Brifman would also soon meet the police commissioner. Author Peter James once interviewed Bischof’s former driver, Earl ‘Slim’ Somerville: ‘He told me he used to drive Bischof around to all the brothels once a week. The madams and the girls would all be standing to attention when he arrived, and handed over the money.’
Brifman’s working name was Marge Chapple, taken from her sister.
As far as her family knew, in Brisbane she had launched a new and promising career – as a receptionist.
Rats, Bodgies, and Drinks at the National
Members of Brisbane’s CIB noticed a change in Detective Lewis by the late 1950s, when he started regularly partnering with Murphy and Hallahan.
Up until then, Lewis was considered a smart operator but not a hard-nosed police officer. It was a combination of his demeanour, his sloped shoulders, his slight lisp. There was the rumour, too, that he had only been granted the favour of Police Commissioner Bischof because of his family connections to the Brisbane racing scene via his mother and the Hanlons. For whatever reasons, he was seen as a weak officer, not handy with his fists, not easily driven to the sort of snap violence and brute force that had served many of his colleagues so well.
But when he teamed with Hallahan and Murphy, they noted a different Lewis. He drew off the substantial physical presence of both men. He enjoyed their power. While remaining largely in their shadow, his association with the two possibly fulfilled something lacking in his character. Conversely, being a component of the trio gave him a form of proxy protection both within the force and on the street. It was now Murphy, Hallahan, and Lewis.
‘In those days, meeting Lewis was about as exciting as watching grass grow,’ former Telegraph police reporter Ken ‘Digger’ Blanch recalls. ‘He was a pleasant young fellow, and said to be good at his job, but I can’t remember him making any important pinches.
‘He always seemed to us to be one of the quiet coppers. He wasn’t flamboyant. But for some reason Bischof teamed him up with Hallahan.
‘You have to remember that the Consorting Squad in those days was extremely powerful. The consorting laws gave them enormous power. If you were eligible for the Consorting Squad’s attention, there was no invitation to come and have a talk at the CIB. The invitation was to get in the fucking car.’
It was around this time, too, with the teaming of Lewis, Murphy and Hallahan, that the tag ‘Rat Pack’ – Bischof’s favoured trio – first began to emerge.
‘There was [a Rat Pack], without a doubt,’ Lewis says, ‘but I could never understand why I was included in that. I was supposed to give it an air of respectability? I don’t know . . . It wasn’t until later years it got a sinister connotation.
‘I never knew Bischof as a grafter, a crook, a pants man. I knew him as a drinker and a racing man.’
Lewis’s police diaries reveal, too, that when he was partnered with Hallahan he repeatedly confronted a different range of offences, and a largely different criminal milieu from his days with, for instance, Abe Duncan and Hoppy Hopgood.
Forget drunks and vagrants, with Hallahan he was now in the thick of rapists, robbers, and interstate criminals. He was also dropping in late at night on the city’s many dozens of bars and pubs. The regular visits to the city’s brothels continued apace.
A typical police diary entry in early 1959 reads: ‘On duty with Det. Hallahan. On foot patrol of Arcadia; Globe; Carlton; Australian; British Empire; Her Majesty’s; Grand Central; Embassy; Ulster; Exchange; Victory; Royal; Gresham; Albert; Windsor and Lennons Hotels.’ Or: ‘On duty with Det. Hallahan. To Margaret Street brothel re: inmates. To Grand Hotel. To Killarney brothel re: inmates.’
Former detective Ron Edington recalls the CIB in the late 1950s: ‘It wasn’t like going to work, it was like going to a party every day. You’d go to hotel after hotel and drink. You knew the men who ran the hotels and the waiters.’
Police Commissioner Bischof’s favourite watering hole was the National Hotel, owned and run by the well-known Roberts brothers – John Robert (Jack), William Rollinson (Rolly) and Maxwell James (Max). Perched on a corner tongue where Queen and Adelaide streets intersect at Petrie Bight, within view of Customs House, the National was built in the 1880s with two storeys, later expanded to four, and had the prerequisite wrap-around verandahs and cast-iron lace. Upper-level bedrooms in the Victorian Gothic pile had splendid views of the river and Kangaroo Point well into the twentieth century.
