First Steps to the Big Chair
With Murphy, Hallahan, and Jack Herbert set to be called as witnesses before the royal commission, Lewis took his first concrete steps towards the commissionership. He decided to get educated.
In the latter part of 1963, Lewis was indefatigable, on behalf of the JAB, in developing contacts and forging links with government, community and educational bodies.
One was Dr Elsie Harwood, a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Queensland.
Ever on the lookout to better himself and gain a qualification, Lewis took up a course in general psychology given by Harwood for Brisbane’s Board of Adult Education. He consulted her about the latest psychological literature as he steadily pieced together the work of the JAB.
He also asked her about the possibility of studying at the university.
Harwood observed a ‘conscientious and thorough student’ in Lewis. ‘[He] availed himself of the opportunity in his own time to study . . . in the special fields of child and adolescent development, delinquency, criminality, and personal adjustment,’ she would later write in a reference for Lewis.
He then wrote to J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States, about printed material dealing with how the FBI managed troubled juveniles. The literature was forwarded to him in his little office in the old Queensland Egg Board building by the Brisbane River.
Lewis was working hard and working well. Given the proximity of the JAB to Bischof’s office, it would have been surprising if Lewis was not aware of a small court matter involving a juvenile by the name of Daniel Fels, seventeen, labourer, of Underwood Road, Eight Mile Plains. Daniel Fels was one of the children of Mary Margaret Fels, Bischof’s ex-lover, who was being sued by the police commissioner for defamation and was, by late 1963, still living under the pall of a future court case.
Incredibly, or coincidentally, a CIB summons issued against Daniel Fels over the alleged theft of a pair of sunglasses was listed for hearing in the Police Court just two days after Premier Nicklin ordered the royal commission into the National Hotel.
The incident allegedly occurred in early March 1963 – less than four months after Bischof had lodged his defamation writ against Fels. Following a fatal car accident in Eight Mile Plains, Daniel, who happened to be in the vicinity, was interviewed by investigating officer Detective Hoppner and accused of stealing a pair of sunglasses from one of the wrecked vehicles.
He was issued a summons for theft more than two weeks after the accident.
The boy’s father, Alfonso, subsequently made the trip into headquarters to discuss the matter with police.
Alfonso would later allege that Hoppner told him that instructions had come from ‘the top’ to prosecute Daniel.
Renowned lawyer Dan Casey represented the boy in court and vigorously cross-examined Hoppner.
Casey:Did you tell Mr [Alfonso] Fels the day he saw Sub-inspector Rockett [at police headquarters] that ‘instructions had come from the top’ and you couldn’t do anything about this prosecution?
Hoppner:No, sir. I told him that other lads involved would be charged, and we couldn’t make fish out of one and flesh of another.
Casey:What, stealing a pair of sunglasses?
Hoppner:Serious in the nature of the offence – stealing from a car in which one person was killed.
Hoppner explained that Alfonso Fels had tried to get the charge quashed.
Casey:And that was when he was told instructions had come from ‘higher up’ that his son must be prosecuted?
Hoppner:No, sir, to my knowledge, the matter never went past Sub-inspector Rockett.
Casey:How would you know?
Hoppner:As I said, not to my knowledge.
Casey:I am putting it to you that the real reason why you did not serve this summons until seventeen days after the alleged offence was that you did not intend to proceed with the matter until you were compelled?
Hoppner:No, sir. That is not so.
Casey:Why did you take [Daniel] into the presence of his mother and father against his wish?
Hoppner:So as to obviate his arrest and proceed by summons.
Casey:That had nothing to do with it, did it?
Hoppner:Yes, sir, it did.
Casey:You surely would not proceed by way of arrest over a pair of sunglasses.
Hoppner:No, I would not, in the circumstances.
Casey:Well, I take it you have made arrangements for Mrs Fels to be called to give evidence in relation to conversations?
Hoppner:No, sir.
