Three Crooked Kings

by Matthew Condon

  Finally, on Friday 6 October 1972, the Crown announced in the Brisbane magistrates court that it would offer no evidence against the charge. The case was dismissed.

  Lawyer Kevin Townsley had earlier defended Hallahan against the Knight charge in the lower court and called on Des Sturgess to assist as it came to trial proper.

  Having studied the brief, and facing evidence that included secretly taped recorded conversations between Knight and Hallahan, Sturgess concluded: ‘We haven’t got a feather to fly with here.’

  Townsley was more confident. ‘I think we might be able to argue that the tape recording is inadmissible. I think it’s possible.’

  ‘You’ve got more confidence than I have,’ Sturgess said. ‘You handle that side of the argument and I’ll just listen.’

  On the Friday before the trial went to court, Sturgess had a meeting with Townsley and Hallahan at his own chambers at the Inns of Court.

  Sturgess remembers the meeting: ‘Hallahan evinced a great deal of interest in what judge would be taking the matter. So much so that the solicitor went over a couple of times to the registry at District Court to find out.

  ‘Finally, he came back and said it’s going to be Eddie Broad. That was a bit surprising. Eddie Broad didn’t do much of this work. He was involved in Licensing.

  ‘Immediately . . . relief flooded over Hallahan. Five minutes later he said, “I’ve had enough, you’ll have to excuse me.” Another police officer was there waiting for him; they were going for a drink.’

  Hallahan was not in court when the case was dismissed. His informant John Edward Milligan would later reveal that Hallahan had visited Broad’s chambers before the trial commenced and offered what he knew about the judge’s sexual history. In short, he threatened to blackmail Broad. Townsley says: ‘I find it hard to believe [that Broad was compromised by Hallahan]. Our legal argument was an absolute clincher. The listening device was a clear contravention of the federal Telephonic Communication (Interception) Act. It was a dishonest prosecution from the word go.’

  After the trial was over, and despite the victory, Sturgess offered Hallahan an observation: ‘I don’t think your future is very bright in the police force.’

  ‘No,’ replied Hallahan.

  Sturgess suggested he strike a deal with Police Commissioner Whitrod – resign, walk out, and ‘that’d be the end of it’. Hallahan agreed. The suspended detective hadn’t been able to get to his police locker and its contents. He wasn’t sure what else might be in store for him by way of charges.

  ‘I approached Whitrod. He was relieved, too. He was glad to get rid of him,’ says Sturgess.

  On the following Monday at 9 a.m., Detective Hallahan was formally reinstated into the force. Within minutes, he tendered his resignation.

  His solicitors issued a statement: ‘All matters of complaint against him have now been resolved and he was this morning reinstated. However, he feels his interest in his future and that of his family will be best served in other spheres.’

  Hallahan offered a single comment to the press: ‘In some ways I am sorry to be leaving.’

  Whitrod’s crack team – the CIU – had put both Murphy and Hallahan in the dock in a single calendar year. But its strike rate in terms of convictions was nil.

  Still, it had exerted enough pressure to get rid of one of the most famous and lauded – and one of the most corrupt – detectives in the history of modern Queensland policing, while still in his absolute prime.

  Sturgess reflects: ‘You’ve got to imagine a young fellow intensely enthusiastic about the business of the police. He enjoyed the hunt.

  ‘He found a lot of the legal rules to be silly and would have developed contempt for the legal process. He would have been prepared to break rules and cut corners.

  Sturgess didn’t believe Hallahan profited hugely from his misdemeanours.

  But was Hallahan corrupt?

  ‘Oh yes.’

  Warnings Ignored

  In the early hours of Wednesday 17 January 1973, a popular café in Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley, inexplicably went up in flames.

  Firemen arrived at Alice’s Café and Coffee Lounge at 3 a.m. but could not save the business. The café was closed at the time and the damage was estimated at twenty thousand dollars.

  Alice’s – a miniature nightclub that was popular with local gays – was owned by John Hannay, the former manager of music group The Planets.

