Jacks and Jokers

by Matthew Condon

  Eventually, both would be surprised at how fast their business interests grew. And how lucrative it would become.

  Marlin Goes Fishing

  The industrious Licensing Branch Constable Brian Marlin, teeming with interesting information for his boss, Alec Jeppesen, and an enigma to his colleagues, gave himself a confidential assignment. Marlin decided he would immerse himself in Brisbane’s gay culture and produce a comprehensive and up-to-date report on the city’s homosexuals.

  In short, Marlin would compile what would effectively be a directory of gay beats, the covert language used by gay men looking for sex, the city’s gay hotels and a list of ‘suspected persons’.

  Had this unusual mission been requested by Police Commissioner Lewis? On Friday 10 March 1978, Lewis had personally seen Marlin in his office regarding ‘his duties generally’, and Tony Murphy had met with Lewis in the winter of that year to talk about, of all things, lesbian policewomen in the force. But gay men had not received such special attention to date, until the indefatigable Marlin came along.

  ‘He was a weird person,’ says one officer who went through a detective training course with him. ‘He was just downright weird. He would make out he knew all these top influential people. Word got around and no one would have anything to do with him. He would walk in and people would just leave.

  ‘He would dob other police in. Anyone who was a dog – that was the biggest fear for any copper.’

  Marlin completed his detailed dossier.

  ‘I’ve seen it, it was shown to me. I was horrified,’ says the officer. ‘He went undercover on his own volition and did this thing on the homosexual underground scene and he gave reports on gay cruising in public parks, listed all the toilets, the Hacienda [Hotel at 394 Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley], all the venues, the whole lot, terminologies, suspected persons, and all of that. Lewis would have got that.’

  The task was a world away from young Marlin’s usual duties in the Licensing Branch, though he had already shown a taste for prowling Brisbane’s seedy gambling dens, and he wasn’t averse to using his fists, or the butt of a firearm, to get his point across.

  Jim Slade, the CIB’s undercover young gun and intelligence expert, says he worked on the Marlin operation with his partner Norm Sprenger.

  ‘I remember we did a job … why did we suddenly have this big interest in paedophilia and gays?’ Slade recalls. ‘It was a massive job, it went on and on and on.

  ‘It had something to do with Rose’s Café in the Valley. We ended up identifying teachers that took kids from their classes in there. That was my first association with paedophilia. Brian Marlin was the one who instigated this whole bloody thing through Tony Murphy.

  ‘Norm Sprenger and I did the whole thing. Marlin would steer us in a certain direction and we would get the evidence or we would establish whether there was anything there. I can’t remember if there were any arrests out of that bloody thing, but the intelligence was incredible.

  ‘Looking back on it now, I think it was to identify all of the major players and use that information at a later date. It had nothing to do with crime. It had nothing to do with children’s safety. It was to identify major players.’

  Some of those players also happened to be working as Queensland police officers. Out of Marlin’s investigation came a separate one – an intense look at the sexuality of the force’s female officers. This became known as the Lesbian Investigation, and was dictated by Tony Murphy.

  One of the female officers interrogated was ‘incensed’. ‘The matters canvassed with these female officers were their own business and no one else’s. No allegations were made about policewomen not working, that they were corrupt or that their work was substandard … As far as I am aware those, the subjects of the investigation, had contempt for [Tony] Murphy as a result of his questioning.’

  A gay male officer at the time said it was a fearful workplace for homosexuals. ‘There was this really homophobic element in the police and it was just very oppressive,’ he says. ‘We had police living in absolute fear like it was the Nazis. I was aware there were other gay officers. I was aware there were relationships happening. Senior police having relationships and all that.

  ‘It was hugely prolific with the female officers. But you couldn’t be homosexual … it was illegal.’

  Mr Asia Books a Room

  On the morning of Friday 9 June, staff at the Terrace Motel on Wickham Terrace had grown suspicious of the behaviour of two guests – a man who had booked himself in under the name J. Petersen, occupation M.P. (a joke at the expense of the Queensland Premier) and another man registered as Wilson. They had also racked up a substantial room service bill that included French champagne. Staff called the police.