Casey:Why?
Hoppner:I discussed the matter with Sub-inspector Hambrecht, and I did not.
Casey:Again, then this case is being directed by an authority higher up? You have not had a free hand in the preparation of the prosecutor’s brief?
Hoppner:No, that is not so. It was Sub-inspector Hambrecht who queried me as to why I had not attempted to get a statement from Mrs Fels and it was decided that at that stage it would not be proper to approach her.
Casey:Why wouldn’t it be proper?
Hoppner:That was the reason.
Casey:But why would it not be proper?
Hoppner:Fels was being defended and pleading not guilty and no doubt Mrs Fels would receive certain advice.
Hoppner said he had never met the Felses before the incident, but when he took Daniel to the family home to confront his parents, his mother admitted she was the woman Bischof was suing for alleged defamation.
It was just another one of Bischof’s usual pincer movements against his foes. He kept building pressure. And he used his closest allies in the force – his personal foot soldiers – to execute his tactics.
The Inquiry
In the months leading up to Christmas, it was Detective Murphy’s habit to buy young chickens and ducklings and prepare them for sale during the festive season.
Murphy would religiously collect scraps and leftovers from the city’s restaurants and fatten up his birds back home. When they were plump enough, he killed and dressed them and sold them to restaurants for a small profit. His family says it was a way for the struggling suburban father to earn a few extra bob.
In December 1963, he would have had little time to prepare his poultry.
The royal commission opened for business on 2 December in a Brisbane District Court and instantly became the biggest show in town. It potentially had it all – a call-girl network, a lid lifted on the peccadilloes of upstanding Queensland husbands and fathers having a night out at the National, corrupt police, and a police commissioner who enjoyed the largesse of mates in the hotel business after hours. In terms of police, the hotel and prostitution, Justice Gibbs and his royal commission would reveal the worst kept ‘secret’ in Brisbane.
Murphy, Bischof, the Roberts brothers, alleged prostitutes (covering their faces with handbags), witnesses and well-appointed legal counsel were all photographed by the press coming and going through the ancient iron gates outside the courts.
Inside the hot court room with its poor acoustics, Bischof, immaculately dressed as ever, took his seat at the bench immediately behind the bar table, and its eleven barristers, and farthest from the witness stand. He appeared carefree and jovial, and was regularly in animated conversation with his senior counsel, future governor of Queensland Walter Campbell, QC.
More than 120 people filled the gallery on the opening day. They were not disappointed.
The first witness, David Young from Beck Street, Rosalie, gave evidence that detectives, including regular Tony Murphy, indeed drank at the National after hours, that prostitutes were booked for clients from the lounge – there were several to choose from in the four-storey building, including the Sovereign and Westminster rooms on the first floor, the Skyline room on the
third, and the Twilight and Roof Garden rooms on the fourth – and the hotel was warned of impending police raids.
There was a barrage to come – Young would allege he had seen prostitutes in bed with men and had once entered a room where all three beds were occupied by naked couples. One of them he recognised as Marge (Shirley Brifman), who would confide in him that she gave ‘favours’ to a senior Queensland police officer. Murphy would later claim that no prostitutes were ever discovered and arrested at the National, and that, while he knew of Brifman, he had no proof she was a working prostitute.
What caught the imagination of the press on opening day, however, was Young’s anonymous threatening phone call prior to his appearance at the inquiry.
The Courier-Mail reported on the front page the following day: probe witness will tell of threat. On page three were photographs of a beaming Bischof in suit and hat, and another of chief witnesses Young and Komlosy, a short, balding man carrying a briefcase.
The details of the anonymous caller’s forty-five-minute conversation with Young were aired before the inquiry, including Young having procured an abortion for a girl in Sydney, that he had had an affair with a married woman, and that he had somehow arranged for a prostitute to be arrested by police.
