Little Fish Are Sweet

by Matthew Condon

  Deb travelled to the State Library of Queensland, across the river from the Brisbane CBD, and hunted records for his grave. In the quiet, air-conditioned climes of the library, Deb soon found more than she’d bargained for. In the archives she stumbled upon an old newspaper clipping with a photograph of her grandfather Reg. She noted he looked like her own father, Ian – Reg’s son. Shockingly, the picture showed the ‘bewildered’ Brown in police custody.

  ‘I was so naïve in those days, I didn’t know what I could find, and of course the staff at the library pointed me towards all the old newsprint and that’s when I saw my very first photo of my grandfather,’ Deb told me. ‘And with the headlines that he had been arrested for murder, so it was terribly confronting.’

  What Deb had stumbled across was a murder case that had shocked and mesmerised Brisbane in January 1947. It had everything: an allegedly sexually frustrated middle-aged man; a beautiful and popular teenage victim, his secretary, found partially clothed and dead in the offices where both of them worked, slain in the prime of life; a long-standing relationship between the families of the murderer and the victim; the rapid action of the city’s most formidable detectives; and an outpouring of community grief in fragile post-war Brisbane.

  Justice against Brown was meted out swiftly. Within two months he had gone from a stable and loving family life with three children in St Lucia, in the city’s inner-west, to Boggo Road Gaol, guilty of murder and sentenced to prison for life. Just days after being incarcerated, Reg Brown, killer, died not of pneumonia but supposedly at his own hand, hanged from a window grille in his cell.

  And that, seemingly, was the end of that.

  Except Brown would ultimately leave behind eight granddaughters, two of whom would initially become captivated by details of their grandfather’s arrest, trial, sentencing and death. Then obsessed.

  The more they looked into the case, the more inconsistencies they saw. The closer they examined the trial, the more they believed that Reginald Wingfield Spence Brown may have been not just wrongly accused but framed by the police and become the victim of a shoddy judicial process. In the name of their grandfather, the two women embarked on an odyssey to find him justice.

  The results of their research were intriguing to me. After all, if this famous Bischof ‘kill’ could be proved to be unstable, how many other of his successful murder prosecutions might also be thrown into doubt?

  On the morning of Friday 10 January 1947, Reg Brown, accountant and secretary/manager for the Brisbane Associated Friendly Societies (BAFS) – he audited the books for the BAFS Dispensary in Turbot Street, the city, and the BAFS Medical Institute Hospital at Kelvin Grove – headed by bus from his home at St Lucia to his office in Albert Street, the city.

  The BAFS rooms were on the first floor of the Wallace Bishop building, above the chic Wallace Bishop Arcade. Two doctors and a nurse were additionally employed there, along with Reg’s secretary, Bronia Armstrong, 19.

  It was a day like any other, although Bronia was looking forward to a weekend at Margate, by Moreton Bay, with girlfriend Rhonda Tasker. Bronia went about her work, visited Tasker – who also worked in the city – during her lunch hour and spoke, twice, to a male friend, Roy Healey, who had made a tentative date with her for that night only to renege in favour of another appointment.

  Late in the afternoon, Reg Brown, beyond the partition in his office, could hear Bronia speaking with a woman or a girl. It was about 4.10 p.m.

  Reg continued working away undisturbed. Later, several witnesses in the Wallace Bishop building, in the arcade and in Albert Street, would claim they heard a series of horrifying screams and thudding noises emanating from BAFS at around 4.15 p.m. It was news to Brown. He would allege no screams came from the BAFS offices. He would know. He was quietly working at his desk.Meanwhile, he telephoned the nearby BAFS Dispensary office and alerted them to his plan to audit their books that evening. He’d head over and pick them up after 5.30 p.m.

  Brown eventually made his way towards the Dispensary in Turbot Street around 7.25 p.m. Not far from his destination he noticed a man leaning against an awning post and another man in a nearby recess. ‘Here he comes now carrying the case,’ one of them said. Suddenly, Brown was being punched. Another grabbed his wrist and bit his fingers. Possibly detecting another pedestrian, the assailants moved off swiftly, leaving a shocked and winded Brown sitting in the street.

