Underworld Commando

By Jim Taousanis

Jim is a former Australian Commando Intelligence Operative that had once lost his way. He now works in Brisbane as an authour, speaker and fitness consultant.

His autobiography "Underworld Commando" leaps out of a 1980s Kings Cross world of crime, corrupt police, commandos and some of the most notorious, infamous mob identities in Australi

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jim Taousanis
• Release date: Oct 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9780645310306

Book preview

Underworld Commando

This book is dedicated to:

Real heroes who dare to stand against the odds to oppose evil in the hope of a better world.

To my family and friends that have endured in my walk along the roads less travelled.

© March 2020 Jim Taousanis

All rights reserved

ISBN: 978-0-6450668-2-1

FOREWORD BY JOURNALIST MICHAEL MADIGAN

Born in Hagen, West Germany, to migrant parents, both Greek, Jim Taousanis father’s father was a soap maker from the island of Samos in the Aegean Sea, the island which gave the world the philosopher Pythagoras.

Pythagoras, in turn, gave the word Metempsychosis, his famous theory on the transmigration of souls which holds each and every one of us is immortal and, upon death, enters into a new body. Our actions in this life having a direct impact on our incarnation in the next.

For Jim Taousanis, former Australian Army Intelligence, Field Operative, Special Forces Commando, hardened criminal and now honest, upright citizen of the Queensland suburb of Redcliffe, the great philosopher's theory has real relevance.

Taousanis’ life has been a journey from a childhood home filled with love, to the discipline of military service, to the unhinged violence of the Australian underworld, and onward to small business owner and family man.

But Taousanis, who in this book is brutally honest about his role in the  Underbelly world of Sydney crime in the 1980s and 90s, is determined that his story ends not merely with a respected place in this world, but the next.

After years of spiritual searching, he wants redemption and assurance that, whatever comes next, he can face it squarely in the knowledge that he recognised and atoned for his sins.

Taousanis is no stranger to death.

On a night in November in 1999 outside his home in Tempe Sydney, newly released from prison and reinvigorated by his first taste of the Christianity which in some ways can be credited with changing his life, he was shot in the back from a distance of three metres in a police coordinated revenge attack.

Taousanis was kept alive by an off-duty police officer who performed CPR.

He was left hovering between life and death in a hospital bed for several days but escaped with his life, minus one lung.

That attack was just one of four attempts on his life by the crew of notorious underworld figure Leonard Arthur McPherson, widely recognised as one of Australia’s most powerful and well connected criminals of the late 20th Century.

One of those earlier attempts was far more brutal and coordinated, and deeply alarmed Australia at the time.

As Taousanis and a Commando accomplice, Fred Massih, attempted to rob a strong room at the Sydney Hilton Hotel in July 1991, they were set upon by three gun wielding police officers in the foyer of the hotel.

A 20-shot gun fight ensued in which Taousanis shot Detective Craig Lee McDonald in the arm.

Taousanis and his accomplice escaped from the ambush, slept between two high rise buildings overnight, altered their appearance and then caught a cab to safety in the anonymity of the early rush hour crowds, slipping away to a garage under safe-house in Brighton Le Sands.

In the days following the shoot out one federal policeman told Taousanis: You were meant to be killed at the Hilton.

That one incident in Taousanis’ crowded criminal life which the Federal National Crime Authority had been monitoring via recording devices helped spark the 1995 Wood Royal Commission which uncovered widespread corruption in the New South Wales Police Force.

Taousanis, who has an intimate knowledge of the underbelly years in 1980s Sydney. He acted in the Kings Cross red light district as the muscle for identities such as McPherson, George Freeman, Branco Balic and Con Kontorinakis. He says he learned early that death was an occupational hazard for those caught up in his lifestyle.

I was skilled and fortunate enough to have lived through the ambushes set for me.

From his immigrant childhood in Sydney, the school yard scraps with the bullies and subsequent development of the martial arts abilities which led to the military, and onward to crime, Taousanis tells an utterly fascinating and absorbing tale.

The young Greek boy who struggled with the English language became a young

tough who spent too much time in gang fights and with his girlfriends in his panel van on Sydney beaches.

From there he educated himself to the point of a civil engineering diploma before being accepted into the Australian Army's 1st Commando Company and evolved, via the Australian Army Intelligence Corps, into a super soldier, highly skilled in the weapons and tactics needed to survive and succeed in modern warfare.

By the 1980s, it was those very specialised military skills which increasingly sophisticated criminal cartels, not only in Australia but across the globe, were actively seeking to recruit.

His life became a mixture of Special Forces training and criminal secrecy, armed robbery and the sort of casual violence which allowed him to break a man's arm without a flinch, just to send a message.

