Stopping a fire starter

Editorial: Jesse Wray-McCann

Photography: Jesse Wray-McCann and Andy Heazlewood

It’s 13 December 2019 and not only are police on high alert, but after weeks of Friday night arson attacks, residents in small farming communities outside Bendigo are living in fear.

At 3pm, Detective Leading Senior Constable Andy Heazlewood starts his shift at Bendigo Crime Investigation Unit (CIU), wondering if the pattern of deliberately lit bushfires will continue.

On three of the past five Friday nights, a serial arsonist had lit several roadside fires along the quiet Elmore-Barnadown Road and surrounding back roads between Bendigo and Shepparton, all around 11.30pm.

A Country Fire Authority (CFA) fire investigator and some of Det Ldg Sen Const Heazlewood’s Bendigo CIU colleagues had investigated the arson attacks and were beginning to look at a number of persons of interest.

Det Ldg Sen Const Heazlewood had barely gotten his feet under the desk when a report of a fire on the Elmore-Barnadown Road came through on the police radio about 3.30pm.

“I knew that around late Friday night there could be a fire, but I wasn't ready for it to happen in the afternoon,” Det Ldg Sen Const Heazlewood said.

Det Ldg Sen Const Andy Heazlewood spent months investigating almost 50 arson attacks in farm communities outside Bendigo.

Photo: Jesse Wray-McCann

As he and his partner, Det Ldg Sen Const Jessie Uren, were driving out to the scene, reports of more fires came through over the radio.

The two detectives were stunned when they arrived at one of the fires at Avonmore.

While most of the arsonist’s previous attacks had resulted in small roadside fires, this fire had run rampant.

Dozens of CFA trucks and even two firefighting helicopters were needed to control the 180-acre fire.

The fire threatened a home and farm machinery, and destroyed $64,500 of farm fencing and hay, as well as a hayshed.

The biggest fire in the arson series was a 180-acre fire that also destroyed this hayshed.

Photo: Det Ldg Sen Const Andy Heazlewood

“It was pretty confronting to see a huge expanse of blackened farmland,” Det Ldg Sen Const Heazlewood said.

After gathering as much evidence as possible, Det Ldg Sen Const Heazlewood returned home for the night about 10.30pm.

He hadn’t been asleep for long when he was called back into work.

The late-night fire-lighting spree had hit again, but this time it had ramped up with nine new fires.

“At the end of the afternoon session, I was thinking, 'Well, if it's some kids or someone just mucking around, hopefully they've realised how bad things can get with that huge fire and they'll pull their head in and stop’,” Det Ldg Sen Const Heazlewood said.

“But they didn't. They actually escalated.”

Specialised chemists from Victoria Police’s Arson Squad meticulously investigated the fire scenes and, on the following Monday, the local police bosses, investigators and CFA discussed next steps.

“Obviously we were in the middle of an investigation, but it had quickly also become a conversation around people's safety,” Det Ldg Sen Const Heazlewood said.

“A lot of people, especially those living on the Elmore-Barnadown Road, were petrified when Friday nights came around.”

For the next four Friday nights, police flooded the area.

The suppression strategy – which involved up to 30 police doing high-visibility patrols – was successful, with the pattern of arson offending coming to a halt.

Det Ldg Sen Const Heazlewood was still furiously pursuing the case, investigating other new fires throughout the region and looking into several persons of interest.

But the investigation was difficult, due to the remote and quiet locations and lack of witnesses.

On 17 January 2020, the first Friday after the suppression patrols had been scaled back, a fire was deliberately lit on the Elmore- Barnadown Road at Goornong about 11.30pm.

As the fires resumed, so did the intense police patrols.

Det Ldg Sen Const Heazlewood was patrolling the Elmore-Barnadown Road at Goornong at 11.30pm on Friday, 24 January when he pulled over only the second car seen travelling south that night.

He explained to the three men inside the Mazda ute that he was there because of the regular arson attacks along the road.

They gave him their names – Justin Hagley, Scott Hagley and Andrew Valli.

“Then they told me something that immediately made my brain go a million miles an hour,” Det Ldg Sen Const Heazlewood said.

“They told me they go tenpin bowling at Shepparton every Friday night and they always come back along this road.

“It just fit straight into the pattern.“Internally, I started jumping up and down.”

He returned to his car to run some checks on the three men and discovered both of the Hagley brothers had previous convictions for a serious series of arson attacks in Bendigo in 2006.

“I knew I'd hit the jackpot,” Det Ldg Sen Const Heazlewood said.

Knowing that he would need more evidence before arresting them, he let the men go and began investigating them in earnest.

He was even more convinced when checks revealed the locations of their mobile phones were remarkably consistent with the locations and times of the fires up to that point.

On Friday, March 20, police travelled to Shepparton to get a feel for the three men’s regular Friday route and photographed their Mazda ute outside the tenpin bowling alley while the men played inside under their regular team names “The Three Terrors” and “Bad Boys 2”.

As the men drove back home to Bendigo, reports started coming through over police radio of roadside fires along the route.

Days later, police installed a tracking device and listening device in the Mazda ute.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) restrictions forced the suspension of the tenpin bowling, so instead, the three men spent their evening of Friday 27 March driving to Melbourne and back.

On the way, they bought sparklers and stopped at the Melbourne Airport viewing area to eat ice creams.

Arson investigators discovered sparklers as the source of ignition at many of the fire scenes.

Photo: Det Ldg Sen Const Andy Heazlewood

While there, Valli was recorded as saying to the two brothers, “Not interested in talking about ice creams now. I’m more interested in a fire, alright?”

As they drove further south, Det Ldg Sen Const Heazlewood and his colleagues warned police stations along the route that they should be prepared to respond to fires.

When driving south, the three men were struggling in their attempts to light fires with the sparklers, causing Valli to say, “Starting to get f***ing frustrated. Been driving for nearly two hours and not one fire has been lit”.

“That’s why we’re going out here,” Justin Hagley replied.

After visiting St Kilda, they started driving back north and stopped at the airport viewing area for ice creams again at 9pm, where they talked about possibly lighting a fire in a nearby vacant house.

As they drove back to Bendigo via back roads, they continued with several successful and unsuccessful attempts to start fires, while also talking about fires they had lit on previous Friday nights.

“Some of my dream conversations that they could have talked about actually happened,” Det Ldg Sen Const Heazlewood said.

We decided, ‘Yep, that's enough. Today's arrest day’.

At one point, the three men drove past Det Ldg Sen Const Heazlewood’s police car and Justin Hagley was recorded as saying, “Unmarked cop car going up there”.

Despite this, they continued throwing sparklers out of the car and lighting fires.

At 10.45pm, police intercepted the men’s car and they were recorded talking about coming up with a fake story to give police.

“They can’t say that we lit them because . . . they can’t prove that we lit them,” Justin Hagley said, not knowing that everything he was saying had been secretly recorded to prove their guilt.

After arresting them, Det Ldg Sen Const Heazlewood, through the interviews and the early court process, laid out the comprehensive evidence he and his colleagues had methodically gathered.

When they understood the full weight of the case against them, all three men caved and made early guilty pleas.

The three men were ultimately convicted at the County Court of lighting 49 fires between 8 November 2019 and 27 March 2020 and each sentenced to six years and four months prison.

Det Ldg Sen Const Heazlewood names it as the biggest and best case of his career.

“It was one of the best jobs because we were able to get evidence so good that there was just no fight by the defence,” he said.

“I’m pretty happy I solved it because the alternative was that these three guys didn't get caught and were free to light another series of fires in the summer of 2020/21.”