The Night Dragon

by Matthew Condon

  Still, had Finch been verballed?

  Jack ‘The Bagman’ Herbert, supreme organiser of the corrupt Queensland police system of graft known as The Joke, was at CIB headquarters the night Finch was interviewed by police and made his so-called confession. Herbert would reveal before his death that he had seen investigators Atkinson and Hayes later washing blood from their arms in the washroom. He said Finch and Stuart had been dragged into the washroom at some point and severely beaten. Herbert said the ‘Sydney police’ were also involved.

  ‘[They] dragged the two of them down, gave them a wash up and that’s all dead-set what I know,’ he would confidentially tell his biographer, Tom Gilling. ‘But I’ve never told another soul. I’ll tell you why. At the time everybody was incensed at these bastards doing what they did. I wasn’t going to get them out and lose all the bloody sympathy of the public. I remember that was my feeling at the time. That I couldn’t afford to [intervene], so I thought about it a lot and I can’t do anything about it. Because what’s it going to do?’

  Gilling asked Herbert if he’d seen police drag the two suspects out of the washroom.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ he said.

  ‘They’d taken them in for a wash?’ Gilling asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  Fifteen years later, in the 22 November edition of The Bulletin magazine, Roger Rogerson, present at Finch’s interrogation that Sunday, would tell journalist Bruce Stannard:

  ‘He [Stuart] was like a bloody wild animal when they brought him into the Watchhouse. All he had on was a pair of briefs and I remember he stood at the charge desk with his feet well back and his arms stretched out, leaning on the desk and snarling like a bloody animal.

  ‘He was a pretty fit little bastard. I remember all the muscles on his chest and stomach rippling like a bloody weightlifter. Stuart never made a statement. He was too smart for that.

  ‘So, when they lumbered Finch, we said, right, this bastard is going to talk. Syd Atkinson brought him into Roma Street after a bit of a chase on the Sunday morning and he was given a terrible hiding. He was handcuffed to a chair and we knocked the shit out of him. Siddy Atkinson was pretty fit then and he gave him a terrible hiding. We all laid into him with our fists. The old adrenalin was up.

  ‘The blokes were yelling at him, “You fucking cunt, Finch. You fucking murderer: you killed 15 fucking people, you mongrel.”

  ‘But I’ve got to say this for him. I admire the way he kept his trap shut. He was as guilty as sin but he didn’t want to give us the satisfaction of hearing it from his own lips. The bastard didn’t utter one bloody word. He just sat there and copped an almighty hiding.

  ‘I’ve seen a lot of blokes get biffed and, believe me, Finch got a real going over but he didn’t even whimper. That takes real guts in my opinion. Some blokes, you kick them in the balls and straight away they start squealing and they’ll tell you everything.

  ‘But not Finch. The bastard sat there like a dummy.’

  Drama in Court

  On Monday 12 March Stuart and Finch were transported in a convoy of four carloads of detectives, many armed with shotguns, to the magistrates court where charges were read against them. The two men were separated, and were led into Number 1 Magistrates Court. They were manacled and surrounded by a scrum of police. True to form, Stuart caused pandemonium. He shouted his innocence and had to be restrained by six police officers. He had to be dragged and pushed into the dock. At one point, Detective Pat Glancy had Stuart in a headlock.

  As the murder charges were being read by police prosecutor Senior Sergeant F.G. Donaghue, Finch interrupted. ‘Can I say something?’ he asked. ‘When I was being brought in the police put a record of interview in my pocket and one of them said, “Cop that.” I made no admissions. I was beaten up by the police a couple of times yesterday. I am innocent.’

  Stuart later shouted out in court: ‘Let go of my arm. What do you think I’m trying to do? Beat 40 coppers. You’re breaking my arm and I’m not even struggling.’

  Neither were granted bail and both men were remanded until 20 March. They were taken to Boggo Road Gaol.

  With Finch and Stuart under arrest and awaiting trial, the press and the public now turned on the authorities in shock and rage, demanding answers. Were the notoriously corrupt Queensland police not telling all they knew?

