The Beat: A True Account of the Bondi Gay Murders

by I. J. Fenn

  [4] A ‘beat’ is described by Mouzos and Thompson (see 7) as ‘a park or public space, where men are known to meet other men for social interaction or anonymous sexual encounters’.

  [5] Research shows that there are many heterosexual males, often married or in established heterosexual relationships, who indulge in regular homosexual activities at certain beats.

  [6] See ‘Comparison Between Gay Hate-Related Homicides of Men and Other Male Homicides In New South Wales 1989–1999’ a paper by Jenny Mouzos and Sue Thompson which was presented at the Hate Crime Conference, University of Sydney, on 9 and 10 December 1999.

  [7] The fact that McCann declined to make a statement which might help a fellow officer should not reflect negatively on him. He was – and remains – a highly respected police officer (not least of all by Steve Page) with an impeccable record. His stance in response to Page’s overture was taken purely on health grounds and should in no way be seen in obstructive terms.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The McCann Reports

  i

  On 15 April 1991 Detective Sergeant Steve McCann of the Homicide Unit, Regional Crime Squad South submitted a three-page report to Chief Superintendent Maroney, State Command. The subject of the report was an overview ‘of reported crime and its possible connection, involving victims of the homosexual community [sic] primarily in the Alexandria and South Bondi areas’.

  In this brief report McCann outlines the Richard Johnson case, stating that he was the officer in charge and offering further details if required. The bare facts, as he provides them, state that Richard Norman Johnson, a known homosexual, died from massive internal injuries after being savagely punched, kicked and jumped on by eight youths at Alexandria Park on 24 January 1990. The youths had lured Johnson to a toilet block in the park, after finding his phone number on the toilet wall, ‘for the purpose of a homosexual act’. Robbery, McCann claimed, was a lesser motive for the killing for at least three of those arrested.

  At their trial, five of the youths were convicted of manslaughter and the other three of murder. They received sentences of between five and 18 years.

  Similarly, McCann reports, he was the officer in charge of the investigation into the murder of Kritchikorn Rattanajurathaporn whose body was found on the rock platform below Mackenzies Point (a spit of land at the eastern limit of the walkway beneath Marks Park) on 27 July 1990. Inquiries revealed that Rattanajurathaporn had visited Marks Park at about 3am on 21July in the company of Jeffrey Sullivan, ‘a homosexual Bondi resident’. Both Sullivan and Rattanajurathaporn were attacked by three youths, Matthew Davis and Sean and David McAuliffe. The 34-year-old Thai died in the attack; Sullivan received a ‘severe beating’.

  Like those arrested for the Johnson murder, these three were also residents of the Redfern and Waterloo areas.

  When questioned, Davis indicated that the McAuliffe brothers were involved in regular weekend attacks on homosexuals in the Bondi area, Centennial Park and Kings Cross. It was also ascertained that Rattanajurathaporn had been thrown off the cliff in a deliberate action: his was not the accidental consequence of a robbery gone wrong.

  During the course of the inquiry, David McAuliffe’s pockets were searched and a pawn slip in the name of Mark Church was found. Mark Church was one of the eight youths found guilty of Richard Johnson’s murder.[1]

  McCann then makes the link between these documented cases and the disappearance of Ross Warren, noting that his last known whereabouts (as evidenced by the location of his car and keys, the fact that he had frequented Marks Park in the past and that he was homosexual) was the ‘immediate area near Mackenzies Point’ and that he was supposedly staying with friends in Redfern.[2] In further support of linking Warren with the others, McCann goes on to mention the fact that John Russell, another homosexual Bondi resident, was found dead on 24November 1989, at the base of exactly the same cliffs where Rattanajurathaporn would later be found. Not only was Russell in good spirits (having recently inherited $100,000), thereby arguing against him having taken his own life, but a clump of hair was found sticking to the back of his hand. These – Warren and Russell – McCann was suggesting, were hardly likely to be suicides.

  Less than a month after Russell’s body had been found, another homosexual male, Alan Boxsell, was attacked and robbed on the walkway beneath Marks Park. He later identified two of his attackers as David McAuliffe and Sean Cushman. Cushman, McCann reports, was reputedly the leader of a ‘loosely connected gang of street thugs who have been terrorising people in the Bondi Beach and South Bondi cliff area for some considerable time’. Police were waiting to interview Cushman, McCann stated, in relation, not only to the Boxsell assault, but also for his part in an attack on one David McMahon on 21 December 1989 at the same location. In this attack, McCann claimed, Cushman was in the company of nine other youths and stated his intention to throw McMahon off the cliff.

  During the course of the Johnson inquiry it became evident to investigating officers that the unsolved murder of William Allen had been perpetrated at exactly the same location as that of Johnson. Allen had been attacked on 28 December 1988, a year before Johnson. As no-one had been apprehended for the Allen murder McCann spoke to some of the parents of Johnson’s killers about his intention of reopening the investigation. Shortly afterwards he was informed that one of those convicted for murdering Johnson had told two of his co-convicted not to say anything about Allen’s killing. At about the same time, he received information that yet another of those convicted in the Johnson case, Adam French, had claimed to have thrown a homosexual from the cliff top at Bondi and that he had thrown his keys into the ocean. Yet another of those convicted agreed to collect covert evidence of the others’ involvement in the Allen case. Listening devices were used and, while no ‘hard evidence’ was obtained, it was established that some of those who had murdered Richard Johnson went ‘gay bashing’ on a regular basis, committing a ‘large number’ of assaults.