  Four detectives – Melloy, Chantler, Pickering and O’Brien – headed up to the relatively new brick hotel with commanding views over Albert Park and Roma Street, not far from police headquarters.

  They located Wilson and took him back to the CIB for questioning. His real identity was drug runner James William Shepherd. He was charged with being in possession of a large sum of money that was suspected of being illegally obtained.

  With Shepherd in custody, a phone call was intercepted in his motel room. This led police to the Coronation Motel on Coronation Drive at Milton. There police found Douglas Robert Wilson and his wife Isabel Martha Wilson. They too were taken in for questioning.

  The couple chatted convivially until Detective Sergeant Barry O’Brien brought up the fact that a dog bowl had been located in the Jaguar they had been driving. ‘Where’s the pup?’ he asked.

  The couple suddenly went quiet.

  The Wilsons, just the month before, had been drying out in a Sydney hospital – both were heroin addicts – when ‘Petersen’ visited them and suggested a holiday ‘in the sun’ in Queensland once they were discharged. Nothing like the sun to beat a Sydney winter, he told them.

  So they headed north – Petersen, the Wilsons, and their pet dog – in Petersen’s hugely powerful E-type Jaguar. At this stage, police were not yet aware of the magnitude of what they had stumbled across, but it involved drugs and large sums of cash and they followed through.

  The CIB then immediately staked out the Terrace Motel for J. Petersen. They believed that a blue Jaguar sedan with New South Wales plates JSG-693 was owned by the suspicious Petersen.

  Later that morning, a male was observed getting into the vehicle and driving it away. The Jaguar was followed to a motor repair workshop at 6 Dorsey Street, Milton. They soon discovered that the business was run by New Zealand criminal Ian Richard Henry. The man who had driven the vehicle from the motel was one of Henry’s mechanics, Stephen Thomas Harrison.

  After a short time, a man called Stephen Brian Johnstone and J. Petersen left the workshop and were approached by Detective Sergeant Ron Pickering and Detective Senior Constable Barry O’Brien. Both men, along with Harrison, were arrested and taken in to headquarters.

  Detective Jim Slade, Murphy’s hand-picked officer in the CIB, did not take part in the apprehension of J. Petersen but he did observe what happened. Slade remembers Pat Glancy and Barry O’Brien driving ‘this bloody massive E-type Jaguar’ back to headquarters. ‘It had all these pistons. They drove it back and we followed them.’

  J. Petersen, it transpired, was the notorious international drug dealer Terrance (Terry) John Clark, a New Zealand criminal wanted on charges there. Later, Henry and another man, Kevin Walter Gower, were arrested at the Milton workshop.

  It was decided that Constables Robson and Le Gros be placed in the cell with Clark, and later Shepherd. Robson went in at 10.50 a.m. that Friday, followed by Le Gros at 11.20 a.m. Robson told Clark he was in ‘for a bust’. Le Gros said he’d been pinched with ‘some grass’.

  Clark told them he was wanted in New Zealand on heroin importation charges and for possession of a .357 Magnum. (Police found in C
lark’s hotel room a Colt Python .357 Magnum revolver, known in firearms circles as the ‘Rolls-Royce’ of handguns.)

  ‘You’re a long way from home if you’re wanted in New Zealand,’ Le Gros quipped.

  ‘Yes,’ Clark said. ‘I’m up for 14 years back home.’

  When Shepherd was put in the same cell, he and Clark immediately moved to one corner and spoke in low tones. Shepherd informed Clark that he had told police he was in Brisbane on a ‘punting trip on the horses’, and the others had said they were on a ‘sailing trip’. Both men laughed.

  Clark then told Shepherd he had $3 million worth of heroin in Sydney and that Shepherd, when released, needed to go to Sydney and contact Clark’s de facto partner, Maria Muhary. She in turn would contact her brother Stephen who would show Shepherd where the drugs were buried in bushland around Sydney. He needed to hide the heroin and await further instructions.

  Henry was then placed in an adjoining cell. ‘What are you in for?’ Henry asked Shepherd.

  ‘They got me for that money I had.’

  ‘How did they get onto you?’

