Three Crooked Kings

by Matthew Condon

  He recalls: ‘It was obvious what Glen was up to. Tony covered his tracks better. As for Terry, when he got into the JAB, to all outward appearances he was pure – saving children’s souls.’

  Murphy, meanwhile, was on his own new trajectory. He left Consorting in 1966.

  ‘Tony had been trying very, very hard to get into the Licensing Branch,’ Brifman remembered. ‘When he got in . . . he said to me, “Shirley, I’m sitting in the place where I’ve wanted to be for years. The place where I can make money.”’

  On his first day in the new job, he was approached by Jack Herbert, now a virtual veteran of Licensing and the supreme organiser of the Joke.

  Herbert claimed that he’d learned from a fellow officer that Lewis and Murphy had been paying a corrupt Licensing Branch detective to protect a baccarat game in South Brisbane run by entrepreneur, and their friend, Tony Robinson Senior.

  Herbert recollected in his memoir: ‘We went around to the police canteen and we had a meal. I told Tony Murphy there was a Joke on in the office and would he like to be included. I had money there to give him straightaway. I recall his exact words when I said, “Do you want the money?” He said to me, “Watch your arm.”’

  Lewis recalls: ‘I could never imagine why Murphy went into the Licensing Branch.

  ‘I suppose if you look at it sensibly, Murphy was a detective sergeant first class, and if [the Joke] didn’t have Murphy in the caper, and Murphy being a hard worker, it would have been impossible.

  ‘I can’t say Murphy was a crook. But it mightn’t have been only Jack Herbert who told me lies. Murphy might have told them too.’

  Herbert said that within weeks Murphy approached him and suggested Terry Lewis be included in the Joke. Despite running the JAB and being of little use to Herbert and Co., there was Lewis’s friendship with Bischof to consider.

  Herbert remembered meeting Lewis socially a few times after this, in company with Tony Murphy: ‘I recall the conversation getting around to payments of money . . . and Terry Lewis saying to me – he thanked me on a number of occasions and he said, “Little fish are sweet” . . . He would just thank me and say, “Little fish are sweet”.’

  Bombs and Brothels

  Hallahan’s informant, the well-known Brisbane tattooist Billy Phillips, lived in a dingy, rundown Queenslander on a steep ridge at 29 Earl Street, Petrie Terrace, with his de facto wife, Tracey, three little children, and any number of friends and associates who happened to drift by.

  By the late 1960s the imposing, bearded Phillips was doing it tough. He had Tracey on the game, and was dabbling in the sale of illegal firearms.

  Just a hundred metres away to the east from his dilapidated home stood the block of flats in St James Street where Detective Hallahan lived. (His private phone number was 25051.) They were, quite literally, neighbours.

  ‘You’ve got to understand,’ says bouncer John Ryan, a former friend of Phillips and Tracey, ‘that Hallahan was just as much a gangster as he was a cop. These guys lived near each other, they worked together, they used each other. That’s the way it was back then.’

  Phillips was running his tattoo business out of the Earl Street house. He had a lengthy criminal record, primarily for assault, and was struggling financially when he was Hallahan’s informant.

  Still, he had gained a reputation for being able to procure handguns and shotguns, and was the first port of call for interstate criminals looking for a weapon: ‘I know Hallahan dropped off a few police issue .38s to Billy’s place,’ Ryan claims. He was also a competent fence, often receiving stolen goods – from both local thieves and crooked police – in exchange for tattoos or money.

  ‘He was a brilliant artist,’ recalls Ryan, who was first tattooed by Phillips in the 1950s. ‘He could look at something and freehand draw it. He became the best known tattooist in the southern hemisphere, but a lot of his clients were dancers and prostitutes. They’d pay him with sex some of the time.’

  And, like Hallahan, he had an insatiable passion for cash.

  ‘He was going to own houses,’ Ryan says, ‘and rent them out. Hallahan was also mad for money. I’d bump into Hallahan over at Billy’s house and all they ever talked about was money, big money.’

