Three Crooked Kings

by Matthew Condon

  Bennett was still juggling two careers – politics and the law – and he intentionally handled only specific criminal cases – SP bookmaking charges, theft, and the like. In this way, he could be in and out of court quickly in the morning then return to his political life in the afternoon. He avoided any cases that might keep him occupied in court for days or weeks at a time.

  He was also in the unique position of appearing for police who were either appealing for promotion or against another officer’s promotion. So Bennett could be fighting against the evidence of a senior officer in court in the morning, and literally representing that same officer’s interests in the Police Appeals Court later in the day.

  It was not unusual for Bennett, waiting to go to court on a given morning, to enter into amiable discussions with some of the many police officers he knew through his busy schedule. And many of them told him stories of what was going on behind the scenes at Makerston Street.

  If you included the tales he was offered by the city’s underclass during his open-house legal aid sessions down at the Inns of Court at North Quay, and the many hundreds of letters he received each week from the public, often with titillating allegations about police and corruption (Bennett made a point of responding to each and every letter that came to his parliamentary office and law chamber), then he was receiving a substantial amount of information about Bischof and his boys.

  He had also taken on an interesting new client – a prostitute called Shirley Brifman. She had sought him out for minor matters and trusted him. Her engagement with Bennett over the next ten years would become so substantial that he would dedicate a leather briefcase solely to the work he would do on her behalf. It became known in the Bennett household and at the Inns of Court as the ‘Brifman briefcase’. She too would be a font of information for Bennett.

  But from 1960, Bennett had relied heavily – for his parliamentary attacks – on a single police informant. Ron Edington.

  Edington, since the early 1950s, had had his run-ins with Bischof. One even spilled into the public arena at a function in the late 1950s, when both men almost came to blows.

  It was the Police Department’s annual dinner, always attended by the police minister and other dignitaries. On this particular occasion it was held at the Moreton Bay Hotel in Redcliffe.

  ‘Bischof hated me because I was a friend of Col Bennett,’ Edington remembers. ‘I was the first uniformed man to defeat two detectives on promotion appeal. I won the appeal and Col looked after me on that one.

  ‘On the night of the dinner I got up to respond to one of the speeches. Bischof was half bloody full and he said: “Sit down and shut up.”

  ‘I said: “Distinguished guests, you’ve just witnessed the actions of a man who’s got the recognition of being called the commissioner of police. I would like to apologise to you gentlemen for his disgusting behaviour.”

  ‘Bischof nearly went mad.’

  As the two men passed each other near the function room piano later in the evening Bischof ‘hooked’ Edington in the stomach and said, ‘You bloody bastard.’

  ‘I hooked him in the guts with my elbow and said, “You go and get fucked”,’ Edington says. ‘I went to work the next day and I’d been transferred to uniform.’

  Edington immediately consulted with lawyers, who recommended he launch a legal action against Bischof. He planned to serve the summons himself.

  When Edington and Jim Donovan – who was passed over for police commissioner in favour of Bischof, and himself no friend of the Big Fella – were entering police headquarters days later, they were stopped by a young police officer in the corridor. The officer told them that Bischof had written a negative report on Edington and had backdated it to weeks prior to the Moreton Bay Hotel incident.

  Two days later, Edington sent a message to Bischof that he knew of the backdating and would withdraw his summons if the transfer was cancelled and he received an apology from the police commissioner. To avert an ugly court case, Bischof acceded to Edington’s demands.

  With his relationship with his boss at rock bottom, Edington actively worked with Bennett to undermine Bischof.

  ‘Ron gave Dad a lot of information and Dad pursued it,’ Bennett’s daughter Mary recalls. ‘He was around at the house all the time. He’d just drop in when he was working his shifts. I think Ron thought the force was as rotten as Dad did. Dad wanted a royal commission.’

