Finch was granted parole, after 15 years in gaol, on 1 February 1988. Corrective Services Minister Russell Cooper said Cabinet had approved a unanimous recommendation from the Parole Board that Finch be released. ‘God sure answers prayers,’ said Cheryl Finch. She had married Finch in the women’s prison chapel in February 1986. ‘I have been praying a lot. It’s like a dream come true.’
A condition of Finch’s parole was that he was to be immediately deported back to the country of his birth, the United Kingdom. The decision on Finch instantly sparked renewed press and public interest in the Whiskey case, and it was in the news for weeks. The families of victims said they hoped the Fitzgerald inquiry could get to the bottom of what really happened that night at the Whiskey. It was speculated that the inquiry might take on the task of reinvestigating the fatal fire.
On 7 February, a week after the news of Finch’s release, the Sunday Mail published an extraordinary story about the Whiskey and who might have been behind it. The story carried no by-line.
A 1973 report by a group of senior police known as the Committee of Eight, which names a former senior Queensland police officer as having approved the Whiskey Au Go Go firebombing, will be given to the Fitzgerald Inquiry. A Gold Coast solicitor, Mr Christopher Nyst, will soon present fresh evidence to the inquiry relating to the conviction of James Richard Finch on murder and arson charges following the blaze…
The story detailed how Queensland had been pre-warned about the firebombing and had even been given a date when the attack might occur, and no inquiry into the torching of Torino’s and the Whiskey had ever been called. The report continued:
A Fortitude Valley resident has told the Sunday Mail that police warned a number of people to stay away from the Whiskey Au Go Go on the night of the firebombing. Mr John Hannay … with Ken and Brian Little, said last week that nightclub owners bribed police to stay in operation. He also said police were involved in the Whiskey Au Go Go fire. Hannay … says he dealt regularly with members of the Licensing Branch.
While the Fitzgerald inquiry became an instant vessel for all sorts of new information about the past and present, there was a danger that, on the other side of the coin, its findings could be used by people without pure motive as a way of blaming everything on corrupt police. Solicitor Nyst also revealed that he was preparing a submission to the Attorney – General in relation to aspects of Finch’s guilt or innocence, and had fresh evidence from police about the so-called verballing of Finch in 1973.
Finch was deported on 16 February. As he boarded his Qantas flight to London, he gave a V for victory sign and said: ‘I’ll be back to tell the truth – if I’m allowed to.’
His solicitor, Nyst, read out a prepared statement from Finch: ‘Fifteen years ago, Judge Lucas asked me if I had any comment to make before he passed sentence. I said, “I’ll maintain my innocence until the day I die.” He then did what he had to do and sentenced me to gaol for the rest of my life. Now I am no longer in gaol, but I am not free yet. I will not be free until I am totally exonerated from all involvement in the Whiskey Au Go Go fire. I am innocent of that crime.’
The Boeing 747 closed its doors at 2.45 p.m. and left for Singapore. When Finch landed back in the United Kingdom, he faced one particular headline in the Daily Mirror. It read: ‘WELCOME HOME KILLER’.
Powderkeg
During the Fitzgerald inquiry the commission received many documents and statements pertaining to the Whiskey – it was a crucible of information, true or otherwise – but the inquiry had not dealt with the fatal fire singularly. It was, like so much brought to the inquiry and its investigators, its own seething entity.
While the Fitzgerald inquiry may not have focussed directly on the Whiskey Au Go Go, the extensive hearings did draw out people who wanted to share what they knew about the incident, albeit 15 years later.
The deportation of Finch, too, loosened some lips. After Finch from the safety of the United Kingdom accused then Acting Police Commissioner Ron Redmond of having verballed him over the Whiskey, other police came forward and named Syd Atkinson as another who contributed to concocting the so-called Finch confession.
The Whiskey hornet’s nest had been stirred again. And the Courier-Mail, in a firm editorial on 24 February, demanded answers.
