After almost 50 years, new evidence exposes the ‘third man’ in Roger Rogerson and Neddy Smith’s notorious criminal partnership… and how they made him disappear

The planned robbery of the Fielders Bakery payroll 48 years ago was a spectacular debacle from start to finish.

The gunmen escaped with no cash, a bakery employee almost lost his life, and everyone involved in the disastrous caper in Sydney’s westerns suburbs was arrested.

It was barely newsworthy at the time – there was only $16,000 up for grabs anyway – but this failed 1976 hold-up had seismic consequences for Australian criminal history.

The aftermath of the Fielders Bakery job brought together for the first time the man who would become the nation’s most notorious detective, Roger Rogerson, and Sydney’s busiest gangster of the 1980s, Neddy Smith.

Now – as incredible new evidence emerges – it could also hold the key to the fate of forgotten crook Bobby McKinnon, who seemingly fell off the face of the Earth a day after the stick-up in a mystery no one is trying to solve – and who likely lost his life because Rogerson and Smith chose him as their scapegoat.

The acclaimed TV series Blue Murder, first screened in 1995, begins with a dramatic recreation of the Fielders Bakery raid, but McKinnon does not rate a mention.

Despite Smith being formally questioned about McKinnon’s disappearance and Rogerson falsely accusing McKinnon in court of being one of the Fielders robbers, it is as if the missing man never existed.

Which is remarkable given his key role at the very start of Rogerson and Smith’s criminal partnership – a role that has never been reported on, until now.

Until today, McKinnon’s only major media coverage came after his arrest over the robbery of $43,304 from Grace Brothers department store at Bondi Junction in August 1969, along with Australia’s most infamous prison escapee, Darcy Dugan.

Then 23 and described in court papers as a labourer, McKinnon was one of the youngest members of Dugan’s ‘Lavenders’ gang, a name taken from the 1951 British comedy film The Lavender Hill Mob about a gold bullion heist.

At the time of his arrest, McKinnon was paying $85 a week to rent the seventh floor penthouse of an apartment block in Mona Road, Darling Point, one of Australia’s most exclusive suburbs.  

In July 1970 he was sentenced to 12 years’ jail with a non-parole period of five years for his role in the Grace Brothers robbery, part of a series of crimes committed by the Lavenders which reaped a total $173,000.

After that brief early infamy, McKinnon has become such an obscure figure in the annals of Australian crime there is no known photograph – not even a mugshot – to depict him.

There have been no regular appeals to solve McKinnon’s disappearance, no reward offered for information which might lead to the apprehension of those responsible for his presumed murder, and no coronial inquest.

The NSW Police Force confirmed that until an enquiry was made by a journalist in March this year, its Unsolved Homicide Squad had never heard of Robert William McKinnon and neither had its Missing Persons Unit.

That journalist was veteran investigative reporter Neil Mercer, who tried to find out what happened to McKinnon while researching his recently published book about Smith and Rogerson, The Kingpin and the Crooked Cop.

‘I knew almost nothing about him when I started but became more and more intrigued,’ Mercer tells me. ‘Robert is truly the man who never was. He has been erased from history.’

Mercer found traces of McKinnon in court transcripts related to the Fielders robbery case, spoke to the few people he could locate who remembered the man, and cited references in Smith’s 1991 memoir Neddy.

He also obtained a signed copy of the original typed interview Smith gave to detectives investigating McKinnon’s disappearance just days after his last sighting.

Mercer believes Rogerson, who died in January while serving a life sentence for shooting dead a drug dealer, covered up for Smith by removing the McKinnon file from police records.

Earlier this year, the author tracked down former big-time heroin dealer Dave Kelleher, who said Smith had once casually admitted to murdering McKinnon.

Smith’s word could never be trusted when he was alive – let alone from the grave – considering how many underworld associates he claimed to have killed.

Smith, who died in 2021, was charged with eight murders, convicted of two, and supposedly confessed to several others. But the first time he was accused of murder was when no one could find Bobby McKinnon.

Little is known about McKinnon’s family background. He grew up in Sydney’s  eastern suburbs and at the time of his disappearance had a brother living in England.

He was a keen painter and photographer, owning an art collection including charcoal drawings by figurative painter Robert Dickerson, which was valued at more than $13,000 in 1970.

Acclaimed sculptor Ron Robertson-Swann got to know McKinnon when he was involved with education programs at Long Bay jail and enrolled him at the University of NSW art school while he was on day release.

When McKinnon was granted parole he was picked up from the gates of Long Bay by Robertson-Swann and his then wife Annie, an acting teacher, in a borrowed Rolls-Royce. 

