Sydney Noir

by Michael Duffy

  The function was held in the ballroom of Sydney’s flashest hotel, the Chevron on Macleay Street, Potts Point. The guests included politicians, judges, real estate bigwigs, actors, artists, bookmakers, doctors, horse trainers, pressmen and, according to the report the next day in Rupert Murdoch’s Daily Mirror, ‘the kings of Sydney’s baccarat dens, big wheels in the SP trade [and] … several men who simply do the best they can’. That last category was a euphemism for crooks. That such men could mix so easily with leading politicians and police – a situation reported but not condemned by the media – is an indication of the open tolerance for so much crime during this period.

  Premier Robin Askin was there, and told the crowd that, ‘No fictional detective could hold a candle to Ray Kelly’. Police Commissioner Norman ‘The Foreman’ Allan was there. It was, he boasted, ‘an assemblage of big names that, I’ll swear, has never before gathered under one roof and may never do so again’.

  Kelly himself said he would remain a police officer until he died, and possibly he did, at least so far as the organising of crime was one of the responsibilities of Sydney police. He said crooks were not taking over Sydney, unlike some foreign cities, and made the observation that ‘No one who has not been a policeman can ever understand our problems, no one at all’. He took a swipe at those who wanted to be protected from criminals while criticising the methods used by police to do so: ‘There is too much moral cow-ardice in the community’.2

  Kelly wore spectacles and could be charming, but he was a tall, hard man. Born in 1906 in Wellington, on leaving school he worked in the Broken Hill mines and then on cattle stations, before joining the police force at the age of twenty-three. His police service record contains a long list of commendations, from his attempt to save a man from drowning off the Spit Bridge in 1938 to encounters with gunmen. He was brave and had a developed capacity for violence, and was known as ‘the Gunner’ on account of all the men he’d shot.

  In his first year as a policeman some crooks in a car tried to run him down in Newtown: he shot three of them, killing one and earning his nickname. On another occasion his skull was fractured with an iron bar by one of the tenants he helped evict when he stormed a property. He was to kill again in 1953, after a car chase through Drummoyne.

  Kelly became a detective in 1941 and joined the CIB, the prestigious central detective unit that handled most serious crime, including murder. Eventually he became an inspector, the highest operational rank, and was considered very much first among equals. When Brit gangster Billy Hill arrived in Sydney in 1955 with a view to setting up shop, it was Kelly who was sent on board the ship to persuade him to change his mind. Hill, who was accompanied by his wife Gypsy Hill, did not disembark. ‘It makes you sick when you think we have come this far,’ she told a London tabloid. ‘If only we had known sooner, we could have got off earlier – in Tahiti.’3

  Kelly led a string of successful high-profile investigations, including the recapture of prison escapees Kevin Simmonds and Leslie Newcombe in 1959. In 1960 Kelly, along with other officers, was commended for his work on the famous Graham Thorne murder case. This involved many of the police we shall meet in this book.

  Thorne was an eight-year-old pupil at The Scots College, a prestigious Presbyterian private school. His father Bazil was an early winner of the Opera House Lottery. A man named Stephen Bradley kidnapped the boy in what was Australia’s first kidnap for ransom case, but quickly panicked, killed Graham, and fled with his family by sea.

  Two police flew to Sri Lanka and brought Bradley back after tricky extradition issues were resolved. One of those detectives was Brian Doyle, a Catholic known as ‘the Cardinal’ whom Kelly despised for his honesty.

  Kelly had a knack for self-promotion and was helpful to crime reporters. One of them, Bill Jenkings of the Daily Mirror, eulogised him thus:

  ‘Kelly was responsible for keeping the lid on violent crime by locking up killers, gunslingers, druggies, safe-breakers, burglars, receivers and knockdown men. He was instrumental in bringing to justice some of the worst criminals in the country’s history. … [he] was an almost mythical figure in Sydney. … What a wonderful subject [Damon] Runyon would have had if he had known Kelly. Here was a policeman who could be hard as iron or smooth as silk. When there was a shooting or other violence, Kelly was in the van-guard. When there was a situation to be handled smoothly, it was Ray Kelly they called upon.

