By the time Barbara awoke and prepared breakfast for the children and got them ready for school, the bodies had been laid out in a car park beside the club and the process of identifying the victims was underway. When she was to learn the news of the deadly blaze proper, with all the information she’d picked up for the past several weeks at 6 Dorchester Street, she would enter a blind panic. On seeing the early edition newspaper reports on the fire in the corner store just a few doors down from her cottage, Barbara’s first response to the tragedy was: ‘Oh my God, they did it.’
In its late edition on the day of the fire, the Telegraph featured the fire on its front and back pages, as well as comprehensive reports inside. The lead story, written by veteran police reporter Pat Lloyd, was headlined simply: ‘AUSTRALIA’S WORST KILLINGS’. He wrote that a special police task force had been set up to orchestrate early morning raids and bring known underworld figures to the Brisbane CIB.
Their main theory on the bombing is that underworld extortionists are to blame. But, so far, they have been unable to find anyone willing to talk on the issue. Police say there is little doubt today’s bombing horror might be linked with the February 25 fire-bomb blast which gutted the Torino Night Club…
On the morning of the fire, John Hannay’s former gopher and Whiskey barmaid, Lucy Kirkov, set about organising her day. She lived in New Farm, one of Brisbane’s oldest suburbs perched just two kilometres east of the CBD and hugged by the Brisbane River. New Farm bordered Fortitude Valley and its sleaze and vice had leached into New Farm soil. The peninsula suburb was littered with Queenslander workers’ cottages and the occasional modern brick block of flats.
On the morning of the Whiskey tragedy, Lucy, unaware of the fire, had set off from home to walk to town. ‘It wasn’t until I went past there to the hairdressers that I seen it’d gone up,’ she says about the Whiskey fire. ‘That was the first I was aware of it.’
Kirkov says not long after she left home that morning she saw Hannay on the corner of Merthyr Road and Brunswick Street in his Mustang. ‘Now I can’t mistake Hannay, I’ve known him for too long to not be able to recognise him.’
When Lucy later told police she’d identified John Hannay in New Farm on the morning of Thursday 8 March, just hours after the fire, the police told her she was ‘bullshitting’. According to official police documents, they believed Hannay had left Brisbane on the morning of Wednesday 7 March and arrived in Rockhampton by car at around 5 p.m., several hours before the fatal fire.
‘The coppers said, “For your information” … and I said, “Before you go any further, I suppose he was drinking with coppers up in Rockhampton,” and they said, “Yeah that’s right.”
‘He [the police officer] asked me if I knew how long it took to get from Brisbane to Rockhampton, and I said, “Yep, it’s eight hours by car, and an hour by plane.” But I definitely saw Hannay that day … I swear on the Bible. He was in Brisbane that morning, so he had to have been in town the night the Whiskey went up.’
A Hitman Comes to Town
The blaze at the Whiskey Au Go Go fired off tremors and triggers that initiated overt and covert actions across the country. This inferno, this evil act, touched everything from the highest office in the land to the darkest recesses of the criminal underworld.
Australia had never seen anything like the Whiskey. It was a crime difficult to immediately comprehend for most. But a handful of people instantly digested its meaning, and implications. One of those was Sydney gunman Stewart John Regan, himself a psychopath and serial killer who had terrorised Sydney for almost a decade with his ruthless and schizoid nature.
Regan was an occasional asset as strong arm and enforcer to the major Sydney gangsters of the day, including Paddles Anderson, Lenny McPherson and George Freeman. But his total unpredictability also made him a liability. Regan was also acquainted with John Andrew Stuart and James Finch. In 1966, after a shootout in the streets of Paddington in inner-Sydney, Finch was charged with maliciously shooting Regan with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm. Finch was sentenced to 14 years in prison but served less than half that.
According to criminal sources, Regan and O’Dempsey were certainly known to each other in the 1960s and 70s, to the point where they’d sometimes do jobs and ‘swap identities’.
