Australia in the 1980’s laid claim to arguably the most corrupt circle of police in the English-speaking world.
Some officers so dirty they became leading heroin dealers, members of the elite Armed Hold Up Squad organised armed robberies – and were even involved in murders. And the superstar of the NSW Police Force, Roger Rogerson, was the terrorising criminal at the centre of it all.
This extraordinary corruption went unchecked for years until a single mother, a heroin-addicted sex worker from Kings Cross, literally blew the lid – exposing the rotten underbelly of Australia’s largest city.
Sallie-Anne Huckstepp had floated close to the flames of police corruption and organised crime for more than a decade.
She had spent years paying off crooked cops and rubbed shoulders with some of the most notorious criminals of the time. And she knew the corrupt relationships that existed between senior police officers and major crime figures.
When her lover Warren Lanfranchi was gunned down in an inner-city lane in 1981, Sallie-Anne Huckstepp took the bold and ultimately fatal decision to break ranks and blow the whistle on police corruption in an explosive tell-all interview on 60 Minutes. But due to legal concerns, only a fraction of that bombshell interview ever went to air – although its central allegations went to the highest levels of authority.
After 40 years the original interview has been re-discovered, revealing in astonishing detail how one woman changed the course of Australian Police history.
Sallie-Anne Huckstepp was the first person to lift the lid on corruption and the rogue gallery of criminals and crooked cops running organised crime in Sydney and around Australia.
The “Avenging Angel” knew she could pay the ultimate price for going public. And in 1986 she did. Her body was found lying face down in a pond in Sydney’s Centennial Park.
Despite strong suspects, court hearings and inquests, her brutal murder has never been solved. Now Under Investigation has gathered a war table of experts to shed new light on her exploits and identify her probable killer.
AT THE WAR TABLE:
- Mick Fuller – Current NSW Police Commissioner who began his early career in and around the infamous Kings Cross.
- John Laycock – Retired Assistant Police Commissioner who re-examined the murder of Sallie-Anne Huckstepp in Operation Snowy.
- Mick Drury – The award-winning undercover police officer and straight cop whose conflict with the country’s dirtiest cop almost cost him his life.
- John Dale – Author and researcher who literally wrote the book on the life and death of Sallie-Anne Huckstepp
- Kate McClymont – Award-winning investigative journalist who reported many of Huckstepp’s bombshell corruption allegations and knew many of the key players in this drama
ALSO FEATURING IN THIS EPISODE:
- Ray Martin – One of the original 60 Minutes reporters, who conducted the 1981 intervie with Sallie-Anne.
- Mary McElhone and Jane Healy – eyewitnesses to Roger Rogerson’s execution killing of Sallie-Anne’s lover.
- Sallie-Anne Huckstepp – The avenging voice from the grave whose remaining and unseen 45 minutes of explosive interviews smash open police corruption and expose the rotten underbelly of criminal life in New South Wales in the 1980’s.
