Other doors were closing. On 29 December, Brifman’s earliest police ‘protector’, Glen Hallahan, was arrested for taking a bribe from a prostitute. And even though their relationship had gone sour at the beginning of 1970, and even though Hallahan now considered Brifman an enemy because of the interviews she had given the police, his arrest was very definitely the end of a chapter.
Hallahan and Brifman went all the way back to 1958, to when the twenty-two-year-old Shirley was first working in a South Brisbane brothel. And for the three years starting in 1967, she, Krahe and Hallahan had been in that most electric of emotional settings: the triangle.
When Shirley would leave phone messages for Krahe at CIB headquarters in Sydney, she used the code name ‘Mrs Hall’. This was a private joke, ‘Hall’ being the first syllable of ‘Hallahan’.
OVER-SEXED, OVER-PAID, OVER-ESTIMATED
The R&R program wound up at the end of 1971. Today, the prevailing view is that the American servicemen had a significant, and frequently negative, impact on Australian society. In particular, R&R is blamed for fostering Australia’s heroin plague. For example, in the view of James Morton and Susanna Lobez, authors of Gangland Sydney, ‘it was not until … R&R, that the heroin trade really took off in Australia’.28 Crime historian Duncan McNab has written that ‘The (American) troops brought with them a taste for heroin, which changed crime in Australia for ever …’29
But did it? If this were the case, then the heroin epidemic would have arrived with the Americans in 1967 and grown in geometric progression as more and more users became addicted and the market grew to supply them. But this didn’t happen.
There certainly was, from an almost negligible base, a rise in heroin use in the R&R years, partly supplied by imports by and for US servicemen. But following the end of the R&R program in 1971, heroin use did not continue to rise, as one would have expected if organised crime gangs were pushing sales of a highly addictive drug. Instead, heroin use either stayed static, or perhaps even declined, for another four years.
There are two sets of statistics here to guide us. One is the national rate of overdoses from narcotics: in the ten years ending in 1974 this hovered at around 1 to 3 deaths per million people. Then in 1975 it started to soar, reaching 70 deaths per million in 1976 and 1977.30 The other is narcotics offences in NSW: from a low base of 50 in 1968, these jumped to 239 in 1971. Then, with the end of R&R, they fell back to 173 in 1972 and it was several years before they ticked up again.31
So yes, some Americans brought heroin with them from Vietnam, but the heroin-using community they left behind in Sydney was small and not growing. Whatever caused the heroin epidemic of the second half of the 1970s, it wasn’t R&R.
The view that R&R had a major impact on Sydney is sustained by a persistent overstatement of the program’s duration by 40 per cent. This started when the influential Al McCoy wrote that the program began in March 1966, and subsequent authors like Richard Hall followed him. In fact, while the program started in South-East Asia in 1966, Sydney joined the list of R&R destinations only in October 1967.32
Numbers are also overstated. The total number of US servicemen arriving over the entire period was, at the highest contemporary estimate, 280 000.33 This sounds like a lot and it sounds even more if, as has now become routine, you round it up to ‘about 300 000’ or ‘more than 300 000’.34 But their leave periods lasted less than one week, so in fact at any given moment there were only about 1500 Americans on R&R leave in Sydney. Richard Hall describes the American presence as being ‘crammed into a few blocks around Kings Cross in a score or so of nightclubs and bars’.35 There were limits to the effect that this number of Americans could have on the inhabitants of Sydney – not to say Australia.
When R&R ended in December 1971, Askin said that all the visiting US servicemen had spent an average of $20 million a year.36 And yet Al McCoy estimated the total value of crime in New South Wales, just a few years later in the mid-1970s, at $2.2 billion a year – most of it SP betting. So however much money the Americans were throwing around in a few streets around Kings Cross, it was only a small fraction of what people all across Sydney were spending on the horses.
Reactions to R&R have always been subjective. In stark contrast to today’s self-congratulatory rhetoric about foreigners beating a path to a ‘world-class’ city, many baby boomers found the Sydney of their youth suffocatingly dull, and spent their whole time plot-ting their escape overseas. When R&R brought the Americans to Sydney, Kings Cross became the next best thing.
