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It's Saturday, March fourth, nineteen seventy two and teenager Mary Anne Brifman, daughter to Sydney brothel Madame Shirley Brifman, has woken early.

She had been living with relatives in country New South Wales after her mother famously blew the whistle on the Sydney Underworld in a national television interview and sent the family fleeing for their lives.

The Brifmans returned to Brisbane, where Shirley had worked as a prostitute at the start of her notorious career, and Marianne rejoined them there.

In Brisbane, Shirley had relatives to lean on, and after being shuffled through a series of safe houses, Shirley, her husband and their four children finally settled in a flat at fifty Bonnie Avenue, Clayfield in the Cities Inner Northwest Shirley had been hunted by Stuart John Reagan after the television fiasco.

He warned her to keep her mouth shut.

He turned up the heat in Brisbane, arriving unexpectedly at one of her police safe houses, and Shirley, with the magician on her tail, was a nervous wreck.

For months, she'd given official police interview to both Queensland and New Southwelles detectives about her public allegations of police corruption and close ties to the underworld.

Shirley didn't hold back, so by early nineteen seventy two, she was convinced she was going to be murdered.

She was due to appear as a witness in the trial of Detective Anthony Murphy, the feared leader of Queensland's rat pack of corrupt police.

He had been charged with perjury on the evidence of Brifman in the wake of her television expose a and stood down from his official duties.

Briffman and Murphy had been one time lovers.

Now she was due in court intent on sending him to prison.

On that Saturday morning in early March, Marianne wandered through the spacious Bonnie Avenue apartment her boyfriend Jim had stayed the night sleeping on a bed in the foyer.

He had left before dawn for his job at a nearby service station.

Meanwhile, mary Anne went into the spare room and it was there that she found her mother's body.

You've got to remember, I'm fifteen.

Well it is really a murder.

If that had happened, you think that they protect the crime scene even back then.

But none of that happened.

I can't remember who the police were that came, or the detectives.

I can't recall who they were, but they were obviously instructed to leave everything very loose.

They allowed me to go back in the room and sit next to my mother.

I was in there for I don't know, thirty or forty minutes, just sitting there by myself.

Nobody even came and looked.

Were all out there.

They had to wait for the fingerprints to be done right, and maybe they were waiting to take the body.

But we were all walking in and out.

The whole family, like the weaver was round, was allowed to walk in and out of the bedroom, just saying I died in this room.

You close it off to me, even the family walking in, even though I remember asking can I go in and sit with my mother?

I remember doing that, but not to who, some police person, And I was surprised that I was allowed to stay now as long as I wanted.

I don't mean to upset you after all this year, But what was your mother like?

She was it just like.

She's fall to sleep?

No, she was like frozen.

Well, obviously the wigged mortison sent in, But no, what.

Was her position?

It wasn't just like she'd gone to sleep.

No, No, she was laying back on pillows, half sitting up, like the pillows were propped up, and her hand was frozen like this up in the air.

And yes, she was like in that position.

Yeah, I read that an empty bottle of presumably the bottle that had been delivered to her, was found under the mattress or something.

I don't know.

Was there anything you remember seeing in the room that was different or that would have stuck out to you?

I was too busy looking at my mother.

My sisters and brother didn't go back in, you know, like they went in and had a look and didn't but they didn't stay there.

That was too scary for them because of how she looked and being dead.

Do you know what I mean.

So I'm journalist Matthew Condon and this is the Gangster's Ghost, a podcast from The Australian.

This podcast started out as a clinical look at one of Australia's most reviled gangsters, but when the Reagan family came on board, the project took on another dimension and begged the question how does a family cope with the generational stain of a murderer whose death was celebrated by criminals and police alike.

This is episode eight Collateral Damage.

Shirley Briffman's death was officially ruled a drug overdose.

Police recommended no autopsy.

Her daughter Mary Anne, believed her mother knew she had to die.

For years, she'd paid grass for protection, but for months leading up to her death, she'd been exposed and vulnerable.

She was very depressed and very sad, with very good reason.

And you know, you don't appreciate that as a child, but as an adult you can see she was racked with depression.

Really, I saw her depressed for many, many years, but this was different depression.

I guess it was oppression in the sense she was crying a lot.

I think she felt quite helpless, and I think That's why she was so mad with the police commissioner at that time, because nobody.

Would help her, and the more she told, the less they wanted to help her.

And I think she was conflicted actually over that, and that's why I don't think that she was smart.