  At 4.27 p.m. on Tuesday 29 October 1963, Bennett stood in a nearly empty parliamentary chamber during a debate on supply, and began: ‘I propose to concentrate my attention on the Police Department and the Police Force of Queensland . . .

  ‘I believe we have a large body of men in the Queensland Police Force in whom we can have only the greatest of pride; but I further believe that those men, in the carrying out of their tasks, are being frustrated, disconcerted and disillusioned, first of all, through the lack of attention by the Government and the Cabinet, and secondly, by the example that is set for them by the top echelon of the Police Force . . .’

  Bennett went on to reveal that he had concrete evidence of how various officers charged with misconduct had received different punishments within the force depending on which ‘faction’ they belonged to.

  The department’s ‘Record of Punishment of Members of the Queensland Police Force’ going back to 1957 – the dawn of Bischof’s reign – showed numerous instances of misconduct ranging from being drunk on duty to using a squad car for immoral purposes to indecently dealing with women at the Brisbane city watchhouse. The punishments ranged from reprimands to fines. Only a handful of police were dismissed from the force, two being Constables McArthur and Murray, who were involved in the death of James Michael Jorgensen, the man who died in the Mount Isa watchhouse in 1956.

  Just weeks before Bennett’s address on police corruption to state parliament, both Constable M.R. Strong and Senior Constable J. Maccheroni were fined three pounds each for engaging in ‘remunerative employment’, namely driving motor cars from Sydney without the approval of the police commissioner.

  But Bennett’s concern that Tuesday afternoon was not a few cops turning up for duty drunk, or swearing at their superiors, or earning a quid on the side. He was tackling the big picture. Bennett wanted to expose Bischof and his top-level clique of officers. He wanted to rip back the veil on what would later be dubbed the Rat Pack.

  ‘The Police Force itself is seething with discontent,’ he went on. ‘There are what might be termed camps in the Police Department, and police officers are in one camp or the other depending on the treatment that they are receiving from the Commissioner and some of his top colleagues.

  ‘Unless they are prepared to bow to the dictates of those top administrative officers, they have no chance of getting anywhere in the Force and, what is more drastic and alarming, they run the risk of getting into a heap of difficulties.’

  Bennett said that during ‘the last three or four years’ – since Bischof became police commissioner – there had been ‘more trouble’ in the force than under any other government or commissioner in Queensland history. ‘There is something wrong somewhere, and someone must take the responsibility for it.’

  Bennett went on to discuss the importance of police officers’ private lives needing to be exemplary – no doubt a direct strike at Bischof over the curious incident with Mary Margaret Fels the year before.

  Bennett further accused Bischof, and CIB Chief Inspector Norm Bauer, of being too active in politics, and, in particular, of leading a ‘barnstorming’ in support of the Liberal–Country government at the 1960 election. Bennett said of the police commissioner: ‘He is meddling in politics and endeavouring to keep the present Government in office because he knows that under its regime he can do as he pleases.’

  Bennett then prosecuted Bischof for his control over who appeared on jury lists, and strongly intimated ther
e was huge potential for corruption if jurists had to be vetted by Bischof.

  In just under sixty minutes, Bennett had ranged across numerous serious issues to do with the administration of the force. He discussed the existence of a protected cabal at the top of the force with Bischof at its centre, wide-ranging political interference by senior police and their potential corrupt infiltration of the judicial system.

  It was a crowded hour.

  But there was one paragraph – halfway through his missive – that would later receive all the attention.

  ‘I do not wish to dally too long on this subject,’ Bennett said, ‘but I should say that the Commissioner and his colleagues who frequent the National Hotel, encouraging and condoning the call-girl service that operates there, would be better occupied in preventing such activities rather than tolerating them.’

  It was classic titillating tabloid newspaper fodder. It was also an allegation that had a specific address. Although it was buckshot to Bennett’s fusillade of heavy artillery, it was the one the Nicklin government dallied over.

