Jacks and Jokers

by Matthew Condon

  One of the highest ranking police named was Detective Sergeant Ron Pickering, then head of the Special Crimes Squad.

  Glasson handed on a copy of the report to the Attorney-General and Justice Minister, Sam Doumany. ‘It will be up to the Solicitor-General to decide whether or not there is a case to answer and if so, to take appropriate action,’ Police Minister Glasson said.

  The Solicitor-General, D.V. Galligan, was then expected to hand his decision to Police Commissioner Lewis, who was then responsible for making the final decision as to whether to proceed with charges or not.

  Come Monday 20 December, Glasson announced that five policemen and one policewoman would be charged over the Bikie Bandits investigation. They would appear in a Magistrates’ Court in January of the New Year.

  Lewis was in for a busy day. He was behind his desk at 7.20 a.m., and after some minor paperwork he noted in his diary that Col Chant of the Police Complaints Tribunal and others called, ‘re: charging and possible suspension in “Bikie Bandit” case’. Later: ‘Hon. Glasson phoned re: report from Crown Law office.’

  Then Lewis called Solicitor-General Galligan ‘who said summons proper and suspension not necessary’. He also had a ‘brief discussion’ with soon to be retired Assistant Commissioner Tony Murphy.

  Later that day, Commissioner Lewis made it over to the Executive Building for the Premier’s official Christmas party, where he had a quiet word with Bjelke-Petersen and Bill Glasson who told him to ‘summons and do not suspend’. It had been a baptism of fire as Police Minister for the generally laconic Glasson.

  Lewis eventually made his way back to the Police Club, the ­traditional refuge for officers when, under siege, they needed to gather for private discussions and debate, and to support each other. The ‘Bikie Bandit Six’ would have their legal funding taken care of by the union. He drank with Noel Dwyer and, of course, Tony Murphy.

  The force had been in this position many, many times, since the days of Frank Bischof. And they had always come out on top. Heading into the New Year, there was no reason to think to the contrary.

  Another Christmas Card

  As was his habit on an almost annual basis, Gunther Bahnemann, living out on Harvey Creek Road in Bellenden Ker, 50 kilometres south of Cairns in Far North Queensland, wrote Lewis a letter in response to receiving one of the Commissioner’s Christmas cards.

  The year before the card depicted two mounted police. This year it had a German Shepherd police dog.

  ‘Dear Terry, it is just after two o’clock in the morning, so please overlook the typing errors that may occur, one does get a bit dopey in the head around that hour,’ wrote Bahnemann.

  Apart from the usual pleasantries, Bahnemann had an extraordinary story to tell. He explained to Lewis that his boat building and fibreglass business had recently hit the wall and he had been forced to apply for social security benefits – ‘it was that bad, Terry’ – only to be told by a young public servant that the dole was not in place to be a crutch for failed businesses and that he needed to sign a Statutory Declaration pledging not to reopen his business.

  ‘I promptly blew my stack and told her I would rob banks first before I signed such defeatist rubbish,’ wrote Gunther. ‘Leonie [his wife] promptly rang the Whip at Canberra and got onto Senator Flo Bjelke-Petersen. Flo had a twenty minute talk with Leonie and the ball started rolling.’

  Gunther explained that a week later the Senator was in Innisfail and rang his wife, ‘inviting her for further discussion’.

  ‘We found Flo very efficient and as she mentioned everyone seems to hear about her pumpkin scones – and no one ever hears about her arguments she carries into parliament,’ Bahnemann added.

  ‘Anyway, we got back into business and at the moment employ four workers.’

  The previous year Bahnemann had an audience with Assistant Commissioner Tony Murphy. And this year he and his wife had a one-on-one with Senator Bjelke-Petersen, wife of the Premier, himself close to the Commissioner of Police, Terry Lewis. For someone with a conviction for attempted murder against his name, and living in remote Bellenden Ker, Bahnemann mixed with some powerful people.

