Jacks and Jokers

by Matthew Condon

  Barbara McCulkin had been married to petty gangster Billy ‘The Mouse’ McCulkin until late 1973 when he left the family home in Dorchester Street, Highgate Hill, and took up with another woman. Barbara and Billy had two daughters, Vicky Maree, almost thirteen, and Barbara Leanne, eleven.

  Following the bombing of the Torino nightclub in the Valley and the Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub in March 1973 that claimed 15 lives – Barbara McCulkin heard innumerable stories about Billy and the involvement of other criminals, such as John Andrew Stuart and Tommy Hamilton of the Clockwork Orange Gang and a host of other suspects. Stuart had supposedly had an affair with Barbara McCulkin before the fire at the Whiskey.

  Upset by her marriage breakdown, Barbara was making noises to blow the whistle on her husband and his associates. Then, in January 1974, she and her two daughters vanished from their Highgate Hill home without a trace.

  In prison, Stokes would be reunited with John Andrew Stuart. Gossamer webs seemed to connect many people and crimes in the 1970s. There were many tiles in the mosaic. But what was the big picture?

  In Queen Street

  Fred Collins, a former Queensland police officer, was in Queen Street in the Brisbane CBD around this time when he bumped into an old friend – Jack Herbert.

  Collins had known Herbert since the late 1950s, when Herbert sold him a motor vehicle. He also saw him socially at various functions over the years. Collins had left the force in 1971, having worked for five years with Terry Lewis in the Juvenile Aid Bureau.

  Collins and Herbert had a chinwag, particularly about Herbert’s cancer scare. Collins had noticed Herbert had lost a lot of weight.

  Herbert also went on about how the Southport Betting Case and its prohibitive legal fees had cleaned him out. He had had to sell his home. The whole thing had left him broke, he told Fred. ‘He then went on to say that he was then engaged in the pinball machine business and was placing them in clubs,’ Collins later attested in a statement. ‘He then told me he had been to the United States and had visited Las Vegas as a guest of the Mafia.

  ‘He said that the reason for this was that because he was an ex-policeman and said that he knew Terry Lewis, who was then the Commissioner of Police, they assumed that he would have the right connections in having the pinball machines placed in the most profitable places.

  ‘He said that this assumption about Terry Lewis was bullshit but he let them believe it and that he was in a position to assist them.’

  It was a curious exchange. Could Herbert have been throwing around the Commissioner’s name to line his own pockets? But what of their friendship? The dinners? The family occasions?

  Lewis says he was used by numerous people who he thought were loyal.

  ‘They could abuse me very easily,’ he reflects. ‘They could have said, “Oh I’m seeing Terry down at the Crest Hotel tonight” or whatever, and we’ll have a couple of drinks so you can see that we’re mates. I’ve no hesitation in saying Herbert in particular [did that] and maybe [Tony] Murphy and maybe [Glen] Hallahan, I don’t know, I don’t know if I can think of any others at the moment but there was probably others.’

  As for the friendship between Lewis and Herbert, what was the truth?

  The Zebra

  In late August the likeable John Goleby, National Party member for Redlands, south-west of the city and in the heart of Brisbane’s so-called ‘salad bowl’, telephoned Basil Hicks.

  Backbencher Goleby was a committed Christian and he had struck up a close friendship with Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen. It was Goleby who had put the Premier and Alec Jeppesen together just a couple of months earlier. Now he asked if Hicks would also confidentially meet with the Premier.

  It was a curious period for Commissioner Terry Lewis and his top brass. Lewis had been diligently running the police force as per the Premier’s wishes. He was, for example, immediately acquiescent when it came to enforcing the anti-protest legislation, among other things. At the same time he had done everything in his power to hose out any remnants of the Whitrod era. He had demoted, moved or forced the resignation of Whitrod loyalists. He had dismantled many of Whitrod’s initiatives.

  Yet less than two years into Lewis’s stewardship, Bjelke-Petersen was hearing stories. The Rat Pack was back.

