Peggy also testified that she had told him it was not very nice for a gentleman to be in a lady’s bedroom. This delighted the movie-going public because Warner Bros. had just released a movie called Gentleman Jim starring Flynn. In it, Flynn’s character tells actress Alexis Smith: ‘Oh, darling, that gentleman stuff never fooled you, did it? I’m no gentleman.’ She replies, ‘In that case, I’m no lady.’ Oh dear.
Then seventeen-year-old Betty Hansen took the stand. Gently, Geisler got her to talk through what happened. How Flynn had taken her upstairs and undressed her before undressing himself, leaving on only his shoes. Warner Bros. had also just released Flynn’s movie They Died With Their Boots On, and Betty’s testimony caused undue hilarity. That, however, was nothing compared to her response to Geisler when he asked, ‘You say that Flynn removed your slacks. Didn’t you want him to take them off?’ Betty hesitated and then said: ‘I didn’t have no objections.’
The jury came back and found him innocent on all charges. Flynn had won, but in his own mind he felt he had lost because he was now forever tarnished with the brand of an internationally followed rape case.
Flynn took to the high seas to lick his wounds. He made more movies, had some successes and lost a lot of money. He found himself drawn to Cuba, where he hung out with Fidel Castro and made a terrible movie called Cuban Rebel Girls. His girlfriend at the time, seventeen-year-old Beverly Aadland, was the star of the movie. She was a former chorus girl who had lost her virginity to Flynn when she was just fifteen. Flynn nicknamed her ‘Woodsy’, because she reminded him of a wood nymph, and had even taken her to director Stanley Kubrick and offered them as a package deal for his movie version of Lolita, though Kubrick declined.
The couple were in Canada to lease Flynn’s yacht when he complained of back pain. Beverly took him to a doctor, who, rather than treating him, invited his friends over to meet the star. Flynn entertained them all with a story about how his friends stole legendary actor and drunk John Barrymore’s body from the morgue and set it up in Flynn’s living room for a joke. It was Flynn’s last performance. He left the room to go and get some rest, saying he had never felt better.
Beverly later went to check on him and found him dead. Drink, drugs, womanising and hard living had taken their toll. His wicked, wicked ways had caught up with him at just 50 years old. He died believing himself to be the greatest con ever played on a gullible public.
I Have Seen the Light: Religious double-crossers
THE Lord moves in mysterious ways — unfortunately those who preach his gospel here on Earth work in far more predictable patterns. Often their pursuit is not the enrichment of mankind but the enrichment of their back pockets. And they will use whatever good a church can provide to help them relieve the true believers of their money.
One such non-believer was Michael Guglielmucci who, long before Justin Bieber graced its hallowed halls, had used Hillsong for his own dastardly ends. Australia’s biggest evangelical church, run by Pastor Brian Houston and his wife, Pastor Bobbi, has its own band, Hillsong Worship (formerly known as Hillsong Live). It has a huge following, despite making headlines in 2008 with a scandal surrounding former bass player Michael Guglielmucci.
Guglielmucci’s story moved people around the world. Here was a young man in his late twenties, who had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. As he struggled to come to terms with his illness and his mortality, he wrote a song called ‘Healer’, which peaked at number two on the ARIA charts. It was the hit track of Hillsong Live’s album This is Our God recorded at Acer Arena in 2008.
On a video on his blog, he described the song’s genesis immediately after being diagnosed: ‘I just went home. I knew I had to go home and needed to get alone with God. I walked into my studio at home and for some reason … I sat at a piano and began to worship. I sang that song from start to finish. I was crying. I just realised that God had given me an incredible gift and I realised that song was going to be my strength.’ As Michael continued to defy doctors’ prognoses, the song became an anthem to the power of faith.
