If so, was the $6000 cash a final corrupt payment to the Licensing Branch, or the price of getting out of The Joke?
With her intricate knowledge of the corrupt police network, though, what if Simone Vogel, at some point, decided to blow the whistle, as Fancourt had believed she would do a few years earlier? An unchecked brothel operator like Vogel could be extremely dangerous to high-ranking police.
If this theory was in any way close to the truth, it naturally followed that police might have been involved in the disappearance.
‘Simone, over many years, had become a central part of this corrupt system even if as a willing participant in what was described as victimless crime,’ Keith Smith says. ‘She had become quite friendly with the senior officers of the Licensing Branch. Her knowledge of what was later to become known as The Joke was vast and if she ever decided to blow the whistle for whatever reason, she could bring down the whole Licensing Branch with serious repercussions through to the very top police officers in the state.’
It was a notion investigating officers couldn’t shake. Who better to make someone vanish than corrupt and experienced police officers?
Smith recalls: ‘In what I believed to be a confidential conversation, I expressed my concerns of possible police involvement to my immediate superior officer … he gave me a good hearing but I could tell that he was somewhat disturbed by what I had related to him and virtually told me that I was on the wrong track and that I should forget about any such conspiracy theories.
‘I later recognised that what I had done had not remained confidential and I noticed that I was being shunned by some who I had previously regarded as mates.
‘On one occasion during an after-work drinking session, one of these detectives accused me in front of others of having become a mate of Steven Pavich and of receiving money from him. He suggested that this was the reason I had never pursued Pavich as the most likely suspect in Simone’s disappearance.’
Still, the homicide detective went ahead and committed his theory of police involvement to paper, typing a confidential report and handing it to a superior, head of the CIB. ‘I put my “theory” on paper and against all recognised chain-of-command protocol I confidentially forwarded my report to the Detective Superintendent in charge of the CIU,’ the detective recalls. ‘I knew this man and felt that I could trust him. He assured me that my report would be kept in his safe and would remain confidential.
‘Within weeks after I did this [Tony] Murphy summoned me and my partner to his office. He told us that we “could not see the woods for the trees” and that we had never really sufficiently directed and concentrated our investigations on Pavich who he and many others believed was Simone’s killer.
‘He told us that he was taking us off the investigation and that all associated material was to be handed over to two detectives who were being seconded to the Homicide Squad especially to have a fresh look at the investigation. Whether by coincidence or otherwise, it was one of these Detectives who had accused me of being in Pavich’s pocket. Naturally, I thought this was more than coincidence,’ Smith remembers.
The detective later made ‘discreet enquiries’ within the Bureau of Criminal Intelligence about his ‘confidential report’.
‘Much to my dismay he told me that after due consideration, my report had been disregarded and shredded,’ Smith says.
Simone Vogel’s body was never found.
Cleaning Out the House
Around September 1977, Gerry Bellino’s illegal casino upstairs at 142 Wickham Street, Fortitude Valley, was doing good business when a famous local identity graced its gambling tables.
It was Luciano ‘Lou’ Merlo, the Brisbane restaurateur and owner of the extremely popular Merlo’s. The New Farm restaurant – one of the first fine-dining eateries in the Brisbane suburbs – was opened in 1974 and frequented by many of the city’s notables, including public servant Sir David Longland, politicians Russ Hinze and Llew Edwards, and popular ABC radio announcer Bill Hurrey. Merlo was also hard to miss around town in his 1974 Maserati V6 Merak SS.
On this particular night, private investigator and hardman John Wayne Ryan was pacing the footpath outside 142 keeping an eye out for drunks wanting to get into the casino.
Since being employed by Gerry Bellino to be on the lookout for trouble, the karate expert and well-known figure in Brisbane’s underworld made it a point of not working on the actual premises. He would not be knicked by police for being in an illegal casino.