  Author Peter James described the impact of Bennett’s parliamentary speech as akin to ‘setting off a string of Chinese firecrackers at the Oriental New Year: fireworks and noise, billows of smoke and, when the smoke clears, a few scraps of paper blown by the breeze’.

  Members poured into the chamber after Bennett’s speech and a ferocious debate ensued. The Liberal member for Sherwood, John Herbert, said Bennett’s attacks on Bischof were the ‘outpourings of a diseased mind’. He suggested that Bennett produce evidence to support his charges or risk being branded ‘a character assassin of the lowest order’.

  The police minister, Alex Dewar, appeared caught on the hop and offered ineffectual debate. He said he had taken up the matter of the call girls with Bischof and was satisfied Bennett’s allegations were the figment of an ‘infantile imagination’.

  Days later, the Police Union urged Dewar to conduct an open inquiry into the matter. Dewar demurred.

  The following Tuesday, 5 November, Premier Nicklin – whose government just months before had been returned to power in the state elections – appealed for credible public witnesses to come forward with first-hand evidence relating to Bennett’s accusations.

  A single anonymous letter arrived in the mail at Parliament House. The author, later identified as former National Hotel employee David Young, was subsequently interviewed by Crown Law officers. There he signed statements listing specific allegations against police and the hotel.

  Young asserted that he had served Bischof food and alcohol during and after trading hours; he often served beer to Licensing Squad members after 11 p.m., as well as Detective Tony Murphy, without payment; he sometimes took calls from police on Sundays, warning of impending raids; the hotel was used by prostitutes, some of whom gave favours to police; and police supervision of the hotel was lax.

  Young’s allegations were handed to the premier for perusal.

  Bischof did not waste time. He immediately seconded Murphy and Hallahan to investigate Young. They, in turn, got in touch with Shirley Brifman. She had gone to Sydney mid-year to procure an abortion – she claimed it was easier than getting one in Brisbane – and had temporarily settled there. She decided at the last minute to have the baby.

  Brifman was in constant touch with Murphy and Hallahan during those few months in Sydney, and their contact heated up during the debate over whether to stage a royal commission. Hallahan liked to phone. Murphy, with old-school charm, used to type a letter to Brifman about once a week. In late 1963 she was living at 195 Bunnerong Road, Maroubra.

  In one letter, Murphy wrote: ‘By the way Marge [the name Brifman used when working as a prostitute, and appropriated from her sister Marge Chapple], I would like to reassure you that anything you tell me in confidence will always be kept that way by myself, and so consequently, you need have no fear of my repeating anything you tell me in your letters to anyone, for I am only too well aware of the position that it would put you in. If you are worried over anything in that regard, you can leave it to me to see everything is always covered, as I have in fact already done at all times.’

  Murphy promised to give her and husband, Sonny, a ring when he was next down in Sydney.

  Murphy also wrote asking what she knew about David Young. Brifman had been acquainted with Young when he worked briefly as a barman at the Grand Central Hotel in Queen Street, Brisbane.

  ‘In particular I was pleased to learn what you knew about this person David Young,’ Murphy wrote. ‘You may well realise my surprise to learn that he had accused me of certain misconduct. I’m still not sure what he has alleged against me.’

  He later explained to Brifman: ‘We have gotta finish David Young. We have got to get something on him.’

  On Friday 8 November, the Sunday Truth received a letter from a man called John Komlosy – the former night porter at the National Hotel. He too made allegations against Bischof, certain police and the hotel along the same lines as Young.

  On Monday 11 November, after the government’s weekly Cabinet meeting, Premier Nicklin announced a royal commission into the allegations. It was a page-one story for the Courier-Mail the following day.

  judge to inquire into charges against our police, the headline read.

  The next day it was revealed that Justice Harry Gibbs would be the commissioner of the inquiry, and the terms of reference were released.

  Down at Makerston Street there must have been a sense of relief, perhaps cause for celebration. The terms of reference were so narrow and so utterly containable that the exposure of Bischof’s corruption was not under threat.