Pastor Brian witnessed Michael’s battle first-hand when he visited the apartment in Sydney’s inner west where Michael was living with his wife, Amanda. When he went in, Michael was sitting on the floor, clearly in pain. It seemed the medication had worn off long before the four hours doctors had instructed he wait to take more. ‘The pain was obviously becoming more and more intense as he shook and groaned with sweat-beads clearly breaking out across his brow. Those around him began to gently pray and do what they could to keep him comfortable while Michael himself turned on a recording of his song Healer,’ he wrote on his blog. ‘I placed my hand on Michael’s head and prayed for healing with all the faith I could muster.’
As the illness and chemotherapy took its toll, Michael continued to perform his hit song at Christian concerts over the next two years, often with no hair and an oxygen tube attached to his nose. This brave young man’s battle and his faith were truly inspirational.
They were also a complete lie.
‘So now we all know that so much of this was not real … but was I personally sucked in? Yep, 100%!!!’ wrote Pastor Brian on his blog afterwards. Others had been conned too, and the act had been pretty convincing. Pastor Brian wrote that friends of Michael had apparently witnessed him coughing up blood and vomiting. They had reported that when they dropped him off at hospital, Michael would insist he go in alone. They even spoke of Michael’s hair falling out in clumps, apparently as a result of his treatment.
The whistle was finally blown in 2008 by Michael’s father, Danny, the founder of Edge Church in Adelaide. His son did not have cancer. In many ways, it was worse.
Danny was on his way to New Zealand when his son rang and asked him to come and see him straight away. ‘I said to my wife, “Maybe the doctors have told him he’s only got a few weeks to live,”’ he said. ‘So we cancelled everything and jumped on the plane and went to see him in Melbourne, and that’s when he told us the story.’
His son revealed he was suffering not from cancer, but from a sixteen-year addiction to porn.
Danny said, ‘We were just in absolute shock and we still are. We haven’t had time to get our head around it.
‘As a professional minister … I’ve travelled the world asking people to pray for him. Can you imagine what a horrible thing it would be if I was playing a game? To be honest, I ask myself as a father, “What did I miss, what did I not do? What could I have done better?”’
The answer was, probably nothing. Michael Guglielmucci had been an accomplished liar and con artist from the age of twelve. ‘I’ve been living a lie for a long time,’ he told Channel Seven’s Today Tonight in 2008. ‘I’ve been hiding who I am for so long. I can honestly say to you that the last two years have been hell for me physically, emotionally, but I never sat down and said … let’s try and fool the world.’
He confessed that the real sickness was an addiction to pornography that he said made him feel physically sick with guilt. He claimed his addiction was behind all the ailments he had ever suffered: the seven-week stint in Adelaide Children’s Hospital when he was a child, the appendix operation that did not cure him, the vomiting, the clumps of hair falling out. ‘This is who I am … I’m addicted to the stuff, it consumes my mind … I’m sick and this is why I had to come up with some sort of explanation of what was happening in my body.’ He vowed to return all the money to believers who had bought his song, and to tell the truth from that day forward.
The first person he told was his wife, Amanda. ‘He just went through it — where it had started, everything in his life as a young kid, the patterns,’ Amanda said. ‘He was crying, sobbing actually … it was a very hard moment for him, as it was for me hearing it.’
Incredibly, despite their lives being built on a web of lies, she was not bitter. ‘Seeing your husband of seven years absolutely sobbing in front of you, risking everything coming forward and telling the truth — in that instance i
t was really hard to be angry or mad,’ she said. ‘I never questioned it; when you love someone you trust them. I had no reason not to trust him. Perhaps I feel a little bit foolish in this; hindsight’s a fabulous thing … but I’m trying not to beat myself up.’ She needed counselling, but, if anything, she said the whole affair had strengthened her resolve and her faith.
* * *
But if you really want a test of your faith, try being a member of the Catholic Church. Its crimes are far worse than faking an illness to a gullible flock and fleecing them of their hard-earned cash.
