Hall also recalled that Vince and Shorty were friends. ‘They had been to prison together early on when Shorty was in his late teens. I noticed Vince seemed to have a hold over Shorty, and what Vince said Shorty would agree to. Vince was a bit older than us and was a solo kind of bloke, we knew him but he was not part of our crew.
‘I knew he was someone who carried a handgun at various times and he was generally considered as a dangerous man that was not to be messed with.’
As for Vince, he was trying to turn a buck anywhere he could. One day in Queen Street, an acquaintance of O’Dempsey’s from Warwick was in Brisbane on business and bumped into him. ‘I remember that day,’ the friend recalls. ‘We’d stepped up onto the footpath and this voice says, “Hello, mate!” It was Vince. He was wearing a white suit and he sort of stepped out of an alcove. He asked me if I’d like to buy a watch. It was not long after he left the poultry farm. I said we didn’t have time to talk. He was very polite.
‘But we wanted to get away from there.’
Under Observation
Police Commissioner Ray Whitrod had only been in the top job since 1970 but in a very short time he and his methods had generated an enormous volume of enmity among the rank and file. He wanted his officers educated. He wanted more women in the force. And he wanted to rout out corrupt officers, especially the mythical Rat Pack he had been warned about before taking the top job – Terry Lewis, Tony Murphy and Glen Hallahan.
To weed out the bad apples, Whitrod established a special investigating group of men he trusted implicitly, and who were not afraid to bring down their fellow officers. His Police Minister, Max Hodges, gave Whitrod his full backing on this elite force. Among Whitrod’s trusted officers were Detective Sergeant Basil ‘The Hound’ Hicks, Detective Senior Sergeant Jim Voigt, Detective Inspector Norm Gulbransen, Don Becker, Senior Constable Gregory Early and others who would come in and out of the fold.
By 21 September 1971, the newly formed Crime Intelligence Unit (CIU) was in full operation, working not in headquarters in the city, but out of a group of rooms at the police college in Laurel Avenue, Chelmer, west of the CBD. Their mission was to obtain information about any systems of graft and corruption to prevent the growth of potential ‘crime rings’ or ‘crime bosses’ using standover men and other means to achieve their ends. The CIU would also look at preventing Queensland police officers being leveraged by criminals and their networks.
From the outset, Whitrod declared that his CIU would initially focus on some ‘target’ criminals. One such target was the Clockwork Orange Gang. An officer familiar with the case at the time said: ‘As early as 1971 – 72 the CIU started working with the Feds on the Clockwork Orange Gang and their links to the Painters and Dockers Union. The CIU brought in the help of the Federal Narcotics squad, the Commonwealth Police ... and Customs.
‘The opinion was that the Clockwork Orange Gang was a group of heavy criminals and they were starting to get a little bit too big for their boots.’ He said the gang was easily the biggest and most dominating criminal gang in Brisbane in the 1970s. ‘With these guys you can see over time a natural evolution,’ he said. ‘They start out as kids at places like Westbrook. They begin with a bit of break and entering, some shoplifting, and they work out ways to make more money as time goes by.
‘Invariably there are police in there working with them, and those police take on some of these criminals as informants. Sometimes the informant will commit a crime, and the police will let them get away with these things, turn a blind eye, as long as they give the cops information on other crimes. At the same time, informants are trained in their own system as well. And over time police will give back information to the informant, so it all swings around together as the police, the crims and their relationship with each other evolves.’
The CIU was prescient in keeping the Clockwork Orange Gang under surveillance. Detective Basil ‘The Hound’ Hicks had a couple of informants, including John Andrew Stuart, whom he’d known since he was a teenager in the late 1950s when Stuart was first sent to Westbrook. Billy McCulkin was also an occasional informant to Hicks, who would record all of their conversations and compile intelligence on the movements of various suspected criminals. At times McCulkin would talk about Vincent O’Dempsey.
‘At one point he [Billy] was S.P. betting from the Lands Office [Hotel] and O’Dempsey may have been involved,’ Hicks later said. ‘But he [Billy] went on quite a bit about … talking about him, what he’s capable of doing. He talked about he’d heard he’d murdered people.’
