Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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An overseas undercover operation, why we never heard from a key witness, and application after application to abandon the trial. These are just some of the secrets that were kept from the jury for more than two months as they tried to decide who killed Irma. I'm Stephen Stockwell. Welcome to episode 13 of The Case of the Two Intruders.
Irma Palacic's brutal murder rocked her family and has haunted them for 24 long years. This wasn't the average robbery. The brutality of the attack shocked the community. They were virtually tortured that night.
Violently assaulted before the two men ransacked the premises and stole cash and jewellery. My grandparents were beaten and my grandmother was left to die on the lounge room floor. The jury in the trial of Steve Fabrizzi and Joseph Ficone has found they were guilty of the manslaughter of Irma Palacic.
And now the jury has reached that decision, we can tell you what they weren't told during the trial. To help, we have the keeper of the secrets, ABC court reporter Elizabeth Byrne. Welcome, Liz. Hello, Stockie. And as well as Liz, who has her own secret that we'll reveal at the end of this episode, we're also joined by ABC investigative reporter James Viver. G'day, James.
Hey, Stockie.
There is so much to discuss in this episode, so much that you didn't hear. There are so many questions we couldn't answer during the trial. I mean, we've already knocked over the big one, or the Mr. Big One, if you will, with Alicia and Liz in the episode that we put out last week, and it's had a great response from so many of you. But there were lots of others as well we couldn't dive into.
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Chapter 2: What secrets were kept from the jury during the Irma Palacic trial?
But that was something that raised a question in my mind. There was a little bit of evidence from Fabrizi. Well, part of the conversation Fabrizi had with undercover officer Danny was where he talks about someone who knew them who lived in Melbourne talking to their husband about it and then the husband telling Vakoni. It might have been inadvertent.
The third person may not have known what they triggered. We can speculate all we like, but that is the big unanswered question as to how they knew Vakoni
that the cash would be there perhaps in the first instance because remember um 1998 they the colony it has been found guilty of being there uh we don't know what happened in 1997 when the large amount of money was gone we don't know who was responsible for that but somebody knew about that and whoever communicated with them knew they'd moved house so that's the that's the big question
Yeah, and it's less about the Hungarian-ness of them per se, all of the people involved. And the sense I get is it's more that it's just they were a part of a community that just happened to be Hungarian, if that makes sense. And so, like any community, people chat and gossip and pass on things perhaps that they shouldn't. How that happened in this case, as Liz says, we don't know really.
Yeah. Liz, there was some questions about the Pulisic's grandchildren. You know, there was some kind of criminal associations there. And that was something that the defense kind of looked quite closely at. What's the background of this? What was going on there?
Well, you know, there were 331 suspects before they found the two people now found to have been there. First on that list was one of Irma's grandsons. And Sky Jerome cross-examined him and asked him if he'd once been jailed for burglary. And he said, I didn't do that. I just took the rap. And then he said he'd been building the kitchen. So he said, I can't even remember making a secret cupboard.
I just put the kitchen in. I didn't tell anyone anything about the kitchen. Now, the police cleared him.
a long long time like you know 26 years ago um several of his friends uh were on that list as well of course the police cleared them as well a very long time ago so um you know we're not suggesting he was involved in any way but this was one of the possibilities that was uh examined at the outset
Yeah. We had so many, as I mentioned, questions about this. And as well as this, you know, some of these questions that we talked about, we, you know, we sort of had some of the answers to as well. But the way that, you know, these questions were sent into the case of at abc.net.au were great.
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Chapter 3: What was the significance of the undercover operation in Hungary?
Right, Liz?
Yes, that's correct. And the family were not a fan of this. And they were concerned about it. Elizabeth, who was one of Irma's daughters, said to the court that with the secret compartment, she said they'd felt that they had to give them something, otherwise they'd be stashing it all over the house. And she said Irma just liked to have cash and to pay for things in cash. And, you know...
Obviously, her background must have weighed into that a bit because having been robbed of such a large amount of money in 1997, she was still collecting it at home in 1999 when when the burglary where she was killed happened.
There was a time when I started researching this story at the end of last year. And just funny how coincidence works out. My wife and I had gone to buy something from Facebook. It was a deceased estate from a house in Canberra. And I forget what it was, to be honest with you. I don't think we ended up buying it. But we went there.
It was this very sweet couple, perhaps in their 60s, something like that. And they'd been clearing out this house. And... They said, oh, we keep finding these bags of money, like of $1 coins and $2 coins because mum and dad used to love playing the pokies at the Hungarian club. Anyway, we got chatting and they were a Hungarian family too.
And they'd all be in much less amounts of money, to be fair. We're talking about, you know, maybe 50 bucks or 100. Yeah. And I thought, God, isn't it funny how things work out? And just that week I'd been reading about the story, the statement of facts and trying to get myself across it and work out what to do. And so, you know, it's not uncommon even in Canberra.
Lots of people who have spoken to me have said, oh, yeah, my nan used to do it. My pop used to do it. We've had colleagues here talk to us about stashing money here, there and everywhere.
