It was where Detective Sergeant Menary caught up with them during his investigation into the McCulkin murders. Menary had the bit between his teeth and couldn’t let it go. When he finally interviewed Dianne Pritchard, she had recently become Mrs Dianne O’Dempsey, married by the centre’s pastor, even though she was known at the centre as Cheryl Jackson.
While she was being interviewed in one of the police cars Pritchard said: ‘I was a prostitute. I’ve found God now. I’m a Christian. These people here are wonderful. I’ve even seen them make legs grow. I went close to the stage to have a look before I’d believe it.’
Menary offered her some pristine logic – if she was now a committed Christian, she could answer questions from police truthfully.
‘Yes,’ Pritchard agreed.
Menary then informed her that they were seeking information about the disappearance, and presumed murder, of Margaret Grace Ward in late 1973.
Ward had worked with Pritchard in O’Dempsey’s brothel Polonia. Both Pritchard and Ward had been issued summons’ to appear in court in November of that year to answer charges that they were working as prostitutes, and that Pritchard was managing a brothel. Ward had visited her solicitor in the city before the court appearance. After that meeting, Ward vanished.
‘I can’t remember anything about that,’ Pritchard told Menary, ‘that’s all in the past. The past has all been forgiven. It’s too long ago. I don’t remember anything about that.’
Menary said to her: ‘God just left you … he flew out the window.’
He informed her he believed Ward had been murdered and Pritchard quickly changed her tune. ‘Vince told me not to talk to you,’ she said. ‘I’ve said too much already.’ She admitted to police she had once worked for missing brothel madam Simone Vogel.
Menary told her he believed her husband had murdered Ward to prevent her from giving evidence against Pritchard in their pending court case in late 1973.
She later told police of her new home on the mount: ‘We don’t have any guns here. We are Christians now and we don’t need them.’
She said she and Vince had only left Brisbane because she was being harassed by police at the massage parlour.
Despite the police circling ever closer, O’Dempsey still had to earn a quid, and was in the process of growing one of his first cannabis crops in bushland on the eastern side of Cunninghams Gap and the Main Range on the way to Warwick. While O’Dempsey was diligently trying to make a buck on the outside, his name was mysteriously popping up in criminal circles.
One ex-con serving time in gaol for car theft and false pretences, met a fellow inmate called Leslie Smith. The ex-con knew many of Brisbane’s criminals including James Finch and John Andrew Stuart, and had been a long-time phiz-gig, or informant, to a number of Queensland police officers, including detective Tony Murphy.
Leslie Smith, according to the Costigan Commission into the activities of the Federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union, was a member of that union. Interestingly, the Brisbane meeting rooms for union members, located in Cairns Street in Kangaroo Point, had been under surveillance by police in mid-1979. An officer tasked with scoping the union office says, ‘there were literally hundreds of people coming and going who were either criminals or associated criminals’. He says, ‘There were crims out of Victoria turning up in Cairns Street … and it was a hub for Queensland criminals.’
‘Smith told [the ex-con] that he could arrange his escape but that it would need to be from another prison,’ the Costigan report said. ‘[The ex-con] was thereafter moved to Palen Creek.’
How he managed to get himself so conveniently moved to the prison farm at Palen Creek was not explained. However, in a statement years later to the Fitzgerald inquiry into police corruption, a document was tabled in Queensland State Parliament that shed some light on the ex-con’s role in these strange events.
The ex-con said that in 1979 he was approached in prison by police Inspector Ron Redmond and another police officer. Redmond, of course, had been one of the six police officers present when James Finch was interrogated at CIB headquarters days after the Whiskey Au Go Go firebombing in 1973. Redmond had typed Finch’s unsigned record of interview.
Now, according to the ex-con, Redmond needed a favour. The ex-con said the police wanted him to make contact with Vince O’Dempsey, who was lying low given the gathering intensity of the McCulkin reinvestigation. Redmond wanted the ex-con to pass a message on to O’Dempsey. The inspector said O’Dempsey might be charged in relation to the McCulkin murders, but ‘he would not be convicted’.
