The Night Dragon

by Matthew Condon

  ‘… after the burning of the Whiskey Au Go Go night club in the Valley, Mrs McCulkin phoned me and asked me could she come to my place and stay the night with me,’ Gilbert would later tell police. ‘She … arrived at my home conveyed there by her husband, Billy McCulkin, and another person. After she arrived at my home she said she did not want to stay at home as she was very upset. She said something about the police and her house being bugged. I formed the opinion that Mrs McCulkin was very frightened and concerned for the safety of herself and her children and she had deliberately split them up.’

  Why had Barbara McCulkin taken such drastic action? Did she have information concerning the culprits behind the firebombing? What had she overheard at 6 Dorchester Street? Whatever it was, it was enough to make her flee her home.

  Barbara wasn’t the only one worried in the aftermath of the Whiskey. So too were members of the Clockwork Orange Gang. Peter Hall later said at the trial of Garry Dubois that having done the job at Torino’s, he and his mates were concerned that police might link them to the Whiskey. ‘I recall a few weeks after we did the Torino’s the Whiskey Au Go Go fire happened,’ Hall would later confess. ‘It made us all panic because people were killed and we were concerned that we would be implicated. We were out doing break and enters that night, the four of us in two cars. I was with Keithy [Meredith]. I am sure none of us were involved.

  ‘I am also sure because I would have found out about it. Obviously when we found out about it the next day we realised they might look at the Torino’s [fire]. I am aware that it has been suggested that Tom Hamilton was involved in the Whiskey Au Go Go fire but I don’t believe that it’s true.’

  Former Whiskey bouncer John Wayne Ryan, who grew up in the same neighbourhood as most of the Clockwork Orange Gang in the Chermside area, claimed he had been warning all and sundry about a firebombing at the Whiskey but nobody would listen. He knew that Tommy Hamilton and some of the Clockwork Orange boys had torched Torino’s less than two weeks earlier, and had learned that the Whiskey was ‘going to go off’ next.

  Ryan knew Billy McCulkin was behind Torino’s, and he was concerned about Billy’s wife, Barbara, and the girls. ‘John Andrew Stuart had been to her home [at Dorchester Street] a few times in the lead up to the bombing,’ Ryan said. ‘And she said she was present when Billy McCulkin was on the phone making arrangements about the fires, plural. She had information on the Clockwork Orange Gang and its links to some Queensland police.’

  In the meantime, little Leanne McCulkin was attending Yeronga State School when her friends found her in tears. One of those friends, Alan Evans, would later tell a court that he asked Leanne what was wrong. ‘She was crying her eyes out one day … she was really upset,’ Evans said. ‘She said … her father had something to do with it [the Whiskey].’

  Heads Must Roll

  When the true, horrific gravity of the fire’s 15 deaths began to sink in, the press and the public were clamouring for someone to be held accountable for the mass murder. The culprit had to be caught, and swiftly. The perpetrator was a maniac, a mad killer, and if he could set fire to a building with dozens of people in it, he was capable of anything. How had the police force allowed this to happen? What was the Queensland police motto? Firmness with Courtesy? Where was the firmness with a criminal, or criminals, permitted to slaughter 15 innocent people?

  Behind the scenes police were trying to piece together information from a number of different sources. On Saturday 10 March, John Andrew Stuart had another prolonged phone call with Inspector Basil Hicks, who recorded their conversation. In that conversation, he hinted at a broader conspiracy behind the Whiskey attack.

  According to a police report witnessed by author Geoff Plunkett, the following conversation ensued.

  ‘Okay now,’ a rambling and at times incoherent Stuart told Hicks, ‘so all I’m gonna go along with and what I have tried to get the Mirror to go along with. Gees they’re gonna give it a shocking cook tomorrow. I’ve seen some of the stories [in the newspapers].’

  ‘Whose [sic] going to get the cook?’ Hicks asked.

  ‘Not youse. Not youse,’ Stuart stressed. ‘Not the CIU. It’s Whitrod and [Police Minister] Hodges. They’re gonna give them a shocking cook. They’re out to get them. They wanna bring them undone.’

  ‘Why Whitrod and Hodges?’

  ‘It’s political, Basil,’ Stuart answered. ‘It’s not just Bolton, it’s the [news]paper.’