  According to Ryan, Phillips started mixing with ‘some very heavy characters’ around 1966 and ’67. At the same time he was feeding information to his neighbour Hallahan. Sometimes Billy sent a girl over to Hallahan’s flat. Other times the detective dropped by Earl Street to smoke marijuana.

  ‘I saw Hallahan sitting on the couch smoking a reefer and I just couldn’t believe it,’ Ryan says. ‘This guy was a cop, and here he is smoking marijuana. I’m thinking, this cop’s going to knock him off.’

  Then things went foul.

  Phillips began offering Hallahan false leads in order to distract attention from some of his own criminal activities. Hallahan wasn’t pleased. According to Ryan, Hallahan started spreading the word that Phillips was a ‘dog’, or police informant. Given Phillips’s new associates, it was potentially a death sentence.

  On the morning of Monday 9 October 1967, postman Jonus Mickus, in his Postmaster-General-issue shirt with the sleeves rolled up above the elbows, and wearing his wide-brimmed hat, lugged his post bag up Earl Street, dropping off the mail.

  At 8.50 a.m. he delivered a small package to the Phillips home, and continued on his route. Ten minutes later, working Belgrave Street, parallel to Earl, Mickus heard a tremendous blast issue from number 29.

  He vaulted their back fence and rushed through a rear door to the house. He found Phillips’s wife, Tracey, twenty-three, screaming and writhing on the bedroom floor, Phillips, then twenty-six, unconscious beside her, and their five-month-old son, Scott, knocked out on the bed and bleeding from facial wounds. Bomb shrapnel was embedded in the victims’ bodies. Two other Phillips children were wandering about the house, dazed.

  In a rare and disturbing event for Brisbane, the Phillipses had been sent a letter bomb. Addressed to Billy Phillips and clearly intended for him, Tracey had innocently opened the parcel, the size of an alarm clock and wrapped in brown paper. The explosion blew off her left hand and mangled her right, and her upper torso and face were mutilated.

  Police later learned that the bomb contained a nine-volt battery detonation system and gelignite. It was housed in a small, Asian-style trinket box made of magnolia and birch.

  One of the first detectives assigned to the investigation was Glen Patrick Hallahan.

  Did the assassination attempt stem from underworld knowledge that Phillips had been working as a police informant? Or was it more personal, related to Phillips’s multiple infidelities with women, particularly sex industry workers?

  ‘I recall Billy telling me that he and Hallahan had these big plans,’ Ryan says, ‘They were going to be the big boys running guns, women and drugs. I was over at Billy’s one Saturday morning and a young prostitute turned up. The next minute she’s putting out for everybody for a tattoo. Billy said to me, “You never knock it back, John.”’

  Surgeons were unable to save Tracey’s right hand and she was also blinded. Her face was disfigured. And it was discovered she was pregnant and lost the baby. Phillips and his son recovered.

  Hallahan shot down to Melbourne to investigate the bombing, and also went to Sydney to interview known criminals. Naturally, he contacted Brifman. He went to her home at Kingsford and later they went up to his room at the Rex. He had something to show her.

  ‘I had a few beers with him upstairs . . . then he said, “Have you ever seen forged money, Shirl?” It was ten-dollar notes. He said, “Do you want some, Shirley?”

  ‘I said no. I said, “What are you going to do with all them?” He said, “I’m going to use some myself and the rest I’m going to load up crims I don’t like.”’

  Ever the opportunist, Hallahan had pic
ked up the notes off a criminal associate in Melbourne while he was making his Phillips bombing inquiries.

  Hallahan also discussed the bombing with Brifman. He said an informant had told him that Phillips’s former wife, Vickie, had allegedly set up the bombing from Melbourne.

  Some years earlier, Vickie and Billy had had an extremely acrimonious split, according to family friend John Ryan. ‘He was sprung having sex with two women,’ Ryan says. ‘Vickie always threatened to kill him. He was expecting retribution from her for years.’

  Brifman recalled: ‘Tracey copped the bomb. Glen told me that Billy stood at the door and said to Tracey, “Don’t open that, it will be a bomb.” He had been expecting it for about three or four years. Being a sticky beak, she did open it.’

