Australia's Hardest Criminals (2010)

Radev invaded the lives of his extortion victims and terrorised them until they met his demands. Children, wives, family members were dragged in to his world of violence and horror. No one was safe. Radev was a Bulgarian wrestler who came to Australia, claiming resident status as a political refugee. He preferred the nickname “The Russian” believing it instilled greater terror among his victims. Radev boasted of his close connections to the Russian mafia. Tough Nuts provides detailed accounts of Radev’s terror tactics from several of his victims. Businessman Sedat Ceylan was lured to a hotel room in Melbourne and viciously assaulted by Radev and his thugs for nine hours. Tough Nuts reveals that Radev committed identity theft and went on a crime spree, all under the name of his neighbour, a Russian émigré named Ivan Solokov, who he murdered. And for the first time on television, then police detective and former member of Victorian Police’s Organised Crime Squad, Ben Archbold tells o

June 29, 2011, midnight

Feared enforcer for Australian organised crime; multiple murderer and assassin; and drug trafficker turned man of God. Smith was mentored by Sydney hard-man and ‘Mr Big’ Lenny McPherson. Together with George Freeman they founded notorious Sydney underworld gang The Team. With his steely nerves and violent nature, Smith naturally became The Team’s enforcer. Smith was also an accomplished assassin, and the man chosen to rid The Team of its greatest threats, including Chris Flannery and Stewart John Regan. Together The Team dominated Sydney’s underworld for over 30 years. Stan Smith also operated a venture on his own, becoming the biggest distributor of marijuana in eastern Australia. However in an ironic twist for the man who became rich importing drugs, his oldest son became a heroin addict and died of an overdose. Smith sought revenge by hunting down and murdering his son’s heroin dealer in the most gruesome way imaginable, repeatedly running over him in a car and leaving him to die

July 28, 2011, midnight

Brutal killer, armed robber, heart-breaker and prison escapologist, Ray was the ultimate anti-hero who spent his whole life running from the nightmares in his head. Denning’s cards were marked when he was just ten years of age. After many years of terrible domestic violence, his mother committed suicide in the family home by setting herself alight. Ray was found trying to quench the flames. With his teenage years spent on the streets and in and out of reformatories, Denning drifted into a life of crime. But whereas most boys his age were involved in petty theft or stealing cars, Ray Denning became an armed robber at 18 years of age. Caught by police and sentenced to 13 years in prison, Denning tried to escape from Parramatta Jail. During the escape attempt, Denning bashed a prison guard almost to death with a claw hammer. The prison guard, Willy Faber was so terribly wounded that he later died of his injuries, but as he died over a year after the attack Denning could never be charge

Aug. 25, 2011, midnight

Tilly was a drug dealing brothel madam, a criminal sociopath and Sydney’s Queen of vice, who clawed her way to the top of the city’s sex trade with a razor in her hand. Tilly Devine was a prostitute who founded a criminal empire on the mean streets of Sydney after the First World War. She established a network of brothels, enslaved her working girls on cocaine and slashed, bashed and shot her way to the top of the criminal tree in Australia. Growing up as a child prostitute in London, Tilly met Jim Devine, an Australian soldier during World War One. Tilly arrived in Sydney as a war bride in 1920, only to find Jim putting her back on the game again. After five years working the streets, Tilly began building a network of brothels around the Palmer Street area of Woolloomooloo in inner city Sydney, with the violent drunken thug Jim as her partner. When the men reached for their cutthroat razors in gang fights, which proliferated in the 1920s, Tilly did the same, slashing the face of any

Sept. 27, 2011, midnight

Criminal lunatic, gunman, arch-thief and armed robber, Jockey Smith terrorised Australia at gunpoint for three decades. When confronted, the short angry guy with a bad case of small man syndrome invariably reached for a gun. In a TOUGH NUTS exclusive, we bring the first in depth interview with the policeman who finally brought Jockey’s one man crime spree to an end, shooting him dead in order to save his own life. Jockey did his criminal apprenticeship with Ronald Ryan - the last man to hang in Australia. Later on Jockey found his way to Pentridge as a prisoner but escaped after only two days by obtaining a visitor’s pass and casually walking out the front gate. Jockey lived his life on the run in plain view. Brazenly he returned to the life he always wished he’d had and worked in horse racing. The incorrigible criminal’s joke was to call himself Tommy Cummings, training horses under the names of the two great trainers of the time: Tommy Smith and Bart Cummings. After the largest m

Oct. 27, 2011, midnight

Multiple murderer, drug dealer, kidnapper extortionist and street hoon, Dino Dibra grew up in Sunshine – a tough working class suburb where he became lifelong friends with a group of boys at school who would all go on to make their marks in Melbourne’s underworld. Dibra and his gang members, attired in the accoutrements of their violent lifestyle, would set upon their rivals, administering beatings during torture sessions in the garages of their parents’ modest suburban homes. The gang lived by a set of rules that would always be broken. And it was Dibra who broke them first. He fell out with Veniamin and Veniamin had the young gangster wannabe knee-capped with his trusty 9mm “toy”. Dibra recovered but the gang had torn themselves apart. He went on his own way, befriending the emerging king of the party drugs, Carl Williams. Dibra became a high-ranking distributor for Williams. With the position came wealth and influence and Dibra, the gangster with a reported IQ of 89, deluded hims

Nov. 24, 2011, midnight

Multiple murderer, extortionist, pimp, child killer and violent thug, Regan is arguably the most violent and terrifying person in Australian criminal history. A genuine psychopath, Regan spent his childhood in rural New South Wales torturing animals. After moving to Sydney, Regan became a pimp and recorded a conviction for living off the earnings of a prostitute. Over the years to come, Regan would control a string of prostitutes, running brothels and overseeing streetwalkers, controlling these vulnerable women through fear and violence. Regan soon committed his first murder; the body of his victim, like so many others to come, simply disappeared. Regan quickly assumed the identity of his given nickname – the Magician. He was the conjuror who would make associates and enemies alike vanish into thin air, never to be seen again… Regan despised the police. The only police officer Regan ever deferred to was a tough cop named Gil Mackie. Mackie had been a Kokoda veteran who had seen huma

Dec. 29, 2011, midnight

Murderer, standover man, race fixer, SP bookmaker, and crime lord, George Freeman was the King of Sydney for over three decades. His skills as a gambler and race fixer meant he could enrich his associates and a growing band of influential people who helped keep him out of trouble with police. Freeman grew up on the tough streets of Annandale and fell into crime at an early age. A product of boys’ reformatories like Mt Penang in Gosford, Freeman was a small waif like child, and suffered the worst imaginable treatment. His response to the terrors of his childhood was a seething violence that remained with him until his middle years. Approached by Sydney’s Mr Big, Lennie McPherson, Freeman dropped his life of property crime and began concentrating on illegal gambling at McPherson’s behest. Freeman rapidly became one of Sydney’s most influential criminals, running a network of SP bookies and standing over the illegal casinos for protection money. Freeman, together with McPherson and Sta

Jan. 26, 2012, midnight