Underbelly

by John Silvester

  Guilty and innocent: Hayden Haitana the fast talker with Fine Cotton the slow galloper. Haitana went to jail, Cotton to greener fields. CHANNEL 9

  Man in the middle: trainer George Brown before he went to Sydney, where he was tortured and killed when a ring-in went wrong. COURTESY BROWN FAMILY

  Bold personalities: Bill and Robbie Waterhouse and their bag man before the Fine Cotton disgrace. FAIRFAX

  Roger Rogerson: cocky, courageous and corrupt. Dangerous with a gun and in the witness box. RUSSELL McPHEDRAN: FAIRFAX

  Dead beautiful: Sallie-Anne Huckstepp went to the Cross just before she was drugged, choked and drowned. FAIRFAX

  Making a point: an unrepentant Rogerson answers his critics. Lucky he didn’t have a gun. RICK STEVENS: FAIRFAX

  Fred Cook: big scorer on and off the ground; looked after bent cops as if his life depended on it. It probably did. COURTESY FRED COOK

  Christopher Dale Flannery: when a Sydney police hit squad came south to get him, they missed. But his luck didn’t hold. SLY INK ARCHIVES

  Mr Sin a.k.a. Abraham Gilbert Saffron: died after trying to sue the authors. Was it natural causes … or the long-term effects of unnatural acts? SLY INK ARCHIVES

  David McMillan: escaped from the ‘Bangkok Hilton’ with a brolly and a balsawood pistol. COURTESY DAVID McMILLAN

  The silver fox: legendary criminal lawyer Chris Murphy taking care of business. DEAN SEWELL: FAIRFAX

  12

  SMOKING OUT MR SIN

  In the Saffron years where there was smoke there was fire and where there was fire there was Abe.

  PLENTY of pretenders have fought and plotted to be King of the Cross, but Abe Saffron stayed on the throne longer than all of them.

  By the end of the 1980s, the old reptile had made so much money he could fake going legit and pass himself off as the prosperous entrepreneur and philanthropist he’d always claimed to be. As if no one knew he had enough hookers and dodgy clubs to service the entire US Navy if it had sailed through the Heads one day.

  No matter what the racket, if it was illegal and mugs would pay over the odds for it then Abe peddled it: from sex and porn to sly grog and drugs. He was up to his elbows in companies with shares in other companies that controlled so many bent businesses probably only he knew exactly what he did and didn’t control – a puppet master jerking the strings of a heap of patsies and proxies.

  Certainly no one in authority seemed to want to know more about Abe than Abe was willing to share. Between bribery and blackmail of police, public servants, politicians and the odd wayward judge – Abe’s brothels and clubs catered for sexual fetishes and had hidden cameras and oneway mirrors – he had authority exactly where he wanted it. That is, doing him favours and harassing his business competition.

  After decades of collecting the wages of sin around Sydney (and Adelaide and Perth) he could afford to stand back a little. There was still plenty of money to be milked from the Cross, from the oldest profession and its near relatives.

  The only thing that had changed since he’d got his start after the war were the faces on the street. They came and went, the mugs and those who preyed on them, but Abe endured, seemingly above it all. A protected species.

  In 2004 the Sydney City Council installed 115 brass plaques in the footpaths of Kings Cross to mark the characters that have played a part in its raffish history. There were to have been 116 plaques but the one dedicated to Saffron was shelved ostensibly because the old man’s lawyers threatened legal action on grounds that the plaque inscription was defamatory. This was a pity because the terse lines were a masterpiece of understatement – and absolutely true:

  Abe Saffron. Publican and nightclub owner from 1946. Convictions and court appearances from 1938. Friends in high places.

  Even after Saffron died in 2006, the authorities were nervous about green-lighting the plaque. The problem, as ever, was the friends in high places. Connections of one ex-Premier and a former Prime Minister were thought to be sensitive about the implication.

  In death, Saffron still had a hold. In life, he could get away with nearly anything he liked. And what he liked was taking advantage of other people.