So there’s no doubt the advent of the Americans, with their music and their drugs, had a major impact on some, at a personal and cultural level. If you spent time in and around Kings Cross in the years 1967–71, of course you would have been influenced by the R&R phenomenon.
Visiting the Whisky a Go Go was like visiting another country – working there could be a life-changing experience. If you were twenty and an American offered you your first joint, or if you were a sex worker who barely escaped death at the hands of a psy-chotic GI, of course that would have made a big impact on you. But the majority of Sydneysiders never laid eyes on an American serviceman.
AN END AND A BEGINNING
ARISE, SIR ROBERT
A lot happened in the last of the Golden Years. The previous year, eighteen year olds had received the vote in New South Wales and the first so-called sex shop opened in Sydney. Now the Women’s Electoral Lobby was formed, Celsius replaced Fahrenheit, Gough Whitlam was elected prime minister, and the last Australian troops left Vietnam.
In Sydney Noir, Shirley Brifman died, while both Fred Krahe and Philip Arantz were forced out of the police force, one for being too crooked and one for being too honest. It was the year before the Moffitt Royal Commission, and therefore the last year when so many of the public remained so ignorant of the extent of police corruption. It was a year when much ended and much began, the year of New South Wales’ first large-scale commercial marijuana plantations, and the first murder of a Sydney heroin dealer.
In the New Year’s Honours List, Robert Askin was made a knight of the realm, based presumably on his own recommendation to the Queen.1 It was in many ways his apotheosis, and at this point we reprint one of the oddest passages from any Australian political memoir, a picture of Askin enjoying himself from High Climbers by Geoffrey Reading.
‘Picture the scene without getting too excited. The lights have been turned down low, casting eerie but romantic reflections on the black bean panelled walls. The rich curtains have been drawn, not so much to keep out the light, for it is approaching the witching hour, but for the sense of intimacy, the friendliness, the je ne sais quoi they impart. Chairs have been moved to one side and on the luxurious carpet are two ghostly figures shrouded in the half light, swaying to the haunting refrain of Broken Hearted Melody. Sir Robert William Askin, KCMG, GCMG, Premier of New South Wales, is entertaining a lady friend. They are in his office on the eighth floor of the Premier’s Department wing of the State Office Block, Macquarie Street, Sydney.
‘Outside in an adjoining ante-room is the Premier’s faithful driver, factotum and friend, Russell Ferguson, tending the bar on a one-for-them one-for-me basis. He is at peace with the world. Suddenly a stentorian voice slices through the throbbing threnody: “Russ, have you a moment?” Russ puts down his glass and enters the sanctum sanctorum. Immediately he notices something unusual and it is not long before he knows what it is. The Premier and his consort are dancing cheek to cheek, and that in itself is out of the ordinary, but what is really unusual is that they are both completely nude.’2
It is impossible to know if the not always reliable Reading was joking, and the scene contains at least one error – Askin was not made GCMG until after he resigned as Premier. Dating is therefore impossible. But we republish it here for its considerable curiosity value.
BURTON & VARLEY AUTOS
In the previous year we saw dodgy mechanics Alan Burton and Reg Varley being recruited by Fred Krahe at M
oore Park. On 24 January this year their ‘chop shop’ (a clandestine garage for recycling stolen cars) was uncovered by local police, who asked for a bribe in order not to press charges. As the operation was under Fred Krahe’s protection, we don’t know why this occurred, but thanks to a subsequent trial we do know something of how it played out.
At the police station, Burton asked the officers, ‘Who’s the boss cocky?’
When a senior officer identified himself, Burton asked how much Varley and he needed to pay. ‘Would ten grand buy us out of it?’
The detective laughed and said, ‘You’re going to have to do a lot better than that.’
‘Twenty grand?’
‘That’s nearer the mark.’
The detective went away to discuss the amount with his colleagues, and Burton said to Varley, ‘There’s a lot of them there. It looks like you’re going to have to go up to $30 000.’
The detective came back and asked what figure they’d reached. ‘Thirty grand.’
‘That’s the ticket. When would we get the dough?’
‘As soon as I get out of here I’ll go and get the money.’
