paul Searles and backed by retired surgeon Dr Mac Halliday, reframes familiar arguments.
The West Report will publish each episode of the podcast series.
These include that Ngo, a Vietnamese local politician in the Cabramatta area, was wrongly characterised as a political rival to Newman. In fact, Ngo had been offered Newman’s lower house seat by ALP heavy John Della Bosca on the day of the murder and had turned it down. His ambition was an upper house seat. Accusations of branch stacking were flying between Ngo and Newman, but if that were sufficient motive, flak jackets would be de rigeur in NSW Labor circles.
The podcast includes a queue of people offering sympathetic character references for Ngo.
“Most people who have a connection with Phuong Ngo are impressed by his charisma, good manners, intelligence, and the fact that he’s preserved his sanity despite an appalling time, including twelve years in maximum security at Goulburn,” according to Dr Halliday.
“He was very formal, hard working and charming,” said Carlotta McIntosh, who wrote a book about Ngo, A Marked Man.
Less impressed were the 300 Vietnamese community members who signed a petition opposing Ngo’s release on bail after his 1998 arrest.
Likewise, the prison source who saw Ngo’s urbane mask slip when stood over by inmates in jail.
“His face changed, and he said, ‘One phone call, and I could have your entire family killed, they said. Or former NSW Corrective Services Commissioner Ron Woodham, who said Ngo was “very dangerous and a threat to security” after alleging Ngo had paid fellow inmates to organise an escape.
By comparison, Newman is portrayed as a domineering, sometimes violent bully whose murder was almost inevitable.
Steve Atkinson, a local journalist, said in the podcast that he didn’t “know of any politician in south west Sydney from 1985 through to 2005 that was more likely to be shot than John.”
No alternative assassin?
Despite Newman’s many enemies, the free Phuong Ngo push has been unable to identify a credible alternative assassin.
Their argument rests on the fact that the prosecution relied on secret evidence and indemnified witnesses, and the only one convicted of the conspiracy was Ngo. The shooter and the getaway driver were acquitted, despite the evidence of rollover witnesses. If success is so dependant upon indemnities, as in the prosecution of accused war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith, the weight of the direct evidence can rightly be questioned.
However, the prosecution was able to persuade a jury of Ngo’s role in a plot that included the procurement of firearms and abortive earlier attempts on Newman’s life.
Investigators on the case dismiss the new versions of this old story.
“It’s a load of bullshit reinventing history, “ said one, who requested anonymity. To be fair, Whitmont stops short of declaring Ngo’s innocence, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald last weekend: “I can’t say that Ngo is innocent…
But I do know there was something very wrong with the way he was convicted.
Whitmont was the reporter on the Four Corners story, which won a Walkley Award and included sensational inferences that the purported murder weapon was planted by detectives in the Georges River for police divers to find, a claim later discredited. The podcast runs the same suspicion without further evidence from ex MP and lawyer Peter Breen.
“The gun was just too cute by half. You know, turning up in the river. Police divers found it as soon as they dived into the river. We knew in Parliament from various inquiries that the police had a guns locker, and if they needed a gun, that they had access to one.”
The truth is, this was not such a lucky find. Divers had been searching in the same area for at least an hour the previous day.
Excessive sentence?
In the absence of exculpatory evidence, Phuong Ngo’s supporters say a life sentence is manifestly excessive for a single murder. They may have a point. Ngo’s sentence is on a par with backpacker killer Ivan Milat, who killed seven people, Katherine Knight, who killed and cooked up her partner and Sef Gonzales, who slayed his entire family. Ngo’s problem is that
he has never admitted his guilt, a move that might give him a shot at freedom.
Newman’s murder is described as Australia’s first political assassination, but perhaps it was grounded in conventional motives. Police alleged Ngo was connected to the 5T gang in Cabramatta, and Newman had threatened to expose its criminal activities, including laundering of drug money at the Mekong Club, where Ngo was a key figure. Politics aside, that kind of talk can get you killed.