Jacks and Jokers

by Matthew Condon

  He detailed his meeting with Murphy. ‘A couple of months ago I had a session and my wife as well with Tony Murphy in his office, subject marihuana plantations and Cape York in general,’ he wrote. ‘It so happens that up here I am known as an authority on Cape York – offshore, inshore, and interior-wise of this last bit of wilderness.

  ‘Ten years of pearling along the cape coast, croc shooting in the off-season and in 1950 guiding the American Archibald Expedition from the top to Cooktown, having been wrecked twice on its shores left its mark. A professional navigator, its geographical ramifications stay fixed in my mind to day [sic].’

  Bahnemann shared his opinions on likely locations of drug plan­tations with Murphy. He identified the Portland Road area, the Pascoe River, Packers Creek, Lloyds Bay and Cape Grenville. ‘I feel Princes [sic] Charlotte Bay is the southern trading post provided by trawlers,’ Bahnemann added.

  It was an extraordinary supposition on the former German war hero’s part. Princess Charlotte Bay was close to Jane Table Mountain, the precise location where drug importer John Edward Milligan had scrambled about in the wilderness searching for two large packages of heroin dropped from a light aircraft in the 1970s.

  Bahnemann couldn’t have known that their ‘bent’ friend, Glen Patrick Hallahan – the man Bahnemann had been convicted of attempting to murder in late 1959 – was Milligan’s partner in the drug shipment.

  ‘Tony Murphy thinks along my lines, however, geographically and environment-wise he is not too informed, there is a vast difference viewing it from a helicopter or traversing it on the ground,’ Bahnemann added.

  He ended the letter cheerily. ‘All the best for now, Terry, write if the subject is of interest to you. Best of luck. Gunther.’

  The Full Fowl

  At around 2 a.m. on Friday 18 December 1981, the phone rang up at Garfield Drive. It was Sir Edward Lyons, chairman of the TAB and trustee of the National Party. He was in the city watchhouse having been detained for suspected drink driving.

  Earlier the previous night, Commissioner Lewis and his wife, Hazel, had attended a variety of Christmas functions, one being a cocktail party at TAB headquarters at 240 Sandgate Road in Albion, just north of the CBD. Lewis went on to a Police Union dinner, but ‘Top Level’ Ted had cocktailed on.

  Lyons left the party around 1.20 a.m. in his Rolls-Royce and headed across the Story Bridge and onto the South East Freeway heading for his home in Holland Park, just south-east of the CBD.

  Sergeant Lennie Bracken and Constable First Class Carmichael were travelling on the freeway in a squad car and noticed the Roller being driven erratically. Lyons was pulled over. When he refused to take a breath test, he was driven back to the watchhouse. Once there, Kathleen Rynders of the Breath Analysis Section certified that Lyons had a blood alcohol content of .12, just under twice the legal limit. His breathalyser ticket number was D57106. Carmichael started writing out a regulation Bench Charge Sheet.

  Lyons, 67, asked officer in charge, Inspector Dante Squassoni, if he could make a telephone call. The phone soon started ringing in Lewis’s home.

  Lewis asked for Squassoni to get on the line. According to Squassoni, Lewis told him: ‘You know he’s Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s right-hand man … surely you can do something.’

  Squassoni got the impression Lewis wanted the charge dropped. Then Bracken got on the phone, and Lewis said: ‘Other than my mother, Lyons is the only bloke I’d like to do something for … take him home.’

  Lewis’s diary recorded: ‘At 2am Sir Edward Lyons phoned re detention for suspected UIL. Spoke to Const. Carmichael, Insp. D. Squassoni and Sgt. L. Bracken.’

  Carmichael later claimed either Squassoni or Bracken told him to forget about the incident, and he threw the Bench Charge Sheet and breath analysis certificate in a waste paper bin. Bracken wasn’t happy with the result, and told Lyons to drive himself home, he and Carmichael following the Roller to Holland Park. Lyons asked them in for a cup of tea. They declined.

  A young constable, Brian Cook, retrieved the documents from the bin and handed them to Senior Constable Bob Campbell, who then passed them on to the tearaway MP Kev Hooper. Hooper, in turn, immediately leaked them to Ric Allen at the Sunday Mail newspaper.