  Brown, as it was, suffered from bronchial asthma, an inguinal or groin hernia that he had carried since his youth, and led a sedentary lifestyle courtesy of his work. He was unfit and unhealthy. By the time he got to the Dispensary it was locked up, and he made his way back to the bus stop for home. He was still feeling unwell from the surprise attack. He got the 9.10 p.m. bus to St Lucia.

  The next morning, Bill Armstrong, Bronia’s brother, arrived early at the Brown house looking for his missing sister. The Browns and Armstrongs were well acquainted, living just streets from each other, and young Ian was keen on Bronia. Brown told Bill his secretary had left the BAFS building with a girl the previous afternoon.

  At breakfast, the Browns discussed the strange attack on Reg the night before. His wife, Eva, urged him to report it to the police.

  At 8.05 a.m., Reg was at the Roma Street Police Station to make his complaint. He then went to the office. Nurse Major also arrived at work. Shortly after, the nurse, to her horror, found the body of a woman in a rear dressing room. The body was covered in black ants.

  Brown identified the dead woman as that of Bronia. She was partially dressed, her face was covered in a handkerchief or napkin, and a small ethyl chloride bottle was found resting on her chest. She had been suffocated. Had the scene been staged to imply suicide?

  Reg Brown phoned the police. By 9.30 a.m. some of the city’s most powerful and experienced detectives arrived at the BAFS rooms. They included Detective Sergeant Stewart ‘Stewie’ Kerr, Detective Constable Don ‘Buck’ Buchanan and Sub-Inspector Frank Bischof.

  Brown was interviewed in his office. Police interrogated him about his assault in Turbot Street (finding the story ‘fantastic’) and then about Bronia’s movements during that Friday. Brown then reluctantly agreed to accompany them to the offices of the Criminal Investigation Branch (CIB).

  This time, the detectives went in hard. Brown was asked if he’d ever made any sexual advances towards Bronia. Kerr would say he had spoken to someone who had once seen Brown embracing Bronia in the office.

  ‘I didn’t do any harm to the girl,’ Brown allegedly responded.

  By the end of the day, Reg Brown was charged with the wilful murder of Bronia Armstrong and held in police custody. The mild-mannered accountant would never go home again.

  It is astonishing to look at the Reg Brown murder case through the lens of modern eyes, and this is one of the finer achievements of Lingering Doubts. The passage of time has revealed the flaws in the design of the case against Brown.

  To begin with, Brown was questioned by police for the bulk of that Saturday without ever being notified of his rights. With so many anomalies surrounding Bronia’s mysterious death, the haste with which he was charged with murder was almost farcical.

  ‘What they called “circumstantial evidence” was virtually no evidence. It was neutral evidence,’ says Deb. ‘But it was framed in such a way that it just threw a little bit more doubt his way, no matter how ridiculous it was.’

  Jan agrees: ‘Really, they said nothing to incriminate him. Nothing. I don’t think they’d be able to establish even a prima facie case [today].’

  The list of incongruities in the case is almost inexhaustible. What was the source of the crazed woman’s screams on the Friday afternoon emanating from the Wallace Bishop building? Why would Reg harm Bronia – a friend of the family who Reg treated like a daughter? Why would a good, suburban family man suddenly erupt into a violent sex killer, although there was no evidence that Bronia
was raped? And would it have even been remotely possible, given Brown dressed in long-johns even in summer, and wore a support truss for his hernia complaint? What, too, of evidence suddenly turning

  up weeks after the murder, and the police version of discussions

  with Brown given verbatim in the court by Kerr and others as if it was the custom for police to memorise and recite records of interview?

  Was Brown verballed, or framed by false testimony, given the

  corrupt Sub-Inspector Bischof’s specialty in that area?