Ryan knew Merlo by sight. He had seen the restaurateur enjoy the hospitality of 142 Wickham a few times. In the early hours of the morning, Merlo made a fairly slow start but then began winning a succession of hands of blackjack. Word got to Ryan that Merlo was on a lucky streak and it was worth seeing.
‘Bellino was actually standing behind the dealer, and that was something he rarely did, he usually just socialised with the patrons,’ says Ryan. ‘Merlo asked Bellino if he’d up the ante – from $1000 to $3000, $5000, then $10,000 a hand.
‘Merlo cleaned them out. He won big.’
During this sensational streak of luck, phones started ringing and people started turning up at 142 to try and catch a look at Merlo in action. ‘Word got around,’ says Ryan. ‘There were people everywhere. They wanted to see this big game. It was said he won $50,000, but I understand it was closer to $100,000, in cash. That was a lot of money in those days.
‘I walked Merlo back to his car in nearby Duncan Street.’
Merlo’s good fortune had a disastrous knock-on effect for Bellino.
While the restaurateur went home with a big bag of cash after a great night out, the Bellinos had a serious problem. Their monthly kickback of around $10,000 to police had to be found. The safe at 142 Wickham had been emptied. Cash had to be brought over from Pinocchio’s and other joints owned by the Bellinos to facilitate Merlo’s windfall. Where would they get the cash to pay the cops on time?
According to Ryan, gamblers and associates of the Bellinos urged them to pay on time. But they fell behind.
Then in October 1977, just a few weeks after Merlo’s miraculous winning streak, a punter walked past John Wayne Ryan and into the gambling joint. He talked to Tony the Yugoslav, the bouncer on the door, went inside for a while, then left.
Soon after, the stranger came back. It was Constable Brian Marlin of the Licensing Branch.
‘I’ll never forget it,’ says Ryan. ‘I never used to turn up there until late, after 11 p.m. when the pubs were emptying out and the nightclubs were going. There was a bit of traffic. There were a few cops up and down the street but I didn’t take too much notice of that. I saw Phil the Gambler approaching the club with a couple of good-looking girls – he was a professional gambler.
‘Then this guys walks in, slips into the club, and the next minute he’s king hit Tony the Yugoslav. It was Brian Marlin.
‘The next thing there are cops everywhere, at least 20 of them, and I’m bundled back inside the door of 142 and they produce an oxyacetylene torch. They told me if I didn’t go inside with them they’d turn it on and use it on me.
‘I saw Marlin on top of Tony and he raised himself up and said, “We’ve got a gun here!” I saw Marlin wipe blood off the gun onto his own shirt and face, as if he’d suffered an injury in the fight with Tony.
‘I knew these cops gave people “presents” from time to time, but that was the first time I’d seen it with my own eyes.’
About 30 patrons of the club were rounded up as well as the staff. They were then marched down into the street and into a ‘Black Maria’ for transportation to the city watchhouse. ‘There were boys and girls all in there together,’ says Ryan. ‘All the way to the watchhouse they sped up and braked, sped up and braked, so we’d all be thrown forward. We were put in the drunk tanks. Bellino was brought to the watchhouse in a separate vehicle and placed in a separate cell. The cops then pro
cessed us.’
As a result, Bellino was ultimately charged and convicted of keeping a common gaming house at 142 Wickham Street and fined $350. It was his first and last such conviction.
Why did it happen?
‘The Bellinos had missed their monthly payment to the cops thanks to the big win by Lou Merlo,’ says Ryan. ‘That was the lesson. That was what would happen if you didn’t pay up on time.’
Milligan, the Reluctant Bushman
John Edward Milligan returned to Brisbane from his Thai holiday on 15 September, rested and refreshed. He called Glen Hallahan in Obi Obi as soon as he got home.
Associate Bryan Parker, meanwhile, returned to Port Moresby and prepared the heroin for the final leg of the mission, taping it up into two packages. He then journeyed to the nearby island of Daru with the drugs and waited, while Milligan and his co-conspirators Graham Bridge and Ian Barron all reconvened in Cairns.