My mother definitely wasn't intellectually in any sense.

She was bright, very bright, street smart to a degree, but not enough, very trusting, and not enough to realize that.

I mean, it's black and white, but heck, would you not realize you're going to lose your life when you start telling on everyone.

On the night Shirley died, Mary Anne and her boyfriend Jim both said they saw a visitor come to the apartment in Bonnie Avenue around midnight.

The visitor handed Shirley a small medicine vial.

A few hours later, Shirley took the contents of the vial and died.

Her daughter still believes Shirley was given an ultimatum, kill yourself or will kill your children.

Briffman's death was a war watershed in the story of true crime in twentieth century Australia.

She was the intersection of several roads where corrupt police, politicians, and the underworld collided.

She embodied everything you needed to know about organized crime in Australia at that time.

Shirley was made by corrupt police and she was destroyed by them.

Her suspected murder, too, was emblematic of how ruthlessly, violent and reckless crime had become in the lucky country.

Here was a critical whistleblower with intricate knowledge of corrupt systems in two states, and her extermination had been simply passed off as just another prostitute who lost her life through a drug overdose.

Reagan was a critical part of this story.

Who had ordered him to put pressure on Briffman?

And you have to ask the question, was he the mysterious visitor who delivered the fatal drugs to Shirley on the night she died.

I needed to get to the eppy center of Brifman's death.

I had to stand in the room where she died, in that upstairs flat in Clayfield to try and understand what had happened and why.

That's how I met Gary.

His family had owned the small block of flats in Bonnie Avenue for decades.

He was a teenager when the Briffmans moved into their apartment back in late nineteen seventy one.

He's now an old man, but he's never forgotten the time a criminal whistleblower and her family came to live upstairs in apartment number two.

And this has been empty for some time, been happy for ten years.

Okay, So this was coming in through the back door here, Garrett, Yeah, into the kitchen.

But it's at all that everybody used.

So it's pretty much the same layer, isn't it.

As when so Marianne said this, Sonny was asleeping here on that night.

So it was March three into March four, nine seventy two.

So Sonny, she said, was here and that there was a middle bedroom.

Which was which was that this was actually my bedroom for thirty years, and.

In her bedroom, so Marianne said she was in here.

Yeah, that's the other bathroom.

Yeah, and big foyer, and of course this is the room.

Where Shirley's body was found.

Yes, let's go in over here.

I understand up against the wall there, so I've been told.

She was on the bed.

I didn't actually get to see her, but I'm told that she was saying, leaning against the wall.

But there was a stain about here running down.

The wall, and I swear it was from draw or something from her mouth after I said she was laying against her Well, you said she was laying against the wall or something.

Yeah, And it had this stain running down the wall.

How long was that there?

For?

Oh?

Years?

Years?

In the thirty years I was living here, it must have been here.

And my mother had a time machine here.

You know.

Multiple theories emerged in the wake of Shirley's death.

Was it Reagan finally getting the job done after his attempt to strangle her with a coat hanger had failed the previous year in Sydney?

Or was she killed by corrupt police?

A rumor assisted for decades that Fred Froggy Cray from Sydney shoved the fatal drugs down Brifman's throat.

Was he the mysterious midnight visitor?

Or had Tony Murphy arranged it without Brifman His perjury trial collapsed and he went from strength to strength as Queensland's most feared and corrupt copper.

You'll remember the infamous drug dealer John Edward Milligan from our last episode.

After his arrest in nineteen seventy nine by Federal Bureau of niicotics agent John Shobrook.

Milligan had this to say in his record of interview.

These are his words read by a voice actor.

Shirley Brefman was the mistress of several Sydney gangsters, and she told the truth, and she was murdered by sleeping tablets down her throat.

I was told by Glenn Hallahan four days before she was murdered that Shirley Breafman's problem had finally been sold, that she'd be no more worries shortly.

That's the freaking truth.

None of this made any difference to Reagan.

By the time Shirley's body was transported to the city Morgue and then flown to her childhood town of Atherton in far North Queensland, where she was buried in a gold coffin, Reagan had several firm footholds in Queensland.

His friendship with the drug dealer Milligan might have been on the Wayne, but he was building up a stable of criminal associates he could rely on in Queensland, including a local psychopath who may have been even more ruthless than Reagan himself.

As a criminal chemical mix, it would prove explosive.

Meanwhile, Kelly never relented in her search for documents about her second cousin.

She had miraculously secured Reagan's consorting cards, and the next big fish was his actual criminal record.