But by the time the Roberts brothers took over the hotel in 1958, the establishment was run-down and losing money. Jack was the business brain of the trio. Rolly had been running the Treasury in George Street, opposite CIB headquarters, since 1957. Max was to revitalise the National.
‘Bischof was friends with Rolly Roberts,’ Lewis recalls. ‘They had the National Hotel down the Bight. Rolly had the Treasury and he was a lovely man, very personable and a lovely chap. Jack was a real businessman but nice enough. He was very, very much about business. And Max was the man about town.
‘From the Branch, naturally, if we’re going to have a beer, we’d go to the Treasury. Rolly then moved down to the National with Max and we would certainly go down there and have a drink with him. Bischof would go there and have lunch with him from time to time.’
Max, the more gregarious of the brothers, lived in the hotel from the time they took over and quickly turned around the hotel’s fortunes, reconstructing the internals, installing spaces for a cabaret lounge, snack bar, a more formal dining room, private bars and a ‘Steak House’. With the transformation complete, the hotel became hugely popular. By 1963, twenty to twenty-five thousand people were passing through the place per week; the tills were so full of money they had to be emptied on the hour.
On a morning in March 1959 – a Sunday – National Hotel night porter David Young took a phone call at reception from someone who asked to speak to ‘Maxie’. He put the call through to Max Roberts, who told Young shortly after that a ‘friend’ was coming in to pick up some beer – clearly a breach of the Liquor Act.
The ‘friend’ was a police officer, who paid for and left with the beer. He shortly returned with several other detectives. Max Roberts came downstairs and the police informed him and Young that they were to be charged with illegally selling alcohol on a Sunday.
Roberts denied any knowledge of the phone request and the sale of the beer, leaving Young saddled with the blame. Young, in turn, later saw State Licensing Inspector Norm Bauer about the incident. The charges were ultimately dropped, and the word filtered back to Young that the officers involved in the raid were rapped over the knuckles for ‘daring’ to even attempt prosecution against the National.
Meanwhile, the hotel developed a reputation as the one favoured by the most powerful police in town, and soon assorted police-related functions were regularly held there and visiting interstate officers were booked in to enjoy the hospitality of the Roberts brothers and their old family friend Frank Bischof.
It was stronger than rumour that a call-girl service was operating out of the National. Male visitors would be approached by a girl who asked: ‘Do you want a match?’ If a man wanted a call girl, he’d reply: ‘Oh yeah, well, I’ll have to go up to my room.’ He would then repair to his room, where a girl would soon call on him. She’d say: ‘Here’s your towel.’ If he wasn’t pleased with the look of the girl, he asked for another towel.
Out on the streets, the Rat Pack found a new target – rock’n’roll music. The North American phenomenon had made its way to Brisbane, and Bischof was not a fan of its ‘demoralising influence’.
In July 1957 he acted to halt a prospective six-day rock’n’roll marathon to be held at the Caledonian Hall in Elizabeth Street. He informed the event promoter ‘of the actions he would instruct detectives to take if and when such contests commenced here’. The contest was cancelled.
The ‘actions’ of Bis
chof’s detectives became clearer by 1959, as the popularity of rock’n’roll continued unabated and a sub-culture – the bodgies and widgies – developed out of the craze. In their pegged pants and petticoats, they were a phenomenon in the wake of James Dean and maligned as louts, as rockers thumbing their noses at decent values.
And who else would Bischof call upon to enforce his own values in conservative Brisbane but his trusted boys – Murphy, Hallahan, and Lewis?
In his book, It’s Only Rock’n’Roll But I Like It, Geoffrey Walden records musicians and ordinary Brisbane citizens encountering what colloquially became known as Bischof’s ‘Bodgie Squad’ during the late 1950s.
Brian Gagen of the band The Planets recalls: ‘There were a couple of rogues involved in that . . . Hallahan and Murphy, they were involved in the Bodgie Squad. Didn’t they have a good time beating people up. They just thought that anyone in rock’n’roll just needed a clip in the ear and they proceeded to give it to them.’
Others had memories of young males being taken down to CIB headquarters, where their dark shirts were replaced with ‘Woolworths-type white shirt and suitable tie’.