And I sort of tend to agree, really, that if you had led with Svetlana, that if you have left post-World War I or moreover post-World War II, Central, Eastern Europe, when you look at what was happening in Hungary when Irma and Gregor left in the mid-1950s, I wouldn't trust institutions. I mean, the horrors that were part of World War II. So no wonder they stashed money.
But I actually don't even really think it's a – it may not even be a European thing. My granddad was a greengrocer.
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Chapter 4: How did the Palacic family's history impact the trial?
Yeah. Yeah. Such an interesting insight into their lives as well. Something I'm keen to talk a little bit more about later in this episode, just how much we learned about Irma and Gregor through the evidence. But I mean, we almost didn't have any evidence at all. I mean, we're talking about what the jury didn't hear.
They almost didn't hear anything because as this trial was about to begin, it was almost completely stopped in its tracks. Liz, what happened?
Yeah.
We were supposed to start like on February the 2nd or something. And then there was a whole week with nothing. And I was very worried about this podcast. And then things cranked up in the second week with applications for a permanent stay on the charges from both men and some other applications to delay if the first thing didn't happen.
What were they arguing on? What was the point that Sky Jerome was kind of needling away at to say this shouldn't happen?
Well, one of the main things was that there had been a coronial into this event. The coroner had produced a report. There had been a file and a record of what everybody had said in that inquiry. But that file had gone. It's been lost in time. And Sky Jerome suggested that Mr Fabrizi... could not get a fair trial without the evidence from the coronial.
In the end, though, even though this was argued by both parties that there should be a permanent stay and then later maybe a temporary stay. The judge rejected it all. And he said that a fair trial does not require a perfect record of evidence. And so the trial proceeded.
There was an afternoon or it may have been a morning, but for people who never worked in a newsroom, they're quite messy. And there's a section behind my desk in the ABC Canberra newsroom that has copies of the Canberra Times that
They they they are like an archive they go so far back Point being is there's lots of notepads and old reports and bits and pieces around in the newsroom Liz and I looked through all of these weird shelves and round corners in nooks and crannies to see if one of our colleagues had kept this sections of this coronial in in the past to see if we could sort of you know provide it for the legal process and
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Chapter 5: What were the main arguments for a mistrial in the Irma Palacic case?
Yes, the investigation into Mr Fabrizi began perhaps a bit earlier than the jury really knew about. And this is because this all came out during the pre-trial applications. Most of these were lodged by Mr Fabrizi's solicitor, Tom Taylor, and there was one subpoena that he had filed
lodged, which wanted to know about a trip to Hungary where Steve Fabrizio had spent some time in Hungary before the Mr. Big operation began. And Tom Taylor wanted to know what happened in Hungary because he was accompanied there, well, tailed there perhaps is a better way to describe it, by a police officer. Now, we don't know what happened in Hungary.
There's all sorts of, it's surrounded by mystery. But Tom Taylor pursued this for a while. He wanted to know details like, was this legal? Were the guidelines followed? Was this the start of the Mr Big's, operation. Now, the police evidence was that this was not the start of it.
This was a separate undercover operation and that the Mr Big part of it didn't start until probably the January of 2023. And these events were in sort of later 2022. So we didn't get to see many details about this trip. But it was an interesting thing that it was never dragged into the evidence.
In fact, the police said in the end that the subpoena was just an exercise in trying to turn something up. But it does point to the thoroughness of the police investigation, that they were starting it quite early and that they were not letting Mr Fabrizi out of their sights.
Yeah, and I mean, as all of this is being resolved, you know, pre-trial, we had both men, Steve Fabrizzi and Joseph O'Curney, pleading not guilty to all of the charges that they were facing.
They were charged with the murder of Irma Palacic, but in the case of Steve Fabrizzi, he'd also been charged with burglary around the 1999 robbery, and then Joseph O'Curney also charged with burglary in relation to the 1998 robbery of Irma Palacic's home. Now, as I said, they pleaded not guilty to all of these originally, but, you know, on the eve of the trial, Liz...
Steve Fabrizzi changes his plea, pleads guilty to the burglary at Irma Placik's home in 1999. This must have been kind of quite a dramatic moment in the courtroom when that came out.
It was, and we all sort of sat up and thought, hello, you know, is he throwing Vakoni under a bus? But when I read back through my notes about the things that were happening in the run-up to the jury being chosen, I realised Sky Jerome had really been pointed to this quite a few times when she referred to her client as, you know, not denying being there and that sort of thing.
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Chapter 6: Who were the key witnesses that never testified in the trial?
And then late in the trial, the prosecution revealed that that possibly wasn't the case, that the error with that happened in a different process, and some evidence was presented about that. But she said that error was a problem for her client, and Mr Jackson backed this up as well, that they couldn't ask questions or challenge what had been said, that they should have known this earlier.
Well, it wasn't actually picked up until that time. That's what the prosecution said. So they tried again to have the jury dismissed. That was dismissed. And then there was a mistrial application. And that was about the lack of disclosures about the white van and, of course, the tape that was contaminated in the white van.
And we heard all about that in an earlier episode about how it was actually Irma's dried blood from a van. from a laboratory that had not been cleaned. So Sky Jerome's summation in that particular application was that this has been a trial by ambush because she said they weren't getting the information that they needed. And of course, this was all tactical.