Kelly was thrilled to hear early in her search that she was entitled to see Reagan's records, but there was one catch.

They were missing.

No surprise there.

This is Kelly in one of her audio diary entries.

For transparency.

My cousin has rightly or wrongly been portrayed as a murdering psychopath for five decades, and to discover that his criminal history is missing is if I'm being kind a joke.

To my knowledge, John has never been convicted of murder, yet since his death he has been labeled at will, including the death of a three year old child.

This tells me that his criminal record should be in the files of up to twelve unsold murders, not taking into account the fifteen people who died at the Whiskey Go Go Fire.

Further, don't get me started on how a microfilm goes missing.

And then I've just given him my availability and my phone number.

And if I was a conspiracy theorist, I could have a right little party.

But let's just keep this adventure going because it's an interesting journey and I knew it I would face some hurdles, but this is not a hurdle.

This is a complete and utter attempt at a roadblock with really flimsical material to hold the roadblock together.

Kelly was naturally suspicious.

It was hard enough to get the consorting cards.

Now the criminal record of one of the biggest gangsters and alleged killers of his era had vanished.

So Kelly wrote to then New South Wales Police Commissioner Mick Fuller, he was police top dog from March twenty seventeen to January twenty twenty two.

I'm shocked at how this can be, and know that John was involved with corrupt police in both New South Wales and Queensland, but it was forty seven years ago, so what harm would a criminal record create.

I'm aware that John is a person of interest in several killings.

We find it pretty scary that a record of one of Sydney's most notorious criminals has simply been lost.

I am not a crackpot, at least I don't think so, and I am struggling to see how this could happen.

After further letters to state and local politicians and anyone else who might be able to help, and exhausted, Kelly was told the elusive documents had in fact been found and were on their way.

On the cover sheet of the records was the now iconic mugshot of Reagan, taken when he was just sixteen years old.

Someone has hand written across the top left portion of the sheet, this man very anti police, makes false allegations against police.

Question with due caution.

What is astonishing about the old document is that in the vast majority of cases, his charges, ranging from assault and robbery to rape, are ultimately dismissed.

He could not escape jail time over a charge of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice in early nine sixty eight, You'll remember that was when he wrote to the Colonel seeking books on yoga and psychokinetic powers.

But the sentence columns are filled with the words dismissed, acquitted, or discharged, and not a single charge relates to a scam he pulled off that was so audacious that you have to hear it to believe it.

Less than a fortnight after Reagan's murder in Marrickville, in September nineteen seventy four, Sydney newspapers hinted that the dead gangster may have been involved in a real estate scam that had seen hundreds, if not thousands, of ordinary mums and dads in search of the great Australian dream, fleeced of their hard earned savings.

Two months later, Neville Ran, the working class Balmain boy who went on to become a long serving Premier of New South Wales, was an ambitious member of Parliament and leader of the Labor Opposition, and he had a bombshell to drop.

He stood in the Parliamentary chamber and asked a question without notice to Deputy Premier and Minister for Local Government Sir Charles Cutler.

The Premier of New South Wales at the time was the corrupt Robert Askin.

Ran took the floor.

Is the Minister aware of the growing number of people in New South Wales who have been duped by questionable companies which purchase at bargain prices land in country areas sold at auction by local government authorities for non payment of rates and then resell it for vast and extortionate profits.

Further, is the Minister aware that In recent months, a group of interlock companies that were all associated with the recently murdered Stuart John Reagan have been purchasing at auction from council land at such places as Tamworth, Whereas Creek and Cessnock, and at other country centers and reselling it at prices of up to five thousand dollars a block.

Ran was alluding to what would prove to be just the tip of the iceberg when it came to Reagan's outrageous fraud across three states.

The crux of the scam was this.

A team of salesmen in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria advertised desirable blocks of land in regional areas.

The ads flaunted attractive parcels more than suitable for building a house upon the land, fully sewed and powered.

In Queensland, potential interstate buyers were plied with food and booze before handing over cash deposits.

All convancing could only be handled by the seller's own lawyers.

As it turned out, Reagan's complex net of companies never possessed title deeds to any of the blocks.

They fraudulently sold and resold the cash for land disappeared from the late nineteen sixties through to the late nineteen seventies.

Several years after Reagan's death, the scam operated unhindered from law enforcement, despite the press reports and parliamentary agitation.

Reagan's lawyer, Michael Seymour told us that Reagan's real estate venture into the regions was a perfectly legitimate business venture.

