Little Fish Are Sweet

by Matthew Condon

  Many years ago, I was talking to a policeman who was moonlighting as a Private Investigator on some insurance fraud matters for an insurance company for whom I was acting. He told me that he had interviewed the builder who constructed Terry Lewis’s Paddington mansion [at 12 Garfield Drive] and that builder told him that Mrs Lewis paid him in cash out of the boot of her car. He said the boot was filled with wads of cash. The builder was concerned he hadn’t declared these cash payments to the ATO. Just thought you’d like to know.

  And then an email:

  I was a shopkeeper at the time of the Fitzgerald Inquiry and one of my customers was a builder working on the Lewis mansion at Bardon at the time. Unsolicited, he said to me one morning that ‘Lewis is guilty alright’. He went on to say that he and all other contractors at the site were paid in lumps of cash. No receipts were issued or sought.

  One elderly woman approached me at a book event and declared that I had ‘ruined’ her brother’s life.

  ‘How have I done that?’ I asked, concerned.

  ‘You published in the book one of the houses that Terry Lewis once lived in with his wife Hazel, in Holland Park.’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘You wrote the street number. The exact address.’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘My brother lives in that house now, and he has people coming every day stopping out the front and taking pictures.’

  ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ I said.

  ‘Could you take the number out of the book?’ she implored.

  I was contacted by a man who had known Lewis in his late teens and early twenties who said that he always admired Lewis’s immaculately clean and ‘shiny’ Harley-Davidson that he rode around the streets of Hawthorne in the late 1940s.

  Two separate business people came up to me at different book events and told me an identical anecdote about Hazel Lewis. When Lewis was in prison from 1991 to 1998, Lewis’s wife had been a regular customer of theirs. Her visits were always memorable, they said, because when Mrs Lewis came to pay for items she wished to purchase, she did so with ‘mouldy fifty and twenty dollar notes’.

  Another approached me at a talk I was doing at a bookshop in Sydney. They offered confidential information on a senior trade union official in Brisbane during the 1960s and 70s. The official, they claimed, lived in Alderley and had a ‘state-wide network of paedophile contacts’ throughout the unions and ‘various professions: dentists, lawyers, cops etc. and across political boundaries’.

  He also had information about illegal casinos:

  The key to understanding Queensland’s illegal gambling clubs is that they were never just about gambling. The pay-offs to police meant that they [the gambling clubs] were a network of places where almost any illegal activity could occur or deviant taste could be indulged. This involved drug dealing and various specific types of prostitution.

  The one near Brisbane Town Hall in Burnett Lane specialised in child prostitution. Customers would indicate their preference and an employee would walk to the end of the lane and beckon to underage kids who would be made to wait in King George Square so there was never a child on the premises. Once summoned, the child would go to a hotel with a customer.

  I was contacted by dozens of the children of police officers whose careers were destroyed by corruption in the force. I heard from retired senior public servants with an observation to share, former ministerial press secretaries, nightclub bouncers and bodyguards, convicted murderers, retired judges, social workers, the one-time cellmates of notorious criminals, the neighbours of well-known gangsters, the neighbours of Frank Bischof in Barkala Street in the 1970s, hotel switchboard operators and dozens and dozens of retired police themselves.

  A prisoner in a Brisbane gaol sent me a letter. He said he was told that I had written about his deceased parents in Three Crooked Kings. As this was the case, he wanted to know – would he be getting any royalties from the book?

  A few months after Three Crooked Kings came out I arranged to see Lewis at his new home in Glengarry Road, Keperra, north-west of the CBD. He was anxious to talk. He’d driven to my house in the inner-city and left in my letterbox a Post-it note attached to a Liberal National Party promotional leaflet. It read: ‘Please ring.’

  Lewis came to the door looking old, and was rugged up in a chequered coat. The ‘new’ house was a virtual facsimile of the Stafford house, yet everything seemed shrunk. He had a selection of ornaments in a cabinet, a television and a couple of lounge chairs. From the lounge room you could see the study where he had a number of large unpacked boxes.

