Sallie-Anne Huckstepp murder: Were Roger Rogerson and Neddy Smith involved?

SALLIE-Anne Huckstepp was a Sydney prostitute who bravely, and perhaps naively, blew the whistle on crooked cops — but it was a move that ultimately cost her life.

Huckstepp, 26, was found floating in Sydney’s Busby Pond, Centennial Park, on February 7, 1986 by a man walking his dog.

No one has ever been convicted of her murder despite it resulting in one of the longest running inquests of its kind in Australia, from 1987 to 1991.

But many believe they know who was responsible — former NSW detective Roger Rogerson, who was convicted over the murder of Jamie Gao yesterday, and former underworld kingpin Arthur “Neddy” Smith, who is serving two life sentences for another two murders but was acquitted of murdering Huckstepp.

In the early-mid 1980s, Rogerson was considered a star in the New South Wales police force and was earmarked as a potential future police commissioner. Smith, a violent gangster, was not yet as well-known or notorious as he would go on to be.

At the time of her death, Huckstepp had become a threat to Rogerson and Smith as she sought to make public the corrupt relationship between the pair, which was not yet widely known.

The former heroin addict was the girlfriend of heroin dealer Warren Lanfranchi, who worked with Smith, and was shot dead by Rogerson in Chippendale in 1981.

Rogerson claimed self-defence and was eventually given a bravery award.

Huckstepp maintained Lafranchi had been murdered and she became a police informant.

Forty-nine days after Lanfranchi was shot, Huckstepp, her father Jack Krivoshow and a lawyer walked in to police headquarters on College St and detailed a string of allegations against NSW police — including verballing, bribery and the cold blooded execution of her boyfriend.

Huckstepp sought refuge and protection by pursuing the matter in the media.

She believed going public with the information would offer her protection from those who already knew she knew too much. It would be harder to hurt her and get away with it if the world knew who was after her and why.

She appeared in a sensational TV interview on 60 Minutes and made bombshell allegations about the corrupt relationship between Rogerson and Smith.

Huckstepp said Lanfranchi was meeting Rogerson to pay off $10,000 when he was shot. She said he’d left his gun at home and was unarmed.

Rogerson denied the allegations but a seed had been planted and suspicions grew.

In the years that followed, Huckstepp continued to publicly state on television and in courts that Lanfranchi had been murdered, until she was silenced for good.

On February 6, 1986 a person, who identified himself as Warren, called Huckstepp just before 11pm and asked her to meet him.

The next day she was found dead.

There appeared to be no attempt by the killer(s) to hide Huckstepp’s body which was found floating in a shallow pond in the heart of Sydney’s Centennial Park.

In a letter written in the weeks before her death, Huckstepp asked her estranged husband to look after the couple’s daughter “if things somehow go wrong”.

A drug associate of Huckstepp’s, who claimed to have met her on February 6, said she had been concerned about a looming meeting with “Wazza”, her heroin supplier Warren Richards, and “Rogerson”.

It was revealed days after her murder that Huckstepp had been strangled to death.

Years later Smith confessed to the murder when he told a cell mate he had strangled Huckstepp and held her underwater.

His confession was caught on secret police tapes and resulted in Huckstepp’s body being exhumed from Rookwood Cemetery for DNA testing.

Smith was charged with Huckstepp’s murder, eventually tried and acquitted.

Rogerson had an alibi — he was drinking at a club in Merrylands with police prosecutor Mal Spence — but it’s widely believed he ordered Neddy to kill Huckstepp. Richards and other police officers were also persons of interest earlier in the investigation.

“You can bet your bottom dollar Roger and Neddy were behind her murder,” a police officer has said, The Daily Telegraph reported.

Sallie Anne’s daughter Sascha Huckstepp was just 12 years old when her mother was murdered.

She told 60 Minutes in an episode aired this week that Rogerson “shattered” her life.

“He stole my mother from me, he stole my adolescence. I see somebody who thought he had his own green light to do whatever he wanted to do and behave however he wanted to behave and damned be anybody who got in his way,” Sascha said.

“I believe that Rogerson had had enough, that he said that she had to go.

“He wanted her dead, he was being groomed for bigger and greater things and I think that was a big part of his anger and resentment towards my mother.”

Huckstepp believes Rogerson went to his “go-to man, his green light boy” Neddy Smith.

Even as a 12-year-old, Huckstepp didn’t believe initial suggestions her mother had died of a heroin overdose.

“She lived 10 minutes away (from the park). She wouldn’t be using drugs in a dark park sitting in blackness. There’s no need,” she said. “My first thought was Rogerson. Because I knew she had completely shattered his world and his career.”

She added: “There’s a small bone in the back of your throat called a hyoid bone, and that had been sort of crushed or fractured. It had been displaced, which indicates strangulation.”

Decades later, Rogerson finally found himself in a case he couldn’t dodge. On Wednesday, he and Glen McNamara were found guilty of murdering 20-year-old university student Jamie Gao.

And Sascha Huckstepp was just one person happy to see him fall.

“I thought, ‘Well they finally got him.’ You can’t worm out of that — there’s CCTV footage. Three people go in two people come out. You can’t deny that.”

ncG1vNJzZmimlazAb6%2FOpmWarV%2BjrrW1zqeYpWeTp7ausY6tn55lnJ6zpnnAp5tmnJWWwal5zp9krJmcobamrc2nnGagpZi4tMDEqadoppWswG6%2F06ipsmdiZbN0gcBqaJ9pY2d%2FooGVaWdvnpKYrnOwlHFunXFnZw%3D%3D