  Finally, McCann mentioned the case of Wayne Tonks. Tonks was murdered outside the target area, in his flat at Artarmon, and the modus operandi was distinctly different to that employed in the other killings. However, it was noted that Tonks had placed his phone number in public toilets in Naremburn and Chatswood (as had Johnson in Alexandria). And Tonks was a schoolteacher at Cleveland Street High School – which the bulk of the offenders in the Johnson case attended.

  Richard Johnson … Kritchikorn Rattanajurathaporn … John Russell … Ross Warren … William Allen … Alan Boxsell … Wayne Tonks … David McMahon … Interesting reading. Steve Page put down McCann’s first report and picked up the second, dated 10 August 1991.

  ii

  Addressed to ‘The Commander, Modus Operandi Section’ McCann now offered far greater detail than he had in his earlier writing.

  Elaborating on the Johnson case, he noted that the court had dealt with those involved, naming them as Dean Howard, Bradley Young, Adam French, James Lopez, Mark Church, Ronald Morgan, Manuel Jong and Alex Mihailovic. These were the thugs who ‘bashed and kicked to death’ their 34-year-old victim for no other reason than he was homosexual.

  Those arrested (and waiting trial) in relation to the Rattanajurathaporn murder – Matthew Davis and the McAuliffe brothers – as well as most of the Johnson killers had prior convictions for robbery and assault. In addition, McCann stated, David McAuliffe had by now been charged in connection with the Boxsell case. Forty-five-year-old Boxsell sustained fractured ribs and facial injuries.

  In relation to the Allen killing, McCann now offered the fact that, while Allen was attacked outside the toilet block in Alexandria Park, he managed to stagger home, where he died of his horrific injuries. The post mortem examination report included the fact that Allen had sustained ‘a small circular puncture wound in his hand’ which, at five or six millimetres in diameter, was consistent with him having been stabbed.

  In the cold, clinical language used by police in their official reports McCann explained that it
had been the Rattanajurathaporn investigation that had initially brought the Warren case to McCann’s attention: a case that he now described as being of ‘a highly suspicious nature’. He reiterated the basic facts of Warren’s disappearance, including that of the location of the Nissan Pulsar which he pointed out was parked near a set of steps that led down from Kenneth Street to the walkway around Mackenzies Point. Warren, he said, had not been heard from since the day he vanished.

  Similarly, it had been Rattanajurathaporn’s inquiries which also brought the Russell case to McCann’s notice. Russell, he discovered, had been drinking with a friend at the Bondi Hotel on the evening before he died. When his body was found, McCann made a point of emphasising, there was a clump of hair on his hand ‘which has not been located but [which] is depicted in photograph form’.[3]

  In paragraph 11 of his report McCann outlines the McMahon assault again, recording the fact that during the course of the attack one of the assailants told McMahon, ‘I’m gonna throw you over the side’, and started to drag him towards the cliff edge. Initially, McMahon identified 17-year-old Sean Cushman as being the leader of the group of assailants but he ‘has since shown a complete unwillingness to pursue or assist Police with this matter’. As a result, McCann believed there was little to be gained in proceeding with charges against Cushman or his cohorts without the evidence of McMahon.

  Between the writing of the two reports another case had come to McCann’s attention. In January 1987 Raymond Keam was savagely beaten to death outside a toilet block in Alison Park, Randwick. Keam, like the others who suffered similar fates, was homosexual. He was also a karate exponent. At the time of his death, police were concentrating their inquiries on a particular gang of youths although even now, four years later, no arrests had been made, McCann said.

  McCann’s report then goes on to state: ‘In dealing with further aspects of (the various cases examined in his report) certain lines of investigation were taken and it is best clarified by detailing the information gathered under the respective victims’ headings.’

  Under ‘Richard Norman Johnson’ McCann noted that Mihailovic’s parents and solicitor refused to allow Alex Mihailovic the possible opportunity of a sentence reduction by helping the police with their inquiries. Dean Howard, on the other hand, seized the opportunity and had used listening devices to record conversations with several of his fellow prisoners. Howard also indicated that a screwdriver had been used to stab William Allen and that certain individuals had implicated themselves in the killing. The notion of a screwdriver was certainly consistent with the wound reported on Allen’s hand but Howard’s overall evidence is tainted by the fact that one of those he claimed had implicated himself was, according to inquiries made of the Department of Immigration, in New Zealand at the time of the incident whilst another was known to be away in the country. It was apparent that Howard’s poor retentive memory and discrepancies in his various statements suggested that little credence could be given to the accuracy of his allegations so no action could be taken.

  The information, however, would be retained for future attention if further corroboration was forthcoming.

