Unpicking the Mickelberg stitch

By Elin Myrekrok October 2002

"I had to make a decision whether to stay and help or to write a bloody story, and I chose to stay and help."

Avon Lovell made that decision as a young cadet reporter while covering a devastating bush fire near Perth. In the middle of smoke, chaos and possible headline stories, a woman pleaded with him to help her get water to keep the flames away from her house. He did.

Lovell says involvement journalism is very much his game, and the controversial journalist and author certainly proves it in the case of Raymond, Peter and Brian Mickelberg, who in 1982 were convicted for the theft of $1,000,000 in gold bullion from The Royal Mint in Perth. Lovell’s book The Mickelberg Stitch, resulted from his investigations into the case, and reveals a West Australian police conspiracy to manufacture evidence against the brothers in court.

After being banned shortly after publication in 1984 the book was re-launched in Sydney last month at the Public Right to Know Conference, hosted by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ).

"This book … I urge you all to read it. [Lovell is] a very good story teller, but he’s also done a remarkable job of investigation," said Wendy Bacon, director of the ACIJ.

"This is a very important book about a lack of freedom of expression in Australia …The book had to be printed in Singapore. When it hit the bookshelves the police threatened the booksellers that they’d be sued for defamation," Bacon said.

But where there is exercise of power there is always resistance, and despite police threats some used less than ordinary means to distribute Lovell’s book. One proprietor was selling plain paper bags for $8.95 with ‘an entirely free copy’ of The Mickelberg Stitch inside. Another provided customers with a free copy with every bookmark he sold.

However the attempted suppression was soon successful, as most of the booksellers felt they had no other choice than to remove it from the shelves. And the Mickelberg brothers remained in jail. Although now released, their convictions are yet to be lifted, despite several appeals and recent developments in the case vindicating the claims made in Lovell’s book.

"[Avon] got the first detective who sued him for the book … Detective Lewandowski … to roll over and actually confess he fabricated the evidence," Bacon said. "The courts have almost certainly got it wrong: I’d say now 100% wrong. Why shouldn’t those criminal courts deal with the case?"

The ABC TV’s Media Watch recently accused Lovell of chequebook journalism for selling the exclusive story of the Lewandowski confession to Channel 7. Lovell said he took the money to get the ex-detective out of the country for fear of his life, following last year’s unsolved car-bomb killing of the chief detective in the Mickelberg case, Don Hancock.

Answering critics who ask why he would put himself on the line for a man who was formerly his enemy, Lovell’s answer is this: "Because at the end of the day it was an act of courage to come forward [and] say ‘I have done this terrible thing’."

Wendy Bacon said: "Avon recently solved, in many ways, the Mickelberg case [and] if I’d been an editor I would have said ‘We’d better find out actually who did take the gold’, but instead the main focus of the investigation seems to have become Avon himself."

"I find it quite extraordinary that the Royal Commission in Perth … had nothing better to do than to attack Avon who actually [was] the one who exposed the corruption," Bacon said.