McKinnon grew close to the couple and even had a key to their house. For a time he and Robertson-Swann shared a studio at Paddington as McKinnon pursued his painting, while continuing his unsuccessful criminal career.

‘He was a bright kid,’ the now 83-year-old Robertson-Swann tells Daily Mail Australia. ‘He was quite a handsome young man, slim and fit. I think we were a little bit of an extended family for him.’

In the mid 1970s in Sydney, some bohemian figures regularly mixed with ex-inmates who had artistic aspirations such as McKinnon and Parramatta Gaol prisoner-turned-playwright Jim McNeil.

‘In those days it was very trendy to engage yourself in circumstances like that,’ Robertson-Swann says.

‘It went too far when some distinguished ladies from the middle classes started f***ing prisoners. And Robert took advantage of some of that.’

Robertson-Swann’s son Kashell was a boy when McKinnon entered his life and remembers him being different to the other criminals who came into his parents’ world.

‘The others were a bit rough around the edges,’ he says. ‘Robert was the one that stood out.  He was charismatic, intelligent, well-spoken. I can remember him being a gentle human being.’ 

At the time of his disappearance, McKinnon had been been renting the second floor of a factory which had been turned into an apartment on the corner of Church Street and Williams Lane in Darlinghurst. He lived there with his Tahitian girlfriend.  

While McKinnon was enjoying the company of his artistic friends, he was still associating with heavy crooks including Smith and fellow armed robber Bob Chapman.

On October 14, 1976, Smith and McKinnon attended Chapman’s wedding at the Wesley Chapel in the city. About 60 guests continued to the reception in the Astra Hotel at Bondi Beach.

McKinnon went to the wedding alone but according to Smith left with a heavy-set blonde dental nurse called Clare – ‘not real attractive but just average’ – and that was the last he ever saw of him.

The day before Chapman’s wedding, a Sydney cookware company had been relieved of a large amount of valuable kitchen merchandise and 30-year-old McKinnon was suspected of being the thief.

While detectives sought McKinnon for questioning, Smith and Chapman were planning the Fielders Bakery payroll robbery for October 20.

Chapman told Smith a van carrying two guards would be picking up cash from the CBC Bank branch in Granville at 9am to pay workers’ wages at the Harris Park bakery.

Smith would stay in a stolen brown Holden and block the van’s exit when the guards left the bank, while Chapman grabbed the cash. The operation didn’t go to plan.

Instead of a van, a Ford Falcon GT pulled up and two bakery employees, Kenneth Madden and Alan Mair, went inside the bank then walked back to the car with the money. 

Chapman, wearing a mask and armed with a .45 calibre pistol, waited too long and Madden and Mair got into the Falcon.

As the men were putting two cash boxes containing $16,000 on the back seat Chapman ran at them with his gun and said, ‘This is a stick-up.’ Madden replied, ‘Like hell it is.’

Smith tried to cut off the Falcon and a frustrated Chapman fired two shots, the first shattering the rear window. The second round narrowly missed Madden’s head, raising the stakes from attempted armed robbery to attempted murder.

Smith and Chapman fled in their stolen Holden and changed to a blue 1976 Ford Falcon at Harris Park. That vehicle was registered to Chapman’s wife Gail and she was behind the wheel.

Six days after the Fielders stuff-up, on October 26, Smith and Chapman were pulled in by detectives – but their questions were not about the bungled robbery.

Smith went to Kogarah police station where he was interviewed by Detective Sergeant Brian Thompson over what he knew about one Bobby McKinnon.

Thompson told Smith that McKinnon, whose name is spelt MacKinnon in the transcript, had been missing since the previous Thursday, October 21. That was a week after Chapman’s wedding and a day after the Fielders job.

Smith said he had no information that would help police find his old mate, then suggested the only person who might be able to assist was ‘a French chick’ called Brigette.

If Smith thought police were not interested in the Fielders job, he was wrong. The Armed Hold-Up Squad, of which Roger Rogerson was a prominent member, was quietly working away on that investigation behind the scenes.

And Rogerson was about to go rogue, providing assistance – probably for money – to both Smith and Chapman, but more significantly to Smith, by transforming McKinnon into the main player of the botched robbery.

Bob Chapman would eventually be interrogated again and allegedly confess to his role in the Fielders job, but say the shots were fired accidentally. He was charged with two counts of attempted murder, assault with intent to rob while armed and possessing an unlicensed pistol. His wife was charged with being an accessory.

