Jacks and Jokers

by Matthew Condon

  ‘He had a pretty smicko unit down on the Botanical Gardens and he invited three of these guys back for drinks, along with Moore,’ says a friend of Moore’s. ‘During the course of the 45 minutes they were there, everybody was always fascinated with police and the police uniform, and so on that occasion one of the young guys tried on Moore’s police uniform. Moore put on his SEQEB uniform. And Breslin took a photo.’

  It all seemed fairly harmless, but by now word was beginning to circulate within police headquarters that Moore was mixing with characters like Hurrey and a man called Paul Breslin, a former private investigator and freelance journalist who also described himself as a ‘businessman’.

  Around this time, Moore was ordered to see Deputy Commissioner Syd Atkinson in his office. ‘He wanted to talk to Moore about associ­ating with Paul Breslin,’ a source said. ‘Paul Breslin had started to become noticeable. He was a member of the Police Club pretending to be this and that. Syd Atkinson gave Moore a verbal warning about associating with him.’

  Moore also started to distance himself from Hurrey. He was sick of the scene, and the lies. Moore had a premonition – he imagined seeing one of those old metal stands that held the posters for that day’s Daily Telegraph or Courier-Mail, with his name adversely mentioned in the headline.

  About this time Commissioner Lewis was also quietly informed that Dave Moore may have been a homosexual and was mixing with some undesirable characters.

  ‘Every bugger liked him,’ recalls Lewis. ‘And then eventually it did come up to say that, oh, he was suspect. I think David Jefferies [of the Juvenile Aid Bureau and a close friend to Lewis] might have been one of the fellows involved in looking at him.

  ‘I said, “Look, go and find out … check, is he married and that?” Geez, he’s married with four children. I thought it’s just some bastard jealous because he’s on TV … I found it hard to believe. I didn’t pick him. I wouldn’t have picked him.’

  A Telegram from Tony Murphy

  Meanwhile, Jim Slade was working diligently undercover for Tony Murphy in Far North Queensland. He was scoping Cape Tribulation around this time with other undercover officers including Stacey Kirmos. It was dangerous work. Slade and his colleagues were starting to infiltrate drug-dealing circles.

  ‘Stacey was with this group who were dealing drugs, quite heavy,’ recalls Slade. ‘One of them was an ex-SAS guy and we were quite worried about that.’

  According to Slade, the operation was going well until he learned something that shocked him to the core. It was, to Slade, the ultimate breach of trust. ‘I learned later that a telegram [was] sent by Tony Murphy to this group and they picked it up at the Bloomfield River post office [not far from Cedar Bay]. The telegram told them that Stacey was in there, and the whole thing turned to shit. They took Stacey hostage.

  ‘Someone might have walked back that night from Cape Tribulation to the ferry and we were able to get assistance and get Stacey out. That would have been the first time in my career I had heard Tony getting involved in anything.’

  This event coincided with Justice Williams’ Royal Commission which was attempting to establish, among other things, whether or not the Federal Narcotics Bureau was worthwhile.

  Also, the National Crime Authority had been pushing for a charter in Queensland and Murphy and Lewis resisted it, says Slade.

  ‘Queensland was the only state in Australia where nothing was happening in relation to external agencies.’

  The telegram incident made Slade look at his hero Murphy in a different way. Murphy had taught Slade everything he knew.

  It did confirm one thing to Jim Slade. You never knew who you could trust.

  Tribunal

  When the Police Complaints Tribunal Bill was passed through parliament the hunt was on for a respected member of the judiciary to head it – a contentious post by anybody’s reckoning.

  Whoever got the nod was already going to be behind the eight-ball. The tribunal’s charter, enshrined in legislation, stipulated that any investigative work would be carried out by the police department’s Internal Investigation Unit.

  The catch-22 was that back in the first few weeks of Commissioner Lewis’s administration, in early 1977, he and Tony Murphy had dismantled Whitrod’s crack Crime Intelligence Unit and replaced it with the Internal Investigations Unit (IIU). On top of that, Lewis then came to an agreement with the Police Union – the IIU could not use police to investigate other police. On paper, the tribunal, therefore, was already dead in the water before it put up its shingle.