  ‘His ability to cope with all kinds of circumstances extended beyond police work. I often saw him resplendent in tails, whirling about a dance floor, holding the interest of his partner with amusing conversation. At the CIB balls, which we both attended for many years, Kelly never missed a dance. He always had a happy knack of making his friends feel at ease and laugh at things.’4

  Whether using bullets or charm, Kelly chose his targets. There’s a rather creepy photo taken around 1960 of Kelly in Chequers Nightclub, with a friendly arm draped around the shoulders of a very youthful Alan Saffron, son of sleaze lord Abe Saffron.5

  Bill Jenkings referred to rumours that Kelly verballed prisoners, but pretty well dismissed them. (Like all crime reporters his job depended on police goodwill.) In fact, Kelly was so notorious in this regard that ‘Verbal’ was his second nickname. When he became one of the senior detectives who would vet talented uniformed police wanting to work in plain clothes, he would ask if they’d be prepared to verbal a crook to obtain a conviction. If they said no, he would growl, ‘Send him back to the Cardinal. He’s no use to me.’

  Fitting up crooks was helpful to police at a time when three of the most important techniques now at a detective’s disposal were largely unavailable. These are: phone taps and listening devices; forensics; and the ability to offer effective protection in prison to people who give evidence against their co-offenders. Working with a more restricted palette, Kelly was a master of the dark police arts, sometimes known as ‘noble cause corruption’, its two main techniques being the ‘load’ and the ‘verbal’.

  Former Darlinghurst policeman Chris Jones explained the ratio-nale for ‘noble cause’ corruption thus: ‘There was the right way, the wrong way, and the Darlo Way, which meant that the police did whatever was necessary to convict a person who deserved it and protect the lives and property of the community … There’s no way Bumper (Inspector Frank ‘Bumper’ Farrell) or any of us from the old days could exist in the police force today, but the Darlo Way was a method of policing that achieved the results desired by our senior officers and politicians and the public at that time in that district, so we got away with it.’6 The public had to trust that the corruption was indeed for a noble cause, and not merely a way of making money.7

  Kelly used methods that police had always relied on, and would continue to use for quite a while. One example occurred after gunman John ‘Chow’ Hayes was arrested for shooting one William Lee at the Ziegfeld Club in 1951. (Hayes was so nicknamed because his narrow eyes gave him a Chinese appearance.8) When Kelly took Hayes back to the CIB headquarters in Liverpool Street, he said to him: ‘Now look, Chow. You know and I know that you killed Lee … I will tell as many lies as I can to convict you, and you tell as many lies as you can to beat it. Is that fair enough?’9 That was Hayes’ account given to David Hickie for his book Chow Hayes – Gunman, years after the event when he had no reason to lie. Indeed, in the book he admits to having killed Lee.

  The trial played out as Kelly had predicted. None of the people who’d been at the Ziegfeld picked Hayes out of numerous line-ups, so it came down to Kelly’s lie that Hayes had confessed to him. Hayes’ barrister asked the detective if it was true he was known as ‘Verbal’ Kelly, and he denied this. But after two hung juries, Hayes was found guilty. On hearing the verdict, Hayes yelled out, ‘I hope to see Kelly die of cancer of the tongue’.10

  Another gangster who recalled sharp practice was George Freeman, this time in the 1960s.

  ‘Kelly arrested me once for a safe job, which I denied,’ he recalled in his memoir. ‘He did
his lolly during the questioning and punched me on the chin. I screamed abuse at him. I’ll never forget the look of hatred in his beady little eyes.

  “I’ll put you away for five years,” he snarled, “and when you come out I’ll get you another five years … you’ll come out and I’ll down you again.” “Yeah, well down me for the first time for five years and I might just come out and down you,” I fired back. With that he belted me again and stormed out of the room in a wild rage. His partner, Maurie Wild, shook his head slowly. “You’re mad, George. You can’t talk to him like that.”’

  A week later, Freeman says he was pulled over while driving and police found a pistol in his car he’d never seen before.11

  Kelly’s success as an investigator was due not just to such techniques but, as has already been noted, to his criminal informants such as Lennie McPherson. Their symbiotic relationship enabled each man to dominate his own world. By ignoring McPherson’s crimes, Kelly was able to prosecute others. If asked, Kelly might have said it was not particularly ethical, but preferable to the alternative – and it did his career no harm.