  Coupled with cage-rattler Kevin Hooper’s ceaseless denigration of the force and its implicit corruption on the floor of Parliament House, there was an odour about the police that resembled the days of Frank ‘Big Fella’ Bischof. Given that the corrupt Bischof had mentored Lewis, the Premier and some of his trusted National Party colleagues began making their own enquiries.

  On Monday 4 September, Hicks joined Bjelke-Petersen and Goleby at the Zebra Motel on George Street in the heart of the city, opposite the government’s Executive Building.

  Commissioner Lewis had no idea of the meeting. Earlier that day he had spoken at length on the telephone to Stan Wilcox, the Premier’s personal secretary, about a variety of matters including Bjelke-Petersen’s security, bail for demonstrators and the ‘transfer of Insp. Jeppesen’.

  The Premier made it patently clear to Hicks that he was worried that Superintendent Tony Murphy was ‘going to get involved in prostitution again’, and it concerned him. It was mildly ironic that the Premier had to seek advice from one of ousted Commissioner Ray Whitrod’s most trusted lieutenants, rather than his own Police Commissioner.

  Bjelke-Petersen said he planned to move Murphy out of the CIB. The Premier was tired of Lewis never allowing him to make any decisions when it came to the police department. Would Hicks replace Murphy and take over the running of the CIB?

  Hicks agreed. He added that when news leaked out – which it inevitably would – ‘they’ would launch a monumental smear campaign against him. Hicks would be painted as ‘the greatest villain in the world’.

  Did either man know that that campaign was already in train? Commissioner Lewis had been aware since April that there were suggestions that Hicks might replace Murphy.

  Bjelke-Petersen asked Hicks to bring the necessary transfer papers to him in person. Hicks planned to do that on Thursday 7 September.

  Incredibly, given the only participants were the Premier, Goleby and Hicks, the meeting in the Zebra Motel was leaked. Less than 48 hours after Hicks and the Premier talked, and the day before the transfer papers for Hicks were to be delivered to the Executive Building, Deputy Commissioner Vern MacDonald recorded in his diary for 6 September that he had been visited in his office by jailed prostitute Katherine James who made a further statement about having sex with Hicks.

  Prison records confirmed that James indeed visited police headquarters on 6 September. There were no records for her alleged earlier visit to Deputy Commissioner MacDonald’s office in late April.

  Why would James make a statement in the first week of September, when Commissioner Lewis had already received her statement about the Hicks scandal in April? Was Lewis lying in his diary or was MacDonald?

  As promised, on the night of Thursday 7 September, Hicks dropped off the transfer papers to the Premier’s office.

  On the Saturday night he received an anonymous phone call at home to be told ‘a job had been done’ on him, and on Monday, officer Noel Creevey informed Hicks that a statement from a prostitute called Katherine James, outlining a sexual relationship with him, had been shown to the Premier.

  That Monday night, according to Lewis’s diary, the Commissioner met with Superintendent Tony Murphy to discuss ‘Juvenile Bureaux and B & E of Surveyor-General’s office’. They no doubt had a quiet word about Basil Hicks.

  Lewis and company had worked swiftly and efficiently to snooker the Hound.

  Hicks, in turn, had only one option. He needed to go to Brisbane Prison and meet face to face with the prostitute Katherine James.

  A Delegation

  Lorelle Saunders, like many other policewomen in the force, had been app
alled at Tony Murphy and Brian Marlin’s so-called ‘Lesbian Investigation’.

  She was also generally dismayed, since the exit of Whitrod, at the lack of opportunities for female police officers. Although she had just been transferred to a new and exciting unit – the Regional Task Force, set up to handle the protestors and civil libertarians who were pitting their war for basic human rights against Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen on the streets of Brisbane. It may have emboldened her.

  Just as she did with the petition over the wearing of slacks, she went into action. Along with Constable Judy Newman, Sergeant Evelyn Hill and Senior Sergeant Bill Hannigan, Saunders took her dele­gation to meet with none other than Robert Sparkes, President of the Queensland National Party, and Charles Holm, the vice-president.