  Then, just over a month later, the Torino nightclub – also in Fortitude Valley – was destroyed by what police presumed to be a bomb. The Ann Street nightclub, renowned for its food, was owned by Italian brothers Frank and Tony Ponticello, and was completely gutted by the blast. Both the front and rear doors were blown out.

  Again, the venue was closed at the time and no injuries were reported.

  Former bouncer John Ryan claims to have received information prior to the Torino blast that Tony Murphy was showing interest in taking over the club as a ‘retirement investment’. He says that two women he knew overheard Murphy discussing the takeover with other police in a restaurant.

  The Courier-Mail reported two days after the bombing that CIU chief Norm Gulbransen was working on the case.

  Then, on the morning of Tuesday 27 February 1973, Sergeant Bill Humphris of the Commonwealth police force paid a visit to Whitrod’s CIU out at the police college in Chelmer. Humphris had received some extraordinary intelligence that needed to be relayed immediately to Queensland police.

  Humphris sat with Jim Voigt and told him that on the day after the Torino bombing he was contacted by one of his informants. The informant said that in early January he was approached by a criminal called John Andrew Stuart. Late in 1972 Stuart had been arrested on a break and enter charge in Sydney but had been bailed out by two brothers unknown to the informant.

  In exchange for bailing him out, the brothers wanted Stuart to go to Brisbane (Stuart’s home town) and tell local nightclub owners that a Sydney syndicate was about to make a push on their turf and they ‘better go along with their wishes’.

  Stuart explained to the informant that he did as he was told, and the brothers indicated that a couple of nightclubs might have to be ‘bombed’ to let owners know that the syndicate meant business. He was claiming extortion.

  Stuart said he had paid the bail money back to the brothers and wanted nothing to do with any bombings. He added that he planned to contact the member for South Brisbane, Colin Bennett, Basil Hicks of the CIU, and journalist Brian Bolton, and ask them to accompany him on a tour of Brisbane nightclubs, where Stuart would state before witnesses that he would not be connected with any bombing campaign or future trouble.

  Humphris’s informant did not hear from Stuart again until two nights before the Torino bombing. He left a phone message.

  According to a report compiled by Humphris on the matter: ‘I asked my informant why he was disclosing this information to me and also why Stuart would have told him. He said that Stuart told him that the Sydney brothers told him that they intended to bomb the Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub, St Pauls Terrace, Brisbane, by placing a bomb on the ground floor of the building while patrons were being entertained on the floor above. My informant claims that Stuart wanted no part of maiming or possibly killing innocent persons.’

  Torino’s bombing had been big news. But what was this about the Whiskey?

  Voigt was not the only Queensland police officer warned about the strike on the popular nightclub.

  John Ryan had heard since late December the year before that a club was ‘going to go off’. He was working as a bouncer at the Whiskey but was told in early March by co-proprietor Brian Little that his services were no longer required. Ryan was anxious over the intelligence he was receiving from the streets about the Whiskey.

  ‘I spoke to Voigt I don’t know how many tim
es,’ says Ryan. ‘I spoke with Basil Hicks at the CIU. I rang the boys in Licensing and a police officer mate at the Fortitude Valley station. I know for a fact that the information I gave made it all the way up to the commissioner, Ray Whitrod.

  ‘They were all warned and they did nothing.’

  In the early hours of Thursday 8 March, the Whiskey Au Go Go was torched. A band had been playing inside and late-night patrons were enjoying the music. The firestorm killed fifteen people.

  It became, in an instant, the scene of Australia’s biggest mass murder.

  Whiskey

  With the burning of Alice’s and the bombing of Torino, Brisbane could have been forgiven for thinking it was suddenly at the heart of some vicious gangland turf war.

  And by extension, it made sense that such deadly force, previously unseen in the city, had to be the handiwork of more sinister forces out of Sydney or Melbourne. Perhaps the warnings from former local boy John Andrew Stuart, a violent, unpredictable criminal, about a Sydney underworld takeover of Brisbane’s nightclubs weren’t far from the truth.

  Stuart was close to journalist Brian Bolton, often feeding him gossip and innuendo that became fodder for Bolton’s news stories in the popular Sunday Sun. But when Stuart began talking of a Sydney criminal push into Brisbane, and the imminent attack on the Whiskey, Bolton was alarmed and passed on the information to authorities. Bolton was Bill Humphris’s confidential informant.