Then the other cops walked over and one of them didn’t want to take a bribe.
Burton said, ‘Haven’t you made any phone calls? You know what the score is. You know who we’re working for.’
‘Yes. Fred. Well, I’ll make a phone call.’ The detective went away and made the call, returned and told his colleagues, ‘Look, they’re 100 per cent.’
The duo was released but apparently failed to raise the money. A month later Alan Burton disappeared and Reg Varley was convicted of manslaughter for assisting police kill his partner. At the trial, Varley said Krahe had taken most of the bribes police had received, and had killed Burton. In his judgment, Justice Isaacs accepted that the pair had run a ‘gigantic car stealing organisation’ in cooperation with police, who had received ‘large sums of money’ paid weekly. The cops had gone to Burton’s house because he’d ‘diddled’ them out of $20 000 and they wanted to beat him up to encourage payment, but he had died. Varley’s presence at the house was explained by the hypothesis that he had actually informed on Burton in order to take over the business.
It was a case both amazing and confusing, and remains so to this day. Yet the court records are there for all to see. Despite the judge’s comments, none of the corrupt police was actually identified at the trial, let alone prosecuted.3
BERNIE HOUGHTON: ‘A SIMPLE BARKEEP’
Although the R&R program was finished, Bernie Houghton stayed. On 12 February, following a trip to Saigon ‘to investigate the possibility of buying war-surplus material’, he attempted to re-enter Australia at Sydney Airport. But his visa had expired on 10 November 1971. Because of this, he was held up at the immigration checkpoint, but was admitted after he gave two very impressive character references.
One was John Charody, the business partner of Houghton’s first Australian employer Paul Strasser, and another member of Askin’s ‘Hungarian Mafia’. It was natural that Houghton would cite Charody as a reference, because the two were partners in Harpoon Harry’s, a restaurant at 235 George Street in the city, just north of Wynyard Station, which opened in October 1970. In effect, there was a third partner – Robert Askin himself, who had lent Charody $100 000 to start up the restaurant. Unfortunately, the building housing the restaurant burnt down: nevertheless, Charody insisted on paying Askin back the $100 000 – an act of probity the Premier never forgot. For not only would Askin leave Charody $100 000 in his will, he made him his executor.4
Houghton’s other referee was ASIO’s NSW State Director Leo Carter. The question here, as posed by American investigative journalist Jonathan Kwitny, is: ‘Why did one of the top intelligence officials in Australia, one who had direct contact with US intelligence agencies, personally take time out to clear a simple barkeep (Houghton’s ostensible occupation) for admission to Australia?’
When ASIO was later asked this very question by police investigating the collapse of the CIA-linked Nugan Hand merchant bank, they were unable to answer it. ASIO, it then turned out, had never even heard of Houghton – ‘he does not appear in our records’ – despite the fact they had given him a security clearance and one of their top men had given him a character reference. Their best guess was that Carter, by then deceased, ‘may have known Houghton privately as a restaurateur’. But Houghton, for his part, had absolutely no recollection of Carter.5
THE DEATH OF SHIRLEY BRIFMAN
The case against Shirley Brifman for the procuring of Mary Anne – who by now had rejoined the family – was due to be heard in Sydney on 17 March 1972. She never made it into court. On the morning of 4 March, Shirley was found in her Brisbane flat, dead of a drug overdose. Forty-five years later, the argument about the circumstances still rages.
Murder was suspected from the outset. David Hickie recorded that ‘several police attached to the CIB at the time said there was much talk Krahe had gone to Brisbane and, with a Queensland policeman, forced the drugs down Brifman’s throat with a tube’.6
‘Bondi Bill’ Jenkings recorded the same ‘underworld rumour … that Krahe had put a gun to Brifman’s head and forced her to take the tablets’. This was ‘repeated’ in a book written by the criminal George Freeman. ‘I would only point,’ Jenkings said, ‘to the coroner’s conclusion that Brifman committed suicide …’7 But Jenkings was wrong here, because the coroner did not conclude that Brifman’s death was suicide. The Queensland Police reported that there were ‘no suspicious circumstances’ in Brifman’s death and the coroner, accepting their finding, ruled that no inquest was necessary.
