The Night Dragon

by Matthew Condon

  It was during these meetings that O’Dempsey told Barbara of her husband Billy’s numerous affairs, including details of his relationship with Estelle Long. Barbara, in turn, told her workmate Ellen Gilbert that O’Dempsey had taken her to his flat in ‘Nethercote Court’ at 66 Elizabeth Street, Rosalie, but ‘nothing happened’. He would often take her on ‘drives’ in his Charger.

  Billy McCulkin’s lover, Estelle Long, later told police: ‘I recall that at the time Billy knew that O’Dempsey was showing interest in Barbara, there was reference to O’Dempsey taking her for drives and Billy was aware of his interest in her.’

  Barbara said she had no great affection for O’Dempsey, and told Gilbert she had heard a story that he had on occasion tied up his girlfriend, Dianne Pritchard, in the place they were living and went out. Barbara herself had no personal safety issues with O’Dempsey. She knew that her husband, Billy, had trusted Vince, and to a degree so did she. It was Billy she was more afraid of.

  In fact she had relayed her concerns to her neighbour, Peter Nisbet, who lived with friends in the house next door at number 4 Dorchester Street. Nisbet’s bedroom was in the front right-hand corner of the house, and overlooked the McCulkin’s yard and kitchen. The houses were physically close. When Billy McCulkin was still living in the house, Nisbet couldn’t help but notice that he was physically violent to his wife. Billy would later admit to ‘hitting’ his wife.

  After Billy moved in with Long, Nisbet observed Vince O’Dempsey’s distinctive car parked often in front of the McCulkin property. He deduced that O’Dempsey ‘had more than a passing interest’ in Barbara McCulkin.

  Barbara liked Nisbet. They would talk over the fence when he mowed the lawn. Towards the end of 1973 she confided to Nisbet that she was frightened of Billy and wanted to get away from him. ‘On occasions Mrs McCulkin spoke about John Andrew Stuart and the Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub fire as well as the Torino nightclub fire,’ Nisbet later said in a statement to police. ‘She stated that she was in a position to put her husband away in gaol for offences which he had committed of which she knew about.’

  He also told a coroner’s court in 1980: ‘… the context in which Bill is mentioned in it [the fires of early 1973] is that, you know, that he’d given her a hard time at certain stages and, you know, she wanted to get away and if she could, you know, it’d be a way out, by putting him up the creek.’

  Nisbet said Barbara seemed to think Stuart wasn’t involved in torching the Whiskey and that ‘he’d been set up for it’.

  Nisbet later elaborated in another statement to police: ‘I can recall one conversation with Barbara where we spoke for an hour to an hour and a half. Barbara told me that her husband was associated with criminals and she had enough on Billy to put him away for years with what she knew.

  ‘In the same conversation Barbara told me that her husband, Billy McCulkin, had something to do with the Whiskey Au Go Go fire and that if the cops had asked him the right questions they would have found out more people were involved in the Whiskey Au Go Go fire.

  ‘Barbara indicated that Finch and Stuart were not the primary movers of the Whiskey and that they were just collateral damage or an easy get for the cops. She seemed to think Stuart was set up for the Whiskey Au Go Go fire.’

  Margaret Grace Ward Goes Missing

  Following the Licensing Branch raid on O’Dempsey’s little ‘health studio’ at Lutwyche, his de facto, Dianne Pritchard, and young worker Margaret Grace Ward were issued summons’ on prostitution charges. They were due to appear in court on 16 November 1973.

  Ward was terrified about her court appearance, and extremely worried that her parents would discover she was being prosecuted for prostitution. On 15 November, the day before her court hearing, Ward, with Pritchard and O’Dempsey, saw a solicitor in the city about the imminent case. Ward was going to have to give evidence against Pritchard, and in turn, O’Dempsey.

  The next day, Ward failed to appear in court and was convicted in her absence. Pritchard was found guilty of keeping a premises for the purpose of prostitution. She was given a fine.

  On Saturday 24 November, Ward was reported as a missing person by her stepmother. A police investigation was launched into her disappearance. All of Ward’s clothes and belongings had remained untouched in her room at the Vogue Private Hotel.

  Margaret Grace Ward was never seen again.