  The Sydney Tribune – the official newspaper of the Communist party of Australia – fired a salvo that did more than hint that there may have been a conspiracy afoot.

  Behind the fire-murder of 15 in Brisbane’s Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub, and the current hasty prosecution of two police-selected culprits lies one of the greatest police and inter-governmental scandals ever seen in this country. Before the full story is finished, it will reveal much more of the ill-concealed rot and corruption that has featured for years in the police force under the Bjelke-Petersen Country-Liberal Party regime.

  Was this simply a ‘commie rag’ taking the opportunity to savage one of the nation’s most conservative State governments? Could the newspaper really link the death of 15 innocent people to ‘how indifferent the State machine of capitalism can be towards human life’?

  There may have been liberal lashings of hyperbole, but the article joined some interesting dots that would still be puzzling decades later. The Tribune said evidence was already emerging, just days after the fire, which pointed towards ‘police and State government negligence and indifference’.

  The Bjelke-Petersen government during passionate scenes last Thursday in State Parliament clamped the gag on an attempt by the State Labor Opposition to probe police and government negligence over the fire, only hours after it had occurred. They rightly demanded an immediate Royal Commission into the increase in crime, extortion and other rackets.

  The report repeated the denials by Commissioner Whitrod that there was no evidence that the fire was the result of extortion attempts by Sydney gangs to set up rackets in south-east Queensland.

  But in a suddenly-called, special press conference [on the Saturday] … Whitrod angrily confirmed the correctness of a statement made on Friday in Canberra by the Commonwealth Police that they had warned the Queensland Police two weeks beforehand that the Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub was a target for underworld violence. Whitrod – himself a former ASIO officer and Commonwealth Police Commissioner – sought refuge in the claim that he personally had not received the warning until two days after the bombing [Saturday 10 March], when he ‘found confirmation on his desk’.

  This was an extraordinary situation. An explicit warning from a Commonwealth Police officer, having gathered credible information from an informant about an impending and potentially huge tragedy, had not been passed on to Whitrod until it mysteriously appeared on his desk a full two days after the mass murder. The Tribune asked:

  …clearly some people in [the] Queensland State government police regime are interested in suppressing Commonwealth Police advice and warnings about impending crime in Queensland.

  If the Commonwealth Police DID OFFICIALLY inform the Queensland Police of the danger of firebombing, why was that information not put on Whitrod’s desk … until TWO DAYS AFTER the bombing?

  Was it simply inter-police rivalry, dislike of Whitrod by some of the Queensland police hierarchy, or was it that some police (backed by the State Government) wanted to protect a corruption-ridden relationship between police and criminals?

  Or indeed was it a murky combination of all three? The Tribune’s speculation about a cover-up, and the damage to Whitrod, was further underlined by Stuart’s own assertions to Inspector Basil Hicks, that the torching of the Whiskey was ‘politically’ motivated, and that Whitrod and Hodges would ‘cook’ for it. Why had Voigt and Hicks not passed on their concerns about the torching of the Whiskey, separate from the Commonwealth Police warning?

  One former Queensland police officer explained that the ranting of police informant
Stuart may at the time have been seen as just that – wild, improbable conjecture from a known liar who would do and say anything to suit his purposes. Indeed, Stuart’s long-winded stories to Hicks, which placed Stuart as a lifelong criminal now trying to assist police and avert what might develop into a tragedy, must have seemed fantastical at the time.

  How did Stuart know so much about this impending attack from Sydney gangs if, as he claimed, he had nothing to do with the detailed extortion rackets?

  The former officer said it would take a more tangible evidence, apart from just Stuart’s word, to see those allegations move up the investigative chain to the point where priority dictated action by police.

  But that didn’t explain how the formal Commonwealth warning, on paper, had been kept from Whitrod until two days after the tragedy. Who, on Whitrod’s staff, had the access and power to physically withhold that information? That singular act proved to be extremely damaging to Whitrod’s reputation.

