Jacks and Jokers

by Matthew Condon

  By calling McMillan with his extraordinary proposal, he may have been planning ahead for future employment. But why the ALP, given his staunch loyalty to Bjelke-Petersen’s regime during his time as a senior officer?

  The Joke already had an ear in parliament in Don ‘Shady’ Lane. Was the consortium thinking ahead, hedging its bets, and looking at securing a friend in the Labor Party as well, should they ever take power?

  ‘What do you think my … chances would be?’ Murphy asked McMillan.

  The political operative was frank. ‘Virtually none,’ he told Murphy.

  Ultimately, the successful ALP candidate for the seat Murphy had his eye on at the 1983 state election was a lawyer by the name of Wayne Keith Goss.

  Slade Gathers Some Dirt

  A year after entrenching himself in the Far North Queensland drug rings, Detective Jim Slade was becoming something of an expert on the illicit drug trade. During most of September, Slade had criss-crossed the Far North gathering intelligence. He logged 27 hours of flying time in both light aircraft and helicopters. He logged a further 16 hours in police vessels and private launches around Aurukun, False Pera Head, Lockhart River and the Bloomfield River.

  He also spoke to many dozens of people and concluded that Far North Queensland was being used ‘extensively for the landing of illegal immigrants and importation of illegal drugs’.

  The next month he furnished a report for the sitting Royal Commission of Inquiry into Drug Trafficking, presided over by Justice Donald Stewart of New South Wales. The inquiry, hot on the heels of the Williams Royal Commission, was sparked by the murders of Douglas and Isabel Wilson, and was charged with investigating Terry Clark’s so-called Mr Asia drug trafficking syndicate.

  In a covering letter to Slade’s report, dated 13 October, his boss Tony Murphy affirmed that the information ‘would be of vital interest’ to Justice Stewart. It was an irony that he would recommend intelligence to the commission, given that it was Murphy’s actions in leaking confidential material on the Wilsons to Brisbane journalist Brian Bolton in 1979 that had most probably resulted in their murders.

  Murphy had given evidence to the commission three months earlier. As he pointed out in the covering letter: ‘I also made certain recommendations to His Honour suggesting ways of introducing a more effective enforcement in the area.’

  It was typical of Murphy to counter any criticism of his work – namely the Wilson leak – with direct, forthright, even imposing ­assistance to the Stewart commission. He had always attacked when he felt threatened.

  Slade had some pertinent observations for the commission of inquiry. He recommended the formation of an ‘intelligence cell’ based in Cairns.

  ‘This could be made up of members of the Queensland Police Bureau of Criminal Intelligence and Customs Intelligence,’ Slade wrote. ‘This squad would monitor fauna and flora in and out of North Queensland area, illegal drug importation and the movement of local marihuana. This squad would then have the responsibility of farming this information to the areas when it would have the most effect.’

  Slade warned that the vast majority of people he’d spoken to in Far North Queensland had never been approached by authorities in terms of the illegal movements of planes and boats. He suggested cultivating a ‘network of intelligence gatherers’ comprised of responsible members of the community – teachers, nurses, station owners and mission personnel.

  He also recommended a complete revision of the current coastal surveillance methods. Slade noted that the amount of intelligence he had gathered from the field was ‘staggering’.

  Confiding in the Pom

  By the end of 1982, the prostitute Katherine James was attempting to set up her own massage parlour – Xanadu – in Stanley Street at the Gabba.

  The business would unfortunately be not far from another Hapeta/Tilley brothel, the Cosmo, which was just around the corner and directly opposite the Mater Hospital. They were not happy with the prospective competition.

  Come November, James was starting to provide Licensing Branch officer Nigel Powell with some damning intelligence about corrupt payments to police from the brothel and gaming consortiums across the city. She was hearing rumours that her new business would virtually be shut down by police before it had a chance to get going, all because it potentially threatened the Hapeta/Tilley franchise.

  At around 8.30 p.m. on Wednesday 10 November 1982, Powell met with James at the Carindale Tavern. They had one drink in the Banana Bar before heading out to the rear car park.

