The Beat: A True Account of the Bondi Gay Murders

by I. J. Fenn

  v

  An almost definite identification of the blond-haired Cushman by McMahon … blond hairs on the back of John Russell’s hand … a record of violence and homophobic attacks … The strands were all starting to intertwine. Steve Page decided to have another talk to Rod S about the events he’d heard rumoured to have happened around the time that Russell was murdered.

  Rod was interviewed at Waverley Police Station early in the morning. He was shown the statement he’d made to Sergeant Ingleby in 1989 and agreed that it was his: his statement, his signature.

  Asked why he’d made that statement back in ’89 Rod answered with a slight frown. He explained that, as he’d already said, he’d started running in the area a couple of years before and occasionally – at the beginning, anyway – he’d kind of hang around on the off-chance of meeting someone who might be interested in casual sex. Gay sex. In the bushes. He reiterated his meeting with Red and went over the conversation they’d had about Red hearing the sounds of what he thought at the time was a bashing. It was all in the original statement, he said. He spoke naturally, easily, his voice rising and falling with an untroubled cadence. This was old news, he seemed to be saying, but if the police wanted to hear it all again, that was alright with him.

  A few weeks later – after Red had told him about the bashing, a friend of his was ‘up from the country’ and dropped by unexpectedly. The friend, Greg, talked about how he’d lost a couple of other friends recently, guys who’d died from AIDS, and how another friend – John Russell – had been found dead at the bottom of a cliff at Bondi rocks. Interestingly, Rod had originally said that Greg said Russell had been found ‘murdered’: this time he merely said ‘dead’. Perhaps time had taken the edge of sensationalism away from the event, eroded its dramatic impact. Or maybe, in the final analysis, the two words were simply interchangeable. Anyway, Rod said he made no immediate connection between the information he was given by Greg and that given by Red a couple of weeks earlier. Afterwards, though … afterwards he thought about it and, although he didn’t know what day Russell had died, nor what day Red had heard the commotion, Rod made a tentative connection, put the two events together in his mind, and went to Bondi Police Station where he made his statement to Sergeant Ingleby. Exactly as he’d said in ’89.

  So, if it was all unchanged, if everything Rod told Steve Page that morning was precisely what he’d told Ingleby before, what were the police looking for? What did they expect to uncover now that they hadn’t uncovered the first time around? If they knew, they weren’t about to let Rod know. Instead, they asked about the location, about Bondi rocks, and about the reasons people went there.

  Rod smiled. It was a public area, he said. People go there. But he knew what they were getting at. It’s well known to the police, he said, and he thought, to the public at large as a meeting place for gay men. It’s a park, a cruising area for gay men, between Bondi Icebergs and Tamarama Beach. But only at night as far as he knew, late evening and night. He’d never been there during the day so he wouldn’t know, really. He went two or three times a week, he said, but … Well, he stopped going in ’92 because there was a series of deaths, disappearances, of gay men in the area. It became too risky, too dangerous.

  So how did he meet Red? Was that while he was cruising the park?

  Actually, he said, he met Red at Moore Park in about ’87. He had a gay twin brother in the Navy but he – Rod – knew nothing about him other than he was Red’s twin. Rod and Red met four or five times during late ’89 and early ’90 and during one of their meetings Red said he’d been assaulted at the Moore Park beat, had been stabbed. He showed the scars on his upper body. They struck a chord with Rod, he said, because he’d been assaulted himself in 1986 and, although he had a natural interest in these things, it was mainly as a means of gathering information that might help him avoid similar situations in the future. That’s why the conversation about the bashing at Bondi rocks stayed with him, he said.

  Okay, the police said, could Rod repeat precisely what Red had told him? Exactly, word for word? Rod smiled ruefully, no, he said, the imprecision of memory … He could paraphrase what he’d heard, could give a general idea…

  Steve Page nodded. He understood that 1989 was a long time ago, that too much happens in people’s lives for them to be able to remember what become minor details in their past. He referred to Rod’s original statement and asked about when Red had spoken about the loony who’d tried to push him off the cliff but Rod couldn’t recall any of that conversation. Neither could he remember much about going to Marks Park with Sergeant Ingleby to try to find Red. Some things, he said, just didn’t stay in your mind.

  Again, Steve Page nodded his understanding before back-tracking to Red’s true identity. Rod had no idea, he said. He thought Red was working class, could probably handle himself quite well (he’d managed to survive a knife attack) and was possibly known to the police because he refused point blank to tell his version of the bashing incident to Ingleby. That refusal – and his reluctance to even talk about it – suggested to Rod that there was an ulterior motive for his friend not wanting to get involved with the law. Also, whether or not it was of any relevance whatsoever, Rod said, Red seemed not to be employed. Which Rod would have been interested in, seeing as he was an employment consultant.

  Anyway…

  What about Greg, Detective Sergeant Page wanted to know? How did Rod know him? How did Greg know John Russell?

