WA bandit’s book profits seized

David Everett, the former Special Air Service soldier who became one of Australia’s most wanted men after a string of audacious crimes in the 1990s, has become the first target of tough WA criminal property confiscation laws which allow profits from book sales to be seized.

Now free, Everett, 46, spent his 10 years in Casuarina Prison’s notorious special handling unit writing Shadow Warrior, which details his time in the SAS and his violent crimes.

But WA Director of Public Prosecutions Robert Cock won Supreme Court orders last week to freeze proceeds from Shadow Warrior.

Under the WA laws, the DPP can seize any asset acquired in Australia or overseas from the publication or broadcast of crime details.

The orders allow him to freeze money from book sales across Australia and is just the second case of its kind after the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions seized about $300,000 from the sale of Bali drug smuggler Schapelle Corby’s memoir My Story.

Everett could not be contacted yesterday and Penguin Books Australia, which released the book in July, did not return calls.

Mr Cock said the order covered any property Mr Everett owned and all his bank accounts. He would be allowed to keep money from the Department of Veterans Affairs and Centrelink.

“The book covers his early life in Tasmania where he shot his sister when he was 11, his life in the army and then enlistment in the SAS,” Mr Cock said. “After becoming disillusioned with the SAS, he left to help the Karen people in Burma. When he returned to Australia he went on a crime spree kidnapping people and committing armed robberies. Mr Everett says he did this to raise funds for the Karen people.”

WA Police Assistant Commissioner Wayne Gregson said the DPP and police were working to take the profits out of crime. He said this was a developing area of policing and the community would begin to see WA police make significant inroads into taking the proceeds of crime.

In just a few years in the 1990s, Everett transformed from respected soldier and family man into a feared bandit with a thirst for vengeance.

He enlisted in 1978 as an apprentice mechanic, joined the elite SAS in 1983 and transferred to WA. He married in 1986 and was given an honourable discharge that year.

Everett then fought as a mercenary with the Karen and WA charges against him over this involvement were dropped. Other charges over well-planned and violent robberykidnappings involved supermarket and cinema managers but a lack of evidence at the time led to his release on home detention in August 1991. In September 1991, he faked his own abduction from his sister’s home.

While on the run in August 1992, he terrorised the wife and two children of an Armadale supermarket manager in their home before forcing him to drive to his shop and open the safe. Days later he stole a big quantity of explosives from a Baldivis explosives magazine before blowing it up.

Everett planned to rob a goldmine and kill staff and police but a terrified associate, who is a protected witness living overseas, informed police who then bugged their meetings.

Police arrested Everett a few days later when he gave up without a struggle but taunted detectives to “give me a bullet and finish the job”.

Everett served 10 years of an 18-year sentence and lives in Kununurra. Recent charges against him alleging the theft of tractors were dropped.