In 1967 the Vietnam War was continuing to draw in American and allied troops. Later, of course, it would become hugely unpop-ular. But at this stage the administration of President Lyndon Johnson was confident that the war could be won, and American – and Australian – public opinion was still largely behind it.
Washington was pouring troops into Vietnam, and all US servicemen who served a tour of duty there were entitled to seven days’ R&R leave (including travel) in one of the designated centres throughout the region. Keen to expand the range of centres, in April 1967 the Americans sent a survey team to Australia to assess the suitability of Sydney as an R&R destination. The arrival of the survey team gave rise to public discussion. Opinion was largely positive though some feared an increase in street crime.
In May 1967, the Sydney City Council Alderman RE Murphy described a letter he had received from a woman resident of Kellett Street. In it, the woman complained about rampant prostitution in the district, so bad that she had been forced to move out of her flat because of the noise from a brothel upstairs. Then Alderman Murphy added a riff of his own to his constituent’s complaints: ‘With the Yanks coming in at the rate of 12 000 a month it (the situation in Kings Cross) will degenerate even further, not because of them but because certain things will be purveyed to them.’87 (In fact there would rarely be more than 1500 American troops in Sydney at any one time.)
In July, Washington submitted a formal request for Australia to host US servicemen and it was shortly afterwards agreed to. Houghton’s Bourbon and Beefsteak opened in September. Another Noir institution that opened around this time was the Whisky a Go Go. Like Houghton, its owners predicted the Americans would be more interested in recreation than rest. When the first plane carrying Americans on R&R arrived on 4 October 1967, Sydney was ready for them. Many of the Americans would spend their time sightseeing or even staying on farms out of Sydney. Many others had a six-day party in Kings Cross.
‘GET ON THE PHONE TO NORMAN ALLAN’
As an intermediary between two of the most corrupt policeman in Sydney (Krahe) and Brisbane (Hallahan), Shirley Brifman was getting into deep water, but she wasn’t the only one. In the brothels, in the gambling schools, out on the streets, the dance between corrupt policemen who exploited criminals, and criminals who needed to cooperate with corrupt police, continued.
It was a dangerous game, and sometimes there was collateral damage. On 9 October 1967, a parcel bomb exploded in a house in South Brisbane, maiming prostitute Tracey Phillips, and wounding her five-month-old son. The bomb was intended for her husband Billy Phillips, then twenty-six, who would go down in history as the ‘godfather of the Brisbane drug scene’. He was a tattooist, whose customers included prostitutes and dancers.88 And he sold firearms, including police weapons obtained from Brifman’s protector Glen Hallahan, with whom he shared the occasional joint. Phillips also acted as Hallahan’s fizzgig: as Shirley Brifman put it ‘Billy was such a good informant to Glen. Glen told me that Billy stood at the door and said to Tracey “Don’t open that (the parcel), it will be a bomb.” Being a sticky beak she did open it.’89
But tension had arisen between the detective and Phillips and it was said that Hallahan exposed the tattooist as an informant so that other criminals would kill him.90 That was one explanation for the bombing, but there was another: that it was the work of Phillips’ vengeful former wife Vickie. In the aftermath of the bombing, Hallahan – who ironically had been put in charge of the investigation – came down to Sydney, ostensibly to follow up leads, but in fact to ‘load’ (fix the blame on) some suitable criminal.
The Phillips bombing caused considerable agitation in Sydney criminal circles, as Brifman found when she witnessed the following extraordinary scene at the Bronte home of the woman known as Linda the Vice Queen.
Described by her employee Chow Hayes as ‘blonde-headed, a big lump of a woman’,91 Linda the Vice Queen got her nickname because of the brothels she operated – as many as eleven – in and around the Darlinghurst vice precinct. This put her in the same league as Joe Borg.92
The Vice Queen makes an interesting comparison with Brifman. Besides their choice of métier, there were other similarities between the two – for example, they both moved back and forth between Sydney and Brisbane, and both operated under the protection of Krahe and Hallahan.