That life ended, as he says, with the clang of a prison door closing behind him, and nearly a decade behind bars to contemplate the futility of wasting his talents  on crime and violence. From prison he furthered his education with distinctions at Deakin University and began to chart a different course for his life.

His is an extraordinary story, and contains much which still has the potential to embarrass both the Australian military and the nation's law enforcement agencies.

But for Taousanis, a polite and engaging man who for decades has been free of any suggestion of criminality, his ultimate story is one of redemption.

After years of pursuing some solace for his troubled soul through the study of various religions and Christianity, he has settled on his own sense of truth.

He returns to Pythagoras, and the ancient wisdom that comes from listening not outwardly to the instructions of others, but inwardly to what is being said from deep within.

Taousanis, now well into his sixth decade, willingly confronts the wrongs he committed, and knows that by obeying his inner voice, he won't stray into the path of evil again.

If it doesn't feel right in your soul, it usually isn't.

1: DIAMOND HEIST IN PITT STREET, SYDNEY

Better is a little with righteousness than great riches with deceit. Proverbs 16:8

My name is Jim Taousanis. I am a former Australian Army Intelligence Corps field Operative and Special Forces Commando. For a time I became an organised criminal.

Working it out backwards, the getaway from a busy Sydney city weekday lunchtime environment in the late 1980s was going to involve some kind of disguise. After some careful consideration, wigs and business suits would be ditched later, for singlets, shorts, runners and a 4WD recreational utility vehicle.

The target was a Sydney Pitt Street jewellery factory workshop in a high-rise city building. The object was fine cut diamonds in a suitcase, valued at $2,000,000.

The information was that the carrier would be walking down the emergency stairwell shaft of the building for cover providing increased anonymity for him.

Perfect! The carrier’s cover would mean cover for ‘Commando’ Nick Constantin and myself as well.

At the precise same time, two well-dressed men in business suits and disguise including wigs, walked into the ground level of the Pitt street high-rise and commenced a slow ascent into the stairwell.

In his descent, the carrier appeared, turning out of the second landing.

We drew our pistols and shouted: Freeze! Get on the ground! Within seconds the carrier was on the ground un-cuffing the briefcase from his wrist.

Passers-by entered the stairwell from above travelling downward. One also came up from below. Our contingency plans and adjustments saw that the untargeted office workers were also directed to the ground, swiftly wrist-bound with electrical ties behind their back, and instructed to stay on the ground, face down.

Adjustments like these were always a risk and a contingency for the unexpected  innocent passer-by was always regarded. During any heist or armed robbery it  was our intention and agreed policy that these types received special consideration, respect and care in the midst of severe circumstances and action.

Not many criminals intend to hurt their victims or the incidental onlookers except for the most callous. My best advice for any victim of an armed robbery, is to hand over the loot and have an insurance policy in place.

The statistics on armed robberies show that many regrettable and probably avoidable tragedies have occurred across time because of struggles over a mere fist-full of loot. Minimal damage was always our desired outcome when it came to the untargeted. They were treated as gently as circumstances would permit.

After some very quick moves in the Pitt Street building, the diamonds were obtained by Commando Nick and myself, and checked. Within only a few minutes from the time of entry, two businessmen dressed in suits exited at the ground level of the high-rise building with an important brief case in hand. Five people were left behind tied inside a stairwell including the carrier.

Commando Nick and I made a short journey on foot through the busy Sydney city streets and into a car-parking station only a few blocks away. Security cameras were the exception rather than the rule in this late 1980s era of Sydney and world history before the global onset of electromagnetic frequency (EMF) surveillance camera device saturation.

After the Pitt Street robbery and the future 1991 Hilton Hotel foyer gunfight, security cameras were installed throughout the city streets of Sydney, almost everywhere.

Inside the car parking station, suits, wigs and glasses were exchanged for outdoor sports attire and our 4WD vehicle chugged off a ramp onto the street. Commando Nick and I then blended into the city streetscape.

Driving along our exit route we could hear police sirens and see special police uniforms, Tactical Response Group (TRG) police vans and a helicopter.  Meanwhile our vehicle slowly shifted gears for the open road.

The Pitt Street high-rise building where the robbery had occurred some minutes earlier, was now teeming with TRG special police the majority of which belonged to the Australian Army 1st Commando Company (1CDO Coy) based at Middle Head Mosman, Sydney.

The two armed robbers and the responding specialised police were current-serving Special Forces Australian Commandos from the same Unit. We all  trained together on a weekly basis, knew each other on a first name basis, and drank together on special occasions.

On Tuesday night following the Pitt St diamond heist, on the 1CDO Coy Mosman Parade Ground, the elite police who had fruitlessly responded to the Pitt Street robbery, paraded, talked and saluted with the two armed robbers.