  ‘You wouldn’t believe it but it was because we used the name Petersen,’ Shepherd said. ‘Apparently this Petersen, the Premier up here, has got a Jag the same as ours and they thought we were impersonating him.

  ‘They got me at the motel. I never liked motels. They always … mean trouble.’

  Henry and Shepherd asked Clark what he expected to happen to him.

  ‘I’ll probably do two or three months here and then they’ll take me back to New Zealand to face the big one there,’ he said. ‘I don’t mind spending some time here. In fact, the longer I can spend here the better.’

  In another part of the building Doug and Isabel Wilson were being interviewed separately. A story was beginning to emerge – the Wilsons were couriers for Terrance Clark and his huge international heroin trade. Police were incredulous to the point of disbelief.

  Young Cliff Crawford of the Drug Squad was off duty that night but was called in after the importance of the arrests was understood. ‘We got the drum about Terry Clark on a number of occasions previously but whenever we arrived it was too late, he was gone,’ Crawford recalls. ‘At one stage he was supposed to be staying at a high-rise unit at Ascot, corner of Junction Road and Zillmere Road. It was a brick block of flats.

  ‘We arrived there one day and he’d left two weeks before. The drum was right but it was too late. All we knew was that this guy Terrance Clark was a big importer from New Zealand.’

  It was decided that the Wilsons needed to be interviewed at length and that the interviews had to be recorded on tape.

  Detective Sergeant Sprenger also contacted Commander Max Rogers of the Federal Narcotics Bureau, Queensland chapter, who was in Sydney at the time.

  Meanwhile, the name of the panel shop owner, Ian Richard Henry, rang a bell with Detective Sergeant O’Brien. He later recorded in a statement: ‘In about 1976, while attached to the Drug Squad, I participated in making inquiries on behalf of New Zealand Police to locate a notorious drug runner Terrance John Clarke [sic]. While Clarke was not located, inquiries showed that while in Brisbane he associated with an Ian Richard Henry, and this information was inserted in the Drug Squad collating system.

  ‘In 1978 I assisted in inquiries [relating to] an active criminal named William Anthony [Billy] Stokes for the murder of Thomas Ian Hamilton. During the investigation, Stokes’ residence at Broadbeach on the Gold Coast had been kept under surveillance and visitors photographed.

  ‘One male person visited the premises driving a vehicle which was registered to Ian Richard Henry of Dorsey Street, Milton.’

  On Saturday 10 June, both Henry and Shepherd were released on bail. They caught a taxi to Henry’s workshop in Dorsey Street, then to his flat in Gregory Terrace. Shepherd made his way to the TAA terminal at Eagle Farm and caught Flight 406 to Sydney. He travelled First Class. In the rear stalls was Detective Norm Sprenger, keeping an eye on him.

  It was decided that the Wilsons would be re-interviewed together on Monday 12 June. They specifically asked that the interview not be taped. It took place in the office of Detective Sergeant Terry Ferguson, the Officer in Charge of the Queensland Drug Squad. Prior to the 10.30 a.m. start, Norm Sprenger had set up two recording devices, the microphone installed behind Ferguson’s desk.

  ‘Tony Murphy would have had a hand in the interview from the early stages,’ says Cliff Crawford. ‘When these people started talking about all these murders, the detectives started wondering – is this fair dinkum? It was bizarre. You didn’t get that sort of thing in Queensland.’

  Present were Detective Sergeants Syd Churchill and Fred Maynard. They were joined soon after the start of the interview by Narcotics Bureau Investigator Robert Turner.

  During the next three hours and 27 minutes, the Wilsons revealed that they were part of a major global drug smuggling ring headed by Clark. The couple told the police that in May 1978 – just a month earlier – Clark had mentioned to them that he had shot a lot of people including a man called Harry ‘Pommie’ Lewis who had had a falling out with Clark.

  They said the shooting took place when Clark was travelling down from Brisbane. They didn’t know the location of the body, but said it had happened some distance from Brisbane in bushland.

  The Wilsons said they collected money for Clark. Clark would have the heroin delivered and the Wilsons, pretending to be jewellery sales consultants, picked up the gear. Money for drugs was always paid into the so-called Sydney importing agency, Cross and Mercer.