  Under ‘Ross Bradley Warren’ McCann offered two ‘scenarios’. The first relied on the information supplied by a social worker who overheard Adam French telling a fellow prisoner in Keelong Detention Centre that he, French, had thrown a homosexual off the cliffs onto the rocks at Bondi. The social worker, Ann Pascoe, and the second prisoner signed statements to that effect and the prisoner, a 17-year-old thief from Western Australia, agreed to wear a listening device to procure incriminating evidence from French. Unfortunately, the recordings offer only vague or general references to frequent bashings at Bondi, Centennial and Moore Parks. By the time McCann’s report was written, the inmate had returned to Western Australia from where his parents ‘bluntly suggested’ he was no longer prepared to help police with their inquiries.

  Dean Howard had also recorded conversations with French while they were together at Minda Detention Centre. Again French implicated himself, but in only a general way. However, he did admit to having taken a set of keys off one of his victims, searching the man’s brown vehicle and then throwing the keys into the ocean. The victim at the time, he said, had been pushed off a small cliff. McCann stresses that this attack is alleged to have occurred at around 10.30pm and the vehicle was parked near the Bondi Icebergs pool. Both time and place excluded this incident from having any direct connection to Ross Warren’s disappearance. And, anyway, there were only three or four keys on the key ring while Warren’s key ring held eight keys.

  During questioning, French admitted to taking part in between 70 and 100 attacks on homosexual men while Howard admitted to 15. Legal advice counselled both to silence unless total immunity could be guaranteed – a guarantee that Crown Prosecutor, Mark Tedeschi QC suggested was unlikely given the nature of the crimes that had led to their incarceration. Therefore, as there was no possibility of any direct charge being levelled against either, no further action would be taken at that time.

  McCann’s ‘second scenario’ was based on a direct admission of complicity, if not guilt. Two women, a mother and daughter, had been told independently by a mutual friend, Merlyn McGrath, that she, McGrath, had been present when Ross Warren was bashed and thrown off a cliff at South Bondi. McGrath was with a group of eight Lebanese from Kings Cross when the attack took place. This information was given to the mother and daughter about three weeks after Warren had disappeared, although the women only approached the police after McCann reopened the case and it gained an amount of media attention.

  Both women were asked to provide more information by way of listening devices: the mother at first agreed before changing her mind and ‘showing great reluctance’ in participating. Her daughter flatly refused at the outset. It transpired that Merlyn McGrath had a lengthy criminal record, was known to be violent and, anyway, was nomadic, her present whereabouts unknown.

  McCann felt it would be best to pursue this information at some future time, again, when ‘supportive or corroborative evidence is gained elsewhere’.

  ‘Russell’s death and the circumstances surrounding his demise are disturbing to say the least.’ So begins the section beneath the heading, ‘John Alan Russell’, although McCann declines to offer any further significant information at this point, preferring instead to move on to ‘Raymond Frederick Keam’.

  In another link to the Cleveland Street High School, a former teacher supplied the following information:

  …while talking to an ex-pupil from Cleveland Street High School … at the Redfern Markets about some of the youths involved in the Johnson killing, which included [the ex-pupil’s] friend Morgan, [the ex-pupil] admitted to her that Ron Morgan and others killed a homosexual in a park at Randwick. That person was a karate expert. Morgan was also responsible for a murder at Tamarama Beach.

  Cleveland Street School confirmed the friendship between Morgan and the ex-pupil and repeated efforts were made to persuade the former teacher to a) provide a statement of facts and b) to obtain further admissions which would be recorded using a listening device. The former teacher refused both entreaties.

  The ex-pupil was interviewed, but denied all knowledge of the incidents referred to. However, even though there had been no mention of the former teacher during the ex-pupil’s interview, shortly afterwards the ex-pupil’s girlfriend, Olivia, (a current pupil of the teacher at another school in August 1991) approached her at school and told her – ‘tersely’ – that the ex-pupil wanted to see her. McCann suggests that this development can be construed to verify the accuracy of the statement made at Redfern Markets but that it hadn’t helped persuade the teacher to help with further inquiries.

  iii

  At this stage, McCann seemed to be on the verge of cracking several cases and moving forwards in others. He was fairly certain who was responsible for the William Allen murder, had firm (if not conclusive) evidence regarding the McMahon assault and
had strong leads in the Keam case. He also believed he’d made significant headway in both the Warren and Russell cases, while he thought the Boxsell assault would be resolved in the near future.

  Yet the report ended on a negative note: Detective McCann’s ‘Summary’ highlighted the difficulties he’d encountered during his inquiries, difficulties he found hard to understand given the severity of the crimes involved. He wrote:

  Throughout the course of this inquiry, it was obvious that little help was gained from the homosexual community in reporting incidents of bashing to the Police. This was largely supported by the lack of reported assaults in the relevant areas which has severely hampered Police in establishing specific crimes from the information forthcoming in the conversations recorded through the use of listening devices. The volume of crime committed on the homosexual community as indicated is enormous and largely unreported … Reluctance of witnesses to assist Police in their pursuit has prevented criminal charges being laid against any individuals.