“The Toecutters, Australia’s most murderous gang,
was named after the way they tortured and killed the only father
I’d ever known.”
The once cute-as-a-button Australian surfer Larry Blair, who
famously won back-to-back Pipe Masters titles with long flaxen hair
sprouting from the middle of his crown, back when the Pipe Masters meant
something, has revealed the gruesome torture and
murder of his step dad, and his family’s life on the run.
In a new book titled The Outside, written with his pal
Jeremy Goring, Lazza says his Daddy, the bank robber Frank “Baldy”
Blair, was part of a gang that stole almost six hundred gees in a
robbery of an armoured van, one of the biggest heists in Australian
history. It was the equivalent of nine mill in 2024
cash.
The robbery would inspired the 1978 film Money Movers,
directed by two-time Academy Award winning director Bruce
Beresford.
“Dad and his two new Melbourne comrades, Steve, the Bomber,
and Al (Alan Jones) from the Oshey, followed the armoured van to
the bank then watched it stop at the usual luncheon spot in the
adjacent car park. As always, after a half hour or so, the van door
opened and one of the guards got out to dump the rubbish. At this
point, Dad, the Bomber and Al, who had been crouched behind the
van, pointed their silenced pistols at him and ordered all three
guards to let them into the van or else they’d blow their
fuckinging heads off. The only violence that occurred was when one
of the guards had his glasses broken.”
Larry’s mama, Patricia, was a hot as hell jewel thief and he
says she kept the family together as they kept one step ahead of
his Dad’s pals who wanted to kill him for his share of the
cash.
They got him in the end.
“They asked my father where the money was and to give up his
share. Word has it that Baldy wouldn’t tell them anything. To get
him to talk, Kevin Gore blowtorched his testicles and other parts
of him with his trusty oxy-acetylene torch. He then lopped off his
toes one by one with the boltcutters while Billy held him down.
Frank “Baldy” Blair, the womanising bully, died of his wounds, and
The Toecutters, Australia’s most murderous gang, was born: named
after the manner in which they had tortured and killed the only
father I’d ever known.”
Larry says his Dad’s corpse was dissolved in a barrel of acid
and buried at Sydney airport.
Amid all this Larry was finessing his surfing and when a scam
with his mum was foiled when he was fifteen he jumped a plane to
Hawaii.
Five years later he’d famously win the Coke Surfboard at Manly,
followed by Pipe Masters wins in 1978 and 1979.
Many wild stories! No trannies but still, very good.
