Barbaro drug link to NZ star

By GREG ANSLEY

CANBERRA - Expatriate Auckland-born singer Allison Durbin is facing drug trafficking charges in Melbourne connected with Joe Barbaro, the father of kidnapped baby Montana Ciancio.

Durbin, a one-time Queen of Pop in New Zealand and Australia, was arrested in March in a series of raids that also netted Barbaro and two other men.

Their connection emerged yesterday as the fallout from last weekend's kidnapping of three-week-old Montana continued to take new twists, with Melbourne's Herald Sun revealing Barbaro was leading a secret double life.

While fathering Montana in Melbourne, the alleged drug trafficker had a second family in Canberra - Tanya Flynn, daughter Letesha, 6, and son Jay, 3.

Barbaro has remained silent since an initial appeal for help after Montana was snatched from a shopping complex on Saturday.

His only message to the media has been a flying fist aimed at cameras after the court appearance of the alleged kidnappers.

Barbaro mouthed abuse at the accused, Mark and Cheryl McEachran, from the closest possible seat throughout the hearing, during which magistrate Lisa Hannan granted defence requests for protective custody.

Barbaro has gangland connections through his alleged involvement in drug trafficking and his relatives.

A cousin, Pasquale "Little Pat" Barbaro, was gunned down with notorious gangster Jason Moran in a van in the Melbourne suburb of Essendon North in June last year.

Last March detectives swooped on Joe Barbaro in co-ordinated raids that also led to the arrests of Durbin - charged under her married name of Giles - and two other men, Leonard Charles Crabbe and John Wilson.

Barbaro was charged with trafficking in a drug of dependence, possessing cannabis and cultivating it.

Durbin, 53, was charged with trafficking, possessing and cultivating cannabis, and theft of electricity.

Both were remanded on bail to November 30.

Durbin's career was previously blighted by drugs in 1985, when she was charged with possessing, using and supplying heroin after police found her and a male companion slumped in a car in Sydney's Elizabeth Bay.

The charges of possession and supply were later dismissed, and Durbin was placed on an A$200 bond. A conviction was not recorded.

Durbin later said heroin had devastated her life for 10 years and had led to the breakdown of her first marriage and the loss of her two children.

A year later she married Ray Giles, a policeman who had helped her break her addiction.

Durbin began her singing career aged 5 in Auckland with Uncle Tom's Friendly Road Children's Choir. She recorded her first single at 14 and had her first transtasman hit with I Have Loved Me A Man in 1967.

She was voted Australian Queen of Pop for three successive years, from 1969 to 1971, recorded an album with Australian pop icon John Farnham and, after a break of several years, made a new career as a country singer, including the triple-platinum 1978 album Three Times a Lady.

Barbaro, her alleged partner in crime, is facing more problems.

The Herald Sun uncovered his second family in Canberra, where Tanya Flynn and her children had been living in the belief that Barbaro had been working on a farm in Victoria to save money for the family.

Instead, a friend showed her a newspaper picture of Barbaro on Sunday as he and Montana's mother, Anita Ciancio, pleaded for the return of their baby.

"Until a few days ago we didn't know about these other little girls," Flynn told the Herald Sun.

"Myself and my two children, we're totally devastated ... He told [daughter Letesha] that he loved her and he was sorry [about the Ciancio family]. She said, 'I thought I was your princess, and you have got two new ones'."