For decades, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in Australia looked the other way as members of the clergy systematically physically and sexually abused young people trusted into their care. When an offender became so predatory that the complaints against him could no longer be ignored, the bishops in charge would move him to another parish on the other side of the country. There would be no warning to the people in the new diocese, and the offender was free to carry on offending. This happened time and time again for decades. The people who inhabit the gilded halls of the Catholic Church, from the top to the bottom, need to hang their heads in shame.
It would be remiss not to mention one Catholic priest who does fit the description of a money-grabbing (though not sexually abusing) dirty rotten scoundrel: Father Richard Abourjaily.
Father Abourjaily was welcomed into the homes and hearts of the parishioners at All Hallows Parish Church at Five Dock in Sydney’s inner west after he was ordained in 2007 aged 28. He worked with the church’s Youth Alive group where their Facebook page presented him as ‘the one and only Fr Rich … he is busy promoting World Youth Day among us and is really cool’. The idealistic young man was exactly the right image for the Catholic Church, and his picture was splashed on the front page of the Catholic Weekly when he was ordained. He was quoted as saying that he wanted to show ‘the truth and beauty of our faith’ and that he would pray ‘for all the people I’ll come into contact with during my life as a priest’.
But the joy did not last. Parishioners were devastated to learn that the charismatic priest was suffering from prostate cancer. He had been given the traditional gift of money from parishioners, friends and family when he was ordained, but now Father Abourjaily needed that money to help fund his trips to Lourdes in France as he sought a miracle cure for the deadly cancer. His flock reached out to him with their prayers.
The only slight fly in the ointment was that Father Abourjaily was actually enjoying the very best of health.
All Hallows Parish priest Father Bob Hayes told the congregation at Sunday Mass that Father Abourjaily was not ill at all. He apologised. At the parish’s annual general meeting, he said: ‘Last year became an eventful year for our community with the dismissal from the parish and subsequent suspension from all priestly activities of Father Abourjaily due to his false claims of illness. It has been a regrettable experience for many who grew close to him, especially the young people he endeared himself to during his time with us.’
Parishioner Pina Biazzo, whose nieces were in Youth Alive, told me at the time: ‘We all believed he had prostate cancer. We just thought he was having a tough time and that he wasn’t going to make it. Everyone loved him.’
The priest privately confided to his spiritual advisor that he had lied because he had a prostate problem and feared people would mistake it for a sexually transmitted disease. Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, was having none of that. ‘Father Abourjaily is not functioning as a Catholic priest because of his delusional statements and behaviour. I regret this situation and hope he soon returns to full health,’ he fired off.
But Father Abourjaily was not a man to take these setbacks lying down. He had been sent home early once before, from the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter seminary in Lincoln, Nebraska, for telling similar porkies about his ill health. The Catholic Church loves to give a sinner another chance, so Father Abourjaily repented and started again at a church on the other side of the country in Perth. His spiritual advisor, Father John Flader, director of the Catholic Adult Education Centre, said: ‘All he did was to lie and that’s not a good thing. He was very, very repentant of that and, being as repentant as he was, he is not going to reoffend again.’ No more lies. Definitely not. Not for a third time. Father Flader was confident. ‘We can never be sure and we are all human but I think in any serious matter he knows the serious consequences and he will not lie about anything serious again,’ he said.
But four years later, returned from Perth with Cardinal Pell’s rebuke still stinging in his ears, Father Abourjaily, wearing his clerical collar, was in the dock of Bankstown Local Court to face a charge of speeding while on a suspended driver’s licence. He had, he told magistrate Daniel Reiss, been on his way to hear the confession of an elderly parishioner.
‘It was an urgent confession, was it? You needed to speed over there as well?’ asked Reiss.
The magistrate was also surprised that so many of Father Abourjaily’s earlier speeding offences had been caught on cameras that were well marked to encourage drivers to slow down. ‘You don’t even slow down for the signs,’ he said.
Father Abourjaily told him he was about to take up a position in Albury and would need his licence to tend to his flock on a ‘pastoral’ level. ‘If I may be able to drive in a relatively short time or be given an excess penalty, I will give you my sincere word I will not be speeding again. This is a wake-up call in my role as a priest,’ he said.