  ENTER LENNIE MCPHERSON: MR BIG

  Lennie McPherson was born in Balmain in 1921, the youngest of ten children. At the age of thirteen he did time at Mount Penang Training School near Gosford. He was a persistent petty crook, and married his pregnant sixteen-year-old girlfriend Dawn Allan in 1940. A police report from later that year observed, ‘since his marriage he has frequently quarrelled with his wife and her parents. He is a man of peculiar disposition – he is not addicted to drink and is regarded as a reasonably good worker but he believes that his wife’s people are tempted to do him some injury and when in this frame of mind, he is most peculiar in his manner.’12

  Early in the 1940s McPherson worked at Mort’s Dockyard in Balmain, where he experimented with explosives. Now regarded as the preserve of terrorists, in the Golden Years expertise with explosives – whether for disposing of opponents or blowing safes open – was a key criminal skill. McPherson’s own inclinations in this direction were demonstrated by the police discovery in 1941 that he had used the skills acquired at Mort’s to make three bombs.13

  Much of what we know about McPherson comes from Tony Reeves’ biography Mr Big. Reeves, who is now dead, was a significant crime reporter in the 1970s and 1980s. His later biographies of McPherson, George Freeman and Abe Saffron contain a great deal of original material that is almost entirely based on anonymous sources. We have accepted that information except where it appears highly unlikely in the context of everything we do know about the period. (A rare example of this is where Reeves says a government minister allowed Lennie McPherson into Parramatta Prison to hold court and pass death sentences on other criminals.14)

  In 1946 McPherson was sentenced to prison for receiving stolen goods. In prison he became a snitch – a police informant – a practice he continued when he got out. This was risky, and before long he was called ‘Lennie the Pig’ and ‘Lennie the Squealer’, presumably not to his face. But somehow he survived this reputation, and gained the contacts in the police force that were the basis for his considerable success.

  McPherson was a large man – 95 kilograms, 180 centimetres – and violent from the start, bashing Dawn and also the women with whom he had affairs. He was not safe to be around. One unfortunate woman, pregnant with McPherson’s child, was pack raped after he had informed on one of the rapists’ friends.

  In the early 1950s, Sydney’s most important criminal was Frederick ‘Paddles’ Anderson, a big-footed man whose power was to endure into the 1980s, but about whom little is known. Anderson had an impressive range of contacts, in politics, the judiciary and the police force, and used them subtly. McPherson was his protégé, but had even broader horizons, admiring the late Al Capone so much that in 1951 he visited Chicago and met up with some low-level Mafiosi. After his return home he was convicted of using a false passport and, following an arrest for being in possession of safe-breaking tools, locked up again.

  Around this time McPherson also fell foul of the state’s anti-consorting law. This had been introduced in the late 1920s as a means of breaking up the razor gangs. Under the law, simply being seen with convicted criminals a number of times could get you sent to prison. The law was effective, but the Consorting Squad set up to enforce it became notoriously corrupt, not least because of the dis-cretion it had about whether or not to apply the law to any particular individual. The squad even had the power to tell crooks which premises they could and could not visit.

  By 1959 McPherson was Ray Kelly’s regular informant. His links with police were now so good he could offer protection to favoured criminals, to whom he also lent bail money when needed. He set up what he called a motel, a set of small rooms above a car park in Balmain, which he leased out to criminals on the run, and gave his occupation as ‘Motel Manager’. He had become something of a criminal organiser. Money was coming in, and Dawn and he had a house in Gladesville. Over the years he would turn it into a two-storey fortress, with features such as bullet-proof glass and a front door step that would collapse in an instant if you hit a button just inside the door. Despite this success, on 28 July 1959, McPherson was arrested by Fred Krahe, for the shooting of a criminal named George Hackett. McPherson was almost certainly guilty, and had been given up to the police by the man he’d paid to lead Hackett to his death.

  Krahe’s arrest of McPherson seems odd, given the latter’s relationship with Ray Kelly. One can only speculate on the reason – perhaps the two detectives were in competition for bribes. Tony Reeves details the story, too complicated to be repeated here, of how McPherson eventually escaped conviction by intimidating and bribing informers, witnesses and a senior prison officer. He was still committed to trial, but the state attorney-general, Reg Downing, ‘no billed’ the matter, which was the end of it. (This was in the days before the position of Director of Public Prosecutions was created and assumed responsibility for such decisions.) As was standard in such cases, Downing gave no reason for his decision at the time, although there were rumours he’d been paid. Much later he told Tony Reeves the no-bill was because the case was too weak to succeed.