  Powell recorded in his police notebook: ‘When asked why she trusted me and why she spoke to me – said my name was one of the only ones never connected to anything going on.’

  She spoke at length about Sergeant Harry Burgess, one of Powell’s bosses in the Licensing Branch. ‘She says that Harry Burgess is being paid in money and favours by HAPETA and for TILLEY, but she has no proof. She says that H.B. [and others] … have sex with girls on numerous occasions but obviously only in one another’s company or alone or with others who turn a blind eye.

  ‘She says that Hapeta has the majority of the girls terrified in that he threatens to and does beat the girls up if they do the wrong thing or quit when he doesn’t want them to.

  ‘She says that both Hapeta and Tilley have openly boasted that “Xanadu” will be closed by means that imply police means initially.’

  James was candid. Powell could see the pieces but he couldn’t make sense of the big picture. He couldn’t believe these machinations were transpiring right under his nose.

  James continued on about Harry Burgess: ‘She says that H.B. often goes to Fantasia on or off duty and has a “thing” for Tilley and does disappear with her. Also that Tilley besides the normal alcohol provides meals both at the parlour and at the Aquarius restaurant plus girls.’

  Tilley confirms that Burgess had fallen in love with her, and was often hanging around the parlours for sex, a drink or a meal. ‘My main concern was having the money to pay, and running the places,’ she says. ‘I really didn’t give a shit. It was inferred to me that Terry Lewis was the almighty.

  ‘I never actually gave him [Lewis] the money. Jack Herbert said, “This is going to the top.”

  ‘Maybe [Herbert was lying]. They all lie. They were a very dishonest lot, those policemen. They used to run into the parlour, like the [police] TV show on telly; cops always pose. They’d run into parlours and do that.

  ‘I’d say, “There’s clients here you know?”

  ‘I always found the money to pay, no matter what … It’s like any good books – take rent out every week so you’ve got it. That was my “funny money”. It was in a big roll of carpet in my bedroom.’

  She recalls an encounter with Nigel Powell: ‘I remember Nigel asked me something untoward one night and I said, “Go ask Harry”.’ ‘It was something like, “How does this all keep going?”

  ‘ “I don’t know, ask Harry.” I walked away from him. I thought, Why ask that? He must know.

  ‘He was in there every night with the rest of them. Nigel got nothing.’

  James would later elaborate on the activities of Harry Burgess, courtesy of what she observed and what Tilley told her when she worked for the Hapeta/Tilley consortium at Warry Street and at the parlour at 612 Brunswick Street.

  ‘I was never in a position to see [Harry] Burgess pick up money, but he would often come to Fantasia and have dinner with Anne Marie,’ James recalled. ‘She would often order a big seafood platter from Aquarius.

  ‘Burgess and Tilley would sometimes go away for the night when he called at Fantasia. If Anne Marie wanted to spend the night with Harry, I would arrange an all-night booking for her and she would have to put the money in so that Hector would not find out.

  ‘The approach taken by the Licensing Branch detectives varied according to who was on the shift. When they came to Fantasia, some of them
would go to the rooms with the girls and sit there all night and drink and eat. If sexual activity took place with the visiting detectives, the house would pay the girls at the end of the night.’

  In the dark car park of the Carindale Tavern, James confessed her concerns to Powell.

  He recorded in his notebook: ‘She fears being planted with drugs. She fears an arson attempt on her studio. She says she no longer trusts Nev [Ross] as she thinks he talks to H.B. She believes he is the main danger [H.B.] to her existence.

  ‘I told her the best she could do was to keep digging for information no matter how minor about H.B., Hapeta, Tilley, [Roland] Short.’

  On the night that Katherine James was beginning to give Powell a rudimentary outline of a network of police corruption known as The Joke, Commissioner Lewis was on a few days recreational leave. That evening he took his wife, Hazel, and youngest son John Paul to Hoyts cinemas in the city to see a film called ‘The Boat’ [Das Boot], the epic U-boat drama written and directed by Wolfgang Petersen. They had supper at Jo Jo’s in Queen Street before returning to Garfield Drive.