So you've introduced him to the real estate gameh Yeah.

In the late sixties.

Over the years, I made a bit of money out out in real estate.

Can you goodbye little semi shurs although fifteen thousand dollars bag at those and through an accountant, I bought up the street in maccaboy streetscu Will and then at one stage John Yalway had these propertly Forgarten.

The idea that try and make money down real estate and cheap properties in the inner city area.

The city expands, goes.

Up and expanse only didn't meet something wants to an idea there you'll.

Go after him.

Yeah, twenty towns.

The local councils.

It rapes out paid for a period of time.

The council seizes the land and sells a lot.

So Reagan found out some add in the paper whatever that there were hundreds and hundreds of blocks of land.

They said, So if my office had the lper gome to where all the plank pluntcasts.

So he had a little office in the regions, treat himself in a little office, yeah, the real estate office.

Well, he is trying to sell these lands.

So he Floyd a salesperson.

Okay, and regent Stream John was selling.

Them for about seven fifty for one half thousand flood, a huge profit.

But those on the inside had a different story.

I spoke to a source who was intimate with the Reagan landscam.

We have disguised his voice to protect his identity.

Believe it or not, Even after all these years, there are many people associated with Reagan who are still terrified of repercussions for speaking out.

It started in young and New South Wales, where he coming from.

But the first thing they'd do they find his little out of town places and go there and go to the local council chambers and say, is there any subdivisions with separate deeds in this trickler town blocks of land that had never been divided up and sold off, And go through the council chambers and a pliant and I'll say, well, there's one hundred blocks out of such and such a road.

The guy had an idea of being a developer and he ran out of cash.

But they've all got separate deeds.

All I can say is this, if you pay the rates at something on it, because no rates have been paid on it for ten or fifteen years, we'll sign it over to you.

So that's what it is.

Because those sort of people went broke.

So but say is you just pay the rates and it's yours.

With the cheap land secured, Reagan's scam artists went to work.

They get it all done nicely, and if there was a creek, they'd have it all painted in blue, you know, to make out it was flashy.

And then they would advertise somewhere in Sydney or wherever it be, own your own block of land.

And then the wife or the husband said, well, I have a look at this man, I own Boca land.

We are nothing.

Wouldn't we buy it?

And the next thing they reply to the ad by telephone.

There's no emails in those days and no mobiles, and that'd go out there and there it is there and at which block.

Do you want the corner block?

This is grab whatever he can and deposit because there was no credit card details and that he just grab it in cash.

But before he'd leave, he'd say, now, I make sure you got the money, because when you see this, you'll buy it.

Okay, I don't want to waste my time.

You're living out of para matter.

You know.

It was an hour's run.

But if you don't like it, that's fine, but just make sure you have the money with you.

So this is the way it grunts him on the phone.

You go out there, and the way the maps and everything.

We're done, and the creeks are all nice and blue.

Yeah, okay, we'll take this one.

So they'd buy that one.

And he said I'd just leave, and he said part it would I pull up in Matuda or jag I'd love that.

I thought, shit, look at this car.

This guy is a property developer.

You know.

One Queensland salesman I tracked down believed he was carrying out legitimate business.

If he knew Reagan was behind the scam, he didn't say, but as a justice of the piece at the time, his signature became a handy asset for Reagan's operations.

We have also altered this source's voice.

I threw the under Sydney and brought back people and threw them up to harvey By and go and go and meet them up there.

And we're selling thousands of dollars a weekend.

It was a good business.

What good business here?

And did you ever do some land sales with Stuart John Reagan at all?

He was a criminal.

I knew as he was tied up with the other black in uh Reagan and the other black criminals and selling and acquisition.

I knew him through that.

Why should that not dubs in the valley in Brisbane at the times, or forgive their names.

They had a lot of money's champering them, but they didn't know how to handler, not made a sewer for him.

So I fly there in the Sydney and bring back a flock of people, and I knew how to handle a bars.

And I picked people with money that was not bullshitting here, you know.

And I played the air fear back up here and I made at Brisbane Airport and so they came out and I sold properties and you get the commission.

It was good days for me.

And did you do that on behalf of your mates in the valley who owned those clubs.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, there were several of the victim White sold out to other fellows.

And when they did that, I went along with the sale.

You know.

So that paper, oh my re spreens is not far end Sidney and put an and in the like of paper in Sydney Morning Held or something like that, and stay in a big part.

Of bullshit, you know.

