Australia’s first political assasination or miscarriage of justice?

More than three decades after the murder of NSW politician John Newman, questions remain about the convicted man’s guilt. Adam Shand with story.

Convicted murderer Phuong Ngo is either an evil gang boss who kills to protect a criminal organization or the innocent victim of a miscarriage of justice based on racism and media prosecution.

Twenty-five years after Ngo was convicted of ordering the assassination of NSW MP John Newman in his home garage in 1994, Ngo’s supporters continue to swear. Unfortunately, they lack new and convincing evidence that would allow the 68-year-old man to gain his freedom.

The police who put him in jail are convinced he’s guilty, and the scoreboard is in their favor.

There is no objection anymore but…

Convicted in 2001 after three trials, Ngo has exhausted his appeals and is serving a life sentence without parole. Judicial review in 2008 following ABC’s investigation Four CornersHe unequivocally confirmed that Ngo’s conviction was sound.

None of this satisfies those who believe in Ngo’s innocence. a book By former ABC Four Corners correspondent Debbie Whitmont The Man Who Couldn’t Wait: The Story of Australia’s First Political AssassinationIt will be published this month and is prepared by Paul Searles, retired surgeon Dr. A Shadow of Doubt, a new podcast backed by Mac Halliday, reframes familiar arguments.

West Report will release each episode of the podcast series.

These include Ngo, a local Vietnamese politician in the Cabramatta area, who was incorrectly described as Newman’s political rival. In fact, on the day of the murder, Ngo had been offered Newman’s lower house seat by ALP’s John Della Bosca and rejected the offer. His ambition was the upper house seat. Accusations of branch hoarding were flying between Ngo and Newman, but if that were reason enough, bulletproof vests would be a must-have in NSW Labor circles.

The podcast features a number of people offering sympathetic character references to Ngo.

According to Dr Halliday, “Most people connected with Phuong Ngo are impressed by his charisma, good manners, intelligence and the fact that he has maintained his sanity despite a terrifying period of time, including twelve years in maximum security at Goulburn.”

“He was very formal, hard-working and charming,” said Carlotta McIntosh, who wrote a book about Ngo. Marked Man.

Less impressed were the 300 Vietnamese community members who signed a petition opposing bail for Ngo after his arrest in 1998.

Likewise, the prison source who saw Ngo’s polite mask standing next to the inmates in the prison.

“His face changed and he said: ‘They said, ‘I can kill your whole family with one phone call.'” Or former NSW Corrective Services Commissioner Ron Woodham said Ngo was “very dangerous and a threat to safety” after claiming he paid other inmates to organize an escape.

By comparison, Newman is portrayed as a domineering, sometimes violent bully whose murder is almost inevitable.

Steve Atkinson, a local journalist, said on the podcast that he “didn’t know of any politician in south-west Sydney from 1985 to 2005 who was more likely to be shot than John.”

Are there no alternative assassins?

Despite Newman’s many enemies, the free Phuong Ngo attack failed to identify a reliable alternative assassin.

Their claims are based on the fact that the prosecution relied on secret evidence and compensated witnesses, and that Ngo was the only person convicted of the conspiracy. The shooter and the getaway driver were acquitted despite the testimonies of the witnesses. If success depends so much on reparations, as in the trial of accused war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith, the weight of direct evidence can rightly be questioned.

However, the prosecution managed to convince the jury of Ngo’s role in a conspiracy that involved the purchase of firearms and previous failed attempts on Newman’s life.

Investigators investigating the case reject new versions of this old story.

“Reinventing history is a bunch of nonsense,” said one person who wished to remain anonymous. To be fair, Whitmont refrained from declaring Ngo’s innocence, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald last week: “I cannot say that Ngo is innocent…

But I know there is something very wrong with the way he was convicted.

Whitmont was a reporter Four Corners The Walkley Award-winning story included the sensational inference that the alleged murder weapon was placed by detectives in the Georges River for police divers to find, a claim later discredited. The podcast raises the same suspicion without further evidence from former MP and barrister Peter Breen.

“The gun was pretty sweet by half. You know, it turned up in the river. Police divers found it when they dived into the river. We knew from various investigations that the police had a gun locker in Parliament and they had access to it when they needed a gun.”

The truth is that this wasn’t such a lucky find. Divers had been searching in the same area for at least an hour the day before.

Excessive sentence?

In the absence of exculpatory evidence, Phuong Ngo’s supporters say a life sentence for a single murder is clearly excessive. It might mean something. Ngo’s sentence is on par with that of backpacker murderer Ivan Milat, who killed seven people, Katherine Knight, who killed and trapped her partner, and Sef Gonzales, who murdered his entire family. Ngo’s problem is that

never admitted guilt; It was a move that could give him a chance at freedom.

Newman’s murder has been described as Australia’s first political assassination, but was perhaps based on conventional motives. Police claimed Ngo was linked to the 5T gang in Cabramatta and Newman had threatened to expose criminal activities, including the laundering of drug money, at the Mekong Club, where Ngo was a key figure. Politics aside, this kind of talk can get you killed.