The CIU noticed that over time the Clockwork Orange Gang’s criminal enterprise seemed to be evolving. Less than 18 months after the unit’s formation, the gang, or fractured elements of the gang, would elevate their criminality that would ultimately end in murder.
As the police source said: ‘Think about the sort of informant you might want to cultivate if you were a police officer. For people like Detective Tony Murphy, your aim was to get the best criminals as your informants. If you got that, you were the best police officer.
‘And just think if you had criminal Vince O’Dempsey as your informant. He could go anywhere, talk to anyone, and get any answer. That’s the ultimate informant.’
For years, Tony Murphy had been one of former Queensland police commissioner Frank Bischof’s favoured ‘boys’, his prize detective. When Bischof retired in 1969, former ASIO man, head of the Commonwealth police and an ‘outsider’ to Queensland, honest Ray Whitrod, was given the job.
Within two years Whitrod had identified the so-called Rat Pack and had gone about dismantling it. Hallahan resigned, and Murphy was charged with perjury stemming out of evidence he gave before the National Hotel royal commission in late 1963. While Murphy’s case never got through the courts courtesy of the suspicious ‘suicide’ of the main witness against him, the prostitute Shirley Brifman, he developed a pathological hatred of Whitrod and was intent on destroying the commissioner.
Murphy himself was tough, relentless and no stranger to violence. He commanded and received his men’s loyalty. In return, he was unwaveringly loyal to his friends, and brutal towards his perceived enemies. These were qualities he shared with O’Dempsey, and it seemed inevitable that they would cross paths.
As one associate observed: ‘At one point Vince was a strong arm for the vice trade, right? Like if the molls were playing up or anyone stepped out of line he’d fucking … [you] couldn’t go and stand on the street corner and say, “Righto, well I’m going to get the molls there and just open up business.”
‘If he [Vince] found out he’d come around and fucking pull the guts out of me. That’d be it, you wouldn’t survive. You had to get his permission.
‘If the bikies turned up and said, “Right, we’re fucking going to open a brothel here and I’m going to put some molls in” they had to go through Vince. They weren’t allowed to just go and set up then. Vince would fucking bomb them.
‘Was he a middle man for corrupt police? That’s something I don’t know. Everybody was corrupt back then, so I don’t know. Like, if you’re asking for a copper’s name, the only copper I know is Murphy. They had problems, they go to Murphy, Murphy will fix their problem.’
A Menace Returns
Convicted felon John Andrew Stuart was finally due for release from Sydney’s Long Bay Correctional Complex on 25 July 1972. Sydney police warned their Queensland colleagues that Stuart was heading back home once he was discharged. They said he planned to hold a press conference of some description.
There were many who were wary of his homecoming.
Police in Brisbane issued a special crime circular to all officers warning them of Stuart as a ‘very active criminal’ who should be ‘treated with extreme caution’.
In what may or may not have been an extraordinary coincidence, just as Stuart arrived home in Brisbane, two of the country’s most significant and feared gangsters paid a visit
to the Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub in Fortitude Valley. They were none other than Sydney crime figures Lenny McPherson and Paddles Anderson.
The Whiskey Au Go Go, commonly called the Whiskey, had been purchased by 30-year-old professional company director, Brian Little. Little and his brother had invested in the club on the advice of entertainment guru John Hannay. Hannay was a well-known booking agent for musicians, and managed bands for nightclubs all over town through his company Prestige Artists.
Over the years Hannay had also dabbled in the restaurant game. In the mid-1960s he opened The Cave coffee lounge in Elizabeth Street and then The Pearl Restaurant across the road. According to author Geoff Plunkett in The Whiskey Au Go Go Massacre, the New Zealand-born Brian Little had been booking entertainers through Hannay’s business since December 1971. They named the club after the world famous Whiskey Au Go Go in West Hollywood.
