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Fallen skateboard idol dies a fugitive
By Mark Buttler
March 12, 2007 02:00am
Fallen idol ... A champion skateboarder whose career was destroyed by drugs has died a fugitive murder suspect. Police had been looking for Ben Pappas since his ex-girlfriend's body was found in a river.
A CHAMPION Melbourne skateboarder whose career was destroyed by drugs has died a fugitive murder suspect.
Ben Pappas - who used to earn $15,000 a month as a teenage skate star in the US - was dragged from the water by police divers off Victoria Pier at Docklands.
Homicide detectives had been looking for Pappas, 29, since the body of his former girlfriend, Lynette Phillips, was found at Dights Falls in Abbotsford eight days earlier.
Her body had been wrapped in a doona cover and weighed down.
Police had spoken to Pappas's family and former skateboarding contemporaries in an attempt to find the fallen star over the fatal bashing of Ms Phillips.
A bulletin was sent to all police with Pappas's details last week.
The homicide squad was called to Docklands on Saturday after his wallet floated to the surface.
It is believed Pappas's body was weighed down, but police are investigating whether he took his own life.
Among those mourning his death were his brother Tas and friend Renton Millar, who both grew up skating with Pappas in Melbourne and also went on to international success.
Pappas rose to world No. 2, but with the money and success came the drugs that ruined his career.
He tried cocaine as a 15-year-old and was addicted by the time he was 17.
In 1999, aged 21, he was caught trying to smuggle 103 grams of cocaine into Melbourne Airport in the sole of a skating shoe.
"It (cocaine) just came with the party," he told the County Court.
"When I was 12 it was kept away from me, but the older I got, the more I saw it and the more I got into it."
Judge Pamela Jenkins said it appeared his parents and major sponsor, Hardcore, had abrogated their responsibility to adequately supervise Pappas while he was travelling overseas during his teenage years.
"If this is a fair and accurate observation, then it is reprehensible that you were effectively neglected while some of those same persons were also making money as a result of your success," she said.
Pappas avoided jail but copped a heavy punishment. His passport was suspended for three years, meaning that he couldn't skate in America.
Renton Millar's father, Keith, said the news was tragic. Mr Millar said he could recall taking his son to the Prahran skate ramp more than 20 years ago and watching a seven-year-old Pappas showing his talent.
"He was a good kid, but like a lot of kids he got into drugs. He was a very talented young man and well-respected in the world of skateboarding," Keith Millar said.
Mr Millar said the removal of his passport was a huge blow to Pappas.
"He really only had one dream. When that was taken away, he lost his direction," he said.
Lynette Phillips, 27, was a recovering long-term drug addict who had battled heroin and amphetamine dependency.
Her Balaclava family spoke of their grief in a death notice published in the Herald Sun.
Her mother wrote: "Your heart was too big for such a little girl and you crossed so many different paths always trying to fill it.
"You believed you had forever but it was taken from you. You always gave, but never like this and now you have given all. I'm sorry, so very sorry.
"What I wouldn't give to change one little thing, to hear the phone ring just one more time, to see you and hear you and hold you again."
Pappas was the second big skateboarding name to have died in Melbourne in the past week.
Queenslander Shane Cross died when a motorcycle on which he was a pillion passenger ploughed into a hotel wall at Fitzroy early on Wednesday morning.
Cross and his rider had earlier been partying at a city nightclub.
Herald Sun