  That Friday Lewis recorded nothing in his diary about Lyons’ predica­ment even though he had several conversations with his Minister, Russ Hinze. But on the Saturday, he got in touch with Hinze and Bracken again, probably following queries from the journalist Allen.

  The Sunday Mail ran its extraordinary scoop on page one the next day: KNIGHT FACES DRIVE CHARGE.

  Ric Allen wrote that Lyons had been detained by police over suspected drink driving ‘but was not charged or arrested’. ‘The Police Commissioner confirmed this yesterday, but denied any “cover-up”.’

  Lewis, through a spokesman, said: ‘Sir Edward had to fly to Sydney on urgent business but he will appear in court on the drink driving charge offence.’

  The newspaper pointed out that Lyons had not appeared in the Magistrates’ Court on Friday and that no record of the incident could be found in the Brisbane watchhouse log book. Lewis said Lyons would be charged by summons.

  On the day the newspaper story appeared, Inspector Squassoni was told by Lewis: ‘Make sure Carmichael takes out a summons and make sure he is aware this was the intended action all along.’

  A report in the Brisbane Sun carried the headline: TOP LEVEL TED – FULL AS A FOWL.

  The Attorney-General and Justice Minister Sam Doumany immedi­ately ordered an investigation. Hinze said he would have nothing to do with an inquiry into the Lyons matter. Lewis ordered a separate investi­gation into how the Lyons documents found their way to the media. Constable Cook, who had originally plucked them from the trash, was transferred to Longreach.

  Lewis recalls that the issue was blown out of all proportion: ‘I’d been to two functions and I think I got home about 11 o’clock or something, again I’d have it written up. Two o’clock in the morning I think it was I got a phone call and I’d had the two functions, I’d had one or two drinks.

  ‘It was the watchhouse, saying he [Lyons] was there, [he’d] been pinched. Little shithouse, too, of a sergeant, the police officer.

  ‘Ted Lyons must have spoken to me too, so they both spoke to me to say that he’d have to be in Sydney that morning for his … somebody sponsored him. Katies or something that sponsored some art award [the Archibald Prize], and he had to be down there to present it and he had booked on the six o’clock flight or something.

  ‘So I said to this young fellow, which was permissible, “Can you arrange for him to be released?” But they released him without charging him, which is again okay, I mean you can summons a person.

  ‘But why would I tell them to blood test him or whatever it was … to take his reading before releasing him? I would have said let him out, but they took whatever his alcohol content was, made a note of it, then released him to go and then some policewoman, she came in after that and found out that morning or the next day that they had released him.

  ‘They made a great big story of it, and of course he was summoned to appear before the court later but it appeared that I had said, “Let the bastard, let the fellow go.” And you can’t do that. I mean if they’re at the watchhouse and every bugger and his dog knows it. So they made a great song and dance about that.’

  The story quietly fizzled, but it resonated with Senior Constable Bob Campbell. He was fed up with what he perceived was rampant corruption in the force.

  On Wednesday 23 December Lewis noted in his diary: ‘… saw Const R.J. Campbell re transfer and resign. from 28.2.82.’

  Had Lewis and others discovered that he had passed on the incriminating Lyons documents to Kev Hooper?

  Campbell himself prepared a confidential 11-page statement, witnessed and signed by a Justice of the Peace, to protect himself.

 
; The next Sunday, Commissioner Lewis and Hazel were down at Hinze’s Waverley Park horse stud at Pimpama, on the Pacific Highway 30 kilometres north of Surfers Paradise, for lunch. The stud was Hinze’s crown jewel – 24.28 hectares of training tracks, stables, squash courts, pool and staff quarters. The Hinzes lived in a two-storey mansion on the property, guarded by two trained Rottweilers.

  Lewis’s diary revealed: ‘… spoke to him [Hinze] re Campbell preparing report to Chief Justice re Abuse of Office …’

  Lewis had some time off in the New Year, taking lunch at Eddie Kornhauser’s Paradise Centre in the heart of Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast. Kornhauser was a close friend of Russ Hinze, and at the time was being interviewed as a prospective applicant to build Queensland’s first legal casino on the coast.

  Lewis entered his sixth year as Commissioner unaware that soon to be retired Bob Campbell was about to tread down that well-worn, ultimately pointless, and often very deadly path of the whistleblower.