Walden writes: ‘The dark shirt was returned to the owner wrapped with advice: “That’s how you come to town, you wear a white shirt and tie, you don’t come here wearing a black shirt, you look like a criminal, that’s it. Get rid of that haircut, get rid of those clothes, this is how you should be dressed.”’
A conservative but expensive dresser, Police Commissioner Bischof was making sure his idea of sartorial decency was forcibly impressed on the next generation of Brisbanites.
A Night to Die
Detective Lewis, on duty with Hallahan, claims he was sitting at his desk at CIB headquarters in the early hours of Saturday 8 August 1959, typing briefs, when he received an unexpected phone call from Killarney brothel prostitute Ada Bahnemann.
He wrote in his police diary: ‘Ada Louise Bahnemann then telephoned re: her husband threatening her with a rifle.’
Something was wrong between Ada and husband Gunther – the eccentric former German war hero and boat builder – and it had been brewing for some time.
In February of that year, Lewis recorded in his police diary that he ‘saw Ada Louise Bahnemann re her husband’s conduct’. Then three months later, while on duty with Hallahan on the night of 25 May, he ‘saw’ her again, presumably at either the Killarney or Nott Street brothels as both officers were on patrol in South Brisbane.
On that Saturday morning in August, however, Ada told Lewis that Gunther was threatening to shoot her with a .303 at their home at 217 Whites Road, Lota, in bayside Brisbane.
Lewis then telephoned Wynnum police station and instructed Constables John Morris and Jim Shearer to head out to Lota and exercise ‘caution’. Lewis and Hallahan, both armed with pistols, then hopped into a squad car and drove to the Bahnemann home.
They arrived at 2.16 a.m. and approached the fibro bungalow – a former army hut – which was set back from the street on a deep block. Ada was at the front door. She warned them that Gunther was in the bedroom with the loaded rifle and had already threatened to shoot the two Wynnum constables. Through the front door Lewis could see his two colleagues in the house.
They found Bahnemann in the bedroom, sitting on the double bed, wearing a pair of green pyjamas. He was holding the rifle with both hands and had his right index finger on the trigger.
According to later statements by Lewis and Hallahan, as Lewis entered the room Bahnemann supposedly said, ‘Don’t try any tricks, Mr Lewis, and stay where you are, and don’t try to draw your gun. This gun is loaded and if you move any closer I’ll blow your guts out. I am not joking.’
Bahnemann cocked the rifle and Lewis noticed the gunman had blood on his pyjama jacket and bottom lip.
Lewis then said, ‘Gunther, your wife telephoned me and said that you were threatening to kill her, and she asked us to come here and talk with you.’
Bahnemann issued a short laugh. ‘Talk,’ he said, ‘you’ll have to do a lot of talking to save her. I am going to kill her tonight and then die myself. Don’t you agree, Mr Lewis, that she should die?’
‘Why do you want to kill her?’ Lewis asked.
‘She is of no further use to me. I’ve killed before and another one, especially her, would be easy.’
Bahnemann then swung the rifle in Hallahan’s direction.
‘Mister, whatever you said your name was, if you try another smart trick, you’re dead. Don’t move any closer. I’m not joking. I’ll die tonight, but I will not die alone.’
‘Gunther,’ Lewis said. ‘Don’t do anything silly with that rifle. You will only make more trouble for yourself.’
Bahnemann then launched into an uncharacteristically formal spiel, taking into account he was drugged, drunk, and surrounded by four armed police officers.
‘Mr Lewis, I have taken some tablets and I’m going to die and I will take someone along with me. You know all about me. I was an oberleutnant in the panzer division with Rommel’s Afrika Korps. I fought the Australians at Tobruk and killed my share. Killing means nothing to me and I’ll kill again tonight.’
Bahnemann then turned the rifle once more towards Lewis. Hallahan pounced. Lewis claimed that in a nanosecond Bahnemann swung the rifle towards Hallahan and fired. The bullet passed through Hallahan’s left trouser leg without striking him.
In his statement later, Lewis said: ‘I heard a deafening report and I saw the rifle in the accused’s hand jump in an upward direction. I then jumped over the end of the bed and onto the accused.