The ex-con added in his statement: ‘Redmond said to me words to the effect of: “Just tell him everything will be OK. There’ll be a hearing but he won’t be convicted.”’
The ex-con’s amazing story alleged that he had been secretly removed from solitary confinement by police in order to make contact with O’Dempsey. He did indeed escape from Palen Creek, as arranged, in November 1979. He immediately made contact with Stewart Bridges, also a member of the Painters and Dockers. They met at the union rooms in Cairns Street. ‘A change of clothing, money and a car were provided on the following day during another meeting at the Rooms,’ the Costigan report said. Frank Costigan’s royal commission into the Federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union between 1980 and 1984 was set up to examine the criminal activities and associated violence of the union. Costigan uncovered the story of the ex-con when he focussed on the union’s activities in Queensland.
‘[The ex-con] was directed to people in Newcastle who would arrange his continued concealment from the law. No consideration for this assistance was sought from [the ex-con] although, as will appear, there was to be in due course some quid pro quo.’
The ex-con hooked up with two Painters and Dockers union members in Newcastle. One criminal source confirmed that he turned up in Newcastle driving a stolen car. ‘Everyone felt sorry for him at the time,’ he said. ‘No money. Nothing. We took him on a job and got him $500, but he went through that straight away gambling.’
According to the Costigan report, the ex-con was then ‘ordered’ to ‘help Vincent O’Dempsey plant and tend a cannabis crop on a property outside Warwick in Queensland’.
Here was another coincidence. The ex-con had been moved to Newcastle and then offered a job on a crop run by O’Dempsey, the very man Inspector Ron Redmond wanted him to see and talk to. ‘[The ex-con] wasn’t ordered up there,’ the criminal source said. ‘He went with a bloke up to O’Dempsey’s crop and didn’t last long. He took off.’ The ex-con was to be the cook on the crop. Instead, he surrendered himself back into police custody and was returned to solitary confinement. But not before he had given up O’Dempsey and his illicit crop.
‘Vince was howling on him when he dogged to the copper,’ the criminal source said. ‘If Vince could have got [the ex-con] that man would have suffered a terrible death.’
Another associate of O’Dempsey’s said: ‘Vince was filthy. He said if he caught the dickhead he’d strap him to a tree and feed him dog biscuits for a week, then he’d work out what to do with him.’
It appeared that police were looking for any possible way to keep O’Dempsey incarcerated once the call for the inquest gathered momentum. In July 1979 he was charged with seven counts of conspiracy to defraud that stemmed back to the Medibank fraud the year before. O’Dempsey was convicted but only fined and ordered to pay restitution costs. Then in March 1980, just as the inquest was kicking off, O’Dempsey was charged with cultivating a prohibited plant, possession of a prohibited plant and possession of an unlicensed concealable firearm. It was the ex-con’s tip-off to police that had led to O’Dempsey’s arrest. ‘They caught Vince with a ridiculously small amount of dope seeds, it was pretty rough,’ said one criminal colleague.
Nevertheless, police had him in custody when the inquest began in Brisbane in early 1980.
An Overdue Inquest
It had already been a summer of cyclonic winds and bushfires when Brisbane magistrate Robert William Boujoure finally opened the coronial inquest into the disappearance of the McCulkins, and others. The hearing would focus on five unsolved homicides stretching back to the early 1960s that invariably intersected with the underworld and its vicious and violent cast of characters. The victims were the McCulkins, along with Raymond Vincent ‘Tommy’ Allen – the young Pigott & Co. jewellery store robbery accomplice of O’Dempsey; and Margaret Grace Ward – the reluctant prostitute working out of O’Dempsey’s Polonia Health Studio in Lutwyche in the early 1970s.
The inquest would look into whether these murders were the handiwork of one man – Vincent O’Dempsey – who was strongly connected to the Sydney underworld as well as the local franchise. As for Shorty Dubois, his co-accused in the McCulkin disappearances, he had gone AWOL. There were several warrants on drugs matters and the McCulkin murders out for his arrest. He had been elevated to one of Australia’s ten most wanted criminals.