  Nevertheless, someone had to run it.

  In April 1982, Judge William Joseph Carter was on the court circuit in Bundaberg and was taking breakfast in his motel room. Carter, the son of a barber and hotel keeper, was born in Goondiwindi and schooled in Toowoomba before studying commerce and dentistry at the University of Queensland. These studies were put on hold after he entered the Banyo Catholic seminary for three years. Carter returned to study law at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, graduating in 1959.

  He was admitted as a barrister of the Supreme Court of Queensland on 16 December 1959, and took silk in late 1978. He was appointed as a judge of the District Court of Queensland on 4 February 1980. Carter was smart, likeable, honest, and didn’t mind a punt on the horses.

  He was finishing up breakfast that day in his motel room when the telephone rang. ‘Is that Judge Carter?’ the caller asked. ‘This is Joh Bjelke-Petersen speaking.’

  Carter thought it was a practical joke. He had a good friend who was a superb mimic, and responded accordingly. ‘Don’t give me that bullshit,’ he said. ‘I’m on circuit. You don’t have any respect for me at all!’

  The voice responded: ‘Judge Carter?’ It actually was the Premier.

  Carter recalls: ‘He rang me and said – it was inappropriate that he did ring me – he wanted me to chair the Police Complaints Tribunal. I told him I couldn’t answer that. It was up to the chairman of the court [Bill Grant-Taylor] to decide. I didn’t want to be talking one on one to the Premier, or any other politicians for that matter.’

  Carter ultimately accepted the role, working with fellow members, magistrate Phillip Rodgers and Police Union president Col Chant. The tribunal met for the first time on 7 May 1982.

  Carter says the tribunal was under media scrutiny from the outset. ‘We were seen in some quarters as just a lapdog,’ Carter remembers. ‘I wanted to ensure that wasn’t the case.

  ‘Bjelke-Petersen had always said to the Police Union – look, this body, the new Police Complaints Tribunal, it will be investigative but it won’t be supported by any other investigators other than existing police. That was all a deal.’

  The first job of the tribunal was to investigate the allegations of former police officers Bob Campbell and Kingsley Fancourt that had been aired on the ABC’s Nationwide television program and induced the furore that had led to the establishment of the tribunal in the first place.

  Neither Campbell nor Fancourt wanted to cooperate with the tribunal. ‘They tried to get Campbell and Fancourt to come in and deal with us,’ Carter remembers. ‘They wouldn’t. I didn’t talk to them personally. They suspected us of being in league with Lewis and Bjelke-Petersen. It was a bloody challenging job in that context.’

  Lewis and his sidekick, Syd ‘Sippy’ Atkinson as he was known in legal circles, dropped in on Carter from time to time. The tribunal had a room in the Executive Building in George Street, away from the city’s law courts.

  ‘I was always worried about that and didn’t tell them too much,’ says Carter. ‘I had my guard up.’

  Before Yet Another Royal Commission

  Assistant Commissioner Tony Murphy surely would have had his guest appearance at the Williams Royal Commision of Inquiry into Drugs the year before on his mind when he stepped up to give evidence before the Stewart royal commission during the first week of July in 1
982.

  This time, even the resilient Murphy might have momentarily hesitated. Stewart’s commission was, after all, looking into the murder of Mr Asia drug couriers Doug and Isabel Wilson in 1979, and the circumstances surrounding their brutal deaths.

  Without doubt, he would have refreshed his knowledge and perused the myriad of official memorandums he had been asked to provide to Commissioner Lewis about the story he had leaked to journalist Brian Bolton. The article suggested that secret taped interviews made by police had helped outline Terry Clark’s massive international drug-smuggling ring. Who had spoken to police?

  Clark deduced it was the Wilsons. They were dead three weeks after the publication of Bolton’s article.

  Before Justice Stewart, Murphy trotted out the same line he had presented to Lewis in 1979. He said he hoped the newspaper story about the murders might bring information forward from people on the fringes of the drug ring.