The club was an instant hit with its clientele ... the Littles were netting $1500 per week. In June 1972, another club, the Sound Machine Discotéque at 74 Elizabeth Street, folded. Following the instant success of the Whiskey, the Littles, with Hannay’s encouragement, took over the failed nightclub. Renaming it Chequers Nightclub, they aimed for the high-end market … the club opened in mid-August to great fanfare, with the lavish opening attended by Brisbane’s VIP set.
The Brisbane Whiskey, however, was a far cry from the West Hollywood venue. Even the Sydney club, which had been trading successfully under the same name in William Street, had go-go dancers. Brisbane did not. From the outset, though, the Brisbane Whiskey did attract all sorts of criminals and ladies of the night. According to a police statement by Whiskey bouncer John Bell, it was Brian Aherne, owner of the notorious Lands Office Hotel in the city, who brought Sydney’s two big crime gangsters to visit the Whiskey.
‘[Brian] introduced me to two men, one named Lenny McPherson from Sydney, and the other Paddles Anderson, a more frailer type of man,’ Bell said. ‘They were very respectable at all stages.’
Why would two of Sydney’s biggest heavies be paying the Whiskey a casual visit at precisely the time Stuart had returned to Brisbane?
Of no fixed address, Stuart had spent his first few months out of gaol staying with family and friends in Brisbane. He was regularly stopping by 6 Dorchester Street, Highgate Hill, to catch up with his mate Billy McCulkin. In the spring of 1972 Stuart was also proving a disturbing element on the club scene in Brisbane, and especially at the Whiskey Au Go Go. Hyperactive, a drug addict and a perennial troublemaker, he was constantly on the lookout for a job to pull or cash to scam. If that involved violence, then so be it.
During the next few months Stuart made repeated attempts to engage the owners of the Whiskey in conversation and made a number of threats. First he demanded money from the Little brothers, and then offered his services for protection against the Sydney gangs who he claimed were intending to take over the Brisbane clubs.
According to Plunkett, Stuart attempted to stand over Hannay for $2000, believing Hannay owed this amount to an entertainer who sang at the Lands Office Hotel. Records viewed by Plunkett suggest that Stuart and McCulkin also tried to intimidate Hannay outside Chequers Nightclub, and left a number of threatening messages for the Little brothers, which suggested Hannay would get ‘seven bullets in the heart’.
Stuart was also telling Detective Hicks of the CIU that he had been contacted by Sydney gangster Lenny ‘Mr Big’ McPherson, who wanted to meet him at the Iluka Resort building in Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast. Stuart said it appeared McPherson wanted to talk about a racket extorting nightclubs in Brisbane, and he needed Stuart’s help.
True or false, these allegations to Hicks were the birth of an alibi for a despicable crime that would be months in the making.
The Prisoner of Dorchester Street
What dreams did Barbara McCulkin have, this young mother from a small country town, as she sat in her rundown rented Queenslander with its view of a petrol station in inner-Brisbane? Had she envisaged this – the worker’s cottage with the slumped fence and cracked window out front, the abusive and philandering husband, the convicted criminals breezing in and out of the house – when as a child she performed a sketch in a Sunday School concert called ‘A Wedding in Fairy Land’?
By late 1972, Barbara had been married to Billy for almost 12 years, and life with him and their two children – Vicki, 12, and Leanne, 10 – in the house at 6 Dorchester Street, Highgate Hill, was far from fairy land.
How could she have seen this, coming from a good country family, having grown up in a sprawling Queenslander not far from the Mary River in Maryborough, 255 kilometres north of Brisbane? Here she sat, already feeling old and neglected, at her sewing machine, making her own and her daughters’ clothes while her husband was in town, drinking heavily with workmates and criminal associates.
The only star in Barbara McCulkin’s firmament as the year drew to a close was the bulb of her sewing machine. Then 33, Barbara was a good mother with an uncertain future. Billy had rarely seen full-time work since his time in the Royal Australian Navy in the late 1950s and into the 1960s, and money was always tight. They had no car (Billy McCulkin professed that he couldn’t drive), so Barbara and the children’s social life was restricted to public transport and the kindness of friends with a vehicle.