  ‘I do not want to pat you on the back, Terry, however I think you are just about the most efficient Commissioner Queensland [has] had so far and you are very much liked by the police around here amongst which I have many a good friend.’

  Bahnemann repeated that Lewis never seemed to age as the years had rolled by, and attributed it to ‘excellent grooming’.

  ‘I shall come to Brisbane in March or April,’ he signed off. ‘Please allow me a half an hour for old times sake talking to you. All the best for now.’

  Murphy Resigns

  As the end of 1982 loomed, Assistant Commissioner Tony Murphy decided to call it a day and resign from the force.

  As a part of the mythical Rat Pack, he had outlasted Glen Patrick Hallahan by ten years. His departure would leave Commissioner Terry Lewis the last man standing from that golden era of policing when Uncle Frank Bischof mentored his boys and they roamed the city like three kings. Murphy’s last day on the job would be Tuesday 21 December 1982.

  Even for a hard man like Murphy, it had been a rough 12 months, kicking off with the allegations of police corruption by former officers Campbell and Fancourt on the ABC’s Nationwide program.

  In addition, Murphy’s involvement with the murder of the drug couriers Douglas and Isabel Wilson saw him admonished by a royal commissioner. (Lewis says Murphy would have had no chance of further promotion with him as Commissioner following the Wilson murders.)

  Murphy was just 55 years old.

  His wife, Maureen Murphy, recalls: ‘He said that he wanted to get away from it all. There must have been a bit of scandal then in the police force. I thought Tony had got to that stage that he just wanted to get away from everything. He was tired of everything.’

  Murphy planned to move to a little place he had over on North Stradbroke Island. His idea was to grow Geraldton wax – Chamelaucium uncinatum – a flowering plant popular for its hardiness and longevity after cutting. The flowers were ordinarily white and mauve.

  ‘He loved it there,’ Maureen recalls. ‘The family loved it over there. He wanted to get away from everything.’

  Lewis recalls that the resignation could have been linked to some bad press against Murphy through 1982. ‘The reason he gave was that he’d got some sort of adverse publicity … whether it was over the murders of those two people … over something … I think he did a report of some sort about saying that, seeing there was this publicity, it would preclude him from becoming a deputy commissioner, so he gave it away,’ says Lewis. ‘Why give away being Assistant Commissioner, which was pretty good? I think he would have wanted to stay on and become the boss.

  ‘To go from there, down to an island somewhere growing flowers … it was a very strange finale if you like. Being a detective was his life.’

  Murphy’s good friend, top legal eagle Des Sturgess, says Murphy had grown weary of taking the public hits. ‘He retired because he was sick and tired of the abuse he was getting,’ Sturgess recalls. ‘Comes a stage when you have difficulty standing much more. He’d been in the firing line for too long.

  ‘He went to Point Lookout; he thought he might be able to make a dollar growing Geraldton wax. He reckoned it was a good place to grow Geraldton wax and sell it. It was all bullocky work he did.’

  Lewis says Murphy was a superlative detective and had a brilliant police mind. ‘I can’t criticise him as a working policeman, but what he did outside of … his social activities if you like … I don’t know,’ says Lewis. ‘The only social activities I ever had with him would have been over a drink in various pubs, which we might have met from time to time. He never came to my home for dinner; I never went to his home for dinner. So we weren’t … we were friends but not on a family social sort of thing.’

&nb
sp; Lewis says Murphy had a valuable criminal informant named Norris who worked very close with Murphy. Lewis found Norris the type of person he himself would have found it hard to tolerate. ‘He was a criminal and he was a very, very bloody close informant for Murphy,’ Lewis recalls. ‘I don’t know whether [Shirley] Brifman ever was or whether she was just a bloody sexual object.

  ‘But Norris, I know was, because well I just know. And he was so … I think it was a relative that found out about Norris dogging on people and went to shoot him with a shotgun, and did in fact blow one arm right off but didn’t kill him. They’re the sort of people that I suppose, the life, the career that Murphy had, they’re the sort of people that he got friendly with.

