The Day They Blew Up The Police Station: The Russell Street Bombing Re-Issue

January 11, 2026·35 min·3 clips

Rob Bailey recalls the deserted streets just before the car bomb exploded, narrowly avoiding death.

Rob Bailey begins on duty. His diary gives the episode a plain, procedural start before the story turns toward Russell Street. Bailey was outside police headquarters in downtown Melbourne when a car bomb exploded on 27 March 1986. Constable Angela Taylor was killed. Twenty-two people were injured, and the conversation never treats that as a throwaway number. It sits with the damage. The host keeps the pace steady while Bailey moves through memory, police culture, and the conflict between armed robbers and Victoria Police. The Armed Robbery Squad comes across as a hard, famous unit caught in a nasty fight with Melbourne's armed robbers. Bailey describes the payback logic around it. He says armed robbers believed police were killing them, and some answered with violence against police. The investigation was slow, stubborn work. Police rebuilt a Commodore piece by piece, with parts turning up as far away as a rooftop a kilometre from the blast. Then the story tightens around the arrest raid: Reed pulling a gun, Reed shooting his police friend, and that friend never recovering from what happened. The host does not force the name. That restraint fits the moment, because Bailey says the memory still upsets the people who knew him. Charges followed. Bailey gives his view that Craig Minogue orchestrated the attack, while the episode notes Stan Taylor and Rodney Minogue were acquitted. Court added its own ugliness. Bailey remembers walking past Minogue in the dock and being spat on during the committal. The tone is grave, but not cold. This is less a neat case recap than a return to one day, one squad, and the people left carrying it.

As heard by us

A firsthand police account of the Russell Street bombing, grounded in Bailey's diary, the blast, and the investigation that followed.

Australian True Crime revisits the Russell Street bombing through retired Victoria Police Chief Inspector Rob Bailey, who was outside Melbourne's Russell Street Police Headquarters when the car bomb exploded on March 27, 1986.

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