  They told detectives they collected at least $100,000 a week for Clark. Alarmingly, the police learned that Clark had a top-level informant in the Federal Customs Narcotics Squad who gathered information for Clark and gave him tip-offs. The officer was paid an annual stipend of $25,000, and additional money for new information.

  Wilson indicated he was terrified that Clark would find out that he and his wife had squealed on him. ‘… I’m quite fucking frightened, serious, about it, you know. I know if he thinks for one moment that I’ve given him up, you know, if he can possibly organise it, he’ll have me shot, without any compunction …’ Doug Wilson said.

  Seven tapes were made during the course of the interview. Detective Sergeant Sprenger immediately set up transcription equipment for typist Mrs Robyn Whipps and Homicide/Consorting Squad typist Miss Neroli Taylor.

  Queensland police only made available transcripts of the first five tapes to the Federal Narcotics Bureau. As Assistant Commissioner, Crimes and Services, L.R. Duffy reported later in a confidential statement to Commissioner Terry Lewis: ‘Although there were seven tapes, it was decided by Detective Sergeant Churchill and Detective Sergeant Maynard, that in view of phone numbers of persons being mentioned in the final two tapes as associates of the Wilsons and also because there had been an allegation made against a senior narcotics officer, that the transcript of the last two tapes be not made available to the Narcotics Bureau at that juncture.’

  Slade remembers the day the Wilsons talked. ‘We were the first police force in Australia to start on the Wilsons,’ Slade says. ‘We came straight out [of the recorded interviews] and gave a copy of the tape to Tony Murphy.’

  Murphy had in his hands an extraordinary tale of drugs, greed and murder. It was dynamite. But was it true? It was not every day that Brisbane’s drug squad was regaled with tales of murder and inter­national heroin trafficking worth millions of dollars. Were the Wilsons legitimate, or just addled junkies?

  Just seven years earlier, Queensland police had been told wild tales of crime and corruption by a prostitute by the name of Shirley Margaret Brifman. She too put on the table a complicated tale of corrupt police and the underworld that also stretched credulity.

  But $100,000 a week? More than $5 million a year? And a man called ‘Pommie’ Lewis with half his head blown off and his hands ampu
tated somewhere south of Brisbane?

  Terrance Clark was extradited back to New Zealand. Meanwhile, a souvenir of Clark’s time in Brisbane was left behind. ‘Clark had this crocodile-skin briefcase,’ says Jim Slade. ‘This briefcase, they [the police] knew where it was. A senior officer got it and it was full of money. He had that briefcase for years.’

  Top of the Valley, Top of the World

  Not long after leasing the Top Hat off parlour entrepreneur Geoff Crocker, Hapeta and Tilley expanded.

  It was surprising to Crocker. Here was the physically huge Hector Hapeta, walking with difficulty and a man who couldn’t read or write, spreading his wings having only been in Brisbane for five minutes. Crocker would later notice that Hapeta had considerable organisational skills.

  Around this time, friends of Crocker and his wife, Julie, were talking of getting engaged in Sydney. They decided to take a few days off and drive down to the Emerald City. Just two days into the trip Crocker’s friend Billy Hayes phoned.

  ‘Everything alright?’ Crocker asked.

  ‘I went past the Top Hat the other night – it’s closed,’ Billy replied. ‘There’s a note on the door – any customers wishing to see girls from these premises should now go across the road. That old Fantasia place where they used to gamble upstairs. Hector and his missus have moved in there and closed your joint up.’

  The newcomers had moved lock, stock and barrel into the Top of the Valley at 187 Barry Parade. Fantasia had been run successfully by Katherine James before she was imprisoned on drug charges. She paid rent to Luciano Scognamiglio and her business co-existed with Scognamiglio’s game at the Top of the Valley during the mid-1970s.

  ‘I never worked there [at the illegal casino], but I used to go down there often enough because I worked down the hallway at the parlour,’ recalled James. ‘Gerry and Tony Bellino would come there at least once a week to collect the money. Either one of them would attend each week. It was usually Gerry, but Tony would also attend. They very rarely came together. While one or the other of them was there, from time to time I would hear them give directions to Scognamiglio about the running of the place.