  The End of the Affair

  Barbara McCulkin was admitted to St Andrew’s Hospital on Wickham Terrace, on Friday 7 December 1973, for cosmetic surgery to remove stretch marks from her stomach and her breasts. She’d finished up work at the Milky Way café the week before.

  Workmate Ellen Gilbert said: ‘Mrs McCulkin informed me that her husband was extremely jealous of her and she further informed me that she had particularly severe stretch marks in the abdomen area and … that she was very conscious of these stretch marks and would not have an affair with another man owing to her appearance and had arranged to have the operation to remove the stretch marks and so begin a new life for herself as her husband had deserted her.’

  She was operated on by plastic surgeon, Dr William Everingham, on Tuesday 11 December, to ‘excise stretchmarks on the abdomen’ and for breast augmentation, according to a statement he later provided to court. The operation went ‘without complication’.

  While Barbara was in hospital, Vicki and Leanne McCulkin were looked after by one of Barbara’s friends. According to police statements, Billy McCulkin asked Estelle Long to help pay for Barbara’s operation.

  ‘I’m not sure why but Billy said it was an operation Barbara “had to have” and so I assisted with the money,’ said Long. ‘I don’t remember the amount but I remember it was a fair bit.’ (It was a ruse by Billy. Barbara would go on to claim the cost of the surgery from Medical Benefits of Australia.)

  Barbara was discharged from hospital around 14 December 1973. Billy collected her from the hospital and took her home to Dorchester Street. He later claimed he had visited her every day in hospital and taken her flowers and chocolates. Billy was giving his wife and children a lot of attention after the operation.

  ‘I knew that Billy was going back and visiting Barbara and the children and that he spent a lot of time at the house when Barbara was first out of hospital,’ Long said in a statement.

  Around this time, Nisbet, the neighbour, was awoken at around two o’clock one morning by lights in the McCulkin’s kitchen shining on his bedroom window. His first thought was that Billy McCulkin had turned up at the house to give Barbara ‘a hard time’.

  ‘… so I went over to check to see if she was okay and Mr O’Dempsey was there then, on that occasion and I was … I spoke mainly to Barbara and she said, “This is Vic O’Dempsey or Vince O’Dempsey” … and I said, “Good day” and went home again,’ Nisbet later said. ‘That was it. She was okay. There was another fellow there as well.’

  Billy McCulkin was no longer living at the house but he visited often, and O’Dempsey’s regular presence ensured that a criminal milieu still orbited 6 Dorchester Street. Shorty was occasionally there, as were Tommy Hamilton, Keith Meredith and Peter Hall.

  Still, the life of the family rolled on, and Barbara began making preparations for the New Year. Schoolbooks were bought for the girls. And despite the wet summer – south-east Queensland was saturated from constant rain, not helped by tropical Cyclone Wanda pushing monsoonal troughs south – the McCulkin girls made the most of their vacation, playing with the Gayton girls who lived across the road at 7 Dorchester Street. Janet, 13, went to Yeronga State High School with Vicki McCulkin, and Juneen, who was about to turn 10 on 16 January 1974, was good friends with Leanne McCulkin.

  Barbara continued taking her children and the Gayton sisters to the Red Hill Skate Arena in Enoggera Terrace most Saturday nights. She continued to put out food for the stray cats of Dorchester Street. She was still recovering from her surgery,
and had to wear special medical brassieres. Barbara was due to meet her surgeon, Dr Everingham, in his offices at Morris Towers on Wickham Terrace in Brisbane’s Spring Hill later that month for a check-up.

  Meanwhile, Billy was still splitting his life between Estelle Long at Annerley and his family in Highgate Hill. While he had a job for once he was still drinking most of it away. There was no evidence he was giving Barbara any regular cash to upkeep the house and feed the children, though he claimed he paid the rent on the Dorchester Street house.

  Billy spent most of Tuesday 15 January with his wife at Dorchester Street. They discussed the state of their marriage. It was decided that Billy McCulkin would leave Dorchester Street, and the marriage, for good. He packed most of his belongings into two large, battered suitcases that he left in one of the back rooms of the house.