  Xanadu

  By late 1982 Katherine James was to learn just how tight a grip Hapeta and Tilley, and the Bellinos, had on the vice market in Brisbane.

  Her entrepreneurial initiative, setting up her own parlour Xanadu, coincided with a change of the guard in the Licensing Branch.

  She had worked hard at the Balaclava Street brothel and had saved enough money to either open a parlour or a hairdressing salon. She chose the oldest profession in the world.

  ‘I was attracted by the easy money,’ James later said. ‘At that stage I knew that it would cost a parlour operator about $1000 per week per house [in payments to police] and about $1500 per phone in order to set up a parlour.

  ‘I decided to approach Nev Ross because I knew him well in order to seek permission to open a parlour. He told me that the Licensing Branch was changing its Inspectors and because of my past I would have to wait and see who was appointed.’

  Following the resignation of Noel Dwyer, the new Inspector in Charge of the branch happened to be Graeme Robert Parker, 48, appointed on 20 September.

  Parker joined the force as a cadet in 1951 and had an early stint in the Licensing Branch from 1958 to 1964 where he met and befriended Jack Herbert. He maintained a fairly static police career, spending time in North Queensland from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, before returning to the Licensing Branch in 1980.

  Lewis has positive memories of Parker: ‘He was a very, very bright fellow and I liked him. He was a real worker. How he got involved with Herbert I don’t know.’

  By the time Parker took the top job in the Licensing Branch, graft payments taken from prostitution and illegal gaming had lifted by more than 60 per cent over the previous year. The annual income calculated from the two major consortiums was nudging $250,000. The Joke under Jack Herbert was now a huge, efficiently run business.

  Meanwhile, James got the go-ahead to set up a parlour in either the Valley or the Gabba. She chose Stanley Street.

  ‘I then had a meeting with Graeme Parker,’ James said. ‘Parker did not discuss money with me at the meeting although it was an understanding that money had to be paid.

  ‘I did discuss money with Nev Ross. I was to pay $10,000 in cash to him and then about $1500 to $2000 per week depending on how well the business went. I paid the cash to Nev Ross personally.’

  Parker was extremely particular when he laid down the ground rules for James and her new business. ‘Parker wanted to know what was going to be put into the parlour and how many girls I was going to employ,’ she recalled. ‘He wanted to know whether it was to be “on premises” or escorts. He wanted to know how many phones I had. He told me what ads I could put in the paper. I regarded the conversation with Graeme Parker as the “go ahead” for me to begin renovations for Xanadu.’

  James spent about $35,000 fitting out the brothel.

  She had barely opened her doors for business when she was hit up for more money by corrupt police. Then the pressure accelerated. ‘The police came in and harassed the girls and said that if they left they wouldn’t get into any trouble,’ James said. ‘Towels were even taken. Agents were used and police parked outside for days and harassed clients. I tried to contact Nev Ross. He would not return my calls and neither would Graeme Parker.’

  James did in fact ring Nigel Powell to try and get through to Ross. She asked Powell to get a message to him.

  ‘I’ve done it,’ Powell later told her. ‘I don’t know why he hasn’t contacted you back.’

  Then police came down heavily on James’s staff. They were being arrested and taken to the watchhouse.

  Had this been a quick cash grab by corrupt police all along? Or was the Licensing Branch making life hell for James at the bidding of Hector Hapeta and Anne Marie Tilley, James’s direct competitors?

  James was then approached by Hapeta. ‘He made me two offers,’ James recalled. ‘Firstly, he offered to buy the premises outright for $10,000. His second offer was that I stay on as manageress. He told me I better think seriously about it or I’d be closed in less than two weeks.

  ‘I told Hector to forget it and that I wasn’t prepared to deal.’