  Lawyer Des Sturgess, in his memoir The Tangled Web, would later reflect on the ‘politics’ behind the Whiskey, as Stuart put it to Hicks. Sturgess was Brisbane’s go-to lawyer for large, complicated and controversial legal cases in the 1970s. He had a particular talent for being on-hand in cases that would find themselves in the Supreme Court in George Street, and would go on to represent a veritable roll call of famous, and infamous, Queensland police. He offered counsel to corrupt Rat Pack copper Glen Hallahan, who was charged with corruption by Whitrod’s CIU in late 1971, and offered legal advice to corrupt former police commissioner Frank Bischof and Licensing Branch officer Jack ‘The Bagman’ Herbert.

  In his memoir, Sturgess observed that one of the criticisms of the Whitrod era of police enforcement was ‘the allegation of incompetence costing 15 lives’. Decades later, the attempt to slot the blame for the Whiskey on Whitrod’s incompetence continued to be discussed by retired detectives. Former leading CIB detective A.B. ‘Abe’ Duncan was one vocal critic. ‘If ever there should have been a royal commission or an inquiry into the police force, it should have been over the Whiskey. That should have been top priority. I’ll say that to my dying day. It would have revealed that Whitrod and his men slipped out of the job. It was absolute negligence.’

  Corrupt former police commissioner Terry Lewis concurs: ‘Oh … it was gross negligence on somebody’s part. How far up it got, I don’t know.’

  On the Sunday, Brian Bolton wrote an article that reflected public sentiment about the Whiskey atrocity and echoed the sentiment of Stuart’s conversation with Hicks the day before. The front page headline of the Sunday Sun was: ‘HEADS MUST ROLL!’

  Bolton wrote:

  …some people in the Queensland Police Force appear very naive, deceitful or just plain stupid … Their leaders – right through to the Minister [Hodges] and Commissioner [Whitrod] – persist in saying publicly there were no warnings of the dreadful club disaster which cost 15 lives in Brisbane last week, yet there is ample evidence that warning after warning was given.

  Despite the debate over Whitrod, police had issued vital information about a lead they were following and asked the public for help. The State Government had offered a $50,000 reward for the capture of the offender or offenders. Particularly, the police wanted to know the whereabouts of a certain black car.

  A shiny black sedan, possibly a Holden, has become a major lead in investigations into the massacre … Homicide detectives urgently require any information about the car, which was seen driving away from the Valley nightclub’s Amelia Street entrance before two drums of petrol ignited in the club’s foyer at 2.10 a.m. A young couple told police yesterday they saw the shiny black car drive off just before the club burst into flames. They said the car drove off without lights and turned right into St Pauls Terrace.

  It was a description that perfectly matched the car seen pulling up outside the club by witness Kath Potter. The hunt was on.

  An extraordinary series of allegations by Whiskey manager John Bell then followed in the newspapers. He claimed Stuart had walked into the Whiskey at about 10 p.m. on the night of the fire and spoken to both Bell and Brian Little. Bell told the newspaper:

  Stuart told me that these criminals would throw a hand grenade through the window or drive a burning car into the front foyer. He said there were four young Sydney criminals trying to make a name for themselves. He mentioned the name of two brothers involved in the gang. Stuart told me they had asked him
to arrange a protection racket in Brisbane with the clubs and to collect the money.

  It was unknown to Bell, and indeed the Sunday Sun at that point, that days before the fatal fire Stuart had accidentally bumped into Peter Hall and Tommy Hamilton of the Clockwork Orange Gang in the street, and had made a joke to a witness that here were the ‘two Sydney gangster brothers’. Hall and Hamilton were often mistaken as brothers because of their red hair. Had Stuart simply used the gang as the basis for his fictional Sydney gang, set to extort Brisbane clubs?

  There were more revelations to come. ‘Stuart said that these criminals had firebombed the Torino but had not had enough publicity from it,’ Bell added. ‘Just before he left he said the crime would be done when there were people about and that the innocent would suffer.’