  ‘And Murphy was with Jack Herbert for four years in the frigging Licensing Branch [1966–71]. Herbert says nobody that ever came there knocked him back.’

  Lewis says he never saw Murphy take kickbacks but the word was out there. ‘It was certainly said by various people that he did take money. But again, I didn’t see it. And it was said that he was, when they were probably in the Licensing Branch they had these games going,’ adds Lewis.

  ‘Of course, Tony Robinson had a game going and Herbert and Murphy were supposed to be looking after that. But this is what you’re told. We were in the CIB or the JAB and you get these stories but you don’t follow them up. That’s the boss’s worry, that’s not my worry.

  ‘No, I really don’t think he was anybody that went out and blackmailed anybody or stood over people for money. I’d say it was highly likely that in the Licensing Branch like all the others there, he would have got some bloody money. But … according to Herbert and others, there was a whole heap of them that did.’

  Tuesday 21 December was a pretty quiet day for Commissioner Lewis. He had some trivial duties and then went to see his doctor for a check-up. Later, he went and had a late afternoon drink with Sir Edward Lyons.

  There were no formal festivities for retired Assistant Commissioner Anthony Murphy that night. A proper farewell befitting the great man would be held in the Police Union Building on the night of Monday 14 February 14 1983 – Valentine’s Day. Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen would be in attendance.

  Jim Slade said Murphy was probably the most brilliant police officer he’d ever seen, and probably one of the toughest. In his prime, Murphy radiated power. In the Brisbane underworld they called him ‘The Boss’.

  Slade says Murphy wasn’t a killer, like his counterpart Fred Krahe in Sydney. ‘But Murphy would make the bullets,’ says Slade.

  Murphy may have suspected, on leaving the force, that he was entering the same twilight zone that had been inhabited by former commissioner Frank Bischof, his own mentor from the 1950s and 1960s.

  He was born a policeman. There was nothing else in life that even remotely satisfied Murphy the way being a detective did. He absolutely adored the chase. He loved the company of like-minded tough men and he had relished the power the job gave him.

  If anyone thought the frightening, feared, sometimes brutal and often begrudgingly respected cop Tony Murphy was walking away from the police force to quietly grow flowers, they had rocks in their heads.

  Blue Skies

  In the last week of 1982, Commissioner Lewis tidied a few things up before his 28 days’ annual leave.

  He launched the exciting new ‘Kiss a Cop’ campaign prior to New Year’s Eve festivities and attended the opening of the 13th Australian Jamboree ‘by His Excellency Sir Ninian Stephen, Chief Scout for Australia’.

  It had been another big year – his sixth as Commissioner. But Lewis could be well satisfied. He had what appeared to be an inviolable friendship with the Premier and had also made powerful friends in Sir Robert Sparkes and Sir Edward Lyons.

  He had seen off Police Ministers who didn’t sit well with his philoso­phies and how he ran his ship, the latest being the formidable Russ Hinze. Earlier in the year his Police Force had survived yet another call for a royal commission into its corrupt ways, and Lewis and the government had established a Police Complaints Tribunal that, in the not too distant future, would be put in the hands of his old mate Judge Eric Pratt.

  And though it may have taken six years, Lewis had dismantled and in most cases seen off the final clutch of pro-Whitrod supporters – Pitts, Jeppesen, Hicks, Campbell, Saunders and others.

  In the world away from his big office in police headquarters and his home up on Garfield Drive, his old smooth-talking friend Jack Herbert had hooked into the Hapeta and Tilley money-making vice machine and was reeling in tens of thousands of dollars in corrupt payments for The Joke. Down at 142 Wickham Street, upstairs in the casino that didn’t exist, punters were enjoying the patronage of Geraldo Bellino, the drinks, the girls, and having a flutter into the early hours of the morning.

  Commissioner Lewis had unexpectedly lost a great ally in Tony Murphy, a colleague who he had worked alongside and admired from the late 1940s. Murphy had taught Lewis a lot, and had been indispensable in ridding the force of Ray Whitrod and opening the Commissioner’s door to Lewis.

