6 March 1986, a Victoria Police Traffic unit was in pursuit of a stolen red Daimler Sovereign in East Keilor. During the pursuit, the Daimler turned into a side street and crashed. The driver fled on foot into nearby St. Albans where he had stolen another car from a passing motorist at gunpoint and made his escape. In the boot of the Daimler, police found a backpack, containing a set of Victorian number plates that had been cut into pieces. When the pieces were put back together, the number plates, CCH-997, came back to a silver 1985 VK Commodore HDT that also had been stolen before the bombing. This second Commodore matched the description of a vehicle being used in an armed robbery of a bank in Donvale at 4:00 p.m. on the day of the bombing in which the vehicle was used to ram-raid the front of the bank. The vehicle was later recovered from the Yarra River at Wonga Park on 7 April 1986. Upon the examination of the silver Commodore by the Victoria Police Stolen Motor Vehicles Squad, detectives discovered that the vehicle's VIN on the chassis had been drilled out. The drill marks on the silver Commodore's VIN were found to be identical to the VIN on the Commodore used in the bombing. With the silver Commodore's number plates recovered from the Daimler, investigators linked both the stolen Daimler and the Donvale robbery to the Russell Street Bombing. In a statement given to the detectives, the traffic officer caught a glimpse of the driver from the Daimler during the chase and out of a series of mugshots, identified the driver as Peter Reed. Reed (born Peter Komiazyk) was a suspected armed robber and car thief. As Reed was a person of interest in matters relating to several violent armed robberies and car thefts, his address and the addresses of Reed's family members (who were also suspected in matters relating to theft of motor vehicles) and several of his associates were placed under police surveillance. One of the addresses under surveillance was a house of an associate on Haros Avenue in Nunawading. Police checks on the house identified the associate as Karl Zelinka, while Zelinka had no criminal background, he was known to Reed who visited Zelinka on multiple occasions. Arrests On 25 April 1986, ten Victoria Police officers raided the Kallista home of Peter Michael Reed