The inquest was held in the Holland Park Magistrates Court – a dour, single-storey concrete and glass rectangle – south of the Brisbane CBD. Eight police, including detectives and an inspector, were assigned to guard the court. They were instructed to use two sets of handcuffs to chain O’Dempsey to the bottom of the bar table. Even so, he was omnipresent in court. He was infamous already as a man of few words, and by 1980 had a towering reputation. ‘Everybody said at that time that he was the most feared man in the Australian underworld,’ says one criminal associate.
Nobody could foresee how O’Dempsey might react under intense questioning when Garry Forno, assistant to Coroner Boujoure, began quizzing him about the disappearances.
‘Mr O’Dempsey,’ Forno began, ‘your full name please?’
‘No comment.’
‘Well, is not your full name Vincent O’Dempsey?’
‘No comment.’
‘Would you tell us your present address please?’ asked Forno.
‘No comment.’
‘Are you married or single?’
‘No comment.’
‘You’re aware, Mr O’Dempsey, are you not, that these coronial inquiries are into the disappearances of firstly Raymond Vincent Allen, secondly, Margaret Grace Ward, and thirdly, Barbara May McCulkin, Vicki Maree McCulkin and Barbara Leanne McCulkin?’
‘No comment,’ O’Dempsey replied.
‘First of all, do you know a Raymond Vincent Allen?’
‘No comment.’
‘Do you know Margaret Grace Ward?’ Forno asked.
‘No comment.’
Forno asked if he knew the McCulkin women.
‘No comment,’ said O’Dempsey.
And so the tone was set for the inquest. Forno tried various lines of questioning to prompt a response from O’Dempsey, all to no avail. ‘Mr Forno,’ the coroner said after some time, ‘in view of the attitude of the witness, it might be wise if you did not pursue the matter further at this stage’. He was stood down.
Then it was Billy McCulkin’s turn. Having been a close acquaintance of O’Dempsey since 1966, McCulkin was called as a witness at the inquest on 13 February. He, too, was cross-examined by Garry Forno, who was interested in a conversation McCulkin had with O’Dempsey about six months prior to the disappearance of Barbara and the girls in January 1974.
‘It was in a hotel,’ McCulkin said of the conversation. ‘We were having drinks and some mention of a story about people being put in a dam in Warwick … two people were allegedly put in a dam at Warwick. I said no, I didn’t really believe that story because of the …’
‘This came up in the conversation with O’Dempsey, did it?’ Forno asked.
‘O’Dempsey brought the matter up, yes,’ McCulkin went on. ‘And I said I didn’t really believe that they could put people in a dam wall because having worked on construction sites myself I realised that the work was inspected pretty thoroughly and usually right up to the point that you’re pouring concrete … you have got a Clerk of Works present.’
‘I see,’ said Forno.
‘But we were talking away about things and he mentioned about a … it got round to giving information to the Police,’ Billy continued. ‘He made a statement to me that there was a person in Warwick or near Warwick … that wouldn’t be talking to the Police anymore. I asked what he meant by that and his reply was, “Old Vince [Tommy Allen] won’t be talking to anybody anymore.”’
‘And in what manner did he say that?’
‘Well, you know,’ Billy replied, ‘sort of a sneaky manner I suppose you might say but then again I didn’t take a great deal of notice at the time. Sort of a secretive manner.’
Forno asked McCulkin a number of questions about his marriage to Barbara, the children, and then about the day they vanished and events following their disappearance.
McCulkin told the court that when he was searching for his family he confronted O’Dempsey and Dubois. ‘… I went into the kitchen and spoke to Dubois and O’Dempsey,’ McCulkin added. ‘I said something to the effect, you know, “What were you doing there [at Dorchester Street]?” And he [O’Dempsey] said, “I wasn’t there.”