  And while on paper – certainly according to the department’s annual reports – Lewis was doing a stellar job, his administration in the eyes of many still carried about it the stench of corruption.

  It was not difficult to understand why.

  The 1970s in Queensland, and particularly Brisbane, had seen the evolution of a bona fide underworld, where crime syndicates had formed and carved out their turf. Like anywhere else in the world, criminal real estate was closely protected and transgression from rivals was often met with violence. Quaint little Brisbane, with its jacarandas and poinsettias, its church raffles and hollering paper boys at the main city intersections, had not been spared the growth of the drug and vice trade, and the attendant criminals that presided over it.

  Indeed, those involved in the city’s underworld in the 1970s and into the 1980s described the local scene, straight-faced, as being just as violent and dangerous as anywhere else in Australia.

  The body count was testimony to such observations. In 1973, the Whiskey Au Go Go inferno was the greatest mass murder in the country’s history to that point. There was the controversial ‘drug overdose’ of Shirley Margaret Brifman, the assassination of National Hotel manager Jack Cooper, the murder of boxer Tommy Hamilton, the disappearance of prostitutes Margaret Ward and Simone Vogel, and the vanishing of Barbara McCulkin and her two young daughters. The bulk of these cases, and many others, had attracted the suspicion of police involvement.

  When Commissioner Whitrod had moved on the so-called Rat Pack – Lewis, Murphy and Hallahan – he was ultimately removed, fleeing the state in fear of his life.

  Case after case in Queensland courts against alleged corrupt police, illegal casino operators or friends to crooked officers fell over like dominoes.

  Within the force, police officers who dared voice their opinions against a corrupt regime were forced out of the job and the state, drank themselves to death, or lost their families under the pressure of the need to do what was right. Hundreds of promising careers were destroyed, further perpetuating a cycle of corruption by leaving behind those who toed the line.

  And Jack Herbert, master conman and liar, organised supremely a corrupt system that flourished in the Lewis era and proved resilient to everything thrown at it. Over time, its impact was far greater than its original intention – the effort to keep it hidden from sight and the wheels moving smoothly in turn reached into the public service, the judiciary and into the halls of government itself, and began buckling them out of shape.

  Lewis’s need to please and impress Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen had worked brilliantly for both men. Within a year of Lewis taking the chair, Bjelke-Petersen controlled a Police State. Ordinary civil liberties disappeared and would only be returned when and if the Premier deemed it appropriate to return them. With the Queensland Police Force covering his back, Bjelke-P
etersen was impervious.

  On the eve of 1983, Lewis – always a fine details man, always the master of the small picture, of controlling the day to day – may not have understood the bigger mosaic or the part he was playing in changing the direction of Queensland society. In fact, he may have been thinking about renovating the family home up on Garfield Drive, in finally making a house that befitted his status.

  And, set to celebrate his fifty-fifth birthday, he may have been thinking about a little unit down on the Gold Coast, a place he loved, where he and wife, Hazel, could spend some quality time together as they approached retirement.

  It was blue skies ahead for Lewis. Indeed, he may have been entertaining in his mind informal discussions he had had with Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen about securing a diplomatic posting in Los Angeles or London when his time as Commissioner of Police was done. Without doubt, a Knighthood had to be in the offing. All in all, Lewis could see nothing but good times stretching before him.

  It had taken an enormous amount of work, and there’d been a lot of collateral damage, but he was where he wanted to be – in control and working for a man who was in control. By and large his enemies were behind him, and most importantly he had men he trusted in important positions throughout the force.

  On the last day of 1982 – a Friday – Lewis attended to some trivial paperwork then fitted in some revolver practice. It may have been portentous.

  Beyond the blue skies, and the curve of the earth, the first scuds of cloud were gathering. Over time they would knit together then gain force before building into a storm of such ferocity that it would destroy everything in its path.