  Rod cast his mind back, thought back to the ’80s. He’d met Greg at a gay accommodation place on South Dowling Street, he said. No, it was at a Gay Centre fundraising dinner – Greg was the manager of the South Dowling Street accommodation place. It was closed now, he said, but it used to cater mainly for tourists … Anyway, he – Greg – was from the Bondi area, went to school there, so he knew it well. But he moved away to Lismore. When he came to Sydney the time he dropped by unexpectedly, Rod said, he was in a state of shock. Two of his friends had just died and there was this other one, this John Russell. Greg said he’d known this John Russell for years, from when they were teenagers, and how Russell had been found at the bottom of the cliffs. Greg thought he’d been murdered. Pushed off.

  Why did he think that, Steve Page wondered?

  Rod couldn’t remember. He remembered that Greg said Russell had been drinking in one of the pubs in Bondi, drinking until quite late. He’d been seen in the pub and it was quite late so he must have ‘gone over’ after midnight. And Greg had been convinced that Russell had been murdered.

  And where was Greg now?

  Rod didn’t know really, dropped off the radar. He’d moved away from Sydney, as he’d said, moved to Lismore, well, not Lismore itself – one of the villages in the area. Had the detectives heard of the Tropical Fruits? No? They were a bunch of, a social group out in the country, Rod said. There was a thriving gay community in the country, he said, because people were more laid back out there, live and let live, sort of thing. He hadn’t seen Greg for, oh, for years, three or four years at least. Greg was probably still there, probably having a great time.

  Detective Page switched the focus of the interview back to Marks Park again, asked about how contact was made between interested parties. Rod was becoming garrulous, starting to find his rhythm. He told the detectives how guys would eye each other, would establish a kind of accord without speaking, how they would tacitly agree to covert sex and follow each other up into the bushes or down to the rock shelf. So there was no signal, Page asked, no movement or sound to let the other know …? No. It was all in the eyes, Rod said, all body language. But wasn’t there the possibility of making a mistake? You know, it’s dark, you can’t see clearly – couldn’t a subtle eye movement be misinterpreted? Oh, yeah, Rod agreed. He recounted stories of how he, himself, had fallen victim to that kind of misinterpretation, how he’d found himself treated aggressively by someone who wasn’t at all interested even though he, Rod, had thought differently. Luckily, he said, he was pretty bi
g in the shoulders and had a history in rugby, so it was rare that the aggression lasted long. And he told stories of how, once contact had been made, sometimes it wasn’t ‘quite right’, something was wrong. There’d been one guy who’d followed all the protocol and who’d started to go off into the cover of the trees expecting Rod to go with him – which he did until he, Rod, saw some kind of baton sticking out of the guy’s pocket, a kind of security guard’s baton. He mentioned it, already feeling misgivings about the situation, and the guy turned and chased him intending, Rod believed, to beat and rob him. But that wasn’t a case of misunderstanding the signals, he said: that was just an attempted robbery.

  But when you do go with someone, Page asked, it’s always away from the path, out of the public view?

  And what about the time he was attacked, Page asked? That was earlier than ’89, wasn’t it?

  It was 1986, Rod said. Randwick. Near the shopping centre. He was just sort of hanging out and three guys approached him, asked for sex, outright. He explained that it wasn’t on, three guys together, it didn’t seem like they were genuinely interested … Anyway, they – or he, he couldn’t remember for sure – moved off, went their separate ways. And then, maybe 20 minutes later he was going back to his car when one of the guys approached him again, again asked for sex and Rod thought, what the hell, why not? He started to walk into some nearby bushes with the guy behind him. When he turned around he saw that the guy – small, Mediterranean-looking – had a knife in his hand. There was a scuffle and the knife was dropped. Rod walked away, angry and resentful, not knowing he’d actually been stabbed more than once, superficial wounds but wounds nonetheless. He walked away towards his car, jumped a fence … tried to jump a fence. But as he jumped, his leg was grabbed and he fell awkwardly, one leg on either side of the fence. He turned to see the other two associates of the little guy holding him. Instinctively, Rod threw a punch, hit one of them hard. The other let go and Rod limped off, his anger now building into fury. He was followed until he turned to face the guy, turned and swore at him, snarling, ready to fight. The attacker ran away. In a state of shock Rod drove home. But afterwards, when he’d calmed down, he decided to report the incident to the police so he went to Coogee Police Station the next day to make a statement. Not that the police gave a shit, he said. The desk officer told him the assault didn’t matter: after all, there was no real damage done, he wasn’t seriously hurt and he hadn’t been robbed. It was hardly worth bothering with, was it? Rod was furious, made a scene until eventually a sergeant came and took a statement from him.

  Rod ended up seeing a psychiatrist, he said. He had nightmares and constantly felt anger welling up inside him. He wanted to hit people, he said. It went on for a long time, his feeling angry at people of Mediterranean appearance, at the police … And then that karate expert was murdered in the park at Randwick where he’d been. The police suddenly took an interest in his case then, he said, the assault on him suddenly did matter. Came and spoke to him, took him to look at some ‘mugshots’. But he couldn’t identify anyone in the photographs and they never found the thugs who’d tried to beat him. Probably didn’t try very hard seeing as how he hadn’t been able to identify anyone who might have helped them with the karate expert.

