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The Russell Street bombing was the 27 March 1986 bombing of the Russell Street Police Headquarters complex in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The explosion killed Angela Rose Taylor, the first Australian policewoman to be killed in the line of duty. The materials for the bomb were stolen from Tyrconnel Mine. Several men were arrested for suspected involvement with the bombing. Stanley Taylor and Craig Minogue were convicted of murder and various other offences related to the bombing. Peter Reed and Rodney Minogue were acquitted of any offences related to the bombing, but Reed was convicted of a number of offences related to his arrest, which involved a shootout with police officers in which he and an officer were wounded. He was sentenced to 12 years' imprisonment. Explosion The explosion was caused by a car bomb hidden in a stolen 1979 Holden Commodore, bearing Victoria registration plate AVQ-508. The explosion caused a massive amount of damage to the police station and surrounding buildings, estimated at more than A$1 million (A$5.16 million in 2023 terms). The Age reported that the blast's impact was enhanced by the open-floor design of the offices, which had acted like a Claymore mine, sending more shrapnel as the blast ripped through the floors and adding more pressure to the blast as it followed its path. The blast seriously injured 21-year-old Police Constable Angela Rose Taylor, who died on 20 April, becoming the first Australian policewoman to be killed in the line of duty. 22 other people were injured. Investigations On 7 October 1985, gelignite and detonators were stolen from the Tyrconnel Mine at Blackwood. On 25 March 1986, a Commodore was stolen. Both crimes were later found to provide equipment needed for the construction of the bomb. During the earlier stages of the investigation, detectives initially believed that the bombers target was the Melbourne Magistrates' Court located opposite the Police Headquarters. Prior the Russell Street Bombing, a series of bombings and murders had been committed against a number of Family Court judges in Sydney between June 1980 and April 1985. Detectives initially believed there was a connection, but evidence uncovered during the investigation quickly ruled out links between the Family Court Attack and the Russell Street Bombing. In the course of the investigation, a group of people, including Craig Minogue, Rodney Minogue, Stanley Brian Taylor and Peter Reed, were apprehended. The motive for the bombing seems to have been revenge against the police. A week after the bombing, on 4 April 1986, an anonymous caller had contacted Police Commissioner Mick Miller, stating that they had footage of the offenders responsible just before the explosion. The caller then stated they wanted US$500,000 (A$2.7 million in 2023 terms) to be placed in a Swiss bank account in exchange for the footage. The caller contacted Miller's office on five separate occasions; each of the calls made was traced to a series of public phone boxes in and around the St. Kilda area. In an attempt to get the caller to make contact again, Commissioner Miller and Victoria's Premier, John Cain, had made a appeal to the media and offered the caller's amount as a reward for information (not in US currency or placed in a Swiss bank account). The caller was later identified as a 38-year-old industrial chemist, Vladimir Rhychta, who was arrested while calling Commissioner Miller's office from another public phone box by a St. Kilda detective on 16 April 1986 and charged with hindering a police investigation after it was found that Rhychta's information was false. As a result, Rhychta was convicted and sentenced to two months' imprisonment. With Rhychta's information proven to be false, the taskforce then received information from a female witness who stated that she saw a male suspect parking a Commodore identical to the bomb car in front of the Russell Street Police HQ at around 12:30 p.m. on the day of the bombing. The witness's description was enough to provide detectives with an identikit picture of the suspect; the identikit matched the description of career criminal Claudio Crupi. Crupi was a career armed robber who had a hatred towards police and at the time of the bombing had a grudge against a detective in the Victoria Police Major Case Squad who worked at Russell Street. Prior to the bombing, Crupi had been charged with a burglary and was on bail. Crupi had left Melbourne shortly after bombing. In a raid on Crupi's home, taskforce detectives found a homemade device on Crupi's kitchen table, making him a prime suspect. Detectives tracked Crupi hiding out in Sydney where he was arrested on 15 April 1986 and brought back to Melbourne. Under police questioning, Crupi denied that he had any involvement in the bombing but admitted that the homemade device recovered in his home was a fake and was meant to be planted at a police station in Flemington. A major breakthrough in the investigation came from a police report filed three weeks prior to the bombing. On 6 March 1986, a Victoria Police Traffic unit was in pursuit of a stolen red Daimler Sovereign in East Keilor. During the pursuit, the Daimler turned into a side street and crashed. The driver fled on foot into nearby St. Albans where he had stolen another car from a passing motorist at gunpoint and made his escape. In the boot of the Daimler, police found a backpack, containing a set of Victorian number plates that had been cut into pieces. When the pieces were put back together, the number plates, CCH-997, came back to a silver 1985 VK Commodore HDT that also had been stolen before the bombing. This second Commodore matched the description of a vehicle being used in an armed robbery of a bank in Donvale at 4:00 p.m. on the day of the bombing in which the vehicle was used to ram-raid the front of the bank. The vehicle was later recovered from the Yarra River at Wonga Park on 7 April 1986. Upon the examination of the silver Commodore by the Victoria Police Stolen Motor Vehicles Squad, detectives discovered that the vehicle's VIN on the chassis had been drilled out. The drill marks on the silver Commodore's VIN were found to be identical to the VIN on the Commodore used in the bombing. With the silver Commodore's number plates recovered from the Daimler, investigators linked both the stolen Daimler and the Donvale robbery to the Russell Street Bombing. In a statement given to the detectives, the traffic officer caught a glimpse of the driver from the Daimler during the chase and out of a series of mugshots, identified the driver as Peter Reed. Reed (born Peter Komiazyk) was a suspected armed robber and car thief. As Reed was a person of interest in matters relating to several violent armed robberies and car thefts, his address and the addresses of Reed's family members (who were also suspected in matters relating to theft of motor vehicles) and several of his associates were placed under police .... Discover the Russell Streeter popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Russell Streeter books.