Despite the apparent reluctance of the Police Minister to do so, the Queensland Government must reopen investigations into the convictions of James Richard Finch and the late John Andrew Stuart for the murders arising from the Whiskey Au Go Go firebombing.
In the 15 years since their conviction, frequent doubts have been raised about the value of some evidence given at their trial … The public expectation that policemen always operate on the right side of the law has been demonstrated to be wrong.
Evidence given to the Fitzgerald Inquiry – direct evidence in the form of confessions or indirect evidence – has revealed that some members of the upper echelons of the Queensland police force have been corrupt for a long time. If these officers can accept bribes from illegal gamblers and brothel owners to ignore the law and if they can set themselves up virtually as a controlling authority for the vice and gambling trades, then why can’t their colleagues lie and fabricate evidence in a notorious murder trial?
Former police commissioner Ray Whitrod backed a reinvestigation into the Whiskey. Retired and living in Adelaide, he said that Finch and Stuart might not have been innocent. He said there were many unexplained events surrounding the bombing and there was a possibility that Stuart and Finch were acting on the orders of more powerful criminals.
More ghosts rushed out of the closet.
Then, on 14 April 1988 – two months after Finch had left the country – the ALP member for Rockhampton, Paul Braddy, made a stunning address to parliament in relation to the Torino and Whiskey fires. As a prelude to the powderkeg he was about to light, Braddy said: ‘The public seem to be of the opinion that anything that relates to police corruption in this State can be dealt with by the Fitzgerald inquiry. Clearly, that is not so. The terms of reference, even interpreted widely as they are by the commissioner, must be the parameters of his investigations.
‘So it is a time to look at it and say to ourselves here in the House and to outsiders: what is happening? Are the matters being dealt with adequately and exposed or are there matters that to some extent are associated with police corruption, or potential police corruption, malpractice or failure that should be exposed further?’
Braddy was setting the grounds for the extraordinary information he was about to impart. And he was hinting, not so delicately, that other matters raised by the inquiry merited their own serious investigation. One such matter was, he said, the case of convicted killer James Finch and the Whiskey Au Go Go mass murder.
Braddy told the house that Attorney-General Paul Clauson had received information from the legal outfit Witheriff Nyst about their client James Finch, which included a statement from a former member of the Federal Narcotics Bureau.
According to Braddy, the informant told the now retired narcotics officer that Torino’s restaurant was to be firebombed on a certain night and that Billy McCulkin had been paid $1000 to do the job. Braddy said: ‘As we now know, as predicted, Torino’s restaurant was fire-bombed. It was not stopped, nobody was apprehended and no police action, to my knowledge, has ever been taken in respect of the information provided.
‘Of course, the Whiskey Au Go Go fire occurred a short time after the fire-bombing of Torino’s restaurant. Suggestions have been made that people involved in the Torino’s restaurant fire could also very likely have been involved in the Whiskey Au Go Go fire.’
Braddy informed the House that he had personally spoken to an Officer Russell, who was concerned about the lack of action within the police force to prevent the tragedy. He said that Russell was asked by his superiors to put his concerns in writing, which he did.
‘He handed in a written report in
which, he tells me, he indicated that the fire-bombing would occur at the particular time that it did. He further indicated … that he would like to be present and do what he could as a conscientious police officer to protect the building and to apprehend the villains who were about to perpetrate the offence. However, he was told that it was nothing to do with him; that the matter had been detailed to the Valley police and that it would be attended to. He was told by his superior, “I have experienced detectives”, and it was indicated to him that his presence was not required.’
Braddy told the House that after the bombing of Torino’s, Russell had made further inquiries. The information he was given by Queensland police was that there had been a dreadful mistake. On the night in question, the detectives who had been detailed to protect Torino’s and apprehend the villains were supposedly waiting down at the Valley police station for the owner of Torino’s to turn up with the key so that they could get into the premises. While they were sitting down at the Valley police station waiting for the key, the perpetrators who did not need a key turned up to firebomb the restaurant.
