Jacks and Jokers

by Matthew Condon

  In the struggle to seize the gun off a drugged and drunk Bahnemann, Lewis, Hallahan and two young constables from Wynnum jumped him and the weapon discharged. Bahnemann was found guilty of attempted murder and sentenced to seven years at Boggo Road. He would serve more than half this sentence before being released and would go on to write bestselling books, including Hoodlum and I Deserted Rommel.

  Now, after almost 20 years since the night that changed his life, a hard-up Bahnemann wrote to both friend and foe, Terry Lewis. The lengthy letter, it seems, was prompted by contact initiated by Lewis himself.

  Dear Terry,

  So many years … was the impression I had when you phoned here. Thank you indeed for your call, Terry, and more so for the most unselfish remark – ‘You call me Terry!’. I value that remark of yours, it reminded me of your personal visit to me when I was lodging in the ‘Old Roads’. That time I knew that that visit of yours was a sincere action on your part and, it was the kind of ‘Moral Guts’ visiting the man you helped put away that made me respect you and wanting to be a friend.

  Bahnemann filled in the missing years, telling Lewis he had been married to his wife Leonie for 12 years.

  Leonie is 33 years of age now, I am 58 years. The age difference caused some remarks at the time we married – It won’t work etc etc. Indeed, it did work extremely well despite many hardships …

  They had three children – Tarni, Hagen and young Sonja. ‘So you see Terry I do have a fine family, though we were not much blessed with monetary advantage or exceptional luck.’

  He explained in detail how his old wooden boatbuilding business went sour after ‘fibreglass killed us out’, and that he was known by North Queensland police keen on fishing for his exceptional hand-crafted iceboxes.

  Then came the real point of the letter. Bahnemann, in a perilous financial state, thought he might be able to do some business with his old nemesis.

  When I mentioned boats to you lately, I must admit I had in mind contacting you at a later date since police here showed interest in our craft and thought it would make a marvellous police boat, having the capacity of being the largest trailerable craft made here.

  Lewis promised Bahnemann he would drop in to see him on his next commissioner’s tour of North Queensland and the boatbuilder said he was looking forward to it.

  And please, accept my hand and sincere offer towards whatever help, request, or else is needed, then, should you need it, Terry, just say so, no frills, I am a friend.

  PS: Please don’t feel obliged to reply, Terry, I just wanted to write this lengthy letter and I feel better for it now.

  Why did Bahnemann feel compelled to remain in touch with Lewis? Although a known eccentric, and a man whose financial fortune had always waxed and waned, what was the basis for this so-called friendship based on intermittent letters?

  Lewis says he took pity on Bahnemann following his imprisonment all those years ago. Bahnemann may have been keeping his options open. By fate, the man who had helped imprison him was now the most powerful police officer in the state.

  To his family, Bahnemann privately and keenly expressed his innocence regarding the shooting incident in 1959, although he offered little in the way of detail regarding his former wife, the prostitute Ada, and the night of his arrest.

  Perhaps it was a case of both men – Lewis and Bahnemann – keeping their enemies close.

  Medically Retired

  Earlier in the year, Lewis had recommended that Jeppesen be transferred out of Licensing. Cabinet overruled it. Just over a month later the transfer was approved.

  Immediately following this decision, the ALP’s Keith Wright stood in parliament and said he felt impelled to read into Hansard a confidential document he had received. He only referred to the many police and bookmakers named in the document by their initials. In summary, the document detailed how major SP bookmaking syndicates were aware in 1978 that Jeppesen’s removal was imminent and that soon they could move their business from Tweed Heads and back into Queensland.

  It went on: ‘Heads of the SP syndicates in Queensland have made an approach to police officer M with an offer to establish a fund of $60,000 as a pool with all syndicates contributing. This fund was to be sustained in advance and a weekly payment made to the police to protect the operating of SP betting in Queensland again.’

  It said syndicate members had been ‘hit hard’ by Jeppesen and his crew and that the syndicates wanted the Licensing Branch under ‘CI branch Superintendent M’.

  ‘I believe there has to be a full inquiry,’ Wright added. ‘The infor­mation I have here is an indictment on this government and on elements in the Police Force.’