Both would make it to the top of the sex industry, though they got there by different paths: The Vice Queen through the brothel trade, Brifman through the bar girl/call girl sector. Their business models were different, and as the Vice Queen’s depended on brothels in the mean streets of Darlinghurst, she relied on violent standover men more than Brifman did.
As a result, the Vice Queen kept a whole entourage of gunmen, whereas according to Brifman she herself only needed to hire one, once. Chow Hayes ascribes the Vice Queen’s small army of ‘gunnies’ to her fear of a clash with Joe Borg over control of The Lanes. In Hayes’ view, her fears were unjustified – ‘she never had any major confrontations with Borg – he seemed quite prepared to concentrate on his own thriving business’.93
Days after Tracey Phillips opened the lethal package in Brisbane, Shirley Brifman was at the Vice Queen’s house in Bronte. ‘I was at Linda’s place when the phone rang,’ Brifman said. The caller was Detective Sergeant Frank Charlton of the NSW Consorting Squad, whose relationship with the Vice Queen was like that Brifman had with Fred Krahe. She paid him to protect her operations from the police, and in return kept him abreast of goings-on in criminal circles.
Charlton was angry because one of her gunmen, Jackie ‘Ratty Jack’ Clarke94 (who we last saw at the scene of ‘Ducky’ O’Connor’s killing in the Latin Quarter), had told Hallahan the bombing had been arranged by Billy Phillips’ ex-wife Vickie, cutting across Charlton’s own arrangements to ‘load’ someone else. According to Brifman, ‘Linda talked to Charlton for a while. I could not hear what was said. When she got off the phone she went for (criticised) Jackie on the bombing biz. She said, “You messed up all the business about the bombing with Hallahan”. Clarke denied it. He threw the blame onto Hallahan.’
The dispute – between one cabal of corrupt police and criminals and another about which would reap the advantage from the Phillips bombing – offers insight into the inner workings of Sydney Noir. It shows that the networks that sustained police corruption were opportunistic and personal, rather than stable and corporate. Corrupt police like Charlton and Hallahan were competing among themselves to offer protection, so they needed to be able to demonstrate to the Noir world their ability to actually deliver immunity. The ability to fix on or absolve someone of the blame for the bombing was a commodity in itself. That was what they were fighting over.
This became clear to Brifman when she later met up with Hallahan and told him what she had heard at the Vice Queen’s house. Hallahan’s comment was, ‘No wonder I am not making any headway. Charlton has been the spoke in the wheel all along. He is giving Linda all the information about what I am doing’.
That day, besides Ratty Jack, Brifman identified a whole squad of gunnies present at the Vice Queen’s house. These included ‘Gus Adams, he works for Joe Taylor, Lennie McPherson, and two other men. I was introduced to them. They sat with guns at the window.’
McPherson’s own contribution to the debate was a telling one: ‘Lennie said to Linda, “Stop going crook, get on the phone to Norman Allan”.’ Sydney’s most notorious criminal was suggesting to one of its top brothel madams that she ring up the Commissioner of Police and get him to arbitrate in a dispute between two crooked cops. He was joking – but then all humour depends for its effect on some basis in reality.95
ANNE BORG, CHELMSFORD VICTIM
On 8 November 1967 Joe Borg’s partner Anne Bahnemann, Brifman’s former fellow worker at the Killarney Private Hotel in Brisbane and now known as Mrs Anne Borg, killed herself in their flat at 1/66 Curlewis Street, Bondi, with what the Government Medical Officer described as an ‘overwhelming dose’ of barbitur
ates. ‘I would doubt that this would be accidental,’ he told the Coroner.96
In August 1966, Anne Borg had been referred by her GP to a Macquarie Street psychiatrist for treatment for alcoholism. She was also, the psychiatrist said, experiencing other symptoms, including depression and nausea, ‘which had been building up on her for years’. In addition, she had developed ‘strongly paranoid ideas about her husband’.
The psychiatrist prescribed a ‘fairly rigorous’ medication regime, which required her to undergo an initial treatment in a private hospital. When she emerged she had stopped drinking. Her last appointment with the psychiatrist was on 11 September 1967, at which stage he was prescribing for her a combination of Melleril Retard, Tuinal, anti-depressants and steroids – the latter to help her gain weight.