  At the time Stuart made these allegations to Bell, investigators had no idea who was behind the Torino fire. And while rumours would circulate years later, it wouldn’t be until the murder trials of Garry ‘Shorty’ Dubois and Vince O’Dempsey over the McCulkin killings that the true culprits behind Torino’s were revealed. Gang member Peter Hall would finally confess to the Torino firebombing in 2016, telling a court that it was he, Shorty Dubois and Keith Meredith, who committed the crime, which was organised by Vince O’Dempsey and Billy McCulkin.

  Was the so-called Sydney crime gang Stuart was talking up actually the Clockwork Orange Gang?

  Stuart knew who was behind the club fires when he told Bell that the Sydney gang ‘had firebombed the Torino’, but it would take more than four decades for Stuart’s fabric of lies to be unpicked.

  Caught

  John Andrew Stuart’s long discussions with his friend, Inspector Basil Hicks, did not keep him immune from the Whiskey’s myriad police investigators, who had come from three States – Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria – to assist investigations into the Whiskey firebombing. Despite all Stuart’s attempts to shore up an alibi for the Whiskey fire – the Sydney gang stories, the tip-offs to police, creating an alibi at Flamingos, the notes left with journalist Brian Bolton, and his lengthy rambling to detective Basil Hicks – police still considered him a serious person of interest.

  ‘We got a call from [Stuart’s brother] Danny saying Stuart and Finch were at his house …’ officer Pat Glancy would later say. ‘There was a barbecue on at the house. A couple of carloads of us went out there. As we arrived, a woman came out of the house. She said, “I’m getting out of here, it’s going to be a bloodbath.” I was the first one in and I saw that Stuart had something behind his back.’

  According to Glancy, when police swooped on Dan’s place at 12 Mankinna Street, Jindalee, Stuart was brandishing a hunting knife. It was known among his friends and associates that he often carried a knife in his boot. Glancy said he raised his gun and threatened to shoot Stuart if he didn’t drop the knife. Glancy said Stuart threw the knife across the room. ‘When we drove into headquarters, Stuart, who was in the back seat, wouldn’t shut up,’ Glancy added. ‘He had his head down and shouted that everyone was trying to kill him, that the police were trying to kill him.’ Finch was nowhere to be found. According to newspaper reports the next morning, Sunday 11 March, police received another call to return to the Jindalee house.

  Finch had gone back to the house but fled again. By 11 a.m. he was captured in the area. Both men were interrogated through that Sunday, and at 8.55 p.m. were formally charged with murder.

  ‘I am very pleased at the work of the police team,’ Commissioner Whitrod announced. ‘They have worked long hours and have done very well. In this instance police mobile crews played an important part. We have received great co-operation from the public. People have phoned in many leads which we have worked on.’

  Even Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen weighed in on the backslapping. ‘I would like to commend the police on their very excellent work on a difficult problem,’ he said. ‘I have often said that we in Queensland are fortunate to have the police force we have got.’

  Both Whitrod and Bjelke-Petersen were condemned by the Bar Association of Queensland for their words of praise. President J.D. Dunn said it was a fundamental principle of law that no one is presumed guilty until a court makes that decision. He said the comments bordered on contempt of court.

  On that Sunday evening, Billy McCulkin rang Ellen Gilbert’s house to let his wife know that Finch and Stuart had been arrested for the Whiskey firebombing. ‘She received a telephone call and she told me that she was relieved, and she said her husband had called and that John Stuart had been arrested for the Whiskey Au Go Go fire,’ Gilbert later recalled to police. ‘She borrowed some money from me for a cab and then left. Mrs McCulkin informed me that John Andrew Stuart was a friend and that he had stayed with her and her husband at their home on occasions.’

  On Monday 12 March, with Stuart and Finch safely in custody, the inquest abruptly ended. Coroner Birch said: ‘Yes, gentlemen, well, it’s quite clear that my function at this stage is to adjourn the inquest … to a date and time to be fixed …’

  The inquest into the mass deaths at the Whiskey was never resumed.

  The Verbal

  When Finch was interviewed, on the evening of Sunday 11 March 1973, there were plenty of police interested in the proceedings, from the lead interviewers to young constables on duty down at headquarters. When the typed record of interview was done and handed to younger officers to produce copies, a number of extra copies were made and the juniors pocketed them as ‘souvenirs’.