Another theory, put by Matthew Condon in his 2013 book, Three Crooked Kings, is that Brifman was forced to take an overdose, but not physically, with ‘a gun to her head’, but by threats no less dire, threats against her family. According to this explanation, Brifman was forced to commit suicide not so much – as Sydney Noir had it – because of what she had said about Krahe and corrupt NSW policemen, but because of what she was threatening to say about corrupt Queensland policemen. Such as Tony Murphy, for whom she had lied in the Royal Commission eight years before. Supporting this motive, author Steve Bishop argues that ‘her actions after returning to Queensland point to a determination to gain her revenge on Murphy and Hallahan’ because of their failure to help her evade the prostitution charge.8
Murphy certainly would have welcomed her silence. On 4 February 1972, he had been interviewed by senior police and then charged with having committed perjury at the National Hotel Royal Commission eight years earlier. For his plight, Murphy blamed Brifman’s lawyer Colin Bennett, for having dredged up ‘the untrue, malicious statements of Shirley Brifman, a drug addict, a self-confessed perjurer, prostitute and police informer’. Brifman had ‘obviously fabricated certain statements about me, hoping somehow to evade the consequences of the law with respect to her in New South Wales introducing her thirteen-year-old daughter to the sordid life of a prostitute …’.9
And then, on the night of 3 March a mysterious visitor (vari-ously identified as a man, a woman with a deep voice, or a woman with spectacles) came to the flat, spoke earnestly to Shirley Brifman and gave her ‘an amber vial’. At 8.30 the next morning Mary Anne found her mother dead. A policeman claimed to have found an empty bottle of the sedative Mogadon near her body. An autopsy found that she died of barbiturate intoxication.10 She was thirty-six years old.
Accident, suicide or murder? We don’t know. For more than a year, Brifman had been under great pressure from a range of police and criminals to bend their way. She and her family had received dire threats. She was facing a gaol sentence, a prospect that appalled her. She had a history of overdoses – something her posthumous detractors (like Glen Hallahan) were at pains to emphasise. Some of these overdoses may have been accidents, but at least one was a suicidal gesture.
Mary Anne told the Fitzgerald Inquiry investigators that the mysterious visitor to the flat the night
her mother died was in fact an emissary from Tony Murphy. But the Inquiry concluded on the one hand that ‘There is no evidence to suggest that Murphy was involved in any way in Brifman’s death …’ but on the other that ‘... Brifman’s untimely death meant not that he was acquitted but that the allegations against him remain unsolved’.11 Murphy died in 2010.
There were a few other codas to her death. One was the case over the prostitution of Mary Anne. On 17 March, Sonny Brifman – whose occupation was given as ‘invalid pensioner’ – was back in court in Sydney, charged with ‘suffering a female to resort and be upon premises used as a brothel’. The press report made no mention of the fact that she was his daughter. In late September Sonny was finally convicted: he received a two-year sentence with a non-parole period of eight months.12
At the time of Brifman’s initial arrest in June 1970, her associate Detective Sergeant David Cootes broke regulations by cer-tifying she was fit to get bail, an act for which he was demoted to Senior Constable. Some months after Brifman’s death, Cootes appealed against his demotion to the Crown Employees Appeal Board. Echoing Mick Phelan’s defence, Cootes argued that he had felt obliged to help Brifman because she had been his informant for six years. He said that he knew that she was a prostitute, but not that she was a brothel keeper. This was despite the fact that he had, she said, actually helped her decorate her new brothel at The Reef in Ithaca Road. The Board partially exonerated Cootes, determining that despite the serious charges he should again be eligible for promotion in the future ‘provided his record was satisfactory’.
On 10 August, Glen Hallahan appeared before the District Court in Brisbane on charges of corruptly receiving money from prostitute Dorothy Knight. To general amazement, Judge Edward Broad ruled out the use of crucial intercepted phone calls as evidence, forcing the prosecution to abandon their case. Hallahan, a free man, was then reinstated by the police force, but resigned immediately.13 Later he would be suspected of involvement in the drug trade, but managed to evade all attempts to bring him to book. Hallahan died in the early 1990s.
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