From day one, these spurious allegations against Young were entered into the transcript, into the inquiry’s landscape, and would be repeatedly used to strike back at the barman’s character and veracity. It couldn’t have been a better start for Bischof and his crew.
The following day, Young’s barrister told the inquiry that the cross-examination of Young could ‘turn the inquiry into an inquiry into Young’. It was a prescient observation.
Justice Gibbs ensured that he would take steps to stop such a development if it went beyond the hypothetical.
Yet Murphy and Lewis’s muckraking came into immediate play, and Young’s employment history and moral fibre were vivisected.
Under cross-examination, Young admitted he had had sex with Brifman’s friend Val Weidinger in a room at the National, and that he’d also had intercourse with a co-worker in Brifman’s Spring Hill flat. His infidelity to his wife was held up by some counsel as a measure of the man’s integrity. Here was someone not to be trusted, who was making allegations against the morals of police, and yet was enmeshed in the same murky world he was trying to expose through an inquiry for the betterment of the community.
Counsel Eddie Broad – for Weidinger and Lily Ryan, another friend of Brifman – convinced Young to withdraw his allegation that both women were prostitutes, having never physically seen them receive money from men for services rendered.
As the days progressed, the commission once again informed the inquiry that the hotel’s guest books had been requested. None had been forthcoming.
Following Young’s evidence, a cavalcade of witnesses passed through the inquiry, all denying his allegations.
Night porter Komlosy was next in the firing line. He claimed to be shocked at the late-night drinking at the National when he first started work there in the winter of 1960. He often encountered Murphy and Hallahan drinking after hours, usually beyond midnight. Further, he claimed several prostitutes practically lived at the hotel, including Weidinger and Brifman. He saw Bischof at the hotel often, once at a party in Max Roberts’s flat. Komlosy also named ‘top executives’ in the city who partied at the National. Several would later be called before Justice Gibbs and deny the allegations against them.
Komlosy, a Hungarian immigrant who had settled in Australia in 1951, having served time in a Russian prisoner of war camp during the Second World War, gave a singular reason for appearing as a witness at the inquiry. ‘I lost my country and everything dear to me; there were so very few people who spoke up for the truth. I don’t think that should happen in this country.’
If Young felt he had been drawn and quartered under cross-examination, it was nothing compared to what Komlosy was about to experience. Murphy and Lewis had done their job well.
Justice Gibbs, too, failed to stop his royal commission becoming, at this point, an inquiry into Komlosy himself. The former night porter told the commissioner that he might lose his job as a storeman if he were engaged by the inquiry for a lengthy period.
Counsel for the government immediately exposed that Komlosy had been dismissed from a former job at Queensland Railways for absence of duty. It didn’t stop there.
‘Do you remember threatening to throw a man under a train?’ counsel asked Komlosy. And: ‘You were convicted under the Aliens Act in 1957, were you not?’ And: ‘You presented a fraudulent cheque to Qantas in New Guinea?’
Counsel for the Police Union continued: ‘Is it not true that you were sacked from the C— Hotel as night porter because you stole the master key and entered a female employee’s room?’
The purpose of the accusations, as with Young, was to prove him an unreliable witness.
Komlosy was also closely questioned about his association with Tony Murphy at the National Hotel. Komlosy claimed he saw Murphy often and liked the man.
What followed was a classic Bischof-inspired Rat Pack manoeuvre. Counsel asserted that Komlosy had only met Murphy once, at Brisbane airport a year after he ceased employment at the National. Komlosy had taken his two sons to the airport to see Prime Minister Menzies arrive on a visit to Queensland, and said he saw Murphy there and introduced the detective to his children.
Murphy had been at the airport to arrest a homosexual arriving from Sydney, and by chance was approached by the federal member for Moreton, James Killen. Killen alerted Murphy to a ‘suspicious character’ on the periphery of the prime minister’s party.
Murphy then allegedly approached Komlosy and said, ‘We’re from the CIB and we’ve been told that you may attempt to harm or interfere with Mr Menzies. What is your business here?’