‘I said, “Hang on a minute … five minutes ago, you inferred that you were there” … and he said, “No, well, I wasn’t there.”
‘I said, “If they’ve run away or anything like that, just let me know and, you know, as long as they’re safe I’m not worried if they’ve gone anywhere. If they need any help, well, I’ll help them.”’
McCulkin was then tested by O’Dempsey’s legal counsel, C.D. Thompson Claire, and was asked about his friendship with Vince O’Dempsey.
‘Now, you’ve known Vince O’Dempsey since about 1966, that was some years after your marriage, which was in 1960,’ said Claire. ‘That’s the situation, isn’t it?’
‘That’s basically it,’ McCulkin said.
‘And you have seen much of Mr O’Dempsey over those years up until the time of the disappearance of your wife, I mean, did you see him constantly over all those years or just from time to time?’
‘When he wasn’t in gaol I seen him quite a bit.’
‘Did you regard him as a friend?’
‘… I regarded him as a friend,’ said McCulkin.
Claire then focused on the McCulkin marriage. ‘How did you get on with the children?’ he asked.
‘I got on with them alright,’ Bill said.
‘At the time were you fond of them?’
‘Yes.’
‘Had you not hit your wife in the past at all?’ Claire asked.
‘Yes. I certainly had.’
‘You had hit her?’
‘Yes,’ Billy repeated.
‘And assaulted her?’
‘I didn’t assault her, no,’ he qualified. ‘I didn’t run at her with a baseball bat or anything like that. Perhaps we had an argument and she might have struck me and I might have struck her.’
Then Claire dropped a bombshell question: ‘Have you ever had sex with any of your daughters at all?’
‘I certainly have not,’ McCulkin answered.
‘Has there been any reason for your wife to complain to anybody else that you may have had oral sex with your daughters or one of your daughters?’
‘I certainly have not.’
‘Have you been aware of any complaints, even if not true, have you been aware of any complaints of that sort of thing coming from your wife?’
‘I certainly have not.’
‘You’ve not?’ said Claire.
‘I would say that they would be a figment of whoever’s imagination told you that,’ McCulkin responded.
‘Did you ever persuade your wife to attend husband and wife swapping parties at all in the past?’
‘No,’ he said.
The questioning moved o
n to a letter that O’Dempsey had sent to Billy McCulkin in 1975, the year after Barbara and their daughters disappeared. Claire said the letter, on the surface, appeared friendly enough.
McCulkin disagreed. He said it contained ‘an implied threat’.
‘You think there is?’ asked Claire.
‘I thought so at the time or I wouldn’t have given it to the police,’ McCulkin replied.
‘Is there any particular … part of the letter which you feel is a threat or did you just think the whole thing was an implied threat?’
‘Well, I think … if I persisted in my enquiries and seeing the Police that perhaps your client might endeavour to do something about my life.’
‘That was the impression you got from the letter, was it?’ asked Claire.
‘Well, he seems to have done it before, so I thought, why stop at me?’
It was an extraordinary moment in the infant stages of the inquest. O’Dempsey, a former friend with whom he’d once robbed and cracked safes, among other things, was now chained to a chair at the bar table in the courtroom. To discredit McCulkin’s evidence about the disappearance and presumed murder of his family, O’Dempsey’s counsel was now asking him about incest with his daughters. Claire also asked McCulkin whether or not he had taken part in Australia’s then worst mass murder at the Whiskey. McCulkin denied any knowledge of the Whiskey.
Where had the information about McCulkin allegedly having sex with his own daughters come from? O’Dempsey had briefly courted Barbara McCulkin in late 1973 and into 1974 when Billy McCulkin had left the family home for Estelle Long. Had the allegations come from O’Dempsey?
And what of Billy’s association with the Whiskey firebombing? Were the allegations from Claire simply based on articles that Billy Stokes had published in the Port News? Or had these, too, come from O’Dempsey? And if so, how would O’Dempsey know if McCulkin was in on the Whiskey tragedy or not?
The Night Dragon Page 21