It was extraordinary, Braddy suggested, ‘that it was thought necessary for police officers to have a key to prevent the fire-bombing of a building that obviously could be attacked from the exterior’.
Braddy’s assertions about police inaction and their proximity to the fire would be confirmed years later by separate sources. Firstly, Clockwork Orange Gang member Peter Hall would confess to the Torino’s bombing, admitting that he and others in the gang did the job at the request of Billy McCulkin, and that Vince O’Dempsey had organised the hit. Secondly, Licensing Branch officer Kingsley Fancourt said that on the Monday morning after the fire, he would bump into a fellow branch member who had worked the overnight shift, and claimed to have actually witnessed the bombing, and that no arrests were made. And thirdly, a relation of one of the firebombers would say gang members actually saw a group of police officers standing around outside the Fortitude Valley police station as they made their escape from the crime.
Braddy tried to stress the seriousness of the inaction by Queensland police. Why had they done nothing to prevent the bombing or arrest the perpetrators when they had all the information to hand?
Braddy then reminded the House that there was substantiated rumour that suggested the deaths of the McCulkins was linked to knowledge Barbara had in relation the Whiskey fire. ‘Subsequently,’ Braddy said, ‘at a coroner’s inquiry into the murder of Mrs McCulkin and her two daughters, Mr O’Dempsey was committed for trial … The suggestion is that gangland people had stepped in to protect Billy McCulkin and that, if they had not murdered Mrs McCulkin, the facts in relation to Torino’s bombing and the Whiskey Au Go Go bombing would have emerged. Taking into account the inquiries that are now taking place in Queensland, that is a very serious matter.’
Braddy’s assertions about ‘gangland people’ stepping in to protect McCulkin may have been more prescient than he knew at the time, given the circumstances in the wake of that tragic fire.
Within hours of the Whiskey, crooked New South Wales cop Roger Rogerson rushed to Brisbane. Rogerson, for all the notoriety he would later attract, was a ‘fixer’ with strong connections to Sydney’s underworld, including Fred ‘Paddles’ Anderson and Lenny McPherson.
Had Rogerson been one of those people who had stepped in to protect McCulkin? And if so, was McCulkin indeed the target of the ‘gangland people’s’ largesse? Could it have been Vince O’Dempsey they were protecting, given his links to Anderson and other crime figures? Was O’Dempsey protected as a prize asset of Sydney crime figures?
Stewart John Regan, the feared Sydney hitman, also made a beeline to Brisbane in the hours after the fire. Why? He had also made the extraordinary offer of volunteering to kill John Andrew Stuart as a favour to police. Was Regan also in town, along with Rogerson, to ensure that the true story of who was actually behind the Whiskey mass murder was managed and contained? It’s a fact that when Stuart and Finch were arrested a wall seemed to go up around this complicated crime. And remained in place for decades.
At this point in Braddy’s speech, government members complained that his subject was irrelevant to the debate at hand. But Braddy had other pressing matters to canvass and would not be put off. ‘I ask the Minister: is there a concern that some police officers could themselves be involved with the people involved in Torino’s bombing and the Whiskey Au Go Go fire-bombing?’
Braddy wanted to know why the trial against O’Dempsey did not proceed following the inquest. He claimed to be in possession of an affidavit that contained important and worrying information about these events. But where could he take the affidavit?
‘If an inquiry was held into all of these matters, I could go to that inquiry with that affidavit. Such an inquiry does not exist.’
Braddy told the House he had tried to obtain and read a copy of the coroner’s inquest depositions, in order to ascertain whether matters in those depositions could be sent to the Fitzgerald inquiry and further investigated. However, the information that he received from both the Department of Justice and the Sheriff’s Office was that the depositions in relation to Vincent O’Dempsey were no longer on the file and that no copy of those depositions could be located.
At this point the ALP member for Inala, Henry Palaszczuk, interjected with a question about the whereabouts of the despositions. ‘Where are they?’ he asked.