  Nationwide

  In the New Year, young ABC journalist Alan Hall got a call from one of his good contacts, Kevin Hooper, the opposition spokesman on police and prisons. Hooper had been elected to parliament in 1972; it was the same election that the great corruption fighter Col Bennett, having lost his ALP preselection for the seat of South Brisbane, ran as an independent and lost.

  Hooper, by generational fate or design, quickly took up Bennett’s mantle. Under parliamentary privilege he poked and prodded at the government and in particular successive police ministers. His prized targets, though, were Terry Lewis and Tony Murphy.

  Private secretary to Tom Burns, Malcolm McMillan, remembers the atmosphere in Parliament House when it was suspected Hooper was about to lob a grenade within the chamber.

  ‘He glowed, he was luminous,’ says McMillan. ‘He’d come into the press room clutching an envelope and say: “Boys and girls, have I got a story for you today!” ’

  Hooper was given the nickname ‘Buckets’. He had an interesting tale for Hall, who worked for the ABC television current affairs program Nationwide.

  Hooper had been in touch with a disaffected Queensland police officer who – incredibly – was happy to go on camera and deride what he saw as institutionalised corruption in the force. The officer had had a ‘gutful’, his career had suffered because of his honesty, and he wanted to unburden. The prospective whistleblower was Bob Campbell, one of the co-authors of that unsettling in-house news sheet, The Woolloongabba Worrier, that had so enraged his superiors, including the Commissioner. Campbell was due to formally resign from the force on the last day of February.

  In turn, Hall learned of Kingsley Winston Fancourt – the disaffected Licensing Branch officer who had come close to exposing Herbert and the Rat Pack in the 1970s. It was an irresistible story for the gung-ho Hall, then 23.

  Hall tracked down Fancourt in the small western Queensland town of Anakie. He telephoned and left a message at the local hotel.

  A few days later, Fancourt entered the public bar. ‘I didn’t go to the pub all that often but on this occasion I did,’ says Fancourt. ‘The barmaid gave me a message, which had been sitting there for a few days. It was from Alan Hall.

  ‘I rang him and told him I’d be willing to come down to Brisbane. He sent up a charter flight for me.’

  Fancourt flew out of Emerald for Brisbane and was put up in a hotel. In the presence of his lawyer, Dale Smith, he recorded several interviews with Hall for Nationwide. He never came in contact with or discussed any matters with Bob Campbell, who was interviewed separately. ‘There couldn’t be seen to be any collusion,’ recalls Fancourt.

  Hall was thrilled that the two former police officers were willing to go on the record for the story. ‘They’d raised questions internally [within the department] and were told to either shut up or get out,’ Hall remembers. ‘At first I went and talked to them individually. Fancourt complained about senior police taking pay-offs from criminals. And Campbell had been involved in the Ted Lyons drink-driving incident.

  ‘I eventually compiled the report that alleged widespread corruption that kept pointing towards Tony Murphy and Terry Lewis.’

  The program was due to go to air on Wednesday 3 March. As the story was being put together, Lyons was banned from driving for four months and fined $175 over his drink driving charge.

  Then on 2 March, Kev Hooper, knowing what was to be broadcast on national television the following night, rekindled the Lyons scandal and tabled two controversial documents – the bench sheet and breathalyser certificate – in parliament.

  Hooper said the so-called Lyons and Lewis conspiracy over the matter deserved an inquiry and criminal charges should be laid. When Hinze asked him what he had against Lewis, Hooper replied: ‘I’ve nothing against him personally. I just think he is a corrupt crook.’

  It was the perfect build-up to Nationwide’s explosive story.

  In the segment, Fancourt and Campbell claimed – with either breathtaking courage or naivety – that senior police were involved in the drug trade, illegal gambling and prostitution rackets, and were masterminding much of the state’s criminal activity.

  On the program, Hooper weighed in on the attack. ‘The corruption is in the highest echelon of the force and it is difficult for the honest police officer to carry out his duties.’

  Campbell added that he had been threatened by police following an internal complaint he’d made several months earlier. Fancourt went on to allege that pay-offs to police were ‘coordinated’ by what was known as ‘the Rat Pack’, which was made up of three senior detectives.