  Lewis was immediately on the offensive with his usual list of points he wanted to discuss. It seemed clear that he wasn’t thrilled about the content of the first book. He wondered if I’d still be talking to him at the end of our conversation.

  He cited opinions from two anonymous lawyers he said were at the launch of Three Crooked Kings at the State Library of Queensland and how they’d offered to help him ‘without a fee’. He mentioned a psychologist at the University of Queensland who told him he may be being set up again.

  He agreed that, by and large, Three Crooked Kings depicted events and ‘how it happened’. However he wanted a few errors corrected. He denied he was ‘close’ to corrupt Sydney copper Fred Krahe. He talked at length about a recent reunion of former police colleagues – Peter Le Gros, John Meskell, Neal Freier, Graham Leadbetter, Greg Early and others – on the Gold Coast and their discussion of the book.

  He brought up the issue of money. Lewis wanted to know, come royalty time, if I would pay all the tax on the royalties. With the money left over, would I hand over half of what is left to his children? ‘Once you’ve paid the tax you can do whatever you like with the money,’ he said, intimating that the Proceeds of Crime legislation could not impinge on that.

  He said his lawyer friends would be able to help him ensure that he ‘saw’ the progress of the second volume. He also said he thought the second book should only be about his time as Police Commissioner, the Fitzgerald Inquiry and his trial. Forget about his time in prison and afterwards, he said.

  Lewis then suggested that perhaps his lawyer friends could find a ‘proper’ publisher for the next book. He said he’d worked his tail off for over three years on the book and been delivered SFA – Sweet Fuck All.

  ‘We need to get back to work,’ he told me.

  Lewis stressed he wanted regular perusal of the next manuscript for corrections and matters of accuracy. ‘The second book nobody will be able to dispute,’ he said. ‘It will all be verified by documentation.’

  As I headed out the door he motioned to speak to me again. ‘Have you taped everyone you have interviewed?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘The one thing I need is to clear my name,’ he said, and closed the door.

  The Wild Life of Dorothy Edith Knight

  The morning of Thursday 30 December 1971 was one of the defining moments of the history of police corruption in Queensland. At about 9.25 a.m. on that morning, a casually dressed Glendon Patrick Hallahan, 39, approached a woman who was sitting on a park bench by the river in New Farm Park, and sat down beside her. They exchanged some small-talk before the woman handed Hallahan, one of the state’s most revered, and feared, detectives, $60 in cash – two 20s and two 10s – which he tucked into his top pocket. As Hallahan rose and started walking back to his car, he was approached by senior police investigator Norm Gulbransen, one of Police Commissioner Ray Whitrod’s most trusted allies.

  For months Gulbransen and Whitrod’s crack Crime Intelligence Unit (CIU) had been monitoring Hallahan in preparation for a classic sting. On that hot December morning, they had caught Hallahan receiving protection money from a prostitute, and that prostitute was Dorothy Edith Knight.

  Hallahan was subsequently charged, suspended from the force and committed for trial. In the end, the case against him colla
psed, with Judge Eddie Broad ruling certain evidence against Hallahan inadmissible. Hallahan was reinstated to the force, but immediately resigned. While the case had failed, Hallahan, one of the vital members of the Rat Pack, was no longer a Queensland police officer. It was Dorothy Edith Knight, with her courage, who had triggered that seismic shift.

  As I was researching Jacks and Jokers, I learned that Knight was still alive and enjoying her later years in a country town in south-east Queensland. I desperately wanted to talk to her and find out about that momentous day. But after all this time, would she want to relive that moment in her life?

  The incident with Hallahan had propelled Knight from the world of prostitution, and for years she lived in fear of reprisals. She had, after all, tried to finger a member of the notorious Rat Pack at a time when the troika was under fire. Terry Lewis was clinging to his job as head of the Juvenile Aid Bureau and Tony Murphy had been charged with perjury at the National Hotel inquiry, and was set to face trial in 1972.

  I first started to communicate with Knight through a police source, who would relay messages between us. At one point he emailed and said that while Knight had no objection to speaking to me she didn’t want to ‘get heavily involved’.