  THE young businessman on the make had already earned a reputation as a tough negotiator. He had started with one pub, was on his way to building a national hotel network and was keen to stake a bigger claim in the lucrative Sydney market.

  He already owned four-star and three-star hotels in Kings Cross and had signed a contract to buy a tired-looking two-star accommodation lodge in the same area.

  His reasoning was simple. It was a matter of arithmetic and economies of scale: televisions, jugs, toasters and linen would be handed down from the top-end hotels to the cheaper ones as the room rates and residents’ expectations dropped. Less waste meant more profit, a formula he would follow for the next four decades.

  The deal was done and he paid a deposit on the $2million contract. But three days before settlement, he received a call. It was the hotel vendor in Sydney, asking for a meeting to discuss the deal. He was polite but insistent.

  The young businessman was blunt. There was no need for a meeting, he said: the bank cheque would be in the mail.

  But the man with the charming voice kept insisting and an appointment was set: they would meet in a Sydney office the day before settlement.

  When the man-on-the-make walked in, sitting behind an expensive desk was a small, dapper older man. And standing behind him was a bodyguard – only about 175 centimetres tall but built like a bodybuilder.

  During the meeting the muscle man stood silently with his arms folded, glaring at the visitor. Subtlety was not his strong suit. Neither was the English language. Grunting was his go.

  The older man began gently: ‘Mr (name deleted), I am grateful for your time and I must apologise, as there has been a terrible mistake. The price for the hotel has been listed as $2 million when it should be $2.25 million.’

  The younger man had already done many deals and understood a last minute try-on. ‘A deal is a deal,’ he said quietly. ‘I will settle tomorrow as agreed.’

  The older man responded. ‘I mustn’t have made myself clear: the price is $2.25 million.’

  The younger man was getting restless, wondering how he could end the conversation and leave the building without offending the vendor or his bodyguard. ‘It’s $2 million and I’ll settle as agreed,’ he said.

  The Sydney man pressed on relentlessly.

  ‘Mister, I have done my homework on you and I know you are smart and I know you have a big future so it would be a tragedy if something went wrong.’

  He paused then added: ‘What if there was a fire? What if one of your hotels burnt down? Or more than one? People could be hurt, businesses closed, insurance premiums could go through the roof. It would be a tragedy,’ he said, shaking his head.

  The young man looked down and on the desk he saw a name plaque – Abraham Saffron. Then it dawned on him. This was the Abe Saffron – known as ‘Mr Sin’ and ‘The Boss of The Cross’. Suddenly, he saw that Saffron’s offer was too good to refuse.

  When the contract with the inflated price was pushed towards him he signed, stood up and walked out.

  That was how Saffron did business: quietly and politely but with an unspoken threat.

  Saffron could never have enough money and took shortcuts to make it. Making threats, exerting charm and extorting secret commissions were a way of life for him. And one of his main weapons was the threat of fire: what cynical and sometimes racist police privately called ‘Jewish lightning’.

  In the Saffron years where there was smoke there was fire and where there was fire there was Abe.

  In the early 1970s fire regulations were not that strict and Abe seemed to be a victim of heat-related ‘bad luck’ more than most.

  Lightning might not strike twice but ‘torches’ do.

  In one case, his right hand man, James ‘Big Jim’ McCartney Anderson, was badly burned when Saffron’s Staccato
Club in Darlinghurst Road was set on fire. In another fire, an Adelaide club owned by a Saffron shelf company was also badly damaged.

  A man was jailed for conspiracy to defraud an insurance company but Saffron was never charged. Six of Saffron’s many properties, including gay bars, massage parlours and discos, were to catch fire between 1980 and 1982. All appeared to be deliberately lit.

  Later, Anderson, who would become a star police witness against Saffron, alleged that in one case an insurance claim was made for ‘sound equipment and lighting equipment that had been removed long beforehand.’

  Saffron was the subject of interest in a coronial inquest into four fires and while the coroner found there was a good case against him on the grounds that the circumstances in each case were overwhelmingly similar, the Attorney General’s department disagreed and once again Abe walked away, playing the part of the maligned businessman.