  How old were the youths who had attacked him?

  About 17 … 18, he supposed.

  Seventeen or 18 in 1986? They were too old to be of much direct interest to Steve Page. Still, the attack on Rod further substantiated the police belief that violence against gay males was an established and long-standing ritual in the eastern suburbs, a heritage ritual passed down from one generation of street scum to the next.

  • • •

  After exactly two hours the interview was concluded. Rod knew no more about John Russell’s death than he’d said and whatever information he’d gleaned from the press and the rumour mill regarding Ross Warren, it was largely wrong. Rod left Waverley Police Station having tried desperately to help, hoping that what he had told the detectives would be of some use. Only time would tell.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Phone Tapping the Bondi Boys

  i

  Sydney street gangs are by nature transient. Members kind of drift in (once their credentials have been established) and stay for a while before moving on. Sometimes the ‘moving on’ is voluntary: parents move house, the gang member leaves the area because of work or the location of a girlfriend or because they’re the target of unwelcome attention from the police or from other gang members. Sometimes they leave through no choice of their own, arrested and sent to prison or a juvenile detention centre. When the move is involuntary the gang member usually comes back at the end of their ‘time’ but, more often than not, when they do return they find that things have changed while they’ve been away, the hierarchy has changed, liaisons have realigned in their absence, personnel (never a stable element in the first place) has changed, the hangouts are different. At some time or another it seems that everyone is at least temporarily away from the core gang.

  The core gang members of the Bondi Boys circa 1989, however, had been well documented and those who were still around were subject to surveillance by the officers from Operation Taradale. As Detective Sergeant Page explained in his situation report 4 on 1 November 2001:

  Current Position

  The major tasks identified for evidence gathering in the matters of the deaths of Warren and Russell are nearing completion, with the major task outstanding being interviewing the Persons of Interest. It is proposed to have T.I. Operations targeting six POIs believed to be involved in these matters and an LD [Listening Device] operation targeting two inmates also believed to be involved in these matters. Further, the target group will appear before the NSWCC where coercive powers will be used to gather evidence.

  The principal target Sean Cushman is now known to be living at Bondi and working at Botany. Cushman is currently in a de-facto relationship with [someone] who is known locally after being involved in a critical incident at Bondi.[1] Current TI monitoring includes landlines of Cushman’s residence and mobile in addition to his mother’s residence.

  A conspiracy for the ongoing supply of MDMA (ecstasy) has been identified and persons to be charged at a later date include Cushman, [his de-facto], Adam Barclay (flatmate of Cushman) and Timothy Alger.

  On 2 December the first of the phone taps produced important information which, although not directly connected to the investigation, provided the police with serious ammunition both in their war against drugs in Sydney and as leverage against their targets.

  At 9.10am on 2 December the phone rang in Cushman’s home. Cushman answered and heard the voice of Juan Lawson. He was calling from New Zealand having left Australia on 11 November. Could Cushman get hold of ‘ten grand’ of ecstasy early the following month to send it to New Zealand? Cushman said he’d see what he could do. Shortly after midday he rang 22-year-old Storm Seiden: could Storm fill Juan’s order within the next week? No problem, bro, that would be … Six hundred, Cushman said: 600 e’s for 10 grand.

  Steve Page logged the incident in his next situation report and suggested that the Australian Federal Police be informed in accordance with the Memorandum of Understanding between the two law enforcement bodies.

  ii

  Telephone conversation between Sean Cushman and Donovan Reynolds: 5pm Monday, 3 December.

  Reynolds: Little faggot … he was tellin’ me he’s a poof. He’s selling his bum … Fuckin’ little poofter.

  Cushman: Yeah. He’s goin’ out with a trannie and that.

  Reynolds: Why didn’t you hit him and that? Just for tellin’ ya. Just for being … just for pretending to be normal and being a mate and that?

  iii

  The following week the Public Affairs department of the NSW Police issued a media release appealing for information. Police from Operation Taradale, it read, were investigating two serious offences near Marks Park in 1989. A brief outline of the Warren and Russell cases was fo
llowed by a statement by the Crime Manager at Rose Bay (Detective Inspector Terry Dalton had by now replaced Warwick Brown) in which he planted the seeds that would bear a great deal of fruit over the forthcoming days and weeks:

  It’s been more than a decade since Mr Warren’s disappearance and the suspicious death of Mr Russell, but police are still trying to piece together information which may solve these crimes. Changes to policing and technology in the last 10 years are assisting Operation Taradale’s investigation. DNA testing is currently being conducted on a number of exhibits relating to John Russell’s death.[2] Hair samples found on Mr Russell’s hand may belong to an offender[3] … Tests will also be conducted at Tamarama this morning [9 December] which will assist in determining whether Mr Russell fell from the cliff, or was pushed. A weighted dummy, dressed in clothes similar to those worn by the victim, will be dropped onto the rocks to simulate a fall. The procedure will then be repeated, with the dummy thrown off the cliff. Police will photograph the figure’s landing position in both simulations to assist with Taradale’s inquiries.