The Serial Killer

You just don't know who you are messing with

Life was pretty good in the late 1970s. I was flatting in Grey Lynn in Auckland with my German Shepherd, Lady, and three nurses. They were good sorts and because we all did shift work, it wasn’t uncommon for only one or two of us to be at home at any given time.

We had great neighbours, including a couple of people I had gone to school with and whose company I enjoyed. There was also a guy called Cookie, who was an excellent session guitarist and never went anywhere without his Gibson Les Paul. I had my PA system, which I was mostly using as my stereo amp. It used to rattle the windows at times, and one time a friend told me he could here it from Western Springs, which was about a kilometer away.

Western Springs was the home of speedway, but also the host of the many arena concerts I went to. There were so many. Like Mungo Jerry, Bob Marley, The Eagles, Bob Dylan, Alice Cooper, and many more.

This was the time when a lot of the old rock and roll greats came to New Zealand toward the end of their career. I was too young to have even been into them, but I loved the gigs. One I really enjoyed (when I was still at school) was Bill Haley and the Comets, who came with a couple of other great bands from the era. That was a fun night. It must have been cool for them, as I suspect they didn’t get big audiences in the US anymore.

We had some interesting times in our ‘house’ which was the middle of a 5 unit block of identical 2 story houses, with a tiny front lawn and a decent enough back yard, backing onto what is now a large supermarket, but back then was a big dirt lot, that I road motorbikes on.

I used to keep my german shepherd out the back on a nice day when I was at work, with a big bowl of water in the shade and a bone to chew on. When I was home, the doors were open and she could come and go, which was not always a good thing.

One day my dog came to me with a bit of a cry, and lay down, looking very bloated, and doing a lot of farting. I took her out the back and kept an eye on her in case she was sick. She came right after a long sleep. That evening a neighbour from a flat two doors down (also a friend) came and told me this weird story. She had put a big boneless roast up on the bench to defrost that morning and someone had stolen it. She wanted to warn me, because we pretty much had an open door policy between the houses. I was genuinely surprised, because it was a very peaceful quiet neighbourhood at the time, and people tended to know who was coming and going. Later that night, the penny dropped. That was no thief, well at least not a human one, that was my dog. I owed the neighbours a roast!

Rattling pots and pans went quiet one day when our stove stopped working. I rang the agent who we rented the property through, and she said “No problem, I’ll send someone out.” Two days later we hadn’t seen anyone, and then it was weekend. On Monday I rang again, and they apologised. They had sent the electrician to the wrong house. Our place was 499 Great North Rd (which is a very long road), and they sent the electrician to 499 New North Rd (which is also a very long road). How could they make a mistake like that? It turned out that our landlord Michael Friedlander owned both houses! I don’t know how many properties he owned at the time, but in 2015 he had 220!

The nurses were nice, although I did have one expensive event. Working in Post Office Faults, I wasn’t making a lot of money back then. I had gone from casual labour, earning more in a day than I was earning as a ‘trainee’ in the Fault Control Centre.

One day it was pouring with rain, and I left my dog in the lounge, because we didn’t have any shelter outside. When I got home there was a huge mess in the lounge. She had fretted being on her own for the day, and demolished a huge container of foam plastic, but worse still, she had chewed a couple of really expensive wooden shoes, which set me back a couple of hundred dollars. Don’t ask me how a nurse could afford that, but that was the last time Lady would stay at home on her own.

I have more stories about my nurse flatmates which will wait for another day. For example aiding and abetting an act to help me, that would go against their code of ethics. Don’t worry, nobody died.

We had a really interesting mix of people in the ‘Test Room’. We had a guy with serious diabetes who was smoking himself to death. Yes we were allowed to smoke in our building. We even had branded ash trays!

NZPO Ash Trays

Anyone who worked there would recognise these. There was a huge stack of them, a bit like a stack of dinner plates. Sometimes there was so much smoke you would think the place was on fire. You wouldn’t have wanted to be a non-smoker, but in the 70s, everyone smoked. That’s what I tried to tell the Vice Principal at Kelston as he was about top give me 3 hits of the cane for allegedly smoking at the Titirangi shops, in school uniform. I was smoking, but had gotten changed first, but there was a local bully prefect who didn’t like me, and lied about my clothing. They weren’t going to take my word over his.

On night shifts there was sometimes a bit of other types of smoking going on too, but that happened between consenting colleagues in the basement. It helped to pass the long nights. I’m sure people knew, because it would have clung to our clothes, although now as a non smoker, I realise how poor our sense of smell was, with the insides of our noses covered in tar. When it was quiet, we often played cards. being a 24/7 service that was a perk of the job, and a way to stay awake late at night.

There were a few people like me with long hair, and I have to say, that was never an impediment for the job. In later years when I went into sales management, I had to cut my hair for credibility, but at that time I could sit on my flowing locks.