  At the meeting, a wide range of issues were talked about, including the lesbian inquiry and the rights of female officers compared to their male counterparts. Thinking the meeting was confidential, Saunders also discussed aspects of police corruption she’d come across or been told about. She let the political heavyweights know that massage parlours in Fortitude Valley were being protected by the Licensing Branch in exchange for money. She mentioned the World by Night strip club (run by the Bellinos). And she dropped the name Jack Herbert in the mix.

  The inspector in charge of the task force was Sergeant First Class Allan Lobegeiger. One of Saunders’ first duties was to drive Lobegeiger around, particularly on Friday and Saturday nights. When Lobegeiger was chosen to attend the superintendent’s course at the Australian Police College in Sydney, he was required to complete an assignment. He gave it to Saunders to do for him.

  After her top-level delegation with the National Party brass, Lobegeiger gave her several warnings.

  ‘Lobegeiger often told me that the current police administration regarded me as “highly dangerous” due to my knowledge of certain corrupt officers and practices and believed that I was a member of a group of dissident officers who had sworn to bring about the downfall of the current administration,’ she later recalled.

  ‘He repeatedly asked me the identity of a group of dissident officers known in the press as the “Committee of Eight”. It was believed I was secretary to the “Committee of Eight”.

  ‘He also told me to stop attending political meetings and criticising the police administration.’

  On 14 September 1978, Lewis noted in his diary: ‘Allen Callaghan phoned re 3 p/women having deputation to Mr. R. Sparkes.’ Four days later he telephoned his Police Minister, Ron Camm, to discuss the same matter.

  Less than three weeks later Lewis had a meeting with the Premier about the general running of the force and other matters. They also talked about Lorelle Saunders: ‘… Hannigan and 3 P/W seeing R. Sparkes; and P/W L. Saunders being member of the Nat. Party. Premier said to transfer her.’

  Lewis didn’t, though. He may have thought back to when Whitrod had transferred him and Tony Murphy to Charleville and Longreach respectively, and how, in the end, it was a tactical error by the former commissioner, giving both men an opportunity to campaign out of sight against Whitrod.

  Still, Lewis was concerned about this mythical Committee of Eight and he saw Saunders as a potential problem.

  Good Fun at the Belfast

  So long as Barry Maxwell was behind the beer taps at the Belfast Hotel, he was assured of an enthusiastic police patronage, especially now that his old friend Terry Lewis was the big boss.

  Indeed, the Belfast had many years earlier usurped the former police pub – the National Hotel – since the royal commission into police conduct at the National in 1963–64, and the retirement of former commissioner Frank Bischof.

  The shadows that extended from the National Hotel inquiry were long. For some senior police who were involved, it might almost prove a jinx to grace its doorways again. But that didn’t stop the National owners, the Roberts brothers, from drinking at their rival – the Belfast.

  ‘I met old Rolly Roberts on a couple of occasions,’ says a former manager at the Belfast. ‘He used to come down and see how our business was going. Maxwell didn’t like Rolly.

  ‘I think I might have seen Herbert and Hallahan in the early days … Murphy and Lewis … I might have seen all four of them up in the old cocktail bar before we renovated.

  ‘Tony [Murphy] would come in while he was on duty. He’d say hello to Barry and have a couple of drinks. He never discussed police work. Maxwell was always trying to get something out of him; he liked the mystery and excitement of it all.’

  There was serious talk, and there was plenty of hijinks too. ‘I’ll never forget one night, Lewis was there and he would have been Commissioner,’ the manager remembers. ‘He had another copper with him. They were walking into the Moon Bar; it had a big round doorway, something you’d see on a spaceship. There were plastic chairs, the latest from Sweden or somewhere. Lewis and this poor copper were standing there [when suddenly] Maxwell went, “Is this real?”, and pulled his [the policeman’s] gun out, full of piss.

  ‘The copper said, “Mr Maxwell, I’ll have to ask you to give me my gun back.”

  ‘Tony would stay and I think I might have seen Tony a bit pissed but I don’t think I saw Terry pissed. Maxwell just drank five-ounce beers.