  Author Peter James observed that the terms of reference limited investigation to a handful of police associated with a single hotel, relying on the evidence of one witness, David Young. Bennett’s controversial parliamentary speech ranged across corruption throughout the entire police force, yet the royal commission stemmed from one sentence about booze, call girls and the National Hotel.

  Colin Bennett said he was ‘disgusted’ with the terms of reference, adding that the government was ‘not game to have a full and open inquiry into police administration’.

  Lewis says the allegations that formed the basis of the royal commission were false, especially those against Bischof drinking late at night at the National.

  ‘There might have been the odd prostitute [who] got in there from time to time, but I never saw one and I didn’t know anybody who did see one and we didn’t pinch any from there that I know of. Whereas from the Grand Central we pinched quite a few . . .

  ‘And Bischof had a very unusual car. He had that as commissioner when it was sold . . . Rolly [Roberts] bought it and . . . in those days you could bloody park anywhere and it was parked in front of the National regularly.

  ‘Somehow the rumour was put around that Bischof was there at all hours of the night drinking grog and then the National got a reputation which was almost completely undeserved.’

  The royal commission was set to have a preliminary hearing on 20 November 1963, followed by Justice Gibbs and the inquiry team’s inspection of the National Hotel.

  The first regulation sitting day was scheduled for 2 December. David Young would be the first witness.

  Digging for Dirt

  Lewis might have been working for the greater good of Brisbane’s troubled teenagers in the JAB with policewoman Weier, zipping across town to high schools and private homes, meeting government officials and university academics, but an old friend came calling when the royal commission was announced.

  Tony Murphy was responsible for shoring up the police case, and that meant gathering data – incriminating or otherwise – on the two primary witnesses, Young and Komlosy. He sought Lewis’s help.

  The day after the inquiry was announced, Lewis recorded in his police diary: ‘To Brunswick S
treet, N.F. and saw Attila Kury of 8 Eva St, Deagon re: Komlosy. Saw Commissioner re T.V. show on Sunday.’

  A month later Lewis’s duties with the JAB went out the window for the day: ‘With D/S Murphy to Canberra Hotel and saw Mr Toombs re Komlosy employed there about May to July 1957. To Commonwealth offices, Adelaide St., to see Mr Killen, M.H.R., [federal member for Moreton] and saw his secretary re Komlosy. Off duty 5pm.

  ‘Then with D/S Murphy checked Prints and M.O. Sections re females mentioned by Komlosy. To St. Patricks, Valley and saw Fr. Miklos re Komlosy. To Carlton Hotel and saw Mr Shapley and then to Lennons Hotel and saw Mr J. Walker re: Komlosy. To Office and sent messages to Sydney and Tasmania. Checked criminal files and histories of females. Off 10pm.’

  The next morning he had a meeting with Bischof and spent much of that day with Murphy, digging into Komlosy’s past.

  Hallahan also got in on the act.

  Witness David Young lived in a low-set Queenslander at 31 Beck Street, Rosalie, in the city’s inner west, in the shadow of the nearby Marist College.

  On the night of 19 November, Young received an anonymous phone call at his home. The caller told Young that police had made a thorough check of his background and outlined the allegations about his past that would be aired in public if he gave evidence to the inquiry. He added that police were waiting for him ‘with open arms’.

  Young suspected the caller was a police officer intimately acquainted with the royal commission, but had no proof. Later, on hearing Hallahan give evidence at the inquiry, Young found the identity of his mystery caller. It was Hallahan, with his deep, slow, dulcet tones.

  Komlosy was also intimidated, and received a death threat letter, postmarked Cowra in New South Wales. ‘Keep off the police or we will get [you] as they do in Hungary. If you value your life, say no more. Don’t show this to anyone. It will not pay.’

  Young and Komlosy were about to discover what it meant to cross Bischof and his trusted boys.