Almost 30 years later someone said, Wow - you never even talked about this stuff... it’s interesting!

Yes, it was for your own protection back then!

The lasting treasures, can be found in the kindness of the human soul, the laughter of children, the admiration of parents, and inside the bounds of a happy family home - JT

2: THE TUFFEST KID IN THE SCHOOL!

Who so neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead to the future.  Euripedes 400 BC

I have been fortunate enough to have grown up for most of my life with two loving and nurturing parents. Their marriage lasted for most of my life until the death of my father in 2016.

My parents’ legacy has been a great strength and has helped me to triumph over some incredible obstacles that a very unusual life presented.

In 1962 I was born in Hagen, West Germany to migrant parents. Both were fully Greek but from different parts of Greece. I am the eldest child, with 2 brothers and 2 sisters.

My father Nikolaos Taousanis was the son of Dimitrios (Mitsos) Taousanis, a soap maker from Samos, the famous island of Pythagoras and Aristarchus in the Agean Sea.

When my parents met, my mother Dora had immigrated to Germany from Kastoria, Greek Macedonia near Thessaloniki. She was raised in a small village named Kalohori.

In English, the name Kalohri translates to Goodville. Those are the northern lands of my ancestors, the Macedonians that took the ancient Greek culture to the near East, the Middle East, Egypt, North Africa, Persia, and as far as India from 300BC.

The legacy of Alexander the Great is still a strong issue for many people across the Greek and Slavic regions today. Throughout history, many have and are still likely to die for Alexander’s name sake and for the cultural heritage of those lands which he influenced.

My grandmother’s Greek Macedonian people were engaged in the 1922 Greek-Turkish population exchanges after the first Balkans War and the World War I. Under the directives of the Post WWI Great Powers of Britain, France, Russia and Austria, one million Greeks from inside the Turkish borders were ordered to migrate back to Greece, while Turks residing inside Greece were ordered out of the Greek lands. The most affected region with the highest migrating Greek population was my grandmother’s former homeland of Pondus immediately south of the Black Sea.

After WWII, Greece continued along with a communist-style civil war that ended in 1949  and left the homeland in high unemployment. My parents had not met yet when they individually left and migrated to West Germany for factory work. The German conditions and language barriers necessitated a tightly knit Greek community that facilitated their meeting and marriage. I was the firstborn of five children.

Regardless of my German birth, at the age of only 3 months I was separated from my parents and taken to Greece to live with my grandparents until the age of 5 years. At that time, post-WWII Cold War Germany was not accepting of non-profitable migrant children while West Germany was heavily invested in winning the politics of the Cold War against the communist East Germany.

Concerning migrant workers, West German rental policies did not favour my newlywed parents and they were forced to make some harsh decisions. They stayed in Germany for the necessary work, while I was relocated to Greece to be raised by my grandparents. My father and mother financially supported their extended families and me from abroad.

Three and a half years later, my first brother George came along and by that time, the migrant rental policies had eased. George was permitted to stay in Germany until a few years later when the whole family was reunited in Greece. My mother sometimes still expresses her regrets concerning my early separation.

Although I did experience some adverse effects, those were the Cold War years and the hard times in Greece came as the part and parcel of life for all the Greek migrants. Harsh life beginnings often find common ground in the martial artists and the military. Sometimes, also in crime.

When I reflect on the story of my birth and childhood, I resolve the years in my mind by comparing the experience to learning to ride a pushbike. At first, everyone falls and some fall more than others. Then, what happens after each fall is most important. It took a long time before I learnt to settle adversity, if possible, with flexibility.

Most of life’s events don’t go quite to plan and so, after a while I realised the importance of getting get back up to start again. When that happened, I was free to continue my path but unfortunately I had to not forget the lesson. For me, falling included transgression into crime and in the latter decades of my life, I made amends where possible.

My parents, George and I migrated to Australia from Greece in 1967. The initial place was Bonegilla Victoria, like many other European migrants of the time.  Dad and Mum were honest and hardworking people for all of their lives and they made the most of migrating into a foreign land with only a primary school education. Their real and best education came from their unique experiences in the world’s school of hard knocks, as they were guided by ancient Greek wisdom passed down through the generations.

Reflecting on the lives of my own children these days, I find that there are new unprecedented obstacles for modern parents who wish to impart ancient wisdoms from their culture. Current revolutionary ideologies run counter to old family values and teachings.  Practically developed and with striking similarity, the cultural Greek ancient wisdom and traditional martial arts teachings have been born out of battle fields and cultivated across centuries and lands.

If old wisdom had a voice, it would sound out this caution:

While some things undoubtedly ought to change with progress, most traditions exist inside their well-defined boundaries for good reason.  They ought to not be removed in haste.