See, the thing was the DNA evidence in the fridge on the two containers was quite powerful. So if Sky Jerome could have the jury dismissed or a mistrial declared based on some of these other issues, then she would have achieved her aim. So she couldn't go directly to the strong bit of evidence, but she could use weaker bits of evidence to undo the trial.
Yeah. No, the DNA, yeah, as you mentioned, is such a key part of this trial. And I always appreciate the lawyering that gets done in between the lines, I suppose, when the jury's out of the room, the tiny arguments that are had that have such huge consequence to the trial. Had that mistrial application gotten up, we wouldn't be in this position now. We'd be waiting for another trial. If
the jury had been dismissed, we would have been, you know, in a similar position as well, you know, waiting to find out, you know, what responsibility Joseph Oconee and Steve Fabrizio had for the death of Emma Placix in 1999.
One of the other kind of more substantial bits of evidence and certainly a strong defense line was this idea of a third intruder that was built around someone we've spoken about a bit on the podcast, a guy called Shannon Dunn. And this is someone that, you know, Sky Jerome said in her closing, you know, that the jury never heard from.
You know, this is someone that you haven't heard speak and referenced a whole heap of statements that he had made at the time. And all of this is a discussion around, you know, whether or not Shannon Dunn is going to be, you know, basically called to give evidence.
What they're drawing out, what Sky Drum has drawn out of the prosecution, if this man is going to give evidence in front of the jury about, you know, whether or not he was involved in the robbery of the Play 6 home and the assault on our Play 6 in 1999. Yeah. In the end, he doesn't come. Why does he not appear as a witness after all of this work?
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Chapter 7: What role did the defense barristers play in the trial?
I think we were. One of the most touching moments came quite early in the trial when one of the policemen who'd been called to the 1998 burglary read her statement that was given to police at the time. So we heard in Irma's own words what she said had happened to her that night. And it it brought it home to you, this is a person who's died in a violent way.
And it is a person who had a life, who had children and grandchildren and had a life to live still. And that's very sad. And so while there was a lot of legal argument going on, She was threaded through the whole trial and you did have a sense of her presence through that.
Yeah. Something we'll talk about more in our next episode, what we really think, is just, you know, the way that I think, you know, the play sixes have resonated with us and also the kind of senselessness of what happened on that night in 1999 as well. There's much more that I would love to tell you about, but unfortunately we are still a little bit limited in some of the things we can share.
There's some more details hopefully we'll have for you down the track, but I can't say any more than that without saying attracting the laser focus of the Canberra judicial system. So I'll leave it there. Before we finish with this one, Liz, we have had so many wonderful emails thanking both you and James for your work reporting on this trial.
And as we mentioned at the start of the case of the two intruders, I think in our first episode, when you moved to Canberra to work for the ABC in 1998, this was one of the first stories you covered at that time. And this trial will actually be one of your last.
Well, it is the last stockie. In fact, it was supposed to run last year, but there were some other delays and it didn't start until this year. So I've delayed my retirement till now to cover this. Hopefully I'll be back to talk about sentencing at some point, but I'm not covering courts anymore and I'll be gone in a few weeks.
Liz has been like the John Farnham of court reporters. There's been so many farewells that we thought we were going to have. And then she would just do one last tour, albeit not by her own design. But I would say she's the best we've got, and if not the best court reporter that the country's got. That's my two penneth.
And working with her over this last nine weeks, I've learned an immense amount. So I feel lucky, too.
Liz, you've covered so many different trials, the high-profile trials, things like the trial of Bruce Lerman. You've covered Katy Perry versus Katy Perry in the High Court as well. There's not much that's going to meet that one. Was there something special about this trial that made you want to hang around for it?
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Chapter 8: How did the jury's verdict reflect on the evidence presented?
Look, it's been incredible to have you as part of this, Liz, and I cannot fault your objectivity throughout the process as well. So it's been wonderful to have you here and part of that. So thank you so much for joining us for this series. And James Viver as well. Yeah, it's been nice to have you too, I guess.
Yeah, I'm just the sidecar. That's fine. I know my place. It's been great to be on the pod.
No, it's been wonderful to have both of you. We're not quite finished yet. We do still have to talk through what we really think of this trial. There's so much analysis I'm keen to dive into, particularly around the role of the defence barristers in this case. We had two defence barristers in that room, but I feel like one of them did a lot more work than the other one.
So we can unpack some of the details around that in our next episode. Make sure you grab ABC Listen. It's the best place to listen to the case of the two intruders. And we'll be back in your feed very soon. The Case of the Two Intruders is produced by ABC Audio Studios and ABC News. This episode was reported by Elizabeth Byrne and James Fiverr and was presented by me, Stephen Stockwell.
Our supervising producer is Greg Muller and our executive producer is Claire Rawlinson. Thank you to our senior lawyer, Jasmine Sims, our legal queen for her legal advice, to the ACT Newsroom and also to Audio Studios manager, Eric George. This episode was produced on the land of the Ngunnawal, Ngambri and Wurundjeri people.
Thank you.
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