Allan Chisholm was the boss of Goulburn Jail when numerous murders happened. When asked if it took a toll on him, he said only one death did and it wasn’t a murder, “Sure it does affect you — watching a man die is not pleasant — but with all of them…well… it was just part of the job. But there was a particular death during my time at Goulburn that stands out. One that really got and one that I am still saddened by now. “
“Hey you, retard,” the inmate yelled, throwing a handful of food slop.
“Yeah, you, dumb shit,” he continued to bully as the leftover meat and veggies slid down the target’s spine. “You giant piece of spastic shit. I’m going to hurt you. Hurt you real bad.“
Backed by a posse of tattooed arms and battle-scarred heads, the big-mouthed man stepped in. His leading left crashed into chin. His right, the enforcer’s trusted knock-out blow, slammed into temple.
The ‘giant piece of spastic shit’ shook his head. “Don’t make me hurt you,” he said. “I don’t want to have to hurt you. No trouble, please.“
The prison heavy went red with rage.
A body shot this time.
Wrong.
The giant wrapped his hands around the attacker’s neck, and with nothing more that a flick of his wrists and should twitch, he lifted the prisoner into the air.
“I told you!” the giant screamed.
The force of the blow that followed knocked the name-calling, food-throwing man out cold.
“He never hurt anyone unless he had to,” recalled Chislom of Robert Mark Steele, a man imprisoned for his role in five murders.
“Only one that I can recall. He was a bit like the guy from the movie The Green Mile — a gentle giant who looked like a killer. He was simple but kind, and could have destroyed anyone in the jail but didn’t. He was that sort of inmate. I really had a soft spot for him, and I don’t think he should have even been in jail.“
March 1993,
The rays of the rising summer sun, hot enough to wring steam from the damp grass, could not drive the evil away.
The light did not deter the devil.
“I ain’t going out without a fight,” said self-described sociopath Leonard Leabeater, surrounded by police in a Hanging Rock Station farmhouse at Cangai, New South Wales. “I’m going to make sure they kill me.“
He hugged the shotgun like a teddy bear as he reflected on the two hostages he had just released : Trevor Lasserre, 11, and his sister, Tonia, 6.
“I don’t kill people under 12,” he boasted. “I’d rather be in South Australia killing cops.“
Leabeater had let the children go shortly after fellow fugitive Raymond Basset surrendered himself to police; the 25-year-old wasn’t ready to die. The third murderer, Robert Steele, 22, stayed with Leabeater even after the children had been released. Like Bassett, he didn’t want to be shot down in a hail of bullets, but he couldn’t leave the man who had taken him in, either. Steele believed Leabeater was the religious prophet of the spirit Astra. He had followed Leabeater, who foretold that his own death would come when he was killed by a warlock, without question. But with the death he predicted drawing near — it would later be revealed he told his sister he would die on an altar on the fourth month of 1993 — Leabeater instructed his loyal follower to leave. He told him to walk towards the light.
At 6am Steele strolled from the farmhouse, calmly smoking a Winfield Red, and handed himself over to police.
But Leabeater remained in the dark. The fresh sun, the threatening guns and the pleas driven through police-issue PAs not stopping him from claiming one last life — his own.
After a 26-hour siege, the nine-day rampage that saw Leabeater, Bassett and Steel kill five people was finally over. Leabeater’s body was found lying on a blood-soaked bed, a half-smoked cigarette still gripped between his fingers.
A shotgun was lying next to the remains of his head.
Bassett and Steele were charged with the murders of a pregnant 14-year old, whose charred remains were found on a Queensland farm; three miners, all shot in the head and two thrown from a cliff; and a helicopter mechanic murdered near Mount Isa.
Bassett was given two life sentences for the shocking crime. Steele received five life sentences plus 12 years without the possibility of parole.
The giant Steele, 130kg of bulk and brawn, was sent to Goulburn Jail. That’s where he pulled out a packet of Winfield Reds and offered it to the boss.
“I smoked Marlboros, and he looked at them and told me they were no good,” recalled Chisholm. “He offered me his whole pack. I remember that because no one in prison had ever offered me anything, and smokes were a very big deal to them. They are like gold in prison. That was the first time I saw his good heart.“
The next time Chisholm saw the giant’s kindness was when he reluctantly flipped the bully.
“A crook was picking on him,” Chisholm said. “He was a heavy and he was giving Steele heaps because he was simple. The guy was in high-security because he was a handful; someone who couldn’t be contained elsewhere. He was a tough bloke, but he picked out Steele. It was a huge mistake. Steele upended him and knocked him out with a single blow. He could have kept on going, but he walked away. He didn’t hurt him more that he had to, and I was there soon after the fight. He was apologizing. ‘It’s not my fault, chief. He was picking on me. I’m sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt him so bad,’ he said.”
Chisholm knew Steele was telling the truth. “He could have killed the bloke if he wanted to — and everyone else in the room — with his bare hands. But he was just protecting himself.“
Chisholm found Steele to be incredibly kind but easily led. “He was involved in that hostage thing,” Chisholm said. “He was involved in the killings and the siege, but it was a cult-type thing and he was very young. I’ll go further than that — to be blunt, he was retarded. He wasn’t all there. He was the youngest, and he was taken advantage of. He was like a big kid who is extremely strong. He believed in what the other two were doing and he did as he was told.“
Chisholm became fascinated with the behemoth man-child.
“I was always in close contact with Steele,” Chisholm said. “And I built a rapport with him, mainly because we initially thought he was going to be such a threat to everyone else in jail and a major problem. But he didn’t hurt officers or anyone else. I would tell him to get back to his cell and he did. I honestly believe he should have not been in jail. He should have been in some psychiatric facility. He was a child trapped in a giant’s body. Yes, he deserved to be punished because of his horrendous crimes, and he couldn’t live in society, but Goulburn wasn’t the place for him, and it would kill him.“
Chisholm got the call on Christmas Eve, 1994.
“He’s dead, boss,” said an officer. “You better come down.”
Steele was on his knees, a twisted blanket the only thing stopping his head from falling onto the cell floor.
“About 12.05 am we got a call to say he had necked himself,” Chisholm said. “He was so big that he had to kneel down and fall forward to get enough tension on the sheet. He had tied it to the cell bars and pulled forward until he was dead. It took us ages to get him out of the cell because he was so big. It was really a horrible thing to see.“
Steele was to spend Christmas in solitary confinement after threatening to go out with a bang.
“I went and saw him on the Christmas Eve because of somme allegations he had made,” Chisholm recalled. “He always said that he was going to go out with something big and that he was going to make headlines. He said he would take officers with him, and that he would do it on Christmas Day. We didn’t think he would harm anyone, but we had to take the threat seriously. He could have cause absolute havoc in the prison. We would not have been able to handle him. It would have taken lots of men to contain him, and there would have been a lot hurt.
So we put him in segregation for the night. We told him no officer was going to go near him because of what he had said. We told him no officer would come, even if he knocked. They would have to call me first, and I would come and see him. He assured me there would be no problem. He seemed absolutely normal.“
The next time Chisholm would see Steele, the prisoner would be dead.
“It was a complete shock. We had no idea he would hurt himself. We were worried about others, not him. It’s the prison death that has affected me the most. It was such a sad tale, and I still think about it now. “
Sources: Australia’s Most Murderous Prison : Behind the Walls of Goulburn Jail and The Sydney Morning Herald.
Part 2 coming soon.
Moonlight Murders 
He may have been Grant Beaumont.
LikeLike