But when asked to provide proof that he actually was a priest, he could not produce a thing.
A spokeswoman for the Sydney Archdiocese said Father Abourjaily had been stood down as a priest in 2007 over his fake trip to Lourdes and added they were ‘extremely concerned’ that he was still claiming to be a clergyman.
Magistrate Reiss fined him $1000 and suspended his licence for another twelve months for the speeding. The judgement for his lies will have to wait until he meets a greater power sometime in the future.
Hoodwinked: Carl Synnerdahl
WHENEVER he was broke, Carl Synnerdahl would do what most people do — go to the bank to get some money. Only in Carl’s case, instead of a chequebook he would take a gun. His modus operandi was always the same. He would make a late afternoon appointment, the last of the day, to meet with the bank manager. Synnerdahl would be taken into the manager’s office, they would shake hands and he would then pull a gun out of his bag. Coolly, with the white-faced manager held at gunpoint, he would wait until the bank doors were closed for the day before locking the staff in the vault and loading his bag with cash. Then he would calmly call a taxi.
‘Once I got away from the bank I would ring the police, tell them I’d just robbed it and ask would they please go and let the people out of the vault,’ he told the Sunday Telegraph.
But Synnerdahl was no ordinary crook; he was a rogue who pulled off one of the most astonishing cons ever perpetrated on the New South Wales prison system. His book on the trick, Hoodwink, inspired an award-winning movie of the same name starring John Hargreaves, Judy Davis, Wendy Hughes and Michael Caton.
Early life had been tough for Synnerdahl. A lot of that was of his own making. His first heist was a draught horse from Bomaderry’s Dairy at the bottom of Dickson Street in Newtown in the inner west of Sydney. Bold as brass he walked into the yard, untethered the horse and led it out. Only then did the four-year-old horse thief get to thinking that he needed to put his new pet somewhere. Naturally he took it home. Once inside the kitchen it became clear there was not a lot of room for a full-grown horse. His mother heard the commotion and there was hell to pay. She did not believe his tale that he had found the horse wandering around, although the milkman gave him a ha’penny when he took it back and, with a wise look in his eye, asked the young hustler to return any others he found wandering around.
These were the days when kids roamed the streets, and five-year-old Carl was a regular at the pub, picking up a bottle of brandy for his sick unc
le. As a ten-year-old he jumped a train to Brisbane and broke into three garages to fund his way. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he was a teenager when he was convicted of his first crime back in New South Wales, and was sentenced to four years in Goulburn Jail for stealing cars and armed robbery. This was the 1960s and the emphasis in the prison system at the time was on punishment rather than rehabilitation. ‘I found out the only way to get through prison was with a knife or an iron bar,’ he said. ‘You don’t learn much in jail except how to load a gun quicker.’
The young Synnerdahl was already married, and his long and difficult relationship with women was about to get him into some serious strife. He heard his wife was having an affair and, hell-bent on retribution, he broke out of jail. It was just six months before he was due for parole.
There was a shootout in Wollongong before the police caught him and returned him to the big house. Synnerdahl finally got out in 1967, aged 24. Proving that he had learnt nothing, he was back inside within three months, sentenced to nine years’ hard labour, again for armed robbery. He was released from Parramatta Jail on parole in 1973.
‘I came out of jail in those days with exactly the attitude that was expected of me,’ Synnerdahl told the Sunday Telegraph years later. ‘I went straight out, got a gun and started robbing banks again.’
Police caught him in Melbourne and extradited him to New South Wales. But by now, Synnerdahl was getting wise. A gun was smuggled to him in prison inside a barbecued chook and, as police took him to visit the crime scene, he made good his escape. This time he was not hanging around, and fled the country. He hid out in Hong Kong for several years, only returning to Australia when he ran out of money — naturally, he and his gun paid a visit to the bank.
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels Page 5