  Stewart was scathing of Murphy and his actions. ‘How is it that you hoped to elicit information from drug offenders by having an article published which indicated clearly what might happen if they should come forward?’ Stewart asked, perplexed.

  Murphy replied: ‘I believed that those people on the fringe could become sufficiently concerned for their safety. I hoped to bring the worms out of the woodwork.’

  Justice Stewart reasoned that the article could have led Clark and his gang to believe that police knew more than what they did. It was an easy step for the drug syndicate principals to believe that someone had informed on them.

  ‘There was an investigation going on in New South Wales,’ Justice Stewart went on. ‘When the misinformation turned up, it could have deluded them into believing that the police were ready to pounce on them. It seems to me to be counter-productive.’

  Murphy retorted: ‘It was to protect the Wilsons.’

  Later, Brian Bolton was called to give evidence. Justice Stewart asked him about Murphy leaking him the story that led to the death of the Wilsons. ‘What was Murphy’s reason?’

  ‘In order to get publicity and the possible identification of the murder victim [Harry ‘Pommie’ Lewis] at Port Macquarie,’ Bolton answered.

  The journalist went on to inform the commissioner that he had subsequently written many accurate stories about the Mr Asia syndicate, including that Clark was carrying $50 million in cash when he was arrested in England for the murder of associate Christopher Johnstone.

  ‘That is a load of twaddle,’ Justice Stewart said.

  Lewis recalled of Bolton: ‘He was a good little bloke if you could ever find him sober, I don’t know if he ever was. But he’s the one I told you rang me once in the middle of the night from a cathouse in the Valley somewhere or massage parlour. Full of soup of course and probably showing off to the girls that he could … but I had words with him the next day. No, Brian was, he wasn’t a nasty little bugger, in fact he was the one I think that Murphy trusted to write that bloody story about … that resulted in the death of those two people.’

  Just as Glen Patrick Hallahan had his journalist allies in the 1960s, so too did Lewis and Murphy into the 1970s and 1980s.

  The member for Archerfield, Kev Hooper, called for Murphy to resign the day after Bolton gave his evidence, saying he was unfit to hold such a senior position in the Queensland Police Force.

  It had been a tough year even for someone like Murphy. There had been the storm over the Nationwide television program and the alle­gations of police corruption from former police officers, Bob Campbell and Kingsley Fancourt.

  Now Murphy had been criticised in a major royal commission that was being followed by the nation. The assaults on his reputation were starting to take their toll.

  The Hound Bows Out

  Although he was in charge of the Sunshine Coast police region, Basil ‘The Hound’ Hicks, at 55, had had enough. He had been transferred to Rockhampton after the various pro-Whitrod purges by Lewis and Murphy in the late 1970s. On his arrival there, the regional super­intendent informed him he’d been contacted by Commissioner Lewis who had branded Hicks a ‘troublemaker’.

  Even Police Minister Russ Hinze had talked with Hicks and warned him that Lewis would not have him working back in Brisbane. Hicks went back to Nambour to see out his career, not far from the home of farmer Glen Patrick Hallahan.

  Hicks, who did not shy away from a verbal stoush, had another blow-up with Lewis in December 1981. It was over. (Lewis’s diary confirmed Hicks’ visit to his office the year before. Lewis claimed Hicks unleashed a tirade, saying he had lost faith in the police administration. ‘Hates A/C A. Murphy and does not trust him,’ Lewis recorded in his diary. ‘Has spoken to “Joh” and “Llew” on many occasions. Has tapes of many of his converstaions. Union do not want him and they influence me, as does Murphy. Handed me application to retire from 29.6.82.’)

  Hicks did indeed resign in late June. It had been an extraordinarily tumultuous career, his honesty ruffling the feathers of Hallahan in the late 1960s, the great quest for truth and transparency under the visionary Ray Whitrod, then the return to dark days for Hicks under Commissioner Lewis.