  The attack on Brown in Turbot Street was virtually ignored in the case as was any investigation into Roy Healey, the young man who rebuffed Bronia that night and went out with another man and woman instead. Why were Healey and his companions never factored into the case? Could the trio have been one and the same that attacked Brown in the street? And what were ants doing all over the body on the first floor of a city office building, especially as the offices of BAFS by their nature were assiduously cleaned for public safety reasons, given medical procedures were carried out there? Had the young woman been murdered elsewhere and brought to the offices?

  On top of these many puzzling questions, the pace of Brown’s arrest, trial and incarceration was astonishing even for the times. Within two months, Brown went from hard-working accountant to Boggo Road lifer.

  Investigative journalist and crime specialist Bob Bottom says Brown’s transition from civilian to convicted murderer was, and remains, unprecedented in the annals of Australian law. Bottom says Lingering Doubts contains a quality of journalism that many practitioners in the field would struggle to produce.

  Deb and Jan’s book is painstakingly researched, its reasoning unbiased, and its reportage and logic water-tight. ‘We were determined to be meticulous,’ says Jan. ‘We were determined not to make the same errors that other people had made when they wrote [about] this, that they just copied stuff and didn’t check it. Analysis was our primary goal.’

  Deb says it was vital that the case be laid out without prejudice. ‘We can back up everything we’ve said, even in some cases it will be people’s memories, but academically we can back everything up with references,’ she says. ‘There were times when I wanted to scream from the rooftops. I think also, because of the type of family we come from, my father particularly and Jan’s mum, they wouldn’t have agreed with it being any other way. They wanted just facts told, and it was never going to be a sensationalist type of read.’

  Jan adds: ‘Every time we had these checks and balances with each other, and I think writing it together was really, really important. I’d say, “Deb, you can’t say that.” Or Deb would say to me, “Take that out, that’s prejudicial.” ’

  ‘I think it’s amazing what Deb and Jan have done,’ says Bottom. ‘I have been involved in investigative journalism for half a century, and they’ve done a job in some ways more professional than any professional journalists.’

  Reg Brown always proclaimed his innocence. Indeed, he stressed he should never have been charged in the first place. Ian Brown went and visited his father in prison. Reg told him on several occasions: ‘I am innocent. I had nothing to do with Bronia’s death. I did not kill her.’

  On 20 March 1947 – nine days after a jury found him guilty of murder – Brown was found hanging from his cell window grille. He’d used his belt.

  Deb reflects: ‘I’ve been in Boggo Road, in the cell where our grandfather’s body was found. And then relaying that to Dad and talking to Dad, my father has found this journey very difficult. The family never got over it of course.’

  So if Reg Brown did not kill Bronia Armstrong, then who did?

  ‘Well, we don’t know,’ says Deb. ‘It’s not been a witch hunt after any particular person. The one thing that really sticks in our mind is that Reg said his assailants [in Turbot Street the night before Bronia’s body was found] were waiting for him. And said, “Here he comes carrying the case.”’

  Jan adds: ‘And it was extremely important for the police to negate that whole incident in Turbot Street, they were at pains to take that out of the public arena.’

  ‘So,’ says Deb, ‘we sort of feel that only the workplace knew that he was going to do that audit that night … We feel that Reg Brown’s reputation needed to be ruined. He was an accountant. He knew a lot about people’s financials.’

  ‘Did he turn up something that was fraud?’ asks Jan. ‘We don’t know.’

  Bob Bottom says the Brown case would be part of a campaign by himself, justice expert Dr Bob Moles and journalist and author Evan Whitton to establish in Australia a National Criminal Cases Review Commission. A similar UK commission has had 353 sentences quashed – a quarter of them for murder – since it was formed in 1997.

  Following the publication of their book, Deb and Jan got another tip-off. They went to speak with an elderly woman in a Brisbane retirement home who may have had some new information. The woman revealed that she was working in Brisbane city on the day of the murder in 1947 and walked to the Wallace Bishop Arcade, arriving at about 4.25 p.m. She went upstairs to a small library there and returned a book when she heard what sounded like a muffled scream.

  ‘What was that?’ she asked the librarian.

  ‘I think there is an acting school across the hall and I think the girls are practising screaming,’ the librarian said dismissively.