  There was no inquiry and the Licensing Branch as Jeppesen had assembled it was quickly disintegrating.

  Jock Lumsden, a Detective Sergeant (First Class) in Licensing at the time, recalls when things began to fall apart. He says Jeppesen and his team had ‘plenty of work and plenty of kills’ when the erroneous allegations against Jeppesen and his unit began filtering in.

  Lumsden was out at Boggo Road one day and was observed and recognised by an inmate. The next thing he knew he was called in by Murphy and Atkinson for a formal record of interview. ‘They suggested I had some knowledge of moieties paid in relation to this inmate,’ he says. ‘I’m not sure if they were trying to intimidate me. But they seized my official police diary and I never got it back.’

  Later in 1979, Lumsden moved back to prosecution.

  Jeppesen was medically retired on 6 September 1979, having been transferred to Mobile Patrols earlier in the year.

  A month later, Commissioner Lewis would have some good friends to dinner at his home in Garfield Drive – guests included Barry and Sheilagh Maxwell, Jack and Peggy Herbert, and Eric Pratt. He noted in his diary the following week: ‘Insp. Jeppesen out medically unfit; transfer of all other Police involved in Lic. Br. Suspect activities; some discontented Police contacting Premier.’

  Bruce Wilby was transferred to Clermont, 274 kilometres south-west of Mackay. He had been told by Assistant Commissioner Brian Hayes that he ‘needed to remember’ he had a wife and three children. Wilby saw it as a direct threat and was happy to be out of Brisbane.

  When Lewis again tried to move him without justification to Longreach after just six months, he objected and was summoned to Brisbane for a meeting with the Commissioner and his top men, including Brian Hayes.

  They met in a large meeting room in police headquarters. Wilby recalls: ‘I let Lewis have his say. “We know you’ve been bad-mouthing the department,” he said. I told him I’d never bad-mouthed the department.

  ‘He said, “As long as you go back up there and keep your mouth shut, you can stay in Clermont as long as you like. Can you do that?” ’

  The meeting ended, and as Wilby left the room Assistant Commissioner Hayes followed. ‘I remember you from Mobile Patrols,’ Hayes commented.

  ‘And I remember you from there too, sir,’ Wilby said.

  ‘You turned out to be a proper cunt,’ Hayes added. ‘If it’s the last thing I ever do, I’ll have you out of this job, Wilby.’

  ‘With all due respect, sir,’ Wilby replied, ‘I’ll still be in this job and I’ll piss on your grave.’

  Lewis recalls the whole tawdry Jeppesen incident. ‘Brian Marlin realised they were working hot … some member of parliament told him apparently,’ recalls Lewis. ‘And then he … must have got in touch with Greg Early and said he [Marlin] wanted to talk to me.

  ‘Anyhow he talked to me one day and said what was going on and wrote out the names of fellows that were “enemies” if you like. And I got some senior officers to investigate the matter and it went on and on.

  ‘They should have been pinched. They were interviewed and refused to answer questions. The file ended up going to the Crown Law office and they came back, and I don’t remember this coming back b
ut it would have come back to the deputy saying they can’t refuse to answer questions like that.

  ‘They can be forced to answer them but it never got anywhere, never went any further. Jeppesen – he should either have been somehow charged with something or forced to retire if you like, so he went out medically unfit.’

  With Jeppesen’s squad removed, new officers moved into the Licensing Branch. They were Harry Burgess, Noel Dwyer and Graeme Parker.

  Quality Escorts

  When Mary Anne Brifman, daughter of Shirley, decided to quietly re-enter prostitution as a young mother, she was fully cognisant of how her mother’s tragic past was never that far below the surface in Brisbane.

  Terry Lewis, who she claims she remembers as a child occasionally visiting the Brifman home in Sydney in the 1960s, was now the most powerful man in the Queensland Police Force.

  Tony Murphy, too, had risen to Inspector and was in charge of the Bureau of Criminal Intelligence, and quite possibly on a level pegging with Lewis despite the disparity in rank. It was evident to some that, in their minds, Tony Murphy actually ran the force.

