Love Boat
Sun Herald
Saturday August 19, 1995
YOU will have a picture of Nessie over the fireplace, a UFO in your garage and a Tasmanian tiger in your dog kennel the day an old journalist or a Liberal Party hack produces photos of Labor politicians pollenating with Virginia Perger on Joe Meissner's fishing boat, the Kanzen.
But proving yet again that the law is to be loved with the instinctive affection of a serial killer's mother, it jailed Meissner for 12 months on Wednesday for getting Perger to plead guilty to telling lies in a statutory declaration in 1986.
The High Court said if he got her to own up "by means of bribery or intimidation he was guilty of attempting to pervert the course of justice even though she was in fact guilty of the offence". The jury found Meissner guilty without hearing from Perger.
We spoke to them both.
$350,000 BID
IN 1985, journalist David Halpin paid for heroin for Perger then sat and watched her stick it into her arm over a sink at the Lido Motel.
He then took her and her street corner gossip to News Limited. Perger got small change and promises but it was heady stuff for a woman used to contracts of "$40 and $10 for the room". A Liberal Party member with a bag of cash topped The Sunday Telegraph bidding. The bids topped $350,000.
When Perger was charged with telling lies, a lawyer represented her. Publicity was given to a court claim that the "love boat" allegations were true.
Then Perger was dumped in my lap to plead guilty.
She said she lied. She failed a Michael Jackson body parts third degree. She could identify none of the physical or personal characteristics of the politicians named. An independent lawyer also examined her and agreed she was guilty.
In the District Court, Perger admitted her guilt on oath and criticised Halpin's role. Technical evidence showed photos could never have been taken as claimed through the Kanzen's portholes.
A few months after the Liberal election win in 1988 Meissner was charged with wrongly getting her to plead guilty.
Meissner had nothing to do with me. Until last Thursday I had never spoken more than a dozen words to him and none of those before Perger pleaded. Meissner's charges were bound to a telephone chat in which he told a friend: "I made her plead guilty."
Apparently, before she was sentenced, he openly put $15,000 in a joint account for himself and Perger. She says: "He put it there to look after my daughter if I went to jail. After I got my bond I bought a blue Celica for $3,600 and paid a few small bills. I gave Joe the rest of the money back. I sold the car and bought a 5g bag of heroin."
At his trial Meissner was a victim of courtroom chess. The prosecution had Perger on ice but didn't call her. Meissner's lawyers worried about her being cross-examined on her naughty past if she was a defence witness. After Meissner was convicted, Perger came to give "character evidence" but trial judge Tom Ducker correctly stopped her giving evidence that might have contradicted the jury's finding of guilt.
On Thursday, Joe Meissner tried to get into Long Bay Jail but was told: "We would love to have you but there is no warrant". While waiting at home he told me: "Virginia can fight better than most men. No one has ever stood over her in her life. When a hoon tried to take money off her up the Cross she put him in jail." He added: "Virginia was guilty and she pleaded guilty."
Perger said: "That money was to look after my daughter if I went to jail. It went back to Joe."
She added: "Joe is a Gemini. He has never, ever threatened me or hit me. He would just walk out the door. He has been kind to me and my daughter. I crucified him. Politicians went out fishing with Joe but there was no monkey business on that boat. He is going to jail for something that never happened."
In a minority judgment, Justice Dawson said it was "regrettable" the Crown had not called Perger to prove their case "beyond reasonable doubt" and that the phone tapes were equivocal. He would have set the conviction aside.
It was legal for Meissner to try to persuade Perger to plead guilty. They both say she wasn't forced. If Virginia had been scared of Meissner she certainly would not have been game to steal the fees I found out years later he had given her to pay me.
But she did and she bought cocaine and stuck my money up her nose. She's a bugger of a woman but I doubt that any man has ever intimidated her.
VIRGINIA WAKES UP
"I USED to sell very bad quality drugs. I used to get it off Billy and re-cut it and sell it ... Billy never sold top quality drugs, no" - drug dealer BH2 on Bill Bayeh.
Under the patronage of the NSW police force there was a lot of bad junk being sold in the early 90s in Kings Cross. Bill Bayeh and his boys were sellers.
Teenager Denise Perger was a buyer. Her mother Virginia says: "In 1992 there were 15 people overdosed on bad cocaine in the Cross. I went to the pool room near Woolworths and begged them to stop selling to my daughter." They didn't.
In February, 1993, Denise had her last shot. The impurities in doctored cocaine cut off the circulation to her brain and right foot.
At Prince Alfred Hospital she had two heart attacks and plunged into a coma.
Her mother was told to make funeral arrangements as her daughter lingered in a vegetative state for a week. Virginia Perger defied the reality of brain scans and protested: "There might be dust on the scanner." She later said: "They had the right to turn the machine off but I said 'Don't touch it'. I kept going and yelling and screaming at Denise: 'We love you! We love you! Don't let go!'"
When it appeared she was brain dead, Virginia was told her daughter might need to be kept in a home. She replied: "I don't care if she is a vegetable or she has got one leg or one arm. I said fix her up the best you can - she is coming home with me."
Of the vigil, Virginia said: "I don't believe in God, but I lived between the hospital chapel and the bedside. God gave me her and said I will give her back to you but you lead a better life. She had drips in her arm and her legs and her groin. She couldn't hear but I promised to get a job, not sell drugs and that I would do the right thing, but she didn't understand."
The Pergers gathered round. Her grandmother, who raised her until she was 13; her uncle Joey, who put his little children in the comatose girl's bed; her stepbrother Jason, who read to her from biker magazines. Her mother sang Edelweiss.
Denise hated it. She said: "I wanted to get out of my coma to stop her. I couldn't wake to hug them."
They called her Miss Miracle as she climbed back to consciousness. They sliced open her chest and installed an artificial mitral valve in her heart. They amputated her foot. She was blind.
Whispering, with a hole cut in her neck, she asked: "Mum, what are they going to take next?"
Until then Virginia Perger had lived the hard life bloodied but unbowed. Long gone from my books, she was facing District Court charges over the interminable cycle of buying and selling that had been her life as a heroin addict.
Judge Ken Shadbolt gave her 18 months' weekend detention and a two-year bond. Virginia said: "I thank him for my chance. I put six meals in the fridge and markers on the microwave for Denise to cook her meals and I did the time."
She said: "For more than two years Denise was completely blind. She listened to the television and I would describe what was happening. I would just sit and watch her."
Denise said: "Mum knew I was a fighter and begged them to let me live. When I was on drugs I stole off my mother and I weighed 29 kilos and looked disgusting and hoped that was not how people would remember me." Mother and daughter are doing well.
In the last few weeks, Denise has recovered enough sight to distinguish shapes and colours. Gossipy Virginia is blossoming as a shop assistant in a kind company.
Virginia says: "At the time Denise was hurt, bad cocaine was causing heart attacks. My friend Lilly had a mitral valve operation scar, so did my friend Crystal but she died when she didn't take her medication. In those days, the coke dealers sold bad stuff and when the users asked for their money back they would say: 'F--- off, junkie.'"
Well, I suppose that's how you would behave when you had the law on your side.
© 1995 Sun Herald