AUSTRALIAN COP KILLER IS A HERO TO SOME

Thanks to Dorina Lisson for the heads-up on this report. Dorina wrote: ‘Fact is ... almost every convicted prisoner maintains their innocence or wrongful conviction.’

DISGUST AT COP KILLER’S SICK TAUNTS
By Wayne Flower

Herald Sun
August 1, 2011

COP killer Jason Roberts is continuing to taunt his victims from behind bars by professing his innocence online and calling on penpals to write to him.

Roberts, who is serving a life term over the 1998 [Australian] murders of Sgt Gary Silk and Sen-Constable Rodney Miller, has been receiving mail from sympathizers for more than three years, courtesy of an insensitive rant on a website catering for penpals and MySpace.

In it, Roberts claims he was "wrongly implicated by others" and that he was continuing to look for avenues of appeal to "re-address the injustice" imposed on himself and his family.

"I maintain my innocence," he writes.

The posts, which he claims were added by his support group on the outside, provides the address for Barwon prison, including the unit in which he is housed.

A Corrections Victoria spokesman said it was believed the websites were being maintained by someone outside jail.

"No Victorian prisoner is allowed access to the internet," he said.

"Limited access to computers is provided in specified circumstances, such as if a prisoner has a disability, or for educational reasons."

John Forbes, who founded the Tynan-Eyre Memorial Foundation and was chairman of the Blue Ribbon Foundation for 21 years, said the posts disgusted him.

"It's just unbelievable ... Someone's got to do something, because this can't go on."

It is not the first time Roberts has used his contacts to post rants on the internet.

In 2007, he dodged a jail internet ban by mailing lengthy diatribes to supporters, who posted them on a website.

Roberts was jailed for life with a 35-year non-parole period in 2003.

A jury convicted him and an accomplice of murdering Sgt Silk and Sen-Constable Miller in Cochranes Rd, Moorabbin, early on August 16, 1998.

The pair were secretly taped coldly describing the shootings as "a little thing", and taunting police, shouting "bang bang, suck on that" as they drove past other officers.

The tapes also revealed they considered murdering Sen-Constable Miller's widow, Carmel, and young son, James.

Blue Ribbon Foundation CEO Neil Soullier said: "It doesn't seem right that they've got free access to the outside world. It would concern me if they did have free access, because that could open the door to them creating menaces with members of the family, witnesses."

Graham Thwaites, the first policeman at the murder scene, said anyone who had written to Roberts should be ashamed: "This guy is not a hero - he's a cop killer."