  Could the screams from the young actors have been those heard in the arcade and out in Albert Street that afternoon by several witnesses, and not from the murder victim Bronia?

  Deb and Jan saw no coincidence in the fact that this new lead was received precisely 67 years to the day that their grandfather began his life sentence in Boggo Road Gaol.

  Deb smiles: ‘No one can tell me Reg isn’t up there moving things around.’

  The Honourable Speaker

  Often, just to clear my head after long interview sessions with Lewis, I would drive around Brisbane looking for houses and buildings that he had mentioned to me, locations that were important to the early years of the story. It was a useful way to put myself in the shoes of people we’d been discussing and help me visualise certain scenarios, imagining the lives of the characters who were emerging in the broader Lewis narrative.

  I’d have coffee up at the now trendy Petrie Barracks and try to take myself back in time studying that old red brick building, imagining a young Terry Lewis eating in the downstairs canteen (still an eatery) with the tall Lou Rowan across the room, also training to be a policeman.

  I’d drive down Murton Avenue in Holland Park, where Lewis had his first house with his bride, Hazel, and to their other matrimonial houses in Chermside and Coorparoo. I lived less than 500 metres from the Lewis home in Ellena Street, Rosalie, and often walked my children down there to stand in front of the old Queenslander (since renovated), and peer down the back to check out the size of the yard. Lewis had young children when he lived there, and I tried to imagine them in the kitchen at the back of the house at dinner time, their young father a detective in the CIB in the city.

  I’d walk the cracked footpaths down Ellena Street past the little blonde brick Baptist Church, just a couple of doors up from where the Lewis family lived; my own grandfather had helped build that church in the late 1950s. Then I’d head another block south past Beck Street, where my grandparents lived for decades. My grandfather, George Baker, was a signwriter and motorcycle enthusiast, and there is no question that in the Brisbane of the 1950s he would have at least known by sight his neighbour, the policeman Terry Lewis. I imagined Lewis heading to work on whatever shift he had, waiting for the tram at the old stop outside the kindergarten near Rosalie village.

  I would walk through Spring Hill, an inner-city suburb that still bears the residue of its seamy history, home to prostitutes and waterside workers, and I recalled the suburb’s famous elected member for parliament, the legendary Johnno Mann. Of the vast number of char
acters – both living and dead – that I came across in examining crime and corruption over the past half-century or more, John Henry ‘Johnno’ Mann was one who seemed to me to quintessentially represent the Queensland of yesteryear. He popped up time and again in conversations with retired police officers and I began to wonder why.

  Mann was born in Rockhampton, 600 kilometres north of Brisbane, in 1896, and variously worked as a stockman and cane cutter before becoming a wharfie. In 1931 he fell into the hold of the S.S. Peshawur at Port Alma, 60 kilometres from Rockhampton, and badly cut his head and face, fracturing his left forearm and injuring his right leg. Soon after he moved to Brisbane and became active in local unions before winning the seat of Brisbane for the ALP in a 1936 by-election. It was the start of a rocky and colourful 33 years in politics.

  Mann was appointed Speaker of the Queensland Parliament in 1950 and held the job for seven years. He had a reputation as a tough man, a larrikin, a street fighter and a joker, and allegations of corruption swirled around him for years. When he retired in 1969, a member of the conservative Bjelke-Petersen regime reportedly said that ‘there were few crimes [Mann] has not, at some time, committed’.

  In October 1964, Mann was arrested attending an illegal baccarat game in Brisbane. While his identity was not immediately revealed, he later admitted to being arrested. The Canberra Times reported:

  Mr J.H. Mann this week admitted what all the rumours had been whispering: That he was the politician arrested when police raided a baccarat school a fortnight ago. He said in a published interview this week that he had known the baccarat game was to be raided and had gone to witness the raid. His information, he said, had come from another ALP member who had been ‘tipped’ by police.

  Mr Mann’s statements were published in [the] Sunday Truth, a little over 24 hours after he had told a reporter that he was ‘definitely not’ the politician arrested.