And so I just worked just as salesman for the people and they said, oh Easter Hamles.

I kept it like that, and I didn't talk just the taps.

At the time.

Did it occur to you these guys might be sort of laundering their money through the land deals, do you know what I mean?

Oh, Bapore, Now they had money where I get their money?

And I talk about business.

I just said, oh, just would you leardle it for me?

I'll had in mind selling it, so let me look at it.

In the Marston has a lot of shit, and I'm going to cheerful.

You're to be cheerful and you get the lot of aid a bullet in you if you're not careful in that bob in the valley at the time, there's a lot of gluity.

You hungry your basards, you know.

I just to let him know, doesn't don't bullshit for the way.

I don't want to know.

I don't want to know who that was with it.

If you want to know, I'd mentioned strong names.

I said, Oh, you might just need to do things for him, are you know?

You know?

Yeah, Just leave it at that, and they think shit through the camp, play with that basket.

I'll finish up with the bullet in me.

One of Reagan's early business partners in real estate said in Queensland was a man called Vincent Odempsey.

Odempsey had been born and raised in Warwick, a farming community southwest of Brisbane.

His family had worked the land there for generations.

In his mid teens, o'dempsey had been incarcerated in a mental institution and medically diagnosed as a psychopath.

By his early twenties, the word around town was that he had murdered a local man who was set to testify against him in court over a robbery.

By the time Vince hooked up with Reagan in the early nineteen seventies, he'd been jailed for bashing a police officer.

Then in the mid nineteen sixties, o'dempsey paid several visits to Sydney looking for criminal jobs.

He soon gained employment with Frederick Paddles Anderson, the boss of bosses.

You'll remember Anderson was present at Reagan's twenty first birthday at Chequers Nightclub.

At precisely this time, o'dempsey, known as a ruthless gun for hire, was doing odd jobs for Paddles.

It's almost certain this is when Reagan and odempsey first crossed paths.

Incredibly, o'dempsey and Reagan invested in land in Odempsey's hometown of Warwick.

Here's my source again.

A Dempsey's father was selling real estate up in Warwick because A Dempsey knew Reagan pretty well.

Next thing he says to he's dead.

Is there anything any subdivisions that's never been done?

It would soon prove to be a deadly business partnership.

In October nineteen seventy six, the New South Wales Labour MP for la kember Vincent Durick offered a detailed examination of Reagan's scam in Parliament.

He was concerned about hundreds of his constituents who had been duped into buying useless land in the regions of Gulgong and Munchie through a company called Dabamu based at Bondi Junction in Sydney.

Durwick had discovered that not only were parcels of land sold without title deeds, but some blocks had been sold several times to different people.

He told Parliament that the company had firstly represented to buyers.

The land that they were purchasing was fertile and of good quality for the purposes of grazing and market gardening opportunities, and that was a good investment.

Second, that there was adequate permanent supply of water for the purposes of irrigation.

Third, that there was an adequate general availability of services and amenities for farming activities contemplated by these people.

Fourth, that there were opportunities for a quick capital gain.

Fifth that the nearby town of Golgong was represented on the face of the ten dollar note, and that the railway would be coming through shortly.

Sixth that the main highway would soon be constructed, and last, and this is the daddy of them all, that an opera house was to be built for them, and that other general facilities would be made available.

Jurich asked the Attorney General, Frank Walker, to investigate and explained Stuart John Reagan's links to the scam and asked the pertinent question how could loans be arranged with finance companies for the purchase of properties from vendors who had no title to the land.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that CIB detectives believed the scam, active in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, may have been the biggest land fraud in Australian history.

Somehow, the network of salesmen involved in the racket managed to sell blocks for ten times their value to unsuspecting punters.

Senior police say the multimillion dollar swindle is likely to rival the scale of recent huge company frauds.

They have established that hundreds of people paid millions of dollars to land companies whose principles have now vanished.

At this stage, police believe John Stuart Reagan set up the criminal network.

When he was murdered, his accomplices went their own ways, taking shares of his real estate activities.

It is believed Reagan had a quarrel with one of his colleagues shortly before his death over how the spoils would be divided.

As if we didn't already have enough of them.

Here was yet another possible motive behind Reagan's murder.

But back in Brisbane, Reagan's frequent visits to the Queensland capital before and after Shirley Briffman's death had put the local underworld as well as corrupt police, on permanent alert.