  We eventually progressed to telephone conversations and Knight indicated that she was unsure about going on the record. She was enjoying her retirement. It was a long time ago.

  I would learn later she had started reading Three Crooked Kings, which briefly covered Hallahan’s arrest in New Farm Park, and then put the book down. ‘I didn’t want to read any more,’ she would tell me. ‘I didn’t want to go back there.’

  When Knight finally agreed to be interviewed I was at Brisbane’s annual royal exhibition with my children. When I answered the call she said, ‘I mean it this time. I’m not changing my mind, I have to do it.’

  Some months later we finally arranged a meeting at her home, several hours drive from Brisbane. I took former Licensing Branch officer and whistleblower, Nigel Powell, with me. In the car we shared stories of Knight’s era and what she might tell us. But there were so many questions.

  What really went on inside the National Hotel during the 1960s and into the 70s, when Dorothy worked out of there as a prostitute? What was Hallahan like? How did she come to be beholden to him as a working girl? Who were the criminals she consorted with? How did the whole corrupt system with police work? Did she ever meet Frank Bischof, notorious late-night drinker at the National? What was Murphy like? Did she ever have any contact with Terry Lewis? How did the whole National Hotel inquiry fail, if she was the living embodiment of the corruption and debauchery that was going on in that establishment?

  We finally pulled into Knight’s driveway, her house set on a hill with magnificent views over rolling countryside. She was instantly welcoming, and her husband had prepared a splendid roast luncheon.

  Knight looked fantastic for her age – she was now in her seventies – and had an exceedingly bubbly personality. Small and blonde, she showed us photographs of herself during the period we were about to discuss; she was vivacious. But the most outstanding thing about her was a quality that, it was said, made detectives either excellent or very dangerous. Dorothy Edith Knight had a phenomenal memory.

  As we settled out on the back patio that looked onto a lovingly cared for garden, she slowly began to share her story with me.

  Born in Melbourne, Dorothy was young when she married a man called John Knight. They moved around a lot – Brisbane, Townsville, Lismore, Sydney – and eventually the marriage soured. Dorothy then started passing bad cheques. ‘I travelled Australia and I passed cheques in all the big places – Myers – I had bank books. I worked out how to get the money – put money into a bank book.

  I used to use a Bic lighter as the stamp, and I’d keep a cab waiting and I’d fly from everywhere. I went everywhere, everywhere.’

  She ended up getting caught in Townsville in Far North Queensland, and met a man who would change her life. ‘Anyway, I’m locked up and this tall, good-looking guy arrives to take me back to Brisbane,’ Dorothy remembered. ‘And it’s Glen Hallahan. That’s how I met him. That was in the 1960s. In those days – I shouldn’t be proud of this – I used to buy the best clothes because

  I was passing the cheques. And here I am, done up to the nines when he picked me up from the cell. Good God, look, he was charming. He was absolutely charming.

  ‘He was a tall man; very softly spoken. He had a very good education, I think, came from a pretty good family Glen Hallahan, much better than [Tony] Murphy. But he kept me away from Murphy, I didn’t have anything much to do with Murphy at all.’

  Hallahan took Knight back to Brisbane where she faced outstanding charges in almost every state across Australia. ‘When we arrived in Brisbane I was taken into custody from somebody at the CIB in Woolloongabba. Anyway, I go to court and I can’t tell you who the judge was because I had no idea.

  ‘Anyway gaol … the judge said … look, I feel very sorry for you … but … you’ve really passed a lot of money here. He started to read out the charges and I wasn’t sure what concurrent meant and I thought, I’m going to be there [in gaol] for life. And in actual fact I got nine months.’

  Knight recalled that Hallahan used to come and visit her in Boggo Road Gaol. ‘He came to warn me that he was pretty sure I was going to be taken to Melbourne, right? Extradited, the day I got out of gaol in Brisbane. So he once again said to me if you’re going to Melbourne … I’m going to take you. So he did. Anyway he came and picked me up and took me to Melbourne.’

  Knight was expecting two to three years gaol in Victoria, and copped 12 months. She was incarcerated in the Fairlea Women’s Prison in Fairfield and six weeks into her sentence was told she could appeal, which she did. To her surprise, she was released on a bond that same day.