  Don Lane MP got straight on the phone to Lewis at home early the next morning. Lewis was at his desk at 7.40 a.m. ‘Phoned Hon Hinze re “Nationwide” attack on Police. Discussed matter with Snr Officers. With messrs Duffy, Atkinson, Murphy, Dwyer, Early and Hatcher to Parlt House and saw Hon Hinze and prepared Ministerial Statement. Hon Hinze phoned re D/C Duffy and a Crown Law officer to see Campbell and Fancourt and request signed statements.’

  Hinze was initially apoplectic. He called the Nationwide segment and the former officers’ allegations ‘a cock and bull story’, and Campbell and Fancourt ‘two disgruntled malcontents with a grudge against the police force’.

  He called Campbell a ‘bludger’ and a ‘professional student’. He ordered police to locate the two men and ‘wait upon them’ if they had to. He challenged the two men to come forward with signed statements about what they knew of this so-called corruption.

  What the public didn’t know was that Hinze was already in possession of Campbell’s statement, and he was about to receive Fancourt’s, quite literally, in the middle of his parliamentary condemnation of the two former officers.

  Fancourt was in Parliament House in George Street that day too, and submitted his signed statement to Hinze’s staff. In the middle of the Minister’s tirade, the document was handed to him. Hinze briefly paused, tucked it into a folder he was holding, and continued his attack.

  ‘He had the statement right there, handed to him,’ Kingsley Fancourt remembers. ‘Hinze didn’t even mention it.’

  Hinze went to town on Campbell and Fancourt. ‘I am reliably informed that Robert J. Campbell is the author of an underground newspaper known as the Woolloongabba Worrier,’ he bellowed. ‘This grubby little rag, which has seen three issues, was published anonymously and clearly expounds philosophies that were repeated in last night’s scurrilous attack on Nationwide.’

  Hinze then turned his attention to Fancourt: ‘What I would like to know is why it took Mr Fancourt approximately six years to summon the courage to come forward with his allegations. ‘As all honourable members would know, Mr Fancourt left the police force before the present Commissioner, Mr Lewis, was appointed. Whilst in the police force he was the mining warden in Anakie and used this position to obtain some of the best mining leases available.’

  ‘What a
filthy smear,’ Kev Hooper interjected.

  ‘What did you do about it?’ asked Tom Burns. ‘He did nothing, only tip the bucket over him six years later.’

  ‘As I said,’ Hinze continued, ‘he used his position as mining warden in Anakie to obtain some of the best mining leases available.’

  ‘So have some of your ministers,’ the ALP member for Nudgee, Ken Vaughan, retorted.

  In a press conference later, an enraged Hinze faced a barrage of tough questions from Alan Hall. The two men stoushed. Hinze guaranteed he would have Hall ‘out of a job’.

  Lewis then called in Tony Murphy and they discussed Campbell.

  Early the next week, Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen also phoned Lewis to discuss ‘action on Campbell and Fancourt’s allegations’.

  Predictably, Campbell, married and the father of young children, faced a now familiar counter-attack. His wife and children were threatened by men who arrived in an unmarked CIB vehicle. Campbell fled with his family to Tasmania. Fancourt returned to the gemfields of central Queensland.

  Just over a week after the Nationwide segment went to air, Lewis had a meeting with lawyer Des Sturgess about a potential defamation writ. Murphy joined Lewis in the court action. Both, in their writs, identified themselves and Glen Patrick Hallahan as members of the so-called ‘rat-pack’ referred to in the program.

  In his statement of claim, Murphy declared: ‘Among police officers in Queensland the words ‘the Rat Pack’ had since the 1960s been used to refer to and include the plaintiff, Terence Murray Lewis and one Glen Patrick Hallahan who served with them in the police force.’

  Detective Sergeant Neal Freier also sued, claiming he was an unnamed police officer in the show, and that he had been defamed. Bjelke-Petersen decided the government would financially assist Lewis’s and Murphy’s legal action.

  Hall stood his ground: ‘I talked to ABC management and I didn’t resile from any of the allegations made by Fancourt and Campbell. As a journalist there was an acceptance that some of the cops were bent. Murphy in particular was the object of many allegations. It always went back to Murphy.’