Discernment between progress and error is a big challenge for all martial artists in the modern era of so termed, progress. Certainly the world has seen unprecedented effectiveness and development in the skills of the modern martial arts, particularly in the decades since the 1980s. Like the computer and its vast applications within the current new Industrial Revolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) controls, growth in the martial arts has been exponential.

A short time after our arrival in Australia as European immigrants, my family and I found our way to Newtown in Sydney where my father Nick became engaged in a variety of work.  My mother worked for many hours every day from our home in her mink fur sewing trade that she had learnt from her home village in Greece.

In Newtown, she adapted her skills to the tougher Australian kangaroo hides that ended up as tourist souvenirs. My father settled into mail delivery and parcel courier work for the AMP Society life-insurance company at Circular Quay.

His original trade as a barber dropped away in Australia but he never stopped clipping my brothers’ and my hair. Having clippers through my hair in the early decades was a great conflict and I protested much, but today I’d move any obstacle to have those clippers at my hair again.

Beyond the haircuts, it was Nick’s photos, his stories of army life in Greece, and his privileged military position as a barber to the VIPs in the Greek Parliament House of Greece in Athens, that created strong early impressions in my young mind. My father had set good foundational memories for me to remember into the future.

My school years were spent at Stanmore Primary, Enmore High, Dulwich Hill High, and Kingsgrove North High schools. Right from the start at kindergarten, the school curriculum for me included fighting.

In the 1970s, I was the eldest son of Greek migrant parents with a very basic command of the English language. I had dark hair, a Mediterranean wog tan complexion, and lived in the suburbs of a new nation just coming out of Prime Minister John Curtin’s White Australia Policy. The local attitudes of the era made life tough for my type on the streets of Sydney.

Within days of my arrival at Stanmore Primary School, I found myself on the losing end of a fight with a gang of boys. I went home bruised and distressed.  My father tried to report the incident to the headmaster but the language barrier confused the matter, and in the end my father gave me the solution, Get back there, find the tuffest  among the boys, and fight him!

I was fearful but obedient. At six years of age, I challenged the gang-leader Glen to a lunch time fight. Glen was physically the biggest boy and it was a good show!

The other gang members watched and the plain kids cheered in the crowd. I was surprised to find that I had some good genetics and fists that worked. I won the fight and shouted to the boys with my best English words, Anyone else can now fight the new leader!

From that time, fighting for supremacy became a strange ritual that the boys and I turned into a yearly school tradition. For my six years at Stanmore Primary School and beyond, there was an annual playground tournament to determine the tuffest boy in the grade.

By the time I was in fifth class, I had become the tuffest kid in the school. I’m not sure why now, but at the time that was important to me. Interestingly on the academic front, I also did well. After overcoming the initial language problems, my grades were always high with minimal effort, school attendance was consistent, and my uniform was always neat.

Dad had insisted that my brother George and I learn the things that he was denied by his circumstances in life.

When I was eleven years of age Dad sent George and myself to boxing lessons with Jimmy Michaels, a Greek boxer and trainer that operated out of Ern McQuillan’s boxing gym in Newtown, Sydney. Tony Mundine Senior was the top boxer in McQuillan’s gym then and I still have clear memories of him punching the bags.

I have never stopped boxing since that time. One thing led to another and under Jimmy Michaels’s recommendation, GoJu Ryu Karate skills and grades were added in my youth.

By 1984 I had attained a 3rd Dan black belt in Karate and was running three Karate schools of my own. As the world and Australia evolved through multicultural globalisation, more martial arts disciplines and upgrades found their way into my accumulation of fighting skills. Access to information rapidly was gaining momentum.

By this time, my brother George had taken up bodybuilding and it stayed with him as a sport and athlete’s way of life. Our father’s strong influence regarding sports and skills acquisition has had life-lasting effects on us both.

Beyond primary school and upon graduation into Enmore Boys High School, not much changed concerning fights. Fighting was the culture of my generation in the Sydney neighbourhoods and in the public schools. The playground fights continued from the first days of high school induction. From there, fights spilled over and out onto the streets.

For most of the time, I was not the instigator of the fight but as I became better, I discovered power. Afterschool challenges were always popping up. All it took to ignite most migrants  like myself, was the word wog.

I did have some white Australian friends, but they were the non-discriminating type. They were few. When I was about fourteen years of age, Enmore Boys High School became Enmore High School and girlfriends took a different high priority among my pursuits.

It was a time of discovery that had begun in primary school and it now increased with the sudden, novel presence of girls in a former ‘boys-only’ school. Decades later as an adult, I found myself reflecting on ‘gender mixing’ in schools. It was a popular but contentious question for everyone of the era, and for decades beyond. Male/female debates were fuelled with accelerated changing attitudes born of ‘Hippie philosophy’ from