‘The accused struggled violently and several times he called out, “I’ll kill you all.”
‘The accused said to Hallahan, “You are lucky, you should have died. You were lucky that time. I’m sorry that I missed you. I’m a German soldier and a man with a loaded rifle should be shot.”’
Lewis handcuffed Bahnemann and proclaimed, ‘You are under arrest for attempted murder.’
‘Mr Lewis,’ said the gunman, ‘I’m going to die, I don’t care anymore. I would not care if it was murder, but I would like to say this, I’m not finished yet, I’ll kill her.’ Then, pointing to Hallahan, he added: ‘I’m not finished with you yet, I missed that time, but I’ll get you before I’m finished.’
Bahnemann was then conveyed to the Brisbane city watchhouse.
In contrast to his police diary entries and police statement regarding the Bahnemann incident, Lewis says that he and Hallahan, though they never worked together for long, happened to be on duty that night when ‘a call came in over the radio’ to say a man was threatening his wife with a gun.
‘Anybody could go . . . So we were near the city somewhere so we knew the area. So we went down to Whites Road, I think it was at Lota . . . and there Bahnemann . . . He married this piece, but she was on the game. And apparently he didn’t object to that.
‘She must have somehow got in touch with police and two uniform men came along to the house and he held them up with the gun . . . [She] must have phoned and said that he held up the two uniform police and that’s when we got there and I had never struck him before. I don’t think Hallahan had as far as I’m aware.’
In fact, Lewis recorded in his own police diaries that he interviewed Bahnemann in February 1955 over the Alfio Vito Cavallaro incident at Hendra, and his wife in 1956 at Nott Street brothel. With his innumerable visits to Brisbane’s brothels over almost a decade, and especially Killarney and Nott Street in the late 1950s, it is incomprehensible that Lewis didn’t have intimate knowledge of Ada and her family situation. She was one of a coterie of local prostitutes, along with Shirley Brifman, who were protected from prosecution by Bischof and his trusted boys – Lewis, Murphy, and Hallahan.
And if Lewis, as he says, had ‘never struck’ Ada’s husband before, why, in the statements of Lewis, Hallahan,
Morris, and Shearer for the prosecution in Bahnemann’s trial, did the accused refer to Lewis as ‘Mr Lewis’ if they hadn’t been introduced prior to that night?
Hallahan’s statement differs from Lewis’s account. As Hallahan entered the bedroom at Whites Road, he supposedly said: ‘I’m Detective Hallahan from the Consorting Squad, what’s all the trouble about?’
‘Who came with you?’ Bahnemann asked.
‘Detective Lewis, you know him,’ said Hallahan.
Lewis says he didn’t think Hallahan had come across Bahnemann before that night in 1959. But what of Bahnemann’s extensive periods of living in Mount Isa, and claims from locals that the two most certainly knew each other? Did Bahnemann have something on Hallahan from their Mount Isa days?
Or were Lewis and Hallahan simply protecting an asset – one of Killarney’s untouchable prostitutes?
Both Lewis and Hallahan went to great pains in their statements to point out that Hallahan and Bahnemann were not acquainted. ‘Mister, whatever you said your name was,’ Lewis recalled Bahnemann saying to Hallahan. Hallahan’s statement reads: ‘Mr. Whatever you said your name was.’
The four original draft police statements also bear some curious features. Lewis’s was typed on a different typewriter from those of Hallahan, Morris, and Shearer, who, it seems, all used the same machine. Their statements carry an identical typeface, though a line at the top of each reveals the statements were made in different locations – CIB, Wynnum police station and Woolloongabba police station.
In addition, the statements of Hallahan and Shearer carry amendments in Lewis’s own distinctive handwriting.
To confuse things further, Lewis recorded the following in some jottings he made after the incident: ‘On Tuesday about 4.30pm in Day Room, Wynnum Police Stn. And Glen typed both statements.’
Police later interviewed Ada, who said she had ceased working as a prostitute on 28 February 1959, but returned to a house of ill-fame shortly after, under pressure from her husband. She said he ‘wanted money to complete the building of a new boat’ and had threatened her with violence if she did not get back on the game.
Three Crooked Kings Page 8