Since 1971 she had worked at the Milky Way snack bar in the Brisbane CBD. Her employer, Joseph Toth, would later describe her as ‘an excellent worker, a reliable worker, very nice’. At the Milky Way, Barbara struck up a good friendship with her co-worker Ellen Gilbert. It was in Gilbert she confided about her deteriorating relationship with her husband.
‘Mrs McCulkin informed me that her marital relationship was not normal and that her husband came and went at will from their place of residence,’ Gilbert would later reflect. ‘[Barbara] informed me that her husband had beaten her and that she had not been able to attend work as a result of the beating received from him.’
On one occasion he bruised her arm and broke all the crockery in the kitchen. That night she took her daughters and stayed with Mrs Gilbert. Joseph Toth would later confirm that Barbara often came to work showing signs of injury, inflicted by Billy. Toth said sometimes Billy would telephone the café and say: ‘Barbara needed a good biffing so she can’t come into work today.’
McCulkin, drunk, would often boast about his sexual conquests to his wife. Barbara knew that he had fathered a child with some ‘Russian’ woman. He had also slept with one of Barbara’s close friends. That time she unsuccessfully tried to kill herself with an overdose of sleeping pills.
Billy McCulkin would later say about that period in his life: ‘Why does anyone leave their wife? Because they’re incompatible or far fields are green, or something.’
By early 1973, McCulkin and Stuart were hanging out almost daily at Dorchester Street. Stuart was telling stories to local tabloid reporter Brian ‘The Eagle’ Bolton about how Sydney gangsters were set to instigate a comprehensive extortion racket over Brisbane nightclubs. If the clubs didn’t comply, they’d be torched. Bolton sensed a good story, and began quoting Stuart in inflammatory articles about the Sydney crime push.
Then a small incident occurred in the Brisbane suburb of Fortitude Valley that on the surface seemed to bear out Stuart’s wild allegations.
Lucy Kirkov, assistant to Whiskey manager John Hannay, was hearing rumours about her boss and could barely keep up with his business ventures. She’d been working for him since she was a teenager, when he first opened The Cave coffee lounge in the city in the mid-1960s, and although she knew he was gay, he had a peculiar emotional hold on her.
As well as managing clubs for the Little brothers, Hannay was also running his own establishments. In late 1972, he asked Kirkov to help set up a bar and restaurant called Alice’s in Brunswick Street, just around the corner from the Whiskey Au Go Go. At the time she was uncertain about Alice’s, its purpose and its
intended clientele. ‘It had like a bar, where you can make coffee and things like that, and maybe two tables and chairs. I did meet a guy that Hannay brought along with him one day, and he said, “Oh, meet so and so. He’s a gangster from down south.” It was a guy called [Lenny] McPherson.’
Kirkov says Hannay owed money all over Brisbane, to clubs, musicians, suppliers, and his reputation had hit rock bottom. ‘Hannay never paid his bands, see? He used to have all these bands play, and he’d say, “Go and see Lucy … and she’ll pay you.” But I had no authority. I didn’t even have a cheque book, so I couldn’t do that. So they all come to see me for money, and I couldn’t pay them … there was nothing I could do. I used to have to take money to a post box, and I forget what, who that was for, but it was always, “Can you drop this in the mail?” or “Can you drop that there?” No questions asked, I’d do it.’
It had been a similar experience when she was managing The Pearl Restaurant. She recalls, ‘He didn’t have a liquor licence and he used to say to me, “Don’t serve any grog tonight, there’s going to be trouble.” And I couldn’t understand why. Because you know, like, why would there be trouble? But obviously the Licensing Branch coppers or … somebody’s told him that [there might be a raid] because I used to think, you know, how does he know all these things?’
Alice’s operated for a short time and instantly garnered a reputation as a meeting place for men in search of underage boys. Kirkov soon realised it was the replacement venue to The Cave, which in the 1960s became the local hangout for teenagers below the legal drinking age to meet. When Kirkov had first started working at The Cave she noticed that the regular clientele included young effeminate teenage boys, and groups of even younger boys, aged around 13 years. She said Hannay would often befriend the kids, and because he didn’t like the way they dressed, he used to buy them clothes.
The Night Dragon Page 8