  The next day, McCulkin by chance saw Barbara on a council bus in the city. The bus was travelling down Queen Street towards Fortitude Valley. ‘She waved to me and I waved back to her, and I mouthed out to her, “I might come over tonight”,’ Billy McCulkin later told police, ‘… she nodded her head and the bus took off and that’s the last I ever seen her.’

  The Vanishing

  The last day of Barbara McCulkin’s life was a busy one. At about 11.30 a.m. on Wednesday 16 January 1974, she telephoned her good friend, Carole Quiller, who lived at Yeronga, and they discussed one of Quiller’s children visiting the McCulkins the next day. Quiller told Barbara she’d bring her over either the next day or Friday.

  Barbara told her friend she was heading into town to see the Medical Benefits of Australia about her $200 refund for the operation. She also said she was popping into Myer to see about getting a new job. (She was interviewed and told they’d call her when they had a vacancy.)

  During the middle of all this activity, her bus by chance passed the building construction site at 444 Queen Street, where Billy was working, and they had their brief exchange.

  Later that afternoon, Barbara was hard at work at her sewing machine, making clothes for herself and the girls. Billy McCulkin never came to the house that night. Instead, he got drunk after work and ended up back at Estelle Long’s flat.

  Then at about 6.30 p.m., the Gayton girls were on the verandah of their house at 7 Dorchester Street when they saw two men entering the McCulkin property across the road. One of the men was carrying a half-carton of XXXX tallies.

  The sisters then crossed the road to get the McCulkin girls. They were having a tenth birthday party for Juneen, and the cake and candles were all ready. ‘While I was standing near the front gate of their home, I saw a man playing with Ginger Meggs,’ Janet Gayton would tell police less than three months after Barbara McCulkin and her daughters vanished. ‘Ginger Meggs’ was one of the McCulkin family cats. ‘I also saw another man standing near the stove in the kitchen and he was talking to Mrs McCulkin. I knew that man as Vince because I had seen him there before.’

  Janet whistled for her friends and Vicki and Leanne came out of the house. Juneen asked: ‘Are you coming over? The cake’s on the table.’

  ‘Yes,’ Vicki said. ‘Vince and Shorty are here.’

  ‘What’s Shorty’s real name?’ Janet asked.

  Vicki told her. ‘Shorty is a mate of my father,’ Vicki added.

  Vicki was wearing blue jeans with yellow stars on the flared cuffs, a tight-fitting red jumper with a zipper up the front and a Zodiac chain around her neck – she was a Scorpio. Leanne was dressed in a pink smock decorated with flowers and stripes, and pink stretch shorts. The McCulkin girls then crossed the road with the Gayton sisters for the party, leaving Barbara alone with ‘Vince and Shorty’.

  At some point after this, Clockwork Orange Gang member and Torino arsonist Peter Hall said in a statement to police that Shorty Dubois had turned up at his house at 24 Nielson Street, Chermside, where Hall said he was living with Carolyn Scully, the sister of Tommy Hamilton.

  ‘On this day Carol and Jan Stubbs, Shorty’s partner, were out at the gym,’ Hall alleged. ‘I was babysitting the kids at the house, and Keithy [Meredith] was with me. Shorty came back in Vince’s car to pick up Jan and take her home to his mum’s place. When he got to the house it was dark; Shorty told me that he and Vince were at the McCulkins’ on the piss and were going back to McCulkin’s to have sex. He didn’t say who with specifically but he asked me and Keith if we wanted to come along for the fun.

  ‘He told me that O’Dempsey was still back at the McCulkin house and he was going back there after he dropped Jan off home. I told him I was not interested and Keith didn’t want to go either. Shorty left the house to drop Jan home and I didn’t see him again that night.’

  Back at Dorchester Street, Leanne left the party at around 7.30 p.m., feeling unwell. Her older sister, Vicki, got home at around 10.15 p.m. Both respectively told the Gayton girls, when they left the party, that they would see them the next day.

  As promised, Janet and Juneen popped over the road to the McCulkin house the next day – Thursday – but found no one at home. They checked repeatedly throughout the day but failed to make contact with the McCulkin girls or their mother. It wasn’t until about 6 p.m. on Friday 18 January that Billy McCulkin arrived at 6 Dorchester Street, having worked all day at 444 Queen Street.