On the day of Anne Borg’s death, a woman who lived beneath the Borgs said she saw her tottering as she climbed the stairs to the flat above. The neighbour offered help but this was refused and later she heard a crash from upstairs. Joe Borg was a pet lover and kept two Alsatians in the flat. The woman said she would have gone up and investigated, but that she was too scared of the dogs. Borg said he came home after work and found Anne unconscious on the floor. She was taken to hospital where she died.
This story is given an even darker twist by the fact that Anne Borg’s psychiatrist was Dr Harry Bailey, the central figure in what is arguably the worst medical scandal in Australian history.
Bailey was notorious for his ‘Deep Sleep’ treatment, a radical and extreme ‘cure’ for alcoholism and drug addiction. This involved putting patients to sleep using heavy doses of barbiturates while administering electro-convulsive therapy. Bailey inflicted Deep Sleep on a recorded 1127 patients at his Chelmsford Private Hospital in Epping – probably where Anne Borg was ‘treated’ – between 1963 and 1979. Tens of patients died there; scores more committed suicide after passing through it.97
A NOIR CHRISTMAS: ‘THERE WAS A LOT OF DAMAGE...’
By now Krahe and Hallahan had their interstate extortion/protection operation running smoothly. Brifman’s account of the trio’s activities over Christmas 1967 shows just how seamless this business model was.
Hallahan flew down to Sydney before Christmas. Ostensibly he was still inquiring into the Phillips bombing of two months before, but he had other business to attend to. Hallahan’s biographer Steve Bishop has commented on the detective’s amazing capacity to roam, his ability to find plausible excuses not to be at his desk.
According to Shirley Brifman,98 Hallahan spent Christmas Day 1967 at the home of Ray Kelly, whom he had first met in Brisbane in 1963. The continued association of Kelly with the egregiously corrupt Hallahan supports the possibility that Kelly was still ‘in on the joke’ after his retirement.
Hallahan spent Boxing Day chez Brifman, went on to Melbourne and on his way back to Brisbane stayed over in Sydney at the Rex Hotel. Brifman told the story of what happened next:
‘I later met him at the Rex. I only called in to have one beer with Glen – I was dropping Leanne (Leanne Clark – the working name of one of Brifman’s fellow prostitutes) home (to her Kings Cross flat). When I arrived there with Leanne, Glen was in a suite.
‘I had a few beers with him upstairs and he produced forged money … did he have a pile. I asked him, “What are you going to do with all them?” He said, “I am going to use some myself and the rest I am going to load some onto crims I don’t like”.’
‘Glen said to me, “Shirley, whatever you do if that phone rings don’t pick it up”. I asked him why. He said, “Because on the other end of it will be Legs” (the nickname of a female criminal, a ‘shoplifter from Melbourne’). The phone kept ringing all night until about ten o’clock. I had given Glen a sleeping pill. He took it. I was just ready to walk out the door with Leanne and the phone rang again. I picked it up. I handed Glen the phone and Leanne and I heard the whole phone call. It was Legs, naturally.
‘She said, “You were supposed to meet us at some place for dinner”. Glen said, “I couldn’t I am tied up with business, would you like to talk to the man I am with”. She said, “I don’t believe you, you are up there with your Royal Commissioner slut” (that is, Brifman herself ). She put Freddie Krahe and Freddie Smith (Detective Sergeant Frederick Smith, Krahe’s police partner, who we last saw interviewing Ronald Ryan on the morning after his 1966 capture) and Gwyneth Nixon (Smith’s partner, not her real name) on the phone.
‘Ten minutes later there was a knock on the door. We had been talking about the phone call. Glen opened the door and there was Freddie Smith, Legs and Gwyneth Nixon. They came in. Gwynnie was calling me a copper (that is, a police informant – an ironic accusation from another policeman’s mistress ) and picking on me. Freddie Smith was copping it from Gwynnie then and she called him (criticised him) for everything and then Freddie knocked (punched) her. He knocked her ten times if he knocked her once. There was a lot of damage, glasses broken, everything.
‘The management arrived, went right through the place. They did not find Leanne and I because we were (hiding) in the wardrobe. They were ordered to leave. Glen was told he had to be out the next morning. He did – he flew home.