  The reality was that Brisbane’s nightclub scene had been seething with its own internal discontent since late in the previous year, and it had to do with long-standing rivalry and accusations of theft between nightclub managers and their owners. In a small town, competition was fierce, and retribution swift and personal.

  The Little brothers – Brian and Ken – owned the Whiskey Au Go Go and the more salubrious Chequers in Elizabeth Street, Fortitude Valley. Both clubs went into liquidation in late 1972 after allegations emerged of staffers skimming from the tills and mismanagement.

  Entrepreneur John Hannay had control of Alice’s, and was managing the Whiskey. Hannay and the Littles went way back to the early 1960s, and often supported each other with various business ventures.

  At the end of 1972, Hannay allegedly suggested that doorman and security guard John Bell be sacked, as he no longer suited the style of the two clubs. Bell, according to friend and fellow bouncer John Ryan, went hunting for Hannay to teach him a lesson.

  ‘Bell was going to smash him,’ says Ryan.

  The Littles were terrified of an enraged Bell. They continued to pay his weekly wage, though he didn’t appear on the doors of the clubs.

  Bell ultimately caught up with Hannay, according to Ryan, and hospitalised him. Hannay was later removed as manager of the Whiskey. This, then, set off a small local feud that would grow out of control.

  In the New Year a known petty criminal with a speciality in arson attempted to torch Chequers. He only managed minor damage to the stage. A second attempt caused more destruction but did not destroy the club.

  Then Alice’s was torched, followed by Torino.

  Meanwhile, John Andrew Stuart had arrived in town, big-noting himself and mixing with some of his old criminal associates and mates from his youth. Stuart had a reputation from his early teens, having stabbed a boy in a brawl in Fortitude Valley in 1955. Stuart had always wanted to be a gangster, and he was on his way.

  ‘He had a big rep,’ says John Ryan. ‘That was a big deal in the 1950s, carrying a knife. Then he went to Westbrook.’

  The Westbrook Farm Home for Boys, near Toowoomba, had a brutal reputation. Reformatory inmates would later report wholesale sexual abuse, torture and cruelty perpetrated by staff. On his release, aged eighteen, the highly intelligent Stuart was primed for a life of violence and crime.

  ‘He started out as a burglar in Sandgate and around Chermside,’ says Ryan. ‘When he got out of Westbrook he was the swaggerer, the big, bad gangster. I’d see him down at the Hub, a milk bar opposite the Dawn picture theatre on Gympie Road.

  ‘He liked to create fear. He wanted to be the Stewart John Regan of Brisbane. He was violent but he wasn’t very good at it. It didn’t matter. You always suspected he might be carrying a knife or a gun, and that was enough.’

  Stuart went to Sydney, home to genuine gangsters, and was incarcerated for numerous offences, including assault. In prison he met another product of several boys’ homes – James Finch. Finch himself was jailed for attempting to murder Regan and was ultimately deported back to his native United Kingdom.

  Stuart had returned to Brisbane in late 1972 not on a mission to take over the city with his muscle and badness, but by order of a New South Wales court.

  Sydney detective Roger Rogerson was familiar with Stuart, having arrested him once for stealing a car.

  ‘He was insane – I’d say he’d be a psychopath,’ says Rogerson of Stuart. ‘I’ll tell you how mad he was. He was locked up at Long Bay gaol. He made an allegation he’d been bashed or flogged by arresting detectives.

  ‘Two guys from headquarters went out to investigate his complaint – Karl Arkins and his sidekick from Internal Affairs.

  ‘They met in this room and Stuart jumped up, king hit Arkins and smashed his jaw. Then Stuart went to court charged with grievous bodily harm.’

  Stuart managed to secure bail with a condition – go back to Queensland.

  Rogerson says, ‘I’ll never forget, Lennie McPherson once said to me, “Roger, you can control a bad man, but you can’t control a mad man.”’