  If there was one single event that changed the public perception of Saffron from colourful rogue to callous reptile it was a fire at Sydney’s Luna Park.

  In fact, Saffron gave reptiles a bad name. Snakes just eat rats. Abe employed them.

  On 9 June 1979, the ghost train at the loved fun park was engulfed in flames, killing six children and the father of one of them.

  It was widely held that Saffron had long wanted to own the property and had business interests in the fading beauty. One of his companies provided amusement machines to Luna Park and two company directors who leased the park were distant relatives to the gap-toothed crime boss.

  The police investigation into the fires concentrated on the poor electrical standards and, some argued, energetically pushed the theory that the fire was just a terrible accident. But the inquest came back with an open finding – and pointedly rejected the electrical fault theory.

  The fire started around 10.15pm, shortly before closing time, and took hold because of an inadequate fire hose system. Most felt that if the fire were deliberately lit, whoever organised it didn’t want to cause death but to suggest that the owners were incompetent and should lose control of the complex.

  ‘It was started with petrol. Whoever did it didn’t know there was one (more) train to go through,’ a source close to Saffron said.

  Killed were John Godson and his two boys, Damien and Craig, along with four Waverley College students: Jonathon Billings, Richard Carroll, Michael Johnson, and Seamus Rahilly. Another young student was pulled to safety by staff.

  Saffron always maintained he was not involved in the fire but in the absence of other evidence, the denial meant little. Abe was always economical with the truth. He spent his entire career denying he was any more than a misunderstood entrepreneur.

  In May 2007 Saffron’s niece, Anne Buckingham, implicated him in the fire but would not, or could not, provide facts to back up her assertions.

  She dropped her bombshell in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, saying:

  ‘The fire at Luna Park – very strange, that fire.’ Then added: ‘I don’t think people were meant to be killed.’

  While stopping short of saying her uncle organised the fire, she said she believed he wanted to buy the park and that he liked to collect things. She later tried to distance herself from her comments, but the controversy was well and truly reignited.

  The National Crime Authority investigated Saffron and reviewed the arson investigations.

  It found: ‘Luna Park, it was alleged, had been coveted by Saffron for over 20 years and the fire in the ghost train had been lit as a trigger to evict the incumbent tenants and gain control of the park lease for himself.’

  The Costigan Commission had conducted its own inquiry into other fires linked to the Saffron empire.

  A New South Wales policeman gave evidence to the commission that one figure ‘received a payment of money … so that nobody could be found guilty of the committing of arson.’

  But the fires had long gone cold, as had any leads in the cases. Yet again, Saffron would walk away as a suspect but nothing more.

  IF one man built Kings Cross it was Abraham Gilbert Saffron. He promoted his nightclubs as glamorous, risqué, and with an ‘international’ flavour. They even served French onion soup. In fact, the food at Saffron clubs was notoriously bad but no one was there for the roast chicken. (In one club the chicken was just rubbery old rooster with feathers – that was Les Girls. But we digress).

  Some clubs catered for film stars, politicians, senior police and gunmen. Abe didn’t care who he ripped off. He instructed staff that when patrons were drunk on mixed drinks to just rub the rim of the glasses with spirits rather than provide a full nip in the mix – the Saffron version of a finger of scotch.

  People liked the naughty feel. It seemed like a touch of Las Vegas where ‘glamour’ and girls were mixed with graft and gunnies.

  Saffron opened the first of his many clubs – The Roosevelt – in 1947. It was later described as ‘the city’s most notorious and disreputable nightclub’ and closed on court orders. He built Australia’s first strip club – at Kings Cross, naturally – and promoted tours by stars such as Frank Sinatra and Tina Turner.

  If you had a weakness for a good time or bad girls (or boys) Saffron could find you whatever you wanted – at a price. And that price could take a lifetime to repay. Because among Saffron’s many business methods was one he found the most satisfying.

  Abe had a prodigious and eclectic sexual appetite and he encouraged the worst in his clients and friends. He had one ‘official’ wife, Doreen, whom he had married in a synagogue, but he went home only three times a week. The other nights were shared amongst many mistresses and casual partners, mostly not of his faith.