‘Smith kicked Gwynnie all the way down the stairs. Fred Smith called me two days later and apologised. He said he was sorry, he was used to Gwynnie, he had been on with her for eleven years and you get used to people after that.’
Brifman went on to explain just how Hallahan used the forged notes: ‘Dave Patterson (not his real name), a cat burglar, the best in Australia, was living in Woollahra off the main road … He gave me $400 (in real money) and said, “Shirley, I want you to give this to Freddie Krahe”. I said, “What for?” He said, “I got caught with forged $10 notes and they are not mine, Freddie Krahe picked me up near the (El Alamein) fountain.”’
Krahe had arrested Patterson and then planted the false notes on him, as Brifman explained:
‘I rang Freddie Krahe and he came up in about ten minutes and I gave him the four hundred and I asked him what it was all about.
‘Fred said, “Half of this goes to Glen”. Fred said, “We will make plenty out of this one with the forged ten dollar notes”. I said, “Did they come from Glen?” Fred said, “Glen brought them back from Melbourne”.
‘A week or two weeks later Glen stayed at my place. He was too frightened to go back to the Rex (after the fracas described above). I asked Glen why he had set up Dave. He said, “We can’t get him; he is a good cat burglar and we can’t get him any other way and we are out to make money”.’
GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER
By the end of the year, John Warren seemed to have got away with his murder of Richard Reilly, but things were not going so well with Glory McGlinn. Warren had returned to his wife in Arncliffe while McGlinn moved into an apartment he had bought her in Kogarah. Then she started seeing other men and when Warren heard about this he was intensely jealous. In November, she began a relationship with Brian Bowman, a twenty-three-year-old steward at the Eastern Suburbs Leagues Club, but continued to live in the Kogarah flat. Warren was crazy with jealousy and there were many arguments. In December McGlinn told him that if he didn’t stay away from her, she would tell the police about the Eldridge and Reilly murders. As Christmas turned into New Year, Warren brooded on Glory’s betrayal and her threats until he could brood no more.
THE END OF THE LANES
DEATH IN KOGARAH
On 3 January John Warren’s jealousy boiled over, and at 9am he kissed his wife goodbye and drove over to 189 President Avenue, Kogarah. He climbed the stairs and kicked in the door of unit 17. Inside he found Glory’s six-year-old daughter playing with a friend. Ignoring the children, he pulled his .38 calibre Smith & Wesson revolver from his waistband and entered the main bedroom where he found Glory in bed with Brian Bowman. She was wearing a short red nightie while he was naked. Glory jumped out of bed.
Warren was vicious. He shot her in the face. He then shot Bowman twice, also in the head
. Turning he saw Glory’s mother, Molly Campbell, who had been woken by the noise. As she tried to get away he shot her in the back of the head. Then he returned to the lounge room and, in front of the two girls, shot himself.
The horrified children ran to a neighbour, who called the police. When they arrived they found Molly still alive. At St George Hospital she told them, ‘I knew he’d do it! He was insanely jealous and thought she would put him in, put him in for that shooting (that is, Reilly’s murder)’. Molly then died.
Coincidentally, on the day of the shootings the government announced a reward of $5000 and a pardon for any accomplice who provided the identity of Richard Reilly’s killer. Warren had not killed himself; he languished at St George Hospital and died on 22 January. Three days later, Ray Brouggy rang the CIB, where he spoke to detective Philip Arantz. He said he had information on the Reilly killing and asked for a guarantee he’d receive the full reward and a pardon. According to Arantz, Police Commissioner Norm Allan agreed to this, and Brouggy came in and told the police what had happened, providing them with an 82-page statement. He also directed them to the Georges River at Picnic Point, where divers found guns used in the murders of Claude Eldridge and Richard Reilly.1
Based on Brouggy’s information, Charles Rennerson and James Haig (not his real name) were arrested and charged with conspiracy to murder Eldridge and Reilly, and in May 1968 faced a committal hearing at which Brouggy was brought in to the closed court through the back door. In fear for his life, he could not be identified, and was known in court as Joe Smith.
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