  ‘I used to appreciate the police coming in. All the detectives used to come there. I’d shout them tea. I said, “You buy the wine and I’ll buy the tea.” I used to pick the most expensive bottle of wine to get some money out of them. I think probably Barry used to shout all the coppers. His father was a policeman in his day. He always used to think he would be a good cop.’

  The manager didn’t see much of Jack ‘The Bagman’ Herbert. He and his wife, Peggy, would sometimes drop by. ‘Peggy always came across as a lady to me, but they told me she was red-headed and fiery,’ the manager recalled. ‘I saw her at a couple of functions they had at the pub.’

  While Murphy might not have shared stories of his fascinating life as a top-rate detective with Maxwell, he did with the manager. ‘He showed me this new drug – LSD. It was in a matchbox … looked like bits of blotting paper. He sat and talked to me and told me about different things,’ the manager says.

  ‘Down on Wharf Street there were the old doss houses full of derros living in there. He told me that they raided one of the houses and found a girl there laying on a mattress naked, with blokes hitting her with drugs and other blokes paying two dollars to have sex with her.

  ‘There was another case. A murder. A lady, a cockie’s wife, they found her dead and she’d been raped. They shot her eyes out. It was a really bad crime. It might have been out west, out Toowoomba way.

  ‘Well we were standing in the bar one night – this was shortly after the murder – and Tony was there and he hadn’t slept in two days or two nights. He got a phone call and I always let them come into the office at the pub. He still had half a beer there but he said to his mate, “Let’s get out of here.”

  ‘They got this guy, the murderer, at Coober Pedy. He was brought back to Brisbane. They charged him with the murder.

  ‘Tony Murphy said, “We questioned him all the way back and the poor prick kept falling out of the Jeep on the way back.” They must have beat him to get a confession.

  ‘Tony Murphy was a good cop, he would not let anything rest.’

  Lewis has fond memories of Maxwell and the Belfast.

  ‘Barry Maxwell – we’d met over the years. He’d worked in hotels, he ended up being the licensee down there,’ says Lewis. ‘The police used to go upstairs usually. You could get into, not a corner, but one area of it. When I became Commissioner I used to go down there. Barry would call me to come down to lunch. Sheilagh was a lovely woman. They were nice people.’

  Lewis remembers that when he was in the Consorting Squad in the 1950s they’d call into the Transcontinental and have two beers, and then might drop into the Sportsmen and have a couple mo
re there, then go on to dinner. But in the 1970s they remained loyal to Maxwell and the Belfast. ‘A lot of well-to-do businessmen drank there. You wouldn’t have struck any wharfies or painters and dockers,’ says Lewis.

  The Belfast and its reputation as home away from home to the Rat Pack was not just confined to police gossip. Word had gone further afield. Licensing Branch head Alec Jeppesen had started taping confidential interviews with SP bookmakers into 1978 and a pattern of police graft and corruption was beginning to materialise. One informant told Jeppesen that Tony Murphy and Jack Herbert were ‘ruthless bastards’ who stressed that bookies ‘pay up or fucking else’.

  The informant confirmed that ‘Terry’ and ‘Tony’ drank with Herbert at the Belfast. ‘They all get down there drinking with Terry and Tony and all the boys down at the Belfast,’ the informant said on the tapes. ‘It’s all the same bloody clique, you know.’

  One informant talked of bribe money being paid to Brian Hayes, who was promoted to Assistant Commissioner in mid-1978. ‘Brian would take an empty bottle. Take anything,’ the informant said. ‘Well apparently Terry – well I don’t know whether it’s Terry or whether it’s Tony – but they are pushing to get him [Hayes] up. Tony’s a rather ruthless bastard. He’d just cut anyone’s feet from under them.

  ‘But Terry Lewis, he’s got plenty of principles. He’s not like Tony.’

  Hicks Goes to Gaol

  On Thursday 21 September 1978, Commissioner Terry Lewis was facing a day of relatively light duties. As was his custom, he was in his office around 7.15 a.m. and first up had a quick phone chat with the parliamentarian Dr Llew Edwards.