  With later murders, McPherson was actively helped after the fact by Ray Kelly. Perhaps the most spectacular occurred on the occasion of McPherson’s second wedding. Dawn and he had separated after he came home drunk one night in 1960 and, dinner not being ready, shot up a pot of peas on the stove and pistol-whipped her. Dawn left him that night and was going to file a charge, but was talked out of it by Ray Kelly.

  On 9 July 1963, McPherson married for the second time, his new wife Marlene Gilligan, at twenty-two, being almost half his age (a typical Noir pairing). And that very evening he assisted with another murder, of seaman and tiler Robert ‘Pretty Boy’ Walker.

  In late February 1963, Walker had moved with his girlfriend into 104 Liverpool Street, Paddington, sharing the house with another couple, Gordon James (not his real name) and Yvonne McKinnon. James used to beat up McKinnon, and Walker objected. James moved out, but there was a continuing dispute between the two men and their friends.

  At 7pm on 6 May, a criminal named Stan ‘The Man’ Smith and a few others arrived at the house. Walker said he recognised some of the group as friends of James, and when they broke in through the front door he fired a warning shot with a .303 rifle. This rico-cheted and hit Smith in the chest, although he was not injured too seriously.

  Walker surrendered to police, and was charged with malicious wounding – Smith claimed he had been visiting James, whom he thought still lived at the premises, and had found the front door open. Walker and his girlfriend decamped to Alison Road, Randwick, in fear for their lives. Smith was a man of considerable capacity for violence, so much so that someone who had warned Walker that Smith might be paying him a visit at Liverpool Street now fled to Italy. Smith was also a good friend of another psychopath, Lennie McPherson.

  On 9 July 1963, Walker left the Randwick house in his T-shir
t and cardigan to go to the shops to buy some bread. As he went up Alison Road, a two-tone grey Holden came up behind him, with McPherson reportedly driving and Smith in the back seat. The vehicle had been stolen from outside the home of a salesman in Cremorne the previous evening, and had false number plates, the front one made from papier maché. One witness said the passenger was wearing a dark coat, pulled up high around the neck, and a dark green straw hat with a bright yellow band. Another had him wearing a ‘funny’ grey and white mask, like a clown.

  The bullets, fired from a submachine gun, sounded like fireworks, as they did in the days when people still knew what fireworks sounded like. Walker collapsed dead on the pavement with twelve holes in his chest and abdomen, the blood running across the con-crete into the gutter, his glasses still on his face.

  One witness was a deaf-mute cheesemaker named John Cassidy, who was at a distance and, not hearing the ‘fireworks’, thought he’d seen a hit and run accident. He jumped into his own vehicle and followed the Holden around the corner, into Botany Road and then Meeks Street, until the Holden stopped. The back door opened and out stepped a man in a belted coat, carrying a gun with a ‘large round barrel’. It was at that point, Cassidy told the subsequent inquest using sign language, that ‘I then shot through’.15

  The shooting occurred around 6.10pm, and within 20 minutes detectives Jack McNeill and Philip Arantz were on the scene. Ray Kelly was put in charge of the investigation, and he and McNeill interviewed Smith, asking him where he’d been at the time of the shooting.

  ‘I am not prepared to say,’ he responded. Then: ‘I don’t remember.’

  Ray Kelly tried to pin the killing on a criminal named Raymond ‘Ducky’ O’Connor, possibly to distract attention from McPherson. He even briefed reporters that O’Connor had shot Walker, and went to Queensland in fruitless pursuit of a lead that his suspect had fled north. Kelly’s Queensland police contact was the rising detective Glen Hallahan, and the two policemen joined Hallahan’s lover, the prostitute Shirley Brifman, for drinks in Brisbane’s National Hotel.16 Back in Sydney, Kelly told Fred Krahe that Hallahan was a useful man to know, and, presumably, that he was ‘on’ with Brifman. This was the origin of the triangular relationship between Brifman, Hallahan and Krahe, which became the nexus between police corruption in Sydney and Brisbane in the late 1960s.