When the Whiskey blew, Regan was on a plane directly from Sydney, arriving in Brisbane on Thursday 8 March. Why had a known killer like Regan been in such a rush to head into the heat of a crime of the magnitude of the firebombing of the Whiskey Au Go Go? Had he heard of the tragedy on the news? Had he been phoned by somebody in Brisbane? What possible interest could Regan have in the Brisbane fire?
Nevertheless, he had come like a moth to a flame and took no time getting in touch with Queensland police. Detective Pat Glancy was on duty at headquarters on the morning after the fire and took a call from Regan. ‘He asked me if he was wanted [for the fire],’ Glancy later recalled. ‘He wanted to know if he was to be interviewed … He told me he’d come up from Sydney … He said if I interviewed him one-on-one in a neutral location he would do it without a solicitor. But if we wanted to talk to him in police headquarters he’d bring a legal representative.’
Glancy said he met Regan in a Chinese restaurant in Fortitude Valley. Glancy added: ‘He was one of the coldest people I’ve ever met. He didn’t drink. He had orange juice. He didn’t smoke. He was quiet. Whereas John Andrew Stuart was a loudmouth, he was a bloody idiot.’
In the restaurant, Regan learned that police were looking for Stuart in connection with the Whiskey fire, and the assassin magnanimously offered to help track down his old foe. He even offered to kill Stuart for the police. ‘He was either trying to help us or get us off his back,’ Glancy said. ‘I mentioned Billy Phillips and how he might know where Stuart was.’
Glancy and Regan apparently then drove to Phillips’s house and Regan made a beeline down the side of the house to the back door. When Phillips emerged Regan enquired about Stuart’s whereabouts. The enraged tattooist said he had nothing to do with the Whiskey.
According to Glancy, Phillips was initially unaware of his visitor’s identity. ‘I’m John Regan,’ the visitor said, and Phillips turned ‘white as a ghost’. ‘Remember this,’ Glancy recalls Regan telling Phillips, ‘if you mention to the police that I’m up here, it’ll get to me and I’ll come back and see you.’
Regan returned to Sydney on the Saturday morning. When he was later told of Finch’s and Stuart’s arrests, Regan was elated.
The Hasty Inquest
As parliamentarians assembled in the House at the bottom of George Street, just a few hours after the shocking mass murder at the Whiskey, none would have forgotten the Questions Without Notice from the member for the South Coast, Russell Hinze, just days earlier. Now 15 innocent people were dead, and the culprits were on the run.
The Minister for Justice, Bill Knox, stood at 11.27 a.m. to inform parliament, and the people of Queensland, that a coronial inquiry was imminent. ‘After a conference that was held this morning, I have to announce that a coronial inquiry into this tragedy will be opened this afternoon under the chairmanship of Mr D. Birch, Stipendiary Magistrate,’ Knox said. ‘A number of people will be submitting evidence before the inquiry, and I hope that others will come forward too.’
It was, in any other circumstances, extraordinary that an inquest could be instigated into an event that had only occurred nine hours earlier, and with some of the bodies of the victims still unidentified, down in the city morgue. Who, of substance, would be called to give evidence? How could anybody hope to extract a meaningful picture of the firebombing and its aftermath when there was as yet no perspective on an atrocity of such magnitude?
Minister for Housing and Works (and Police), Max Hodges, followed Knox on the floor of parliament. After expressing his deepest sympathies for the relatives and friends of those who lost their lives, he alluded to the ongoing in
vestigation and assured the House that everything that could be done was being done by the police.
Hodges told parliament that since the fire broke out at 2.08 a.m., police had conducted interviews with over 100 people, some with those ‘fortunate to have survived the holocaust’, along with members of the public. ‘In addition, a large force of police officers are currently scouring the city … There has been a virtual purge by Consorting Squad members of underworld personalities and those who live on the fringe of the underworld. No stone is being left unturned in this incident.’