Barron pulled the same scam that he had used two months earlier. He took a test flight in the other Piper Comanche up for sale, and flew into Daru to pick up the heroin. He was back in the air on 19 September. Before landing in Cairns, he took a sweep over Princess Charlotte Bay – 350 kilometres north-north-west of Cairns – and the nearby Jane Table Mountain (or Jane Table Hill, as it was also known). The mountain was Barron’s target. The syndicate had done its homework, to a degree.
Jane Table, a sandstone plateau, was spectacularly remote and stood out like a sore thumb. It was surrounded by 200,000 hectares of rich floodplain formed by the confluence of four major rivers meeting to the south of Princess Charlotte Bay. But it was a difficult place to access on the ground.
Barron made the drop as planned, and Milligan and Bridge headed to the mountain out of Cairns in a hired Toyota LandCruiser. The two Sydney-based bisexuals passed themselves off as keen fishermen.
On their first night they stayed in the tiny town of Laura in the Cook Shire. They chatted to locals in the only pub, owned by regional legend Percy Trezise – a pilot, painter, writer, explorer and passionate advocate for protection of the abundance of local Aboriginal rock art.
‘Talking to the locals at [the] Laura Hotel where they said they were on a fishing trip, they soon realised that their problems were getting worse for they had no ability to cross the many rivers crisscrossing Princess Charlotte Bay,’ said Narcotics Agent John Shobbrook. ‘Their first attempt to reach Jane Table Mountain was a failure but they did learn the best way to reach their destination …’
Milligan returned to Brisbane, again phoning Hallahan.
On 28 September, the men returned to Cape York, this time borrowing a dinghy and making it across Princess Charlotte Bay to the base of the mountain where they pitched camp. Their search for the small packages of heroin in this vast territory failed again.
By chance, they encountered in the region a local fisherman called David Ward. He caught barramundi illegally. Milligan and his crew recruited him, with the offer of money, to help look for two packages of ‘jewellery’ that had been dropped from a plane.
‘Ward was wary of strangers, as his occupation was illegally netting barramundi from the river,’ said Shobbrook. However, he soon realised that these weren’t Queensland coppers or government snoopers and before too long Milligan felt confident enough to explain to Ward that they had had a couple of parcels of jewellery dropped from a light aircraft and they were looking for them. Ward truthfully admitted that he hadn’t seen any packages but if they’d pay him then he would help them search.
Once again nothing was found, and Milligan gave Ward his name and telephone number on a piece of paper, telling him to call if he found anything. The note said: ‘Phone me if you ever find the parcels, but don’t open them.’
Again, Milligan returned to Brisbane. He rang to break the bad news once more to Hallahan. The former detective was furious. ‘Get your backside up to Cairns and find the bloody heroin,’ he yelled at Milligan.
Milligan returned for yet another search shortly after, and found one of the parcels. So did David Ward, but he didn’t tell Milligan. He figured it was worth more than the reward money offered, and took it back to Cairns where he tried to sell it to a fisherman and petty criminal in a pub, who handed over a huge sample of the drug to a local Customs officer. The fisherman happened to be the officer’s informant.
The sample was sent to the Federal Narcotics Bureau office in Edward Street, Brisbane, and on confirmation that it was high-quality heroin, a major investigation was initiated. It was headed by an officer called Greg Rainbow.
Meanwhile, Milligan, with only half his prize, settled back into his New Farm flat, and proceeded to make money transfers totalling $3000 into Hallahan’s bank account.
Pincer
The week after massage parlour madam Simone Vogel disappeared, Kevin Hooper, acting on information from confidential informants, stood in Parliament House and asked questions of Police Minister Newbery. Hooper was agitating for a full inquiry into the massage parlour industry. The Vogel case gave him the opportunity for a pincer movement.