  The interview was conducted by then Detective Senior Sergeant Brian Hayes, and present were Detective Sergeant Syd ‘Sippy’ Atkinson, as well as New South Wales police officers – Detective Sergeant Noel Morey and Detective Senior Constable Roger Rogerson. The interview commenced at 5.45 p.m. The typist for the interview transcript was Detective Sergeant Ron Redmond.

  The police pulled a standard line – they told Finch that his mate Stuart had willingly confessed to the crime. It was a ruse. Everyone who knew Stuart and Finch were adamant they would never confess to coppers.

  Hayes asked Finch how long he’d been back in Brisbane and Finch told them Stuart had written to him the previous September with a business proposition. Finch arrived in Brisbane on 27 February, just over a week before the Whiskey fire. He conceded that he and Stuart had been friends for years.

  Hayes then informed Finch that police were investigating the fire at the Whiskey, which had resulted in the loss of 15 lives, and proceeded to read out the names of the dead.

  Finch asked them to stop reading the names, claiming he had been ‘sick ever since it happened’ and had dry-retched for a day when he found out about the fatalities.

  ‘Are you admitting that you were involved in the deaths of these people?’ Hayes asked.

  ‘Yes unfortunately,’ Finch supposedly replied. ‘It was not intended to be this way. It was intended to intimidate them so as Johnny could get what he wanted.’

  Hayes asked him what he meant by saying ‘Johnny could get what he wanted’.

  Finch said it was all ‘Johnny’s idea’ and that the idea was to ‘start a bit of a fire’ in the foyer of the club and ‘frighten’ people. He said it was all part of Stuart’s plan to extort money from Brisbane nightclubs. He wanted to ‘tie up’ Brisbane just as gangster Lenny McPherson had tied up the Sydney scene.

  Finch said Stuart paid for his flight to Brisbane knowing he would ‘do anything’ to help his mate.

  Finch supposedly told police that Stuart had been planning the operation for months and that he’d established an iron-clad alibi for himself. He said he had used a local reporter to plant stories in the newspaper about Sydney gangs coming to Brisbane and extorting clubs. When the fire was set and the extortion racket established, Finch was to slip out of the country.

  He said Stuart wanted to be the ‘Mr Big of Brisbane’.

  Hayes then asked him what his movements were on the night of
7 March, and into the early hours of the next morning. ‘We drove in towards town and on the way Johnny pulled up in the bush and picked up two empty drums, he told me he planted them there,’ Finch replied. ‘Before we got to town, Johnny drove into a side street and there were some cars parked there and we took a drum each and a piece of tubing – Johnny filled his first from a car parked in the street and then I put my drum under the tank and as I was filling mine a dog barked and we decided to give it away. We put the two drums of petrol in the back of Johnny’s station wagon.’

  He said Stuart dropped him at the entrance to the Whiskey at about 1 a.m. and he hid the petrol drums in the shadows at the side of the club.

  ‘… Johnny said he had been at the club a few times and there would only be a handful of people there at about 2 o’clock and that they would soon get out the fire escape,’ Finch continued. ‘Oh God why didn’t those people get out, why did they stay there. Johnny said around about 2 o’clock I was to take off the caps of the drums and roll them into the entrance and then light a full packet of folder matches – you know the ones, like you get at the hotel and clubs and all.’

  Finch admitted he had lit the fire.

  He refused to accompany police back to the site of the Whiskey in Amelia Street.

  ‘Are you prepared to read this record of interview over aloud and sign it if it is a correct record of our conversations,’ Hayes supposedly said. ‘You are not obliged to sign it unless you wish to do so.’

  Finch refused to sign the document.

  The interview had lasted just two hours and eight minutes.

  Also present for the interview, as noted at the start of the record typed by Redmond, was the famous Sydney detective Roger Rogerson, whose notorious career would in the end see him found guilty of murder and imprisoned for the rest of his natural life. ‘John Andrew Stuart kept saying it was Sydney criminals, MrBigs, Lenny Mc[Pherson], George Freeman, he was dropping a lot of names,’ Rogerson said. ‘And there was a journalist up there writing up stories about Sydney crims taking over the Valley … It was a way of setting up an alibi. It was all crap. Stuart had been barred from returning to Sydney. He was a ratbag. It was all a story organised by him.’