  While the arrangement may have saved on washing up at home it was not conducive to marital harmony. Doreen Saffron was so humiliated and depressed that she tried to commit suicide more than once.

  Saffron was purported to be a sadomasochist who enjoyed inflicting and receiving pain. In one court case, it was alleged a ‘completely depraved’ Saffron had whipped a girl’s naked buttocks at a private fetishist party. Abe later said the incident had been a ‘joke’ and the whip was a feather duster. No wonder he never suffered from hay fever.

  He was also a notorious exhibitionist – building ‘orgy rooms’ where people could watch him do what he did best. As with everything he did, there was an angle: the two-way mirrors and peepholes in the rooms helped him build a form of insurance as lucrative as the fire policies he routinely cashed after each unexplained blaze.

  Saffron took to photographing his more prominent clients with their pants down. Media barons, barristers, judges and state ministers were snapped in orgies with prostitutes, young boys and schoolgirls. Even in fast and loose Sydney such photos could be career-ending. No wonder that for decades Saffron was virtually untouchable.

  Longtime Sydney journalist and Saffron watcher, Tony Reeves, in his book, Mr Sin, says that when Abe didn’t have the appropriate picture he would organise fakes, once trying to compromise the state Attorney General by producing a photo of the politician horizontal with a notorious prostitute. Luckily for the prominent MP he had a prominent birthmark on his bottom. The lookalike used in the picture didn’t have a birthmark – proving that on at least one occasion arse can beat lack of class.

  One controversial police tape caught Saffron talking to his solicitor, Morgan Ryan, about High Court Judge Lionel Murphy and discussing how to arrange girls for Murphy.

  According to Reeves, prostitute turned photographer Shirley Bega saw the dirt file as her way out of the Saffron sewer. He says the story – often repeated but never proved – was that she was shot dead by her estranged husband after she stole some of the photos. A corrupt detective, who kept the evidence for his own profit and protection, covered up the murder.

  Certainly, it is still said that one prosecutor didn’t try too hard in a Saffron-related case for fear his reputation as a family man would be slightly sullied if the pictures of him playing leapfrog with a sc
hoolboy were made public.

  Saffron, a belts and braces man, had another form of protection besides blackmail. Over the years, he paid millions of dollars in bribes. He paid off police from street coppers to the commissioners – and politicians all the way to longtime New South Wales Premier Sir Robert Askin, who was as rotten as a pork chop.

  James Anderson would make a statement: ‘In my capacity as manager for and partner of Saffron, I had first-hand knowledge of corruption of police to allow a blind eye approach to liquor law violations and other practices.’

  He said there were weekly payments to police varying from $600 to $750 per club and larger payments of $5000 to senior officers. He said Saffron met the then Commissioner, former Olympic rower Mervyn Wood, on a P&O cruise ship ‘for a conference on a new scale of bribe payments after Wood became Commissioner.’

  Anderson revealed that Saffron’s clubs worked with two sets of tills for ‘black’ and legitimate money and claimed millions went undeclared. This would come back to haunt Abe much later.

  Anderson also alleged Saffron was involved in drugs although he couldn’t prove it. Saffron routinely denied he was connected with drug trafficking but it was clear many of his prostitutes were users and dealers. And it is hard to believe that a man who spent a lifetime doing anything for money would stop short of selling the illicit powders that were rampant in the sex industry he dominated.

  ‘Saffron is smart, always in the background, not dirtying his hands, but grabbing the dirty money,’ Anderson said.

  In October 1976 Saffron went public – claiming he was not involved in drugs and that the allegations against him were ‘vile’.

  Costigan was unimpressed and made a damning finding: ‘Despite his protests of innocence, he is involved in drug trafficking. He imports. He distributes. He employs men who use violence to maintain his control and authority. His organization is a myriad of corporations. He uses people as agents and nominees, and shields himself from the criminal activity so that if it is detected, he will escape. Should this fail; he corrupts law enforcement officers to protect himself and his organization. The profits derived from these activities are protected from tax and if they were legitimate, making use of the latest fraudulent device as readily as the legitimate.’