  At this time James briefly left the country. ‘I left [receptionist] Priscilla in charge, but before I left it was quite bad,’ James recalled. ‘They [the police] were parking their car on the footpath directly outside the massage parlour and stopping clients from going in, asking them what they were doing there – just generally letting their presence be felt all day.

  ‘When I was overseas I had contact with Priscilla and she said it got gradually worse. As soon as the new girls started they were told to leave, told to go around the corner [to Cosmo] and get a job and they wouldn’t be harassed in any way, and in that time the premises were closed.’

  The message was powerfully clear. If you threatened the harmony of The Joke, you didn’t last long.

  Into the Past

  By the end of 1982, Mary Anne Brifman was doing her best to raise her children following her decision to work as a prostitute, and coping with a divorce.

  She was living in a flat in Kangaroo Point, not far from where Glen Hallahan, the retired detective and member of the so-called Rat Pack, had once had a place of his own. The same man that her mother had been sexually and emotionally attached to in the 1960s.

  Being on the game and living in that part of the city must have made her wonder if indeed she wasn’t repeating her own mother’s life, and quite possibly making the same mistakes.

  As F. Scott Fitzgerald ended his novel The Great Gatsby: ‘So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.’

  Did she remember, too, the early afternoon of 18 August 1971, at age 14, when she had been interviewed at police headquarters in Brisbane by Sydney detectives Doyle and Paull? For months her mother had been interrogated by the police about her allegations made on the ABC’s current affairs program This Day Tonight. Mary Anne, in turn was questioned by detectives.

  ‘Do you know Detective Sergeant Fred Krahe?’ they had asked her at the time. It was Krahe, also one of Shirley Brifman’s lovers and recipient of graft from her, who helped torture Brifman before she fled Sydney for the apparent safety of Brisbane.

  ‘I spoke to him on the phone but the only place I have seen him was at my home at Westleigh.’

  ‘Have you spoken to him on the phone …?’

  ‘Yes, he used to ring up for Mum. Not every day, but it all depends.’

  ‘Can you tell us anything about any misconduct committed by any member of the New South Wales Police Force?’

  ‘I know that Detectives were part of some robberies,’ replied Mary Anne. ‘Because Sonja, my sister, and I were in the room under the bed at home and Mum was talking to a man who looked like a Detective and they started to tal
k about the robbery of some diamonds and then they heard Sonja and me under the bed and they told us to go outside.’

  They asked her if she knew about any other misconduct by police, and Mary Anne volunteered that her mother used to talk a lot about a ‘Mr Allan’, who often rang the house.

  They asked which ‘Mr. Allan’ she was referring to.

  Mary Anne said: ‘He is like you only he is the Commissioner.’

  She refused to detail what she knew about Norm Allan, New South Wales Commissioner of Police at the time, and any involvement he might have had in crime, because ‘he might lose his job’.

  ‘I am not going to ask you anymore questions,’ the detective said. ‘Do you wish to say anything further?’

  ‘I have got nothing else to say then,’ Mary Anne replied.

  Mary Anne Brifman had seen a lot and suffered a lot. She had still not adequately processed her mother’s horrific death, nor that she had been put on the game by her own parents when she was 13 – an event that precipitated the journey to Shirley’s premature death.

  There, at Kangaroo Point, she could look across the river to the CBD and know that somewhere in the offices at police head­quarters were two men who knew her family’s story intimately. That was Commissioner Terry Lewis and Assistant Commissioner Tony Murphy.

  And just as her mother had done in 1963, soon she too would once again be flying south – to Sydney. Mary Anne Brifman would not mirror her own mother’s short and tragic life, but she would make a career of prostitution, getting to know the main players of the criminal underworld. She would spend decades contemplating her life, reading widely and moving towards a spiritual truth that her past had blinded her from.

  Mary Anne Brifman, unlike poor Shirley, would learn about salvation, and she would find it.

  Games

  In the week leading up to the XII Commonwealth Games – an epochal event for Brisbane – Commissioner Lewis’s work patterns were a combination of official festivities and street-level concerns that protests, especially by Indigenous people, might spoil the party.