Rumors circulated that Reagan was planning a full blown takeover of the tropical city's prostitution, illegal ga gambling and extortion rackets, and that some of his Sydney contemporaries were about to follow suit.

The gossip drums were beating loudly through the city's pub network.

One prominent hotel manager, who asked to remain anonymous let's call him Jack, had a front row seat to much of the drama fermenting in Brisbane in the early nineteen seventies.

He managed pubs, some with questionable reputations, in the inner city suburb of spring Hill as well as down in the CBD.

He was acquainted with many of Brisbane's principal criminals.

Jack recalled talk about Reagan was getting louder and louder.

It was as if a fox had suddenly entered the Chicken coop.

I spoke to Jack at a table outside an Asian dumpling restaurant in Inner Brisbane.

So when did you first lay eyes on Reagan?

So Smoby Septchamber August September of nineteen about seventy two, might have been a little bit later, but not much later.

And how did you come across him?

The real estate for us across the road ranketing like that.

He came across as a customer of theirs.

We talked on different things.

Did you know who he was?

I found out a little bit who he was, and he was always very sillable with me.

How did he strike him physically?

Just easy going?

I wasn't in a suit, always dressed and smartish, casual and just a quiet, easy going like never be bet.

He was with keV quite a lot.

Who's keV?

Yeah?

This is where we were, yep, run, I'm going to just call him keV now.

And I explained that he was in real estate and they would definitely had partnerships or joint business dealings.

Right, And do you know what sort of real estate he was interested in?

Was it I heard the bought or built a block of flats in New Farm he could have done.

They were, They dabbled in bits and that mostly land vacant land, but there were you know, if there's a property or something that those guys were the other side of the other fellow that Kev's partnerships.

Those guys sold land on Russell and Lamb Island.

That's got a island real estate, and keV sold land over there as well.

These are the famous land scams, Harvey Bay cresting his up whales before.

Have we got plenty of people in Melbourne, Sydney, the other places of the World warf land.

That's a whole saga.

Yeah, were there any other It's just as where he came across him.

You might have seen him for a month.

Then you could see him for two or three days.

He once came up with a fellow that I didn't like too much, and the manager from there was definitely with him at least once inside the bar with him, and I saw them at least one other time.

You know, Willie's bizarre.

It was poor, yes, yeah, yeah, so Willi's bizarre.

One of Reagan's associates before they had a falling out was John Edwards Milligan that's the knife, yeah, Jack said.

Everyone knew Milligan was a drug dealer.

He thought he was nothing more than a grub and apart from Reagan, other big time criminals were starting to pop up in Brisbane.

Do you observe other criminals coming in out of town?

I heard a couple.

My best man is to let me know what was happening in town.

There were a couple of others at the ring.

First definitely on tour coach.

I never saw him, but I believe he had been in the whiskey.

You could talk you on possibly with you had definitely been there at cost One.

He had been to a couple of other night clumps.

Jack was also pested by criminal and psychopath John Andrews Stewart and.

Stuart phone Maya from Balls down In made it.

He got on the phone and I said, yeah, he's this.

He said one as John Stewart.

I'm up here representing the big fellows from Sydney and where he had telex squeeze and I said, well, good talking to me.

I said, I don't under place.

I said, I'll have to talk to him.

My own called me back to my so I called Estole.

The next morning, I said, Listen had this play off on the phone, and I said, where do you think I should go?

She said, leave it with me and I'll give back to you, and Stuart ran the second time.

Well, I'll tell you.

If you've just the fuck that were you giving back?

If you've both your knows here a fucking wild hors I know.

I never heard another word or for him.

John Andrew Stewart, the Weekend Gangster.

He'd returned to Brisbane after his adventures in Sydney, including trying to murder Reagan in broad daylight in Oxford Street, Paddington back in nineteen sixty five.

Back home, he was trying to earn a quick quid through extorting nightclubs, pubs and restaurants.

He hinted at big Southern criminals like Reagan and Lenny McPherson wanted to get a cut of Brisbane vice.

Most people, like Jack, thought it was a joke, but others were more cautious.

Tony Bellino always viewed himself as a successful entrepreneur, a visionary businessman, and as a proud Italian a bit of a crooner, but along with his brother Jerry, the belief heos became synonymous in Brisbane with nightclubs, bars and gambling joints in ceed Fortitude Valley.

From the nineteen sixties, they ran spaghetti bars and licensed clubs.

Jerry had a handful of illegal casinos and even a funeral parlor.

Only later, courtesy of the Fitzgerald Inquