Jacks and Jokers

by Matthew Condon

  Geoffrey Luke Crocker was the club manager. He also ran the Key Club and other parlours for Short. He would later describe what went on in the Matador. ‘On a Saturday night it was opened as a swingers’ party night, you know, couples only … like wife-swapping and that sort of thing,’ said Crocker. ‘We used to provide nibbles, you know, sausage rolls, cheerios and sandwiches and they bought their drinks; we supplied movies, blue movies. I used to supply two strippers on a Saturday and they used to pay $20 a couple to come in – and we were getting 50, 60, 70 couples some Saturday nights.

  ‘Well believe it or not none of the wife-swappers hardly ever used the rooms on the premises. It was more or less a meeting place … then they’d leave and go off to one of their own places. On odd occasions four of them would use one of the rooms.’

  Monday night was ‘Strip Night’, where members had to undress. The club had sunken baths, private bedrooms and two-way mirrors.

  Private investigator John Wayne Ryan was hired by Roland Short to fit out the security for the club. His work on the Matador was unparalleled in Brisbane’s club scene at the time.

  ‘Halfway up the front stairs of the club was a landing,’ recalls Ryan. ‘I installed steel gates there, and Short put in closed-circuit TV. I had a PMG technician I knew set a lot of this stuff up.’

  On a typical Thursday, gambling was competitive and the house usually brought in thousands of dollars. At least ten prostitutes were rostered on.

  During the raid a large contingent of police used force to batter down the wood and steel doors, utilising sledge hammers to penetrate the heavy security. They found little money on the tables and just three girls on the call-girl roster. The raid was led by police officer Kevin Dorries. At one point, Crocker ended up in a headlock as police broke down the steel door and elbowed Dorries in the face, cutting him above the eye. Crocker was handcuffed.

  ‘Dorries kept saying to everyone, “If this prick moves, kick him in the guts, he’s an animal”,’ recalled Crocker. ‘He had me handcuffed and slapped me to the desk and he said, “You’re wearing everything, smartarse”, and I could hear screaming and yelling out the back of the place where the toilets and sauna and showers were, and that was Roland going up through the air conditioning duct – a copper met him going through the other way …’

  Fifty people found on the premises were charged with a total of 71 offences including keeping a common gaming house, using premises for the purposes of prostitution, various drug offences, assaulting police, resisting arrest, illegal sale of liquor and exhibiting obscene movies. Short was arrested, as was Geoff Crocker.

  Kev Hooper was suspicious of the raid. ‘As no VIP members were in the club at the time of the raid, this leads me to suspect that they had been tipped off,’ he later theorised. ‘My enquiries show that Roland Short is well known to a senior commissioned police officer. He visited this police officer some days before the raid and after the activities of his club were exposed in [the] Sunday Sun.

  ‘I believe that Short had a good idea when the raid would be made.’

  Hooper said one of the missing VIPs of the Matador, not sighted during the raid, was a prominent member of the National Party. ‘This National Party man is also well known to the night manager of the Matador Club on the night of the raid, Geoff Crocker, who tried to thump one of the policemen who was merely doing his job.

  ‘Crocker is also in the massage game in his own right as the owner of a Valley massage parlour.’

  Commissioner Lewis noted in his diary for Friday 4 March: ‘Saw Supt. MacDonald re successful raid on Matador Club.’

  The club was open for business again a few days later.

  The Studious Constable Campbell

  With Lewis settling in as Commissioner, and the new post-Whitrod landscape still something of a chimera, 28-year-old Constable Bob Campbell made a decision to enrol in a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Queensland.

  Campbell had been sworn in on 10 December 1968, and was serving at the Fortitude Valley police station. He had been an enthusi­astic advocate of former Commissioner Whitrod’s police arts and sciences course, which he had completed, and now wanted to take his education even further. He was interested in psychology and history.

  Campbell informed the police department: ‘I am undertaking this course in order to improve my knowledge in the field of human relations and I feel that such knowledge would assist me as a police officer.’

  Subsequently, he applied for eight hours off each week to attend tutorials and lectures. This was granted under the proviso his lectures were not available outside duty hours, and his attendance in departmental time did not interfere with ‘the efficient functioning’ of his station.

  Campbell had taken the usual path to Mobile Patrols after he was inducted, and uniquely was a ‘community police officer’ at Jamboree Heights, 14 kilometres south-west of the Brisbane CBD. It was upon his arrival at the Fortitude Valley station, however, that his eyes were opened to another side to policing – graft and corruption.

  It was no accident, Campbell theorised, that things had changed dramatically since Whitrod’s departure. ‘After Mr Whitrod left Queensland, I observed a gradual transition in the Police Force in which those who had been suspected of dishonest practices were no longer being kept from positions of Trust within the Force,’ Campbell would later write. ‘At the Fortitude Valley Police Station, where I was attached, a few other Police Officers and myself continued to work honestly and diligently. The norm of conduct, however, had changed, and drinking and loafing were at an alarmingly high level.’

  Campbell was urged by other officers to ‘slow down’ so he wouldn’t show them up. He continued working at his own pace. This, in turn, led to bullying and harassment. In addition, he was seeing some disturbing police practices on the streets. ‘The era of honesty ended with Whitrod,’ Campbell wrote in hindsight. ‘Any person who had a reasonable intellect or who was honest, like I pride myself on being, was subject to a new form of treatment.

  ‘On one occasion, I heard a detective, who had recently survived a court battle involving a corruption charge relating to the attempted bribery of Inspector A.V. Pitts, attempt to persuade a gentleman involved with the Ugolini Realty gaming parlour, one of the many protected by [Inspector Tony] Murphy, to pay him money, on behalf of Murphy, in return for allowing him to operate without prosecution. I have been well aware … that there are certain massage parlours and gaming centres that weren’t to be touched.’

  Campbell, like so many before him, had unwittingly wandered into one of the Rat Pack’s many whirling pools of graft, and learned things he shouldn’t have.

  Just months earlier, former Licensing Branch officer Kingsley Fancourt had resigned after finding himself caught in another such whirlpool. He felt he had no future in a police force strangled with corruption.

  Campbell, though, was different. He would stand and fight. And he would pay a heavy price.

  Old Acquaintances

  It didn’t take long for Jack Herbert to zero in on his acquaintance with the new Commissioner. Herbert would refer to him as an ‘old friend’. Lewis begged to differ. His time in Charleville had obviously put on ice any direct contact they might have had as friends.

  Lewis says their social interaction at the best of times was limited. ‘I’d never … to the best of my knowledge, been closely involved with him prior,’ Lewis says. ‘I would have met him in pubs and some sort of function … but when I was Commissioner I know I met him again at the home of Barry Maxwell, who had the Belfast Hotel. And it sort of went from there. Oh, he’s a good operator there’s no two ways about it.’

  Lewis remembers Herbert for his sartorial elegance and his manners. ‘He was, you know, he was a very presentable bloke,’ Lewis recalls. ‘He was always cleanly dressed and behaved himself and never swore in front of women and I think you’ll find there was a fellow wrote a book ab
out him, which I never bought and never read but I think at the end of that he said, the one thing you can say about him was … he was a great liar.’

  Lewis’s wife Hazel liked Herbert, and his wife Peggy. ‘Hazel spoke well of him, everybody spoke well of Herbert in that respect,’ Lewis says. ‘But a couple of times … he did use me. I thought he was being helpful but he was – how can I put it? – paving the way for himself all the time. And using people and doing it well.

  ‘And of course primarily, as well as seeing me from time to time, keeping in touch with his old workmates in the Licensing Branch, he … didn’t use me as far as I know, to personally protect his interests in the Licensing Branch. He used me to tell them that he was friendly with me.’

  Lewis says he has no doubt Herbert abused the fact that he had a form of relationship with the top police officer in the state. ‘By Herbert keeping in touch with me and me seeing him from time to time and that, he was able to say to these fellows, “Oh don’t you worry, Lewis is on side, I’m giving him money,” or whatever … and yet not in any stage of that game did any one of them, up to and including inspectors or assistants say to me, “Hey, how’s our mate Herbert going?” Or, “I understand you’re matey with Herbert.” Because … Herbert probably realised that they’re not going to go to Lewis and say Herbert told me so and so. That’s a bastard of a situation. You sure used me, old fellow!’

  Herbert would take away different memories of their friendship. ‘Around this time I started seeing Terry Lewis again,’ he said in his memoir, The Bagman. ‘It was quite a few years since the days when we’d both been taking money to protect SP bookmakers. I’d see him socially from time to time but that was all. By now Terry was Commissioner for Police.’

  Another friend poking his head through the boss’s door was the former police officer and state member for Merthyr, Don Lane. ‘I never had much respect for him,’ Lewis says. ‘I never worked with him … He was a policeman of course, he was in the CIB at one stage I think, but he was then in the Special Branch for quite a while … His obvious interest was to get into parliament and he was very good mates with Bill Knox who was quite a pleasant fellow.

  ‘When I came back to Brisbane he used to ring me from time to time and … I don’t think … I never went to his home and he never came to my home. I might have seen him in a pub somewhere. Joh [Bjelke-Petersen] didn’t particularly like him I know that.

  ‘Joh didn’t trust him. Unfortunately, I think Joh was right as it turned out and I … and as a matter of fact at one stage of the game they used to swap [Police] Ministers a bit … and I know I said to Joh one time, “What about giving Lane, you know, consider giving Lane the police [portfolio]? He’d know it all.” And Joh said, “No way in the world.”

  ‘I’d have to say Lane was an opportunist.’

  Lane’s memories would prove a little different. ‘In the police, he [Lewis] had occupied the Juvenile Aid Bureau office adjacent to that of the Special Branch where I worked and I saw him most days in passing,’ he records in his memoir, Trial and Error. ‘We had shared a beer after work on a number of occasions with other officers, sometimes including Jack Herbert.

  ‘On one occasion I had been to his [Lewis’s] home for a barbecue attended by twenty or so police and others, with their wives. I knew him to be an intelligent and courteous man …’

  Enter the Phantom

  William Daniel Alexander [Alec] Jeppesen arrived at the Police Depot on Petrie Terrace for his cadet training precisely three days after Lewis had been sworn in way back in mid-January 1949.

  By the mid-1950s he was posted to Townsville and Ayr and variously served in the CIB and Licensing Branch when he became embroiled in the Southport SP Betting Case along with Pitts, withdrawing as prosecutor in that case after allegations of misconduct were brought against him. He denied any wrongdoing.

  Still, the stench from the Southport case lingered, though in terms of Jeppesen – highly regarded as an honest officer – it didn’t affect Ray Whitrod who, on 15 October 1976, and just prior to his resignation, proposed to Cabinet that Jeppesen be promoted to Inspector (Grade 4) and be put in charge of the Licensing Branch.

  Cabinet approved Jeppesen’s promotion on 15 November – the day Lewis was himself promoted to Assistant Commissioner, and the trigger that ended Whitrod’s police career. Jeppesen was initially assigned to the Office of the Commissioner of Police (Staff Enquiry and Relieving). Then, on 2 December, just days after Lewis taking the top job, Jeppesen was instructed to head the Licensing Branch from late January, 1977.

  Jeppesen was a straight shooter and admired by Whitrod. Why, then, did Lewis agree to him taking over Licensing, a cash cow for corrupt police and still effectively ‘managed’ by Jack Herbert and Tony Murphy? Did he feel he couldn’t block such an important appointment so early in his commissionership? That doing so would draw attention to the branch and raise suspicions?

  From the outset Jeppesen conducted Licensing business to the letter of the law. He began cracking down on prostitution and SP betting – hundreds of charges were being laid week after week. Just months into his new appointment he heard within the branch and on the street that Tony Murphy and his consorters were set to take over the policing of prostitution and the massage parlours. He had already heard it from one of the Licensing Branch constables, Brian Marlin.