Smith’s turn came on November 27 – his 32nd birthday – when, while facing an unrelated stealing charge, he reported to Rockdale police station as part of his bail conditions. Upon his arrest, Smith was taken to the Armed Hold-Up Squad offices and charged with shooting with intent to murder and assault with intent to rob over Fielders. An unlicensed pistol was also found in his home.

Even without Rogerson’s help, there was no physical evidence or eyewitness accounts putting Smith at the scene of the Fielders job and in August 1977 most charges against him were dismissed.

Smith was convicted of possessing the pistol, which he first claimed had been planted by police and later said belonged to his dying father-in-law. Rogerson gave evidence supporting the second story and the conviction was later quashed.

Chapman didn’t beat the rap, but Rogerson still did his best to protect him.

Chapman had been granted bail in December 1976 but two months later robbed the National Bank at Mascot of $29,057 and was sent back to jail. He got bail again with Rogerson’s assistance after the corrupt cop claimed he had helped to solve a March 1977 murder (Chapman always denied being Rogerson’s informant).

Chapman would plead guilty to the attempted robbery of the Fielders payroll but maintained he had not fired the shots. He faced trial on the attempted murder charges in February 1979 and when Rogerson was called to give evidence he invoked the ghost of Bobby McKinnon.

Rogerson told Crown prosecutor Alan Saunders he had ‘very reliable’ information that McKinnon – not Chapman – had been the Fielders shooter, without naming who had told him.

What’s more, Rogerson said he had previously passed on that intelligence to Saunders but the prosecutor had been drunk. A furious Saunders, who had not touched alcohol for a year, asked for the jury to be discharged and a new trial was ordered but never took place.

As the Independent Commission Against Corruption put it 15 years later, ‘the law became a game, manipulated by Rogerson to help Chapman’.

Chapman, who was sentenced to 13 years and six months for the attempted robbery, pleaded guilty to shooting with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and got no additional time.

The Fielders Bakery robbery – and the role McKinnon played as its scapegoat – is significant because it marks the start of the Smith-Rogerson criminal double act.

Smith claimed he began bribing Rogerson after his Fielders arrest and they had a corrupt relationship for more than a decade. Rogerson insisted Smith was a valuable informant until his dismissal from the NSW Police Force in 1986.

After McKinnon’s last spectral appearance at Chapman’s trial, he appears to have been almost completely forgotten to all but his closest family and friends.

His brother, who was a successful businessman, came back to Australia seeking answers but never got any. The case appears to have been simply dropped by police.

The ex-drug dealer Dave Kelleher claimed Smith had confessed to killing McKinnon while the two drug dealers dined in the restaurant at the Hotel Four Seasons in Elizabeth Street, Redfern, which later became the Chinese consulate.

‘I only know that Ned said it was on a beach where he shot McKinnon,’ Kelleher said. ‘And he claimed Chappo buried the body.’

But Smith’s ex-wife Debra tells me McKinnon was a ‘lovely guy’ who her then-husband and Chapman had no reason to kill.

‘I can remember Ned saying Bobby’s gone missing,’ she says.

‘I said, “What do you mean missing?”. He said, “Well, he was supposed to meet us, blah, blah, blah, and he’s never turned up.” And that was it.

‘He was a really good mate of Ned’s and Chappo’s, so I don’t know why they ever accused Ned and Chappo of doing it.’

Robertson-Swann, the sculptor who befriended McKinnon, says he heard McKinnon was picked up in a car from the Paddington studio the two artists shared and then murdered.

‘My understanding now is that it was probably Smith that bumped him off,’ he says.

Sometime after McKinnon’s disappearance, Robertson-Swann went to Central police station seeking an update on the investigation. Among the detectives he spoke to was one he believed to be Rogerson.

‘They were unhelpful and didn’t give a f***,’ he says.

Exactly why someone decided McKinnon had to go remains a mystery, but Mercer believes he was the first in the long line of underworld executions attributed to Smith – and then covered up with Rogerson’s assistance.

‘I think McKinnon is Ned’s first victim,’ the author said.

‘He disappears the day after Fielders Bakery – to me, his murder is linked to that crime but exactly why is unclear.

‘Maybe McKinnon knew about it and was a liability for Ned and Bobby Chapman. McKinnon became a convenient scapegoat later on – Roger and Ned knew he wasn’t going to be found.’

Just as mysterious as why McKinnon was killed is what happened to the records of him going missing.

‘How this could happen is just extraordinary given that Ned was interviewed by police within days and was clearly a suspect,’ Mercer said. ‘McKinnon’s brother and friends were interviewed as well.

‘How could the records disappear? I think Roger just made it happen. How many others have disappeared from the records?’