Death in Paris

ROSS COULTHART: Tell me your impressions of Alex Despallieres.

BILLY GAFF: Evil...psychopath.

ROSS: What do you think happened in Paris?

MOLLY: I think, through medication or whatever, that he poisoned Peter Ikin.

ROSS: Do you believe that Alex Despallieres killed Peter Ikin?

BILLY: Yes.

ROSS: Do you think Alex Despallieres murdered Peter Ikin?

MOLLY: I do.

ROSS: You're accused of lying time and time again.

ALEX: Mmm-hmm.

ROSS: You're accused of deceiving, defrauding, cheating, conniving, everything.

ALEX: Hmm-mmm.

ROSS: Are all these people wrong?

ALEX: Yep.

ROSS: Did you murder Peter Ikin?

ALEX: No.

ROSS: Peter Ikin was the king maker. The Warner Music executive brought the big names to Australia - Fleetwood Mac, Phil Collins, Elton John, Rod Stewart to name a few. He was instrumental in making INXS world stars. He was respected, liked, loved by all who knew him. How important was Peter in the music business?

MOLLY: Very important, and if it had not been for the enthusiasm and his passion, I would even go as far to say we would not have the ARIA Awards today.

ROSS: So he was that big?

MOLLY: Very.

ROSS: That big a name in Australia?

MOLLY: And the world.

ROSS: Molly Meldrum was one of Peter's closest friends. He first met him in the '70s. But it was in the late '80s that Peter, who was gay, introduced Molly to a Frenchman called Alex Despallieres. Was Peter in love with Alex in the '80s? Were they close?

MOLLY: I think so.

ROSS: Did the relationship stop in the 1980s?

MOLLY: I assumed it had because I never heard his name mentioned again until in 2008 when I was at Sydney and I was having lunch with Peter.

ROSS: So you're pretty sure that for 21 years...?

MOLLY: I'm absolutely certain I never heard Alex's name again.

ROSS: They weren't together for the whole 21 years?

MOLLY: I don't know but I never heard his name mentioned ever.

ROSS: Despallieres has spent much of his life trading off his looks. Briefly, he was minor rock star in France with a song 'Love Until Death'. Despallieres has spent much of his life hanging around the famous. sponging off the rich. A very pretty party boy who, out of the blue in 2008, turned up on Peter Ikin's doorstep with a rather fantastic story. He told the multimillionaire that he, too, had made a fortune. That he was an internet tycoon.

MOLLY: I was having lunch with Peter and Peter said to me "Oh, Alex is going to join us - not for lunch, but before we finish" and then I went "Alex who? You don't mean that Alexandre back in Paris, do you?" And he said, "Yes", and I said "What's he doing here?" And he said "Oh, he's got this big company, "he's going to start up one in Sydney, "he's looking for an offices and all that shit" and I went "Oh, right, OK."

ROSS: It's alleged you told Peter and he reported this to friends that you owned several apartments in New York and Los Angeles. Did you?

ALEX: No.

ROSS: Where did that come from?

ALEX: I don't know.

ROSS: The dramatic allegation, of course, is that you went to Australia with the express purpose of renewing your relationship with Peter Ikin so that you could seduce him, steal his money and kill him. True?

ALEX: No.

ROSS: Alex had one other story he shared with Peter. He said he had a brain tumour and he had very little time to live. Peter clearly thought that Alex Despallieres was dying.

BILLY: Yes, he did.

ROSS: And did he talk to you about that?

BILLY: He said that he's very, very sick and he had to look after him.

ROSS: So, Peter told you directly?

BILLY: Peter told me that. And that he had sent his private plane for him and that Alex had left Sydney and he was going to Mexico to have some brain surgery.

ROSS: Was any of that true?

BILLY: No.

ROSS: So, there was nothing to indicate that there was any reason to be suspicious? For decades, Billy Gaff was Rod Stewart's manager. Peter Ikin was his best mate. They'd known each other for nearly 40 years.

BILLY: There is no doubt in my mind that he was telling people he had a brain tumour. There's no question about that. Peter Ikin doesn't lie.

ROSS: But Peter Ikin was deceived. Smitten, and convinced that Alex was dying he agreed to marry him. Soon after their civil ceremony, Despallieres asked him to write a new will. Peter was unsure and confided in a friend. Were you aware that Peter Ikin had made a will in 2002?

ALEX: Yeah.

ROSS: He didn't name you as a beneficiary, did he?

ALEX: No, no, I don't know. I read that it was to some charities or something like that.

ROSS: Yep, it was to charities, his friends, his godchildren and the one surviving relative, a Catholic priest. You knew that Peter had made a will...

BILLY: Yes, I did.

ROSS: ..where he'd left money to certain charities.

BILLY: Absolutely.

ROSS: If Peter's original will stood...

BILLY: Yes.

ROSS: ..he would not have inherited all of Peter's estate.

BILLY: Oh, God. Nothing even close. No, no, not even close.