He asked if Newbery had been made aware of Vogel’s case, and further asked: ‘As this disappearance seems to have sinister overtones, will he [Newbery] now reconsider his opposition to holding a full inquiry into massage parlour operations?’
Newbery said he had noted the newspaper articles on Vogel, and had read ‘more recent newspaper articles concerning this matter wherein the honourable member for Archerfield has claimed that he has been given information by massage parlour girls that strongly indicates that the woman known as Simone Vogel has been murdered.
‘While he is ever ready to pass his information on to the media, he has shown a marked reluctance, despite repeated requests by me, to pass the information on to police to assist them with their investigations,’ Newbery continued.
Incredibly, Newbery told the House – possibly on instruction from Acting Commissioner Vern MacDonald, as Lewis was still on his Interpol tour of Europe – that there was no evidence yet to suggest the disappearance had ‘sinister overtones’.
Newbery, an ineffectual parliamentary performer, even with prepared speeches, decided no commission of inquiry into massage parlours was necessary. ‘While I cannot recall having previously opposed such an inquiry, I do so now,’ he said in response to Hooper. ‘The operations of massage parlours are under daily scrutiny by the police department. Statistics recently tabled in this House prove the success of police activities in this area.’
Newbery concluded with a flat flourish: ‘I can assure all members of this House that police attention will continue to be given to the curtailment, with the aim of elimination, of massage parlours operating for the purpose of prostitution.’
The reality, in the streets of Fortitude Valley and on the byways of far-flung suburban Brisbane, was that the parlour business was expanding at a rapid rate and that men like the entrepreneurial Jack Herbert were beginning to see its potential as a massive source of income.
Certain police, too, were beginning to avail themselves of free alcohol kept on many premises in anticipation of their visits, and some free ‘massages’ to boot. Despite Newbery’s pledges, the industry was as true and constant as the red beacon atop the Brisbane City Hall clock tower.
Taking to the Streets
Justice Lucas’s report, following the Inquiry into the Enforcement of Criminal Law in Queensland, compiled with the assistance of legal eagle Des Sturgess and retired Whitrod man, Don Becker, was delivered to the government in April.
At its heart it intuited that the police practice of ‘verballing’ could be removed with the mandatory audio tape or video recording of criminal confessions. It also saw a benefit in turning over staff more regularly within the Licensing Branch to avoid entrenched corruption.
The report was quickly forgotten. Instead, the end of Lewis’s first year as Commissioner was by and large preoccupied with forg
ing a strong relationship with Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen. And it was the street-march legislation that perfectly aided and abetted this.
Around the time drug dealer John Milligan was wading through marshlands on Cape York looking for packages of heroin in September 1977, student marchers took to Brisbane streets over the dissolving of their right to march and the brutality and arrests began. Out of these clashes emerged a group calling itself The Right to March.
With the election set for November, Lewis pitted hundreds of officers against protestors in a protracted civil arm wrestle that extended over months. Hundreds of arrests were made. Civil liberty groups and members of the public complained about the show of police strength. Television footage of the clashes was broadcast across Australia.
As former commissioner Ray Whitrod had predicted on his resignation, Queensland was showing more than just signs of becoming a police state. That status had arrived.
‘They say Joh was against people and no, they couldn’t march,’ says Lewis. ‘But it wasn’t like that. They could march any day of the week after 6 p.m. Any time Saturday after midday and any time Sunday. You’ve got no idea how many people got in touch with us saying their kids [at All Hallows, Terrace and Brisbane Boys and Girls Grammar schools] have to go through the city to get home from school and we don’t want people marching … it would have disrupted tens of thousands of people and many of them young people.’
Lewis had other distractions during the turmoil.
There were matters of politicians calling about speeding tickets issued to them and their children; of having to provide ‘discreet security’ for mining magnate Lang Hancock when he paid a visit to Mount Isa; talking to the Premier about possibly installing a police radio in his official car.
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