  Marlin was relatively new to the Queensland force, though he had worked in Sydney as a policeman for four years, and prior to that had been a member of the Australian Army. He claimed he had been trained in police work by the legendary Ray ‘Gunner’ Kelly in Sydney (though Kelly had resigned from the force in 1966, years before Marlin was eligible to enrol). There was talk that Marlin had been removed from the New South Wales force on medical grounds, namely psychological reasons.

  He was a tough young cop with a strange obsession – he was addicted to the comic hero The Phantom. Some officers had heard he even built a Phantom ‘cave’ in his house. Not only that, despite being new to the branch, he seemed to be a limitless font of information.

  Licensing Branch officer Bruce Wilby remembers: ‘Marlin was with us for 12 months. When he first came he brought with him a wealth of information. It amazed us he knew so much.’ Wilby suspected that the anti-Jeppesen forces were feeding him.

  ‘Jeppesen fell for Marlin hook, line and sinker,’ Wilby says.

  It would be a potentially fatal error of judgement.

  A White Uganda

  In the early afternoon of Thursday 17 March, Opposition leader Tom Burns readied himself in state parliament for a blistering attack on the Premier and the National Party. The Liberals also would not escape his ire.

  The occasion was a debate on the proposed changes to the Electoral Districts Act prior to a state election later in the year. The Act had last been tweaked in 1971. Burns was all for an electoral redistribution, but a fair one. He knew that under the current arrangement, with the weight of votes in Queensland’s vast rural hinterland disproportionately skewed in favour of the Nationals, he and his Labor colleagues were looking at not just years but potentially decades in the political wilderness.

  The redistribution, if the legislation was passed, would see three Liberal seats – Baroona, Belmont and Clayfield – eliminated, and new seats created on Brisbane’s ever-expanding urban fringe, taking into account the growth of places like Redcliffe and in particular the Gold Coast. The new seats gave Joh and his National Party an opportunity to contest for more seats. It was a win-win for the Nationals.

  The Liberals, still smarting over the fierce debate with their Coalition partners during the last redistribution in 1971, decided to go down a quieter path this time around. As David Ford, former research officer for the Queensland Liberal Party would later surmise: ‘The 1977 redistribution was a reflection of the Liberal Party’s weakness within government … the Liberal Party believed that it would be political folly to embark only months
before an election on what would be undoubtedly another acrimonious intra-Coalition struggle.

  ‘Uncertain gains in some seats seemed poor compensation for the public wrangling and the inevitable upheaval in marginal seats which would follow a redistribution.’

  As for the Nationals, the prospective redistribution was more than tantalising. It would underline Bjelke-Petersen’s growing sense of personal power and indirectly his disdain for Liberal leader Bill Knox. To expose Knox and his party’s collective sheepishness and their willingness to bend at will to the Premier could only be good for Bjelke-Petersen and his cronies.

  ‘To the National Party, however,’ wrote Ford, ‘the prospect of causing considerable disturbance within the Liberal ranks, while, at the same time, assisting marginal National Party members in the south-eastern zone, seemed most appealing.’

  At precisely 2.40 p.m. on that Thursday, with Bjelke-Petersen out of the country trying to drum up mining business in the Middle East, Burns let fly.

  ‘Today this parliament is asked to dishonour democracy,’ he began dramatically. ‘We are asked to remove the last legal obstacle so that the Premier and his 28 per cent National Party can further disfigure – indeed, rape – the parliamentary system of this state.

  ‘Labor acknowledges the urgent need for a full, fair redistribution but will not lend its approval to the predetermined electoral rort that is going to be given to us here today. There is not one person inside or outside this parliament who imagines for a moment that any redistri­bution manipulated in the secrecy of existing guidelines by the Premier and the back-room busybodies of the National Party will be just.’

  Burns quoted extensively from the editorial of that day’s issue of the Courier-Mail: ‘The present system of distributing electorates based on four zones created in the Electoral Districts Act of 1971 is totally slanted in favour of the Nationals. The Act is grossly unfair, even iniquitous.