ROSS: So, there was a strong motive, if Despallieres is a killer, there was a strong motive for him?

BILLY: Absolutely. Money.

ROSS: Money?

BILLY: Yeah.

ROSS: One month after Peter Ikin and Despallieres married, Peter began feeling ill. He began feeling disorientated. In their Paris hotel, he had a dizzy spell and fell down a flight of stairs.

ALEX: I was at the restaurant, he phoned me and said, "Darling, I don't feel good." So, I called the paramedics, they came. I said, "Go to the hospital."

ROSS: Peter was admitted to hospital three times in three days eventually checking himself out on November 12, 2008. The next day, he died alone of an apparent heart attack. When you heard that Peter had died in Paris of a heart attack, were you immediately suspicious?

MOLLY: No. Not until all the emails started coming from this Alex, saying that he was a sole benefactor of the will and...

ROSS: Did that surprise you?

MOLLY: Of course it did.

ROSS: Within weeks, Despallieres had moved back here into Peter Ikin's luxury London home in Chelsea. This time with two gay friends, Jeremy Bilien and Vincent Bray. The three then set out on an extraordinary spending spree blowing about $1.5 million of Peter Ikin's cash in five months of high living. You and your friends went on a spending spree, didn't you?

ALEX: Let's talk about that.

ROSS: Well, you bought three Porsches - one for you, one for Jeremy, and one for Vincent, didn't you?

ALEX: OK, let's talk about that. I was weak and the sell-Porsche man, you know, said "This one is nice", "Yes, it's nice", "And this one is nice", "Yes, it's nice",

ROSS: After Peter's death, Despallieres produced a photocopy of Ikin's will leaving him Peter's fortune. Suspicious, Billy Gaff hired a private eye to follow Despallieres. Next, he obtained a copy of the will and had it forensically examined. It was a forgery. That game was up. When confronted, Despallieres blamed the two friends that he bought the two Porsches for.

ROSS: The will...

ALEX: Oh, yeah, for me?

ROSS: Yeah, it's a fake one.

ALEX: It's a fake?

ROSS: Yeah. And you're alleging that it was faked by Jeremy Bilien and Vincent Bray without your knowledge?

ALEX: Yes, and they sign it.

ROSS: Vincent Bray and Jeremy Bilien came up with this criminal conspiracy to enrich you with tens of millions of euros and you had no idea?

ALEX: No.

ROSS: Why would they have done that?

ALEX: It's very silly. Because, trust me, this will give me so much complication, I don't understand why.

ROSS: You see, they've told the French police that you were the mastermind of the fake will.

ALEX: No.

BILLY: To the best of my knowledge, Bilien was the first to put his hands up and say that the will was a forgery and that he'd done it, that Alex had asked him, made him do it.

ROSS: Did you get invited to the service in Paris to farewell Peter?

MOLLY: No.

ROSS: Were you surprised how quickly Peter's body was cremated?

MOLLY: Absolutely.

ROSS: When Peter Ikin died, Despallieres had Peter's body cremated in France. He may have thought that stopped any possibility of an autopsy, but he slipped up. Caught out by Peter's loyal friend
and a little know French law.

BILLY: Under the law, they must retain pieces of the organs for toxicology should they be needed, for a period of one year. We literally had three to four weeks to go, right, before they would be destroyed.

ROSS: The toxicology report found that Peter had fatal levels of paracetamol in his body - seven times the lethal dose.

BILLY: Here was evidence and I thought, "I just can't believe this." I was absolutely, I was numb, I was so shocked.

ROSS: To you, that was proof that Peter Ikin had been murdered?

BILLY: Absolutely.

ROSS: Is Peter the sort of guy, though, who would've recklessly taken paracetamol like that?

MOLLY: No.

ROSS: I mean, could it possibly have been..?

MOLLY: N-O, with a capital N.

ROSS: Could it possibly be he was absentminded, he forgot how much he was taking, his liver was under stress?

MOLLY: No.

ROSS: Despallieres's claiming that in the months before he died, Peter was using methamphetamine and cocaine.

MOLLY: It was all a plan of his, you know, and I will not take that back. It was a plan of his, you know.

ROSS: The police believe you are the mastermind, don't they?

ALEX: Hmm-mm. Oh, I don't know. I don't talk to the police.

ROSS: Did you give Peter Ikin any paracetamol drugs?

ALEX: Not at all.

ROSS: Did you murder Peter Ikin?

ALEX: No. Of course not.

ROSS: On 1 July, 2010, Alex Despallieres was detained by French police and charged with forgery and first degree murder. Nine months later, he was released on bail. The French police are continuing to gather evidence. Alex Despallieres is free at the moment.

BILLY: Yes.

ROSS: He's walking free.

BILLY: Yes.

ROSS: Do you think he'll go back to jail?

BILLY: God, I hope so.

ROSS: How important is it for you, and for all of Peter's friends, to see a resolution, to see justice in this case?

MOLLY: Justice, absolutely.

END