  ‘On arrival at the house, I found that it was locked up and I could not rouse anybody,’ Billy McCulkin told police in a statement just weeks after the disappearances. ‘I then went to the shop on the corner of Dorchester Street and Gladstone Road, where I spoke to the store-keeper, Mrs Swanston, and I asked if she had seen my wife and children, or if she knew where they were.’

  Mrs Swanston did not, so he returned to the house and sat on the front steps waiting for his family until nightfall. Later, he saw Janet Gayton walking to the shop.

  ‘Have you seen Vicki or Leanne?’ Billy asked her.

  ‘No, they haven’t been there all day,’ Janet said. ‘They weren’t there yesterday either.’

  Worried, Billy smashed the glass on the front door and gained entry to the house. The scene was described by one eyewitness as ‘eerie’. Billy immediately made a chilling inventory. None of Barbara’s clothes or personal effects were taken except for the blue dress with white and yellow spots she was wearing when Billy saw her on the council bus two days earlier. Her cosmetics and the sunglasses she always wore were still in the house.

  None of the children’s clothes were missing except those they wore on the Wednesday. Barbara’s change purse containing $8 and personal papers was found on the top of the refrigerator. There was food in the fridge as well as bottles of beer. The children’s two pet Siamese cats – gifts to the girls from Estelle Long – had been locked in the house with no food. A dress Barbara was making was still in the sewing machine, and the machine’s light was still on. None of the beds in the house had been slept in.

  In the letterbox Billy found a letter from Medical Benefits of Australia with a cheque for $210, and another for $170 made payable to St Andrew’s Hospital. It was as if the house was frozen in time.He began a frenzied search for his family, hailing a taxi to Barbara’s friend Carole Quiller’s house in Yeronga. She had not seen or heard from Barbara and the kids. Having kept the taxi running, he then headed to his sister’s partner’s house at Wynnum.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ they asked him.

  ‘Well, she [Barbara] has just disappeared or something, because she hasn’t been there for a couple of days,’ Billy informed them.

  His sister Eileen and her boyfriend volunteered to help him search. Billy left in the taxi and they promised to meet him soon in Dorchester Street. Later, the three of them drove to the Red Hill Skate Arena for a look around. They weren’t there. Billy McCulkin then entered the phone box outside the skating rink and called Vince O’Dempsey’s brothel, the Polonia, at Lutwyche.

  Dianne Pritchard answered the phone. ‘Do you know where Barbara is?’
Billy asked. ‘She hasn’t been home for a couple of days, her money purse and everything is left there.’

  ‘No I don’t,’ Pritchard replied.

  ‘Is Vince there?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘I’m worried about her.’

  The trio travelled to Barbara’s brother Graham’s place at Strathpine. Nobody had seen Barbara and the girls. Billy then headed back into the city and reported his wife and the children missing to the CIB in the city and the Woolloongabba police station. It was now late in the evening and Billy was dropped off at the Treasury Hotel where he waited for Estelle Long to finish work. She then drove Billy back to Dorchester Street.

  The search continued into the early hours of Saturday morning. Billy was due to work at the Queen Street construction site that day but he called in and arranged to have the day off. He caught a taxi to the Carina home of a friend, Norman Wild, and asked if he’d help him search. Given Wild had a car, he agreed, and they returned to Dorchester Street. Frustrated and tired, McCulkin again saw his daughters’ friend, Janet Gayton, across the road. He went over to talk to her. ‘Are you sure they weren’t here?’ he pleaded with her. ‘Was there anybody else here?’

  ‘Yes,’ the young girl said, ‘Vince and Shorty were here. They were here on Wednesday night.’

  Estelle Long, who was living with Billy McCulkin at this stage, remembered him as being distraught. ‘I recall the night when Billy first told me that Barbara and the girls were missing,’ she later told police, ‘… he appeared genuinely shocked.’ He told Long he had found beer and dried fruit at the house. He knew O’Dempsey, a vegetarian, ate a lot of dried fruit.

  When Billy discovered that Vince and Shorty were seen at the house in Dorchester Street, he feared the worst. ‘He [Billy] told me straight away that he knew they had done something to them,’ Long recounted. ‘He told me that O’Dempsey had killed someone and had a brothel at Lutwyche and talked about the other man [Shorty] being charged for rape.