  The Tribune demanded action on the whole sorry saga, and said it was time for ‘a Federally-conducted public enquiry into the Whiskey Au Go Go murders, the failure of the Queensland Police to stop it, despite ample warning, and the Queensland Government’s attempt to smother the whole tragedy up’.

  The newspaper’s calls went unanswered. It had been shouting into the wind.

  The Man in the White Suit

  It was around the time of the Whiskey Au Go Go tragedy that Vincent O’Dempsey began to show his entrepreneurship and started a small business with a number of branches. This was the lucrative ‘massage parlour’ game. Perhaps taking a leaf out of the book of Sydney heavyweight Stewart John Regan, O’Dempsey started running a couple of prostitutes out of two rooms upstairs in the Mayfair Hotel in Palmerin Street, Warwick.

  The old pub had a bar downstairs and accommodation upstairs. ‘It was across the road from the post office,’ one local said. ‘Vince used to have a couple of girls working for him there. The police knew about it but I don’t think they were game to touch him. I used to drink with a few of them when they were off-duty, so if we knew what was going on upstairs at the Mayfair, then they knew.

  ‘Vince was good friends with one particular police officer anyway. They used to drink together and played rugby league together. They might have had some businesses together going on the side.’

  A few decades earlier, O’Dempsey had stood out on the Warwick streetscape when he dressed as a bodgie. By the 1970s he had changed his attire entirely, although it didn’t make him any less conspicuous. ‘He always wore a white suit,’ says one acquaintance. ‘It stuck out like signs beside a road. Back then you dressed up a little bit more. But that was Vince. A white suit.’

  The acquaintance said he was in a Warwick pub one day when some locals were welcoming a new resident, a young woman, who noticed the white-suited stranger across the bar. ‘She asked who that suave gentleman was. One of the girls had to take her to the toilets and explain to her that it was Vince O’Dempsey.’

  At this time, too, according to family friends and former criminal business partners, O’Dempsey was running some prostitutes on the Gold Coast. ‘He was always going back and forth to the Gold Coast,’ said one source. In the not too distant future, O’Dempsey would also open his ‘health studio’, Polonia, in Brisbane.

  Meanwhile, after the Whiskey went up the Clockwork Orange Gang quickly dissipated. One associate says several of them moved from their rented share house in Chermside to a house in nearby Geebung. ‘This was the start of the run,’ the associate remembers.

  Another associate says the Clockwork boys were understandably quiet after the Whiskey horror. ‘A couple of police said to us, there is no interest in you guys, for the Whiskey,’ he recalls. ‘We heard that from the guys [corrupt police] at Nundah. The higher powers communicated with Nundah to start with. I got a request to come into the CIB. I went in there … and that’s when he [the copper] dropped the bombshell … He said, “How you feeling about helping us out? Giving us information about what’s going to happen and helping us out?”

  ‘I said, “Turn it up, I’m already paying you money, I’m not going to start giving you information … forget about that …”

  ‘After a while, especially after we were told there was no interest in us, it was back to square one again.’

  The gang quietly moved around Brisbane, then further afield. ‘From the Geebung house they went and stayed in a shed near Rocklea for a little while. I helped find that for them. I took their suitcases and stashed them … They were at that shed for only about a day and for some unknown reason they just took off. They jumped on a bus and off they went.’

  [Keith] Meredith went to Darwin. Dubois headed to Adelaide where he had relatives. Hamilton and Hall went over to New Zealand and they stayed there for a while.

  In time most of the gang would return to a farmhouse at Caboolture, north of Brisbane. ‘They came back and settled in the farmhouse,’ the associate says. ‘They were laughing at Stuart and Finch’s predicament. If you rob a bank with me and you get caught and I get away, that’s just bad luck for you. I’m not going to hand myself in. I might send you a Christmas card and sign it Joe Blow or something, but I’d never laugh at you and the predicament you’re in.

  ‘That’s what Tommy and the gang were doing. They were laughing at Stuart and Finch. They were laughing their heads off.’