  Just prior to the Whiskey bombing, Stuart sent for Finch and paid his fare back to Australia. The ticket was booked under the name ‘Mr Trauts’ – Stuart spelled backwards. Finch had been close to Stuart’s mother, Edna, who had fallen seriously ill, and was ostensibly coming back to see her.

  In early 1973, Stuart was conspicuous in Fortitude Valley, acquainting himself with the nightclub scene. The word was out that the Little brothers wanted to take back control of Chequers – they believed they could turn it around and into profit.

  According to Ryan, Stuart was used by the Littles to talk up the so-called extortion threat against the Whiskey and other nightclubs, hoping to scare off the liquidators. The Littles’ plan was to burn the Whiskey, take the insurance payout, and use it to reinvest in the classier Chequers.

  At about 2.10 a.m. on Thursday 8 March 1973, two twenty-three-litre drums of diesel were emptied in the foyer of the club and lit. Plumes of smoke were sucked up the stairwell and into the club. Patrons scrambled to escape through windows and a locked fire escape. The fifteen deaths were caused by asphyxiation.

  While Stuart and Finch were in the vicinity of the Whiskey when it went up, there has always been conjecture about the perpetrators and their motive. Was it an insurance job gone wrong, involving a small team of criminals associated with Brisbane’s so-called Clockwork Orange Gang? Or did Stuart, a lunatic who was trying to make a name for himself in the underworld, commit the crime? Was all his bluff and bluster in the previous months about a Sydney takeover an attempt to establish a pre-emptive alibi? If that were his intention, it had the opposite effect – Stuart was firmly in the eye of police even before the mass killing.

  Police were under enormous pressure to apprehend the murderer or murderers.

  Roger Rogerson, then in his early thirties, and other members of the New South Wales Special Crimes Squad were flown to Brisbane on the morning of the bombing to assist in the investigation and to clarify Stuart’s claims.

  ‘Stuart kept saying it was Sydney criminals, the Mr Bigs – Lennie McPherson, George Freeman. He was dropping a lot of names,’ says Rogerson.

  ‘And there was a journalist [Brian Bolton] up there writing up stories about Sydney crims taking over the Valley. It was all bullshit he was getting from Stuart . . .

  ‘We knew that Stuart hadn�
��t lit the fire because he had an alibi. We then came across Jimmy Finch, a Dr Bernado’s boy. He was the key to it.

  ‘I don’t think they believed they were going to kill anyone.’

  Detective Pat Glancy was on duty that Thursday and remembers taking a curious phone call down at police headquarters. It was from Sydney gunman John Regan.

  ‘He asked me if he was wanted [for the fire],’ Glancy recalls. ‘He wanted to know if he was to be interviewed . . . He told me he’d come up from Sydney . . . He said if I interviewed him one on one in a neutral location he would do it without a solicitor. But if we wanted to talk to him in police headquarters he’d bring a legal representative.’

  Regan flew to Brisbane and Glancy met him by arrangement at a Chinese restaurant in Fortitude Valley. They had a meal.

  ‘He was one of the coldest people I’ve ever met,’ says Glancy. ‘He didn’t drink. He had orange juice. He didn’t smoke. He was quiet. Whereas John Andrew Stuart was a loudmouth. He was a bloody idiot.’

  Glancy told Regan that police had been looking all over Brisbane for Stuart and the Sydney gunman offered to help out. ‘He was either trying to help us, or get us off his back,’ Glancy recalls. ‘I mentioned Billy Phillips and how he might know where Stuart was.’

  Regan said, ‘I’ll go and see him if you like.’

  After the meal, Glancy drove Regan over to Phillips’s home and tattoo parlour in Stanley Street, South Brisbane.

  Regan got out of the car and went around to the back of the premises. He knocked on the door and Phillips emerged. The two had never met. When Regan mentioned Stuart, Phillips went berserk, saying he had nothing to do with the Whiskey fire and killings.

  Then the visitor said: ‘I’m John Regan.’

  Phillips went ‘white as a ghost’. He immediately offered some locations where Stuart might be found.

  ‘Remember this,’ Regan added as he was about leave. ‘If you mention to the police that I’m up here, it’ll get to me and I’ll come back and see you.’