Armed robber Brian Leslie O’Callaghan would be recalled with fear by bank staff he menaced, but was yesterday remembered fondly by gangland cohorts.

MAN described as among the heaviest of Melbourne’s underworld figures during the 1970s has died, aged 62.
Armed robber Brian Leslie O’Callaghan would be recalled with fear by bank staff he menaced, but was yesterday remembered fondly by gangland cohorts.
He was a close mate of Raymond Chuck Bennett, who masterminded the Great Bookie Robbery, and was also a member of the notorious Kangaroo Gang.
When Bennett was murdered at Melbourne Magistrates’ Court in 1979, it was feared O’Callaghan was the most likely to square up.
O’Callaghan escaped from prison in NSW the day after his mate was killed.
Notorious crime figure Billy Longley, who did time with O’Callaghan in Pentridge Prison’s H Division, said O’Callaghan was highly regarded among criminals.
“He was respected by all who knew him,” Longley said.
“He could conceive a rort, he could take charge of a rort and he could execute a rort.”
Longley said, despite his history of armed robbery, O’Callaghan was not given to excessive violence: “He wasn’t a fighting man. He was more finesse than knuckle.”
O’Callaghan worked with the Kangaroo Gang as it fleeced millions in jewellery and other goods from Europe in the 1960s and 1970s. He escaped from a British prison in 1972, where he was awaiting trial over a jewel robbery, and arrested two years later at a Carlton house.
A former top Victorian detective said O’Callaghan was connected with big names of Melbourne crime, including Edward “Jockey” Smith, Dennis “Fatty” Smith, Norman Lee, Laurie Prendergast, Graham Kinniburgh and Keith Collingburn.
“They were the heaviest of the heavy,” the detective said.
Mark “Chopper” Read said O’Callaghan was the seventh of the Great Bookie Robbery crew, but was in jail when the plan was executed. He said his good mate Bennett later gave him a $1 million cut.
But O’Callaghan’s heroin addiction drove him to poverty.
Read said he gave O’Callaghan $1000 when he saw him outside a Carlton supermarket. “I gave him $1000 and he started crying. He was rapt,” Read said.

Posted in: Armed robber Brian Leslie O’Callaghan would be recalled with fear by bank staff he menaced,but was yesterday remembered fondly by gangland cohorts.