Komlosy then supposedly told the detective he’d brought his sons out to see Australia’s biggest political gangster, Mr Menzies. ‘In my country we’d put him against the wall and shoot him.’
Murphy gave Komlosy a warning, and Komlosy then allegedly asked, ‘What is your name?’
‘I am Detective Murphy.’
This scenario shared more than a few characteristics with the Gunther Bahnemann incident years earlier. Here all over again was the formal language concocted from thin air, the suspected violent potential of a ‘foreigner’, the threat by an outsider to the Australian way of life, upheld by ever-vigilant, honest Queensland detectives. The clear implication, too, was that the two men did not know each other – and Murphy still didn’t know Komlosy’s name – until this moment.
Murphy later produced his police diary, in which he’d written: ‘Interviewed man Kom Losy at Brisbane Airport . . .’ Murphy said the incorrect spelling of the surname proved that he did not know the night porter.
Komlosy was getting fed up with the trashing of his personal life. ‘Not one gentleman has asked me anything about the National,’ he said, exasperated.
Komlosy did lose his job. He told the royal commission he intended to leave Australia with his family in a couple of months. Murphy and crew had destroyed his new life and robbed him of a future in his adopted home.
Murphy appeared as a witness on Friday 13 December. He was the first police officer called.
John Hay of the Sunday Mail described the moment: ‘Sergeant Murphy is unmistakably a policeman. Tall. Erect. Forthright in speech, with a seemingly precise memory indicating years of training and experience.’
Murphy said he felt ‘in jeopardy’ when the inquiry was called and believed it was necessary to investigate Young’s background.
When asked about specific prostitutes, particularly Brifman, Weidinger and Ryan, he said he had spoken to them on suspicion of their being prostitutes but had no proof. None of the women had a police file.
Brifman later admitt
ed: ‘Between the Grand Central and the National, I lived in the two of them . . . It was a habit to go from one hotel to another.’
In fact, Murphy went as far as to say that he had never seen a prostitute at the National. According to official police statistics, a meagre eight had been arrested there over a period of four years.
‘Well, there was one woman who could’ve been. Yanka or Yanku . . . Hallahan arrested her,’ Murphy said on oath.
He was also questioned about Young’s anonymous threatening phone call. ‘If there was any such phone call, I don’t think the caller was any friend of mine,’ Murphy said.
In a contradiction to Murphy’s testimony, another officer – Detective Sergeant William (Bill) Osborne of the Licensing Branch – told the royal commission that in the course of an investigation in 1962 into whether a Grand Central waiter was procuring women for prostitution, he interviewed Brifman and Ryan. Osborne said that both had indicated to him that they worked as prostitutes in Brisbane but only operated out of the Grand Central, not the National.
Brifman later recalled that Osborne was an ‘honest’ cop, and he told her that he had been persecuted in the job because he was one of the men who initially objected to Bischof’s appointment as police commissioner in 1958.
The inquiry adjourned on 20 December and resumed on Monday 13 January 1964.
The next day, Hallahan was called before the inquiry. Just the previous Wednesday he had been suspended from duties over his ‘fraud on the court’ matter regarding so-called vagrant Gary Campbell, pending an internal Police Department investigation.
Hallahan claimed he was ill – presumably related to his kidney condition – and hoped his testimony and cross-examination could be expedited swiftly.
He said he could never prove Weidinger and Ryan were prostitutes. Brifman? ‘Not a reputed prostitute.’ Yanku? Hallahan had taken no notes after he pulled her out of the National following a phone call from Rolly Roberts.
Hallahan called in sick the next day. Meanwhile, Young was re-examined and he explained he had come in to the inquiry to specifically hear Hallahan give evidence and to solve the mystery of the anonymous caller. He said he believed Hallahan was the man. Young’s claim was later dismissed by the commissioner.
Three Crooked Kings Page 16