  He had suffered meticulous and elaborate plans to bring him down personally and professionally, involving gossip, allegations of sexual impropriety with a prostitute and allegations he was crooked and protected SP bookmakers.

  The exact day of his departure did not rate a mention in Commissioner Lewis’s diary.

  A House on the Hill

  Near the end of July, Constable Nigel Powell of the Licensing Branch was told to go home and pack a bag. There was a job on and he’d be heading outside of Brisbane.

  At his Jindalee house, Powell was telephoned again by the office. Pack a bigger bag, they said. You might be away for a while.

  ‘They never used to tell us much, but we knew that Nev Ross and Harry Burgess were away. They were somewhere undercover in North Queensland.

  ‘We were all laughing and joking at the idea of Harry Burgess undercover. He was hopeless undercover. We worked out that we were going to Cairns and that it had something to do with the Bellinos.’

  It was Saturday 24 July. The team met at the airport and boarded the police plane. ‘In the police plane, as you got up the stairs, was a seat facing the door,’ remembers Powell. ‘It was actually two seats, but the arm rest had been taken out so it became one seat. That was reserved for the Police Minister, Russ Hinze.’

  As the plane took off it started heading south. The younger officers on board were confused. The plane was actually flying first to the Gold Coast to pick up the boss, Syd Atkinson.

  ‘He got on board and as we were taxiing on the runway it was like he was going to explode,’ says Powell.

  ‘So, do you know where you’re going?’ demanded Atkinson of the team. ‘Has anybody told anybody where you’re going?

  ‘There’s a game up there [in Cairns]. It’s run by guys from Brisbane. We’re going to bust some tables.’

  Powell wondered about the raging Atkinson and the plan. He didn’t think it was good. He didn’t think that was the way the Licensing Branch did things. It was too aggressive.

  The police plane arrived in Cairns and a meeting was held at the airport. Present was a local superintendent they called ‘One Ball’ McCall, on account of his peculiarly high voice, as well as Nev Ross and Harry Burgess. The two Licensing Branch officers told the team they’d been in the illegal casino they were about to raid – it was in a building called Traveltown on Lake Street, in the Cairns CBD – and they’d seen the layout. To Powell, the whole operation was a disaster in the making.

  Atkinson again ‘went mental’ and laid down the law about smashing this illegal game.

  ‘We got there with a warrant,’ Powell recalls. ‘It was upstairs in a shopping centre. They had a roulette wheel in there and some tables. We pinched everybody. There were people from Brisbane that we knew in t
here. Allan Holloway who ran the World by Night club for the Bellinos in Brisbane. Geoff Crocker and his wife Julie.’

  Crocker and Holloway had in fact set up the casino as a sort of joint venture and the first initiative in what they’d hoped would become a financially rewarding collaboration. Holloway came up with the idea of moving out of Brisbane and expanding in Queensland’s regional centres. Crocker had always wanted to go to Cairns.

  Crocker and his wife rented, then bought a house in Cairns, and set up the Traveltown casino. ‘We had a carpenter in there working for us and I decided that Cairns was where I wanted to be and where I was going to stay, so I got the escort agency going and it never went real good but it was alright,’ remembered Crocker.

  Holloway contacted Vic Conte in Brisbane about the gambling equipment for the illegal game.

  Crocker said: ‘Holloway come back to Brisbane and seen Vic Conte and arranged for us to buy gear … cards, chips, cloths, all that sort of thing. A couple of days later it arrived up there on air freight and we picked it up. I think Vic even lent us some dealers. We opened up Traveltown and it took a little while but it started going very good.’

  A few months later they noticed large numbers of young men trying to get into the casino to play and they grew suspicious. Were they undercover cops? They scaled back the business.

  They’d spent $50,000 refurbishing it. Clients could enjoy blackjack, Manila, ‘Unders and Overs’, baccarat and ‘Crown and Anchor’.

  What they’d found, eventually, was that the Cairns locals treated it like a nightclub and just preferred to sit around and drink and socialise. The joint was losing money hand over fist courtesy of the complimentary liquor consumption. Importantly, they weren’t paying police protection to run the game.