The Telegraph reported:
Complete uproar and chaos broke out in State Parliament today as the Government defeated two attempts by the Opposition to debate the Whiskey Au Go Go murders. For almost half an hour members shouted at each other in the rowdiest scenes in Parliament for many years.
The Government defeated a move by the Opposition Leader, Mr Houston, for the immediate setting up of a Royal Commission into increased incidents of organised crime extortion and other rackets emerging in Queensland.
The vote was lost 31 – 42.
Later that day, Stipendiary Magistrate Doug Birch convened the Whiskey Au Go Go inquest in Millaquin House at 30 – 36 Herschel Street at North Quay. According to legal observers at the time, it might have been an unusual move to hold an inquest within hours of the crime and deaths it was examining, but on the other hand, the Whiskey Au Go Go mass murder was a commensurately unusual event. ‘These were special circumstances,’ one former magistrate says. ‘He couldn’t have proceeded to take very much evidence. It was a formality, to open it.’
Birch, a highly respected and well-liked magistrate, wasted no time. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I will open an inquest into the cause and origin of a fire which occurred on the 8th day of March, 1973, whereby a property known as “Whiskey-Au-Go-Go” Nightclub … was damaged and whereby the lives of Colin William Folster, William David Nolan, Leslie Gordon Palethorpe, Peter Marcus, David John Westren, Fay Ellen Will, Ernest John Peters, Desmond John Peters, Jennifer Denise Davie, Paul Ferdinand Zoller, Desma Selma Carroll, Carol Ann Green, Darcy Thomas Day, Wendy Leonne Drew, and Brian William Watson, were lost,’ Birch told the court.
Soon after, Birch explained the unusual circumstances surrounding the hastily convened hearings. ‘Because of the nature of the incident, it has been decided to open the inquest today, and for that reason it has not been possible to advise all those who may be interested,’ he said. ‘Action has been taken to bring the inquest to the notice of as many persons as possible.’
The first witnesses called were representatives of the Licensing Commission and Fire Brigade and detailed the various work orders that were in place and revealed that there had been ‘unauthorised alterations’ made to the club, including a reception area and a liquor servery near the back of the club. Leo Terence McQuillan, secretary of the Licensing Commission, confirmed that the work had not obstructed any of the club’s exits, and was of a high standard, the club’s windows had had their winding mechanisms removed and been riveted so they could not open. McQuillan explained: ‘The premises are air-conditioned. These windows were left open and the Commission had received many complaints concerning noise emanating from the entertainment even to the early hours of the morning from these premises.’
The next witness was Vivian William Dowling, Chief Officer of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, Brisbane. Dowling was asked where he believed the fire started. ‘It is my opinion that the main seat of the fire was around the main staircase, that is the staircase nearest to Amelia Street,’ he replied. ‘That is the entrance. In this particular position the damage was the greatest throughout the building.’
Dowling said he studied the means of travel of the fire because he could not understand why it had spread so quickly. ‘The rapid spread of fire within the building was far in excess of any normal spread of fire,’ he concluded. ‘It is my opinion that because of the closed windows fronting St Pauls Terrace the people inside panicked. They knew or had an idea or had been told where the escape was but the fire resistant door had closed and with the lights having gone out within the building they were groping in the dark and in the smoke-filled area. They missed the door and went into a little alcove by the side and this is where we found three and another group of five.’
Dowling agreed that the fire was suspicious and ‘had been assisted by some sort of accelerant’.
On Friday 9 March witnesses at the inquest observed the heartbreaking evidence of the relatives of the dead. One after another, Coroner Birch asked them if they had identified the bodies of their deceased loved ones the day before. It was a parade of pure sorrow.
After 2.30 p.m. on that Friday, with the perpetrators of Australia’s worst mass murder still on the run, the inquest called pathologist and deputy director of the State Health Laboratory, Dr Merrick John O’Reilly. He agreed that he had performed post-mortem examinations on a large number of the Whiskey victims. Dr O’Reilly was asked to tell the court what the ‘principal cause of death’ was.
