Jack Lawrence

David said this had an obvious advantage when it came to the authorities.

However, he was also dealing with some very dangerous people.

So how did he avoid getting himself into trouble with them?

So a very brief Australian criminal history lesson for you.

The man that David is referring to is James Frederick Baisley, also known as the Iceman or Machine Gun.

And he's long believed to be the hitman who gunned down prominent anti-drug campaigner and liberal politician Don McKay.

It's an order supposedly given by the Italian mafia in Australia in the 1970s and was the subject of Channel 9's underbelly series A Tale of Two Cities.

James Baisley died at the age of 90 in 2018, a free man in a Melbourne nursing home, although no stranger to the inside of a prison cell.

In fact, in 1986, he was sentenced to nine years behind bars for the conspiracy to murder Mr McKay, but was never tried over being the one who actually fired the gun used to kill the politician.

He also was handed a life sentence for his role in the double murder of drug couriers Isabel and Douglas Wilson, whose bodies were recovered in 1979.

However handed a life sentence, Mr Baisley would walk out of prison in 2001.

Mr McKay's remains were never found.

Mr Baisley kept his secret until the very end.

Police would describe this man as someone who saw murder as a job and felt absolutely no remorse.

So you were hanging around some very, very dangerous people then.

Yeah, that's what you want on your side.

Absolutely, totally.

This Michael that David speaks of was his long-time business partner and former champion pole vaulter, Michael Sullivan.

A man whose life likely would have been vastly different if he had been able to represent Australia in the Olympic Games.

Michael was, in fact, the first ever Australian to break the 16-foot mark in pole vaulting, but was passed over by Olympic selectors in 1968 for the Mexico City squad.