‘Indeed, that is the question: where are they?’ echoed Braddy. ‘I telephoned the clerk of the Justice Department to inquire whether or not I could obtain a copy of the depositions of that inquest. I was informed that those depositions could not be located. No reason could be given for that. Not only were the depositions missing, but the O’Dempsey file in the Supreme Court also was missing.’
These were extraordinary allegations. Not only had Braddy suggested that members of the Queensland police force may have had some involvement in the Whiskey mass murder, but that important official documents relating to the case had mysteriously vanished.
Where was Vincent O’Dempsey’s Supreme Court file? Where were the depositions?
Braddy said: ‘The Opposition is concerned that, if there was potentially a cover-up in relation to the O’Dempsey trial, one of the best things to do would be to remove the formal evidence. Indeed, I understand that the official files no longer contain a copy of the depositions which set out in detail the evidence that was given. If those depositions were where they should be, namely, in the Supreme Court file,’ Braddy said, ‘we would be able to purchase a copy of them to see whether the matter should be pursued further.’
Braddy had more serious allegations to make. ‘All of us have been most appreciative, and accept, that the Fitzgerald inquiry has been competent and forthright in the matters which it has been investigating,’ he said. ‘However, there is some concern in the material that went to the Attorney-General from Mr Nyst about the Finch case and about an officer in the Fitzgerald inquiry.’
Furthermore Braddy claimed to have information about a senior officer in the Fitzgerald inquiry who had interviewed Russell in relation to his statements and that nothing was done about it. ‘I have received further information,’ Braddy said, ‘that this police officer is a close friend of and is in constant contact with Assistant Commissioner Ron Redmond.’ Here was Braddy’s other bombshell. Redmond, he informed the House, had of course been present at the ‘so-called confession of Jim Finch’.
‘On reading the materials forwarded to the Attorney-General and on having received the information which I have received, one can only but be concerned about whether in fact there is at least one officer at the Fitzgerald Inquiry who, whilst doing his job in other matters, in fact has conversations with the Assistant Commissioner and is in fact failing to fully carry out his role in relation to matters that are not part of the terms of reference of the Fitzgerald inquiry but which are still touching on it and which
are still very serious,’ Braddy continued. ‘I again ask whether the Attorney-General has done anything about the officer whose name appears in the statement that he received. I ask whether the Attorney-General took any action to see why the officer did not go back to interview the reliable witness with his informant.’
Braddy’s main concern was that ‘all matters of police malpractice or failure to attend to duty or corruption should be attended to’. Braddy said the government continued to think that the inquiry would be a panacea to all of Queensland’s ills. ‘The challenge is again before the Government. Why does the Government not inquire into the Torino bombing and the other associated matters? It will be interesting to hear what answers are given in relation to the missing depositions and Supreme Court file.’
The Minister for Justice, Attorney-General and the member for Redland, Paul Clauson, stood in reply. ‘I am at some loss as to exactly what the thrust of his speech was,’ Clauson said.
‘The Honourable member raised a question about Supreme Court files. I am having investigations made into that matter. As he would appreciate, that was an event that occurred long before my time in this place or in this portfolio. However, attempts are being made to locate those files after so many years. I shall keep him apprised of that matter.’
Little was done in relation to Paul Braddy’s allegations in parliament and once again, the Whiskey slipped off the radar.
The Confession
Jim Finch settled back into civilian life in the village of Basildon, Essex, with his sister June, thinking he’d put the nightmare of Queensland behind him. His wife, Cheryl, had joined him briefly, but then returned quietly to Australia. The relationship that had worked so beautifully when he was locked up in Brisbane didn’t survive in the real world.
In November 1988, as winter began to set in, Finch was paid a visit by his friend and best man at his wedding, Brisbane newspaper reporter Dennis Watt. Watt was a chief reporter for the Brisbane Sun, and he’d hoped that Finch might, at last, tell the truth about who was behind the Whiskey tragedy.
The Night Dragon Page 23