  Evidence and Amputations

  Given the histrionics displayed during Finch and Stuart’s brief court appearance on the day after their arrest in early March, there was much more to come in the weeks leading up to, and during, their committal hearing in Brisbane. A number of police who had taken witness statements from Finch and Stuart testified to both men being guilty, as did Stuart’s brother Dan, who had in fact given his own brother up to police on the day of his arrest.

  The Little brothers joined the witness fray, as did the mysterious John Hannay, albeit briefly. Brian Little told the court he was on good terms with Hannay, the Whiskey’s former manager, but they had had a dispute over money. ‘There was a large amount of money missing from the company and there were certain records that John Hannay had in his offices in Brunswick Street that were either misplaced or destroyed,’ Little said under questioning. He said the missing money could have been about $20,000.

  Hannay, who listed his address as the Grosvenor Hotel in Rockhampton, said he had been the manager of the Whiskey until November 1972.

  Why did he leave Little Enterprises, he was asked.

  ‘I got belted up,’ Hannay said in court. He said the bashing occurred in a laneway near Chequers Nightclub in Fortitude Valley. He said he was given his letter of dismissal from the Little’s nightclub business the next day. Hannay said he had been attempting to get an explanation for his sacking.

  On 21 June 1973 Stuart and Finch were committed for trial and so began the predictable skirmishes, medical emergencies and delays leading up to the trial that would grip the nation. Within days of being committed, Stuart was taken to hospital complaining of ‘severe abdominal pains’. X-rays revealed nothing. (Finch had earlier tried to amputate one of his fingers as a way of delaying his court appearance.)

  In mid-August, Stuart was then remanded on charges of having assaulted three prison officers. It was alleged he had thrown a bucket of urine through the bars and struck one officer. Two officers who went to their colleagues’ aid were also assaulted.

  In a separate matter, it was also alleged that Whiskey owner Brian Little was further threatened as the trial loomed. (During the committal Little was approached by an ‘intermediary’ at his other club, Chequers, and issued a threat. The man told him that Billy McCulkin was not ‘very happy’ about his best mate Stuart being charged over the Whiskey fire. Little was told hitman [Frederick] ‘Paddles’ Anderson would be coming into the club ‘to have a chat’ and John Bell would be knocked off.)

  The trial opened on 10
September before Justice George Lucas. Preliminary legal debate lasted almost two days before the jury was empanelled. Only then did Crown Prosecutor L.J. McNamara read a list of 131 prospective witnesses. It was set to be a long trial.

  After those early delays, Chief Crown Prosecutor L.G. Martin opened the Crown case, describing Stuart in the lead-up to the Whiskey fire as the ‘distraught prophet of doom’. He said Stuart’s warning to police and the press was nothing more than Stuart sowing fear and building an alibi for himself.

  Within days, the trial was rocked by two things. Stuart abruptly dismissed his legal counsel, and then he swallowed four pieces of metal and was taken to the Royal Brisbane Hospital for treatment.

  It was expected he would be operated on, and confined to hospital for 10 to 14 days. For a moment, the future of the trial was in jeopardy. But in the end, after careful consideration, Justice Lucas was having none of it. He ordered the trial continue in Stuart’s absence. Justice Lucas said he was convinced this was part of Stuart’s plan to either stop the trial or prevent him from being tried jointly with Finch. The judge said Stuart would be provided transcripts of each day’s proceedings.

  One of the early trial witnesses was Sydney gangster Leonard ‘Mr Big’ McPherson. McPherson denied Stuart’s claim that he and Stuart had arranged to meet on the Gold Coast in September 1972, where McPherson had a holiday house. McPherson admitted he knew a man named [Stewart John] Regan. He said he had nothing to do with any attempt to set up extortion rackets in Brisbane.

  Underworld figures Frederick ‘Paddles’ Anderson and Regan also made star appearances. Regan was described in court as a ‘company manager’. He testified he had no interest in Brisbane nightclubs.