  Still, these two men had been a part of Mary Anne Brifman’s life since she was a small child. Now she was retracing her mother’s footsteps, albeit as quietly as humanly possible.

  Mary Anne was still working solo out of an escort agency she called Quality Escorts. Despite her low profile she began to meet and get to know other sex industry workers in Brisbane.

  ‘I never, ever paid any graft,’ Brifman remembers. ‘I knew of Hector Hapeta. I heard a lot of stories about Geoff Crocker from the girls. I didn’t personally come across the Bellinos. They had their fingers in prostitution but they were mainly into gambling, that was their big thing.

  ‘Nobody knew I was related to my mother. That was another era, anyway. By this time whole new crews had come on.’

  Also, Brifman’s marriage to Graham had broken down and she began living in different parts of the city – Lutwyche, Newmarket, then a flat in Kangaroo Point.

  Then came the rape by a young police officer in an auto workshop in the city.

  ‘It took courage to report it,’ Mary Anne says. ‘I didn’t want to be known, but I did it because I didn’t want it to happen to any other working girls.

  ‘I was back doing what I never wanted to do. I was ashamed of the whole thing. All I wanted to do was get enough money to pay the rent and provide food for me and the kids.

  ‘When the officer raped me it changed me, psychologically. I never wanted to be known as a victim, but the shame, and all those feelings I’d bottled up over the years and never shared … I don’t know.’

  Milligan Sings

  After 14 months on Operation Jungle, an exhausted John Shobbrook got a telephone call in Brisbane from an old mate in the New South Wales Drug Squad. Would he like to know the whereabouts of one John Edward Milligan?

  On the afternoon of Monday 10 September 1979, Shobbrook hopped on the next flight to Sydney and proceeded to a block of flats in Edgecliff, four kilometress east of the CBD.

  ‘I knocked on the door and there was John Milligan,’ says Shobbrook. ‘It was a really strange feeling after working for over a year on the case. He wasn’t surprised at all that we were arresting him.’

  While Federal Police raided Hallahan’s farm in Obi Obi on the Sunshine Coast, Milligan was taken to the imposing Customs House at Circular Quay and placed in an interview room.

  Shobbrook told Milligan nothing about the operation he’d been working on. Then Milligan said: ‘I know about your little Operation Jungle.’

  Milligan expressed no interest in being interviewed.

  ‘I don’t need you to tell me anything,’ Shobbrook said. ‘We’ve been pretty thorough.’

  The Narcotics Agent asked for the whereabouts of Milligan’s passport. He said he’d spilled a bottle of ink on it and thrown it away.

  Milligan was installed for the night in the nearby four-cell Phillip Street police station. Meanwhile Shobbrook headed across the harbour to Kirribilli where he knew Milligan’s sister lived. She handed over the defendant’s passport.

  In the special Federal Court the next morning Milligan was ordered to surrender his passport. Milligan’s solicitor said his client had lost his passport.

  ‘I have it here,’ Shobbrook interjected.

  Shobbrook recalls Milligan’s response: ‘If looks could kill, I would have died on the spot. He realised I could be nasty too. That I could think as quickly as he could. He had a disregard for people he didn’t think were up to his intellectual capacity.’

  Shobbrook told Milligan he’d see him in two weeks at the next hearing.

  Milligan hesitated. ‘Can I talk to you?’

  ‘No,’ Shobbrook said. ‘I’m going.’

  ‘You don’t know how big this is and who’s involved,’ Milligan said. ‘I’ve got to talk to you privately.’

  Shobbrook and Milligan convened in a nearby solicitor’s briefing office and Milligan suddenly started talking about a Queensland triumvirate that consisted of Terry Lewis, Tony Murphy and Glen Patrick Hallahan.

  Shobbrook couldn’t believe his ears. He knew Milligan was a consummate liar and a great name-dropper. He might have had his little index-card database on every person he ever met to thank for his astonishing ability to credibly mix fact with fiction.

  ‘You’re going to have to get me protection,’ he told Shobbrook. ‘If I go to Long Bay I’ll be killed. I’m telling you the truth.’