  When Hallahan prepared to fly back to Brisbane, it was Fred Krahe who drove him to Sydney airport.

  On another occasion in 1967, Brifman was in Brisbane staying at the Treasury. One night she went over to Hallahan’s one-bedroom flat for a drink.

  ‘I remember I picked up a cent off the floor and handed it to him and I said, “Put it in your money box.”’

  Hallahan then opened a wooden wardrobe and inside Brifman saw bundles of genuine cash bound with rubber bands.

  ‘Well, you don’t need the cent piece,’ she remarked.

  Hallahan replied: ‘I have never been short of money since I went to Sydney.’

  They sat and drank for a while and the phone rang around 11.30 p.m.

  ‘Forget about the bank robbery tonight,’ Hallahan told the caller. ‘I’ve got a friend up from Sydney.’

  Off the phone, Hallahan explained to Brifman that a bank robbery had been arranged at Capalaba, south-east of the CBD towards Redland Bay.

  He said, ‘I put if off because you’re here. When it’s done I’ll charge another couple of chaps with it.’

  Around this time, Brifman remembered what Tony Murphy had told her about Hallahan: ‘Shirley, you have got to be careful with Glen. The trouble Glen is getting into lately. We’re trying to drop off Glen.’

  Brisbane was getting dangerous. And so was Detective Hallahan.

  The Stockbroker with the Gold Limousine

  Of all the men Brifman met in the course of her work as a prostitute, there was nobody quite like Robin Corrie.

  Corrie was a flamboyant Brisbane-based stockbroker with Corrie and Co., a broking firm that was an institution in Brisbane, founded by his grandfather in 1877.

  Corrie was short and wiry, a prankster and a daredevil, a self-publicist and showman with ferocious energy. As a teenager in 1935, he made the news pages of the Courier-Mail when his dinghy sank in Bramble Bay, off Redcliffe, and he and a companion were rescued after spending more than two hours in the water. With youthful bravado, he told the reporter that he didn’t feel in danger at any point but was hesitant about his mother finding out about the mishap.

  As a successful broker, he pulled stunts and subsequently attention to himself. He had a grey Rolls Royce (it had a tow bar, in case Corrie wanted to take off with his caravan) complete with capped chauffeur.

  Corrie’s son, John Corrie, recalls being excruciatingly embarrassed when his father dropped him off of a morning at Eagle Junction State School.

  ‘We’d be dropped off in front of seven hundred screaming kids . . . The chauffeur with cap would open the door to let us out. Where could you go? There was nowhere to go.’

  Corrie also had a Ford Fairlane that he painted gold to bring notice to his belief that gold stocks were on the rise. The act earned him a fine from the Brisbane Stock Exchange.

  He was also a man who knew how to spend serious money. While he had a passion for yachts, he also had a taste for marijuana and the wilder fringes of life. He was well known to management and staff at the National Hotel.

  In the late 1960s, the Corries – wife Barbara, three children and a Labrador – lived in what the press described as a ‘mansion’ in the well-heeled suburb of Clayfield. The house featured a marble foyer, a wading pool with a waterside bar, and a maid’s room. Corrie also owned a large beachfront getaway house in Hedges Avenue, Mermaid Beach.

  For all intents and purposes, Corrie was a wealthy man with a happy home life. He had been a pioneer with oil stocks in Queensland, was well connected to government, and was nationally respected for his good business judgement.

  Behind the scenes, he was worrying about the future of his company and was mentally starting to fray. His lifestyle didn’t help. He smoked at least six packs of unfiltered Benson & Hedges cigarettes a day. His children remember him lighting up while still in bed and half asleep.

  After Corrie met Brifman in Sydney, he would often fly her up to Brisbane for ‘big money’ and put her up in a hotel in the city.

  Both Hallahan and Murphy knew of Shirley’s lavish client and their interstate arrangements.

  ‘He used to discuss all his problems with me,’ Brifman said. ‘There was nothing I did not know about Corrie.’ One of the last things Corrie confided in her was that he had exercised poor judgement over a share purchase that ‘went wrong’ and had received criticism from those who took his advice.