‘In every case the major cause of death was due to inhalation of fumes, the major portion of which was carbon monoxide,’ he told the hearing. ‘There may have been other products of combustion, but these are being currently investigated by the Government Analyst at the moment. But we do know that the first eight of those had high concentrations of carbon monoxide in their blood.’
He said there was no evidence of injuries that could have been a factor in their deaths. The bodies carried on average 40 per cent to 60 per cent saturation of carbon monoxide. Anything above 40 per cent was considered a lethal dose. Dr O’Reilly said the victims would have been dead within two to three minutes of inhaling the toxic fumes. ‘I should perhaps add that consciousness would have been lost before death would have occurred,’ he added.
Days and Nights at Headquarters
Constable McSherry, who’d come so close to actually witnessing the torching of the Whiskey when he was on patrol the morning of the fire, returned to CIB headquarters in Makerston Street, North Quay. It had been one of the longest and most traumatic shifts of his young career. But the ordeal was not over yet. He was ordered by his superiors to stay at the CIB indefinitely. ‘I was told, “You’re going to have to stay here late and just be on tap if we need you.” I had a number of detectives asking me questions, most of which I couldn’t answer.
‘Syd Atkinson and, I’m sure, Ronnie Redmond were there because I got to know Ronnie pretty well after that. I remember sitting with him in the witness room and Syd Atkinson was in there and he was the fellow I met the most. He was the one that sort of got in my ear quite a bit. But you’ve got to bear in mind that the hierarchical structure of the police back then was a lot different to what it is now. A fellow with my service was a bit like the kid in the corner – speak when spoken to, you know?’
McSherry says he witnessed many potential suspects brought into headquarters that morning. ‘I saw people coming and going in the company of detectives but I didn’t know who they were,’ he recalls.
From Thursday morning after his shift finished until Sunday, McSherry was literally confined to headquarters as the investigation played out. He was not allowed to return to his wife and their rented flat in Ascot. ‘I think from memory I just slept in a bloody chair,’ he recalls. ‘I was 24 and obviously, you know … the enormity of the situation wasn’t lost on me. I was happy to do whatever I had to do to assist in any way.’ He says, ‘to this day’, he has no idea why he was asked not to leave the headquarters precinct.
‘I really can’t fathom why they kept me there but they did. I saw their comings and goings and I wonder if they were just thinking, if I saw someone that I recognised [from the crime scene] then I might say, “Hang on, I saw that fellow in or out of the club”, you know? But that didn’t happen, I didn’t see anyone coming or going that I recognised. Either from that night or from previously.’
Nevert
heless, detectives wanted McSherry there for a reason. He had been the first officer, with Constable Kay Suhr, on the scene, and had literally missed witnessing the torching of the club at the front entrance by a matter of seconds. But why would the likes of Atkinson and Redmond ensure that the young constable not leave their sight? Was he pressed by any senior detectives about what he actually saw that morning at the Whiskey?
‘They got me to go through books of photographs, you know, but without … looking for any particular person ... which made good sense if you think about it. They said to me, “Just keep looking … just let us know if there is anyone you recognise, either from the event or prior to that.”
‘I remember leafing through the black and white photographs, you know, watch house photographs, with the blackboard across the chest. And I’m trying to put myself in their shoes and wondering what they possibly expected, given I’d already told them I saw nobody set fire to the place.
‘It was lost on me … I was just sitting in the corner and serving no purpose whatsoever. Whoever made the decision to keep me there, I don’t know who it was. Because there was hectic bloody activity, obviously. So that’s probably the biggest event that ever happened in Queensland at the time.’
It was days before McSherry was permitted to return home. His partner on patrol that night, Constable Suhr, was not asked to stay at headquarters. McSherry never worked a shift with her again.
Barbara Flees
Less than 48 hours after the fire, Barbara fled Dorchester Street with her children. She took the girls to separate friends and then she went to stay that Saturday night with her friend from the milk bar, Ellen Gilbert.
The Night Dragon Page 12