One of our team was a vicar’s daughter, I won’t say where she was from, because it might identify her, but it was the other side of the world. She was cool, well educated and one of the boys, who could make you blush with some of her jokes. She had an affair with an Egyption guy who was a serious male chauvinist, which he seemed to get away with in the day, even though it annoyed many of us. We threatened to tell his wife, but never did. His personality and what he was doing were a good reason to play pranks on him, but I have to say he gave as good as he got. I liked him, just not that he was cheating on his wife.

Also I tried to subscribe to the philosophy of not dipping your pen in the company ink. I only did that once on a skiing trip with fellow students with someone from a different town. It was a spur of the moment thing on a long weekend, with a clear understanding that it couldn’t go anywhere. To be fair, we were both single and had good communication. We parted at the end of the course as friends and got on well as colleagues, when work would connect us with each other. It was probably a year later that I would learn that for some people casual sex, was not casual. That’s another story. You have to remember that the 70s were very free and easy, and that was the environment my coming of age developed.

One of the great things about shift work, was that you could go to nightclubs and parties after an evening shift, and sleep in the following morning. We had great bands and clubs in the 70s, and being a lover of music, got to enjoy most of the bands of the time. If you were of that time you might remember, Dragon, Hello Sailor, Living Force with the awesome Harvey Mann and Eddie Hansen and my old friend Johnny Pepper who I tried to start a band with, that never quite got off the ground because people were running in all directions at the time. A stalwart of Auckland night clubs was Tommy Sharplin, who lost both of his legs in a tractor accident and had one reattached. Many of his audiences didn’t even know that he only had one leg. His Rock & Roll gigs were great and always popular.

One of the guys I would go to clubs with, a colleague at work, we’ll call him Greg, was the epitome of the Dedicated Follower of Fashion.

If you ever see movies or series based in the 70s, you would probably recognise his style. Some of us had long hair, worn jeans, perhaps a beard, but not Greg. He dressed impeccably in clothes that always looked like they were brand new off the rack. Cool shirt, dress jeans, a coloured sports jacket, sharp looking boots. He had quite long sideburns, perfectly trimmed, light brown here to his shoulders, which was cut every few weeks so it hung straight just above his shoulders and didn’t curl.

He was a bit aloof at work. He didn’t join in with playing cards, or the practical jokes we would play on the unsuspecting public, or our friends. It was like he was there, but you hardly noticed, unless it was in the men’s room, where he would be combing his hair to look smart when he came back into the test room.

After joining him at clubs a few times, it turned out he lived diagonally over the road from me. I didn’t have a car and he did, a Mark IV Ford Zephyr so we often went in his car, so he didn’t get his clothes dirty on a bus. One day I went over and a brown skinned guy with a medium sized afro opened the door. We both laughed. We knew each other from school in Kelston. We hadn’t been friends at school, but he was likeable and we got on ok. He had an awesome sense of humour and was good looking with a great smile. He then joined us going to the clubs, and was a welcome addition to the crew. He was also a smart dresser, but not fanatic. I had some smart clothes, but really no interest in fashion. I wore what I was comfortable in. Greg had offered to help me by smarter clothes, but what did I need them for. There was no dress code at work, so all I had to do was pass the minimum requirements for clubs.

What was unusual about them as flatmates was that they were total opposites in personality. My Samoan friend, we’ll call him Jimmy, was a joker, the life of the party, and great fun to have around. Greg was more into having a relationship with his mirror. Don’t get me wrong, we were friends and enjoyed each other’s company, but his primary goal in life was for other people, especially women, to adore him.

We would often go to nightclubs and see Kiwi bands together. It was good that I worked before we went, because we were always waiting for Greg. Jimmy would tell me to get there at 9 pm, for example. I was brainwashed as a kid to always get somewhere on time, never early and never late. So I did. Then we would have to wait for Greg for another half an hour. He couldn’t leave the flat until he looked just right. I guess it worked for him, because the girls at the clubs liked him and he was never short of a dance partner, although I can’t remember him bringing girls home. I* never thought too much on that.

Anyway, as you do, over time we drifted apart. I moved out west with a couple who had been my neighbours on Great North Rd, that I got on really well with. They had found an awesome property to rent, designed by and for an architect. It had a massive fireplace, about three times the size of normal, and I would have a fairly large room, which was cool.

It would have been probably ten or more years after that, when I caught up with an ex-colleague, who asked me, “Did you hear about Greg?”

“No, what about him?” I asked.

“You know that guy that was on the news, who was arrested in Australia after murdering several hitchhikers over a period of a few years? That was him!”

You could have knocked me over with a feather. I had worked with this guy for a few years, partied and socialised with him, and other than being totally fastidious about his looks, and being a bit aloof, he was the last person you would expect to be a serial killer. But then I don’t have a lot of experience with serial killers, it’s not like there is one on every block.

It does make you wonder what is behind some people’s veneers. I’m glad I never got on his bad side. I don’t know what happened to him in the end. I don’t know whether he ever got out of jail, and am quite happy not knowing. But you do meet all sorts. Did I tell you that I once met a hit man for the mafia? That will be another story.