$200,000 reward for leads about Mackay's murder

The decent, hardworking folk of the picturesque Riverina town have long memories, and the pain of what was done to them - their town, their crusader - still bites.

The murder of the anti-drugs campaigner Donald Mackay is a dark shadow that still hangs over Griffith, even now - 35 years on. It has often been described as Australia's first political assassination. A stain on Griffith's history. The day the Mafia flexed its muscle and won.

But most disturbingly, it remains unsolved. His body has never been found, nobody has been charged with the killing. Someone, somewhere, knows something, and police are hoping a $200,000 reward for information announced yesterday will lead to his remains.

The former Griffith mayor John Dal Broi hopes developments this week will help close the case once and for all.

''What happened to Don Mackay has been a terrible blight on Griffith's history,'' he said. ''I was on council when it happened and I really feel for the family and hopefully they can finally get some closure.''

Leads have regularly trickled in over the years, including one in recent months that is still being forensically analysed for authenticity - and maybe, just maybe, could lead detectives to Mackay's burial site.

In 1970s Griffith, Mackay was a man of his convictions. Married with four children, he stood up for what he believed in. A local furniture salesman, whose shop is now run by his son Paul, he became increasingly incensed by the ''grass castles'' springing up around his town in the mid-1970s.

A small group of drug-rich immigrant families, he knew, were growing and feeding the nation's appetite for cannabis. Two years before his death, in 1975, he had learned of a big crop being grown about 65 kilometres from Griffith, and became a police informant.

Just two days before he died, he told the Fairfax journalist Tony Wright he was a marked man because the mob had found out.

The $60 million crop had been raided, but as five Italian immigrants stood trial, a drugs squad detective was forced to hand over his notebook to the defence team - and there was Mackay's name as the man that started it all.

Within that context, there appears to be little mystery about the general identity of those who wanted the would-be politician gone.

The Woodward royal commission into drug trafficking following Mackay's murder named six members of a local cell of the Ndrangheta as being involved in the murder - including the Mafia kingpin Robert Trimbole.

It privately galls the descendants and friends of Mackay that many of those men or their surviving relatives still live a well-heeled existence in their town.

Police openly admit the reward could be their last roll of the dice to solve this crime.

Nobody in this dark, sordid tale is getting any younger, the advancing ages of everyone involved potentially robbing investigators of their last chance of justice.

Three men were prosecuted for conspiracy to murder, but James Bazley - the man many believe was the hitman, although he denies it - has said nothing to assist police to locate Mackay's remains.

Author Bob Bottom, who wrote the definitive tale of the saga, has long maintained Mackay's body was disposed of in the Murray River crossing at Tocumwal as Bazley returned home to Melbourne following the murder.

An anonymous tip is all it would take to ease the pain of a town, and the heartache of a family.

with the Area News, Griffith