  ‘I was on a bond and I had to go and live with my mother and father, right? Which I hated. The bond was for five years and I wanted to come back to Queensland,’ she said. ‘In the meantime I met a fellow … in Melbourne and he’d been working out of Western Australia on an oil rig. And he said to me, “I’ll give you a lift back up to Queensland if you’d like.” And I said, “Right, okay.” So that was it and I came up, I came back up here with him.’

  She wasn’t sure about her bond conditions and what she should do in Queensland, so she rang Glen Hallahan. ‘I fancied him then, I have to be honest,’ Dorothy recalled. ‘I rang him up and I told him [where I was]. He said, “Oh God, you’re lucky to get out.” He said, “Well what are you going to do?” And I said, “Oh, I don’t know, I’ll get a job of some sort.”

  ‘See I had never done that other thing [prostitution] before, ever.’

  She settled with a new partner, a qualified baker, and the pair lived in Butterfield Street, Herston. Her relationship was on shaky ground, and she couldn’t remember how or why she went on the game.

  ‘For the life of me I cannot work out in my head how did this start,’ she said. ‘Was I pushed? No. Did Hallahan push me? Not sure about that … well I’m not … I think I just went a couple of nights to the National Hotel. Anyway, I ran into this woman. She was a Greek person. I was sitting at the bar, at Warren’s Bar, and through the night she came over and spoke to me and she said, “Oh, are you going to be working here?” And I said, “Oh, I’m not sure.”

  ‘I was stupid, do you know what I mean? Because she was – all her hair was teased up and whatever, we all did in those days – she was trying to find out what I was all about because that was her territory, you see? And they don’t like you getting in on their territory.’

  Dorothy said she absolutely adored the National Hotel.

  ‘Oh, it was fabulous, I loved the National, I loved it,’ she recalled. ‘The steak house was fabulous. Warren’s Bar was the place to go and he was a classic. I loved him, he was beautiful. He had the tight pants on and the glittery … you know �
� and the eye shadow and could he make a cocktail. His brother was the … if you wanted to book a room his brother was the porter, would you call them the porter?

  ‘Like in the bar itself, I always thought I was well dressed, well I was well dressed. My hair was very, very long then and it was done up …’

  She said she was naïve about the approach from the Greek woman, but remembered Hallahan asking her what she was going to do with her life when they were on the plane coming down from Townsville. She now believed that Hallahan was ‘moulding’ her for a career in prostitution. It was 1967.

  ‘So I started working … from the National, and I used to get rooms at the National or go round to an old bird, I often wonder what happened to her, Mavis. Mavis with the green door. She had a boarding house up in Spring Hill. So all through this, Glen said to me, “We’ve got to get you out of here, I’ve got a good friend who is running a good establishment.”

  ‘He suggested to me that, you know, that you’ve got to pay a certain amount of money to be able to work, and it wasn’t much in those days. But I guess a 20 or a 30 or whatever it was, it was a fair bit of money, wasn’t it? I mean you crack a 50 or something now or a 100 dollar bill you haven’t got much change. But, yeah.’

  Hallahan then introduced Knight to Lily Ryan, another prostitute he took protection payments from. Ryan was a close friend of Shirley Brifman. Knight would hear a lot about the then famous Sydney vice queen who had started her career in Cairns before moving down to Brisbane in the late 1950s and coming into contact with Hallahan and Murphy.

  ‘I had to go up there [to Lily’s place in Spring Hill] and oh … I feel embarrassed saying this … I always remember this person, he was very nice actually, he knew I was bloody nervous and he had to try, to see if I was alright, that’s sort of the bottom line,’ Knight remembered.

  ‘I can still see Lily Ryan … God she was a nice person. She had the most beautiful long red hair. She died of cancer. And when she knew she had cancer she died within weeks. Lily was an exceptionally nice person, she really, really was … I became very good friends with Lily and I’m sorry I went to see her at Mount Olivet in the days that she was dying because I wanted to remember her as she was. I didn’t recognise her at that hospital … she’d lost all her hair …’