  Milligan was moved to the Holsworthy Army Barracks in south-western Sydney. He was appointed a minder – a senior and experienced Federal Narcotics detective – who drove Milligan to and from Customs House.

  ‘Milligan was a very intelligent person,’ the agent recalls. ‘I’d pick him up at the gaol every morning and bring him into town. He’d be immaculately dressed and smelling sweet as a lily first thing in the morning, but after a few hours you could smell Milligan’s sweat. When we took him back at the end of the day you’d have to wind down all the windows of the car.’

  Over three days, Shobbrook interrogated Milligan in Customs House. The interviews were recorded on tapes. ‘I did the Operation Jungle record of interview,’ Shobbrook says. ‘We started talking about a broader area of corruption. As soon as each day’s tapes were finished, they were flown straight to central office in Canberra.

  ‘I had established a rapport with John Milligan. I used to sit and cry with him when he got emotional. You get to know them. He had a shoulder to cry on – it kept him talking.’

  Milligan, trusting Shobbrook, directed him to a flat in Paddington where numerous documents were discovered, including bank transfer receipts that totalled $26,000, paid by Milligan into the account of former detective and Obi Obi farmer Glen Hallahan.

  What Milligan discussed in those 72 hours was explosive. He alleged that Lewis, Murphy and Hallahan controlled various aspects of crime and corruption in Queensland. ‘Glen’s the civil arm [of the trio],’ Milligan said. ‘Tony Murphy is in charge of security. Tony does the dirty work a lot.’

  He said businessman, racing yachtsman and Bally poker machine importer, Jack Rooklyn, who had a mansion in Sydney’s Darling Point, was one of the few ‘heavies’ who controlled the police. He said whatever Rooklyn ordered was ‘accepted as a directive by Terry Lewis, and by Tony and by Glen in Queensland’.

  Milligan had a clear memory of the Rat Pack when he was a young legal associate working in Brisbane in the mid-1960s. ‘The Rat Pack was the gang of five. That was Bischof, Bauer, Lewis, Murphy and Hallahan, and they were reputed amongst the legal profession to be the heavies of the CIB and the corrupt characters of the city. Legion were the stories about the corruption and the graft that went on,’ Milligan said.

  He told in great detail stories of his past, his association with the killer Johnny Regan, his links with the highest echelons
of organised crime in New South Wales, and his conversation with Hallahan about the impending death of prostitute Shirley Brifman, just days prior to her actual death by drug overdose.

  Milligan admitted that over time he had dropped $26,000 into one of Hallahan’s bank accounts and that they had concocted a story that if it was ever queried, the money was for the sale of a parcel of Hallahan’s farm to Milligan. (There were never any documents to prove the sale.)

  Milligan went on to indicate a conspiracy over the departure of the head of the Brisbane Narcotics Bureau, Max Rogers; Lewis, Hallahan and company had arranged for a former Queensland state police officer, and friend of Hallahan’s, to replace him, and that the transition was a ‘foregone conclusion’. ‘… We left it to Terry to do,’ Milligan said.

  Milligan added if he ever had a query about police he might encounter he always sought counsel from Hallahan to see if ‘he is okay or not’.

  The drug importer also explained why the Jane Table Mountain importation was finally given the green light. Organisers went ahead ‘after the power structure in Queensland had been consolidated after the State election up there [12 November 1977, won by the Nationals on a platform of law and order] and Lewis had been Commissioner for a couple of years so that there could be no immediate allegations against him if anything went wrong’.

  There were details, too, of Hallahan arranging for an old friend and police colleague from the 1960s – who had subsequently enlisted in the Commonwealth force – to mock up an investigation into the Jane Table Mountain importation, including a record of interview with Milligan, to hedge off any serious scrutiny of the case prior to Shobbrook’s dogged work.

  Milligan was under pressure on several fronts, not the least being that the Royal Commission into Drug Trafficking, under Justice Philip Woodward, had wound up and the commission’s report was weeks away from being delivered. The royal commission had been sparked by the disappearance of anti-drugs campaigner Donald Mackay on 15 July 1977. The hearings commenced on 10 August that year.