  While in Brisbane, Brifman dined with Corrie at the fashionable Lennons Hotel on the corner of Ann and George streets. At one end of the hotel foyer was a large clock and a map of the world, emphasising the establishment’s ‘cosmopolitan’ atmosphere. It was all leather banquettes and cut flowers, and a far cry from the National down at the Bight with its bawdy clientele.

  Brifman called Corrie ‘the professor’, and he offered her his wisdom and worldly advice. She visited the Corrie family home in Clayfield, and he would send each of the Brifman children forty dollars every Christmas.

  In April 1968, Corrie flew to Sydney to take possession of a new yacht – a twenty-three-foot Hood he planned to sail home from Sydney.

  But he had some partying to do first.

  ‘He rang me,’ Brifman remembered. ‘He came in and played up with Ann Marie Stevens that night. Ann Marie was coming up to Surfers. He said, “When you come up, give me a ring.”

  ‘After playing up with her that night he wouldn’t have anything more to do with her. She got the brush-off. Robin told me that he went home this night and his first wife was very upset. She said a girl had rung and said, “Do you want to know who your husband is playing up with in Sydney? It will cost you so much.”

  ‘He had to put on the defensive. Naturally, he said, “Tell [this woman] to come forward and front me.” His wife believed him. Ann Marie rang back and Mrs Corrie told her she did not believe her.’

  Corrie’s association with Brifman – one of the best connected prostitutes and madams in Sydney – was starting to blow back into his private and professional life.

  And with Hallahan monitoring Corrie’s illicit activities – not just squandering cash on prostitutes and drugs, but on Brifman, who had been intimate with Hallahan for years and was deeply interconnected with corrupt police and criminals in two states – it was destined to end badly.

  The Traveller and the Travel Agent

  Lewis was his usual punctual self on Tuesday 24 October 1967, and arrived at the office forty-five minutes early, at 8.15 a.m., to an exciting surprise.

  A telegram waiting on his desk announced that his application for a Churchill Fellowship had been successful. He was off on his first trip overseas – to the United States and Europe – to learn the latest techniques in policing juveniles.

  For whatever reason, that morning he walked down to the Wintergarden Theatre and saw Danger Grows Wild.

  The film was an anti-drug spy and action flick produced by the United Nations. Did he think it his duty to see a film about the heroin trade in Afghanistan, as it was potentially harmful to young, impressionable Brisbane teenagers?

  Afterwards, Lewis saw Bischof about the f
ellowship and immediately typed an application for special leave.

  He was still plugging away at his degree, but the Churchill honour gave him even greater kudos. He had proved he worked hard, now here was recognition from the prestigious Churchill Trust, established in 1965 in memory of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and based on merit rather than academic qualification. The fellowships aimed to offer overseas experience to applicants whose ‘pursuit of excellence’ had been exhausted on home ground. Lewis was Queensland’s first Churchill fellow.

  And in executing an international tour of juvenile policing, he was emulating Bischof, who had undertaken a similar study tour early in his own career. It gave a sign to Lewis’s friends and foes in the force that Lewis was heading for greater things.

  In theory, the fellowship would look good on his curriculum vitae. But prior to taking the global trip – devised through research conducted by Lewis himself – he learned that not only was the daily allowance for travelling expenses minimal, but he would only attract a half-salary back home for the six-month duration of the expedition. With a wife and four children to support up on Garfield Drive, this was the cause of much anxiety.

  He considered handing back the honour.

  ‘It caused me more financial stress and heartbreak than anything I ever did,’ Lewis recalls. ‘I was given an economy-class airline ticket and eleven dollars a day expenses. It was very, very tight.’

  Yet another police function was held at the National Hotel, to help raise money for Lewis’s travelling expenses.

  He flew to Europe with Qantas on Wednesday 1 May 1968. Lewis admits he was daunted at the prospect of his first trip overseas, and especially with so little money to make it work for him.

  Lewis distilled the trip to three months, travelling to Germany, Denmark, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, bedding down in the cheapest rooms he could find, keeping an eye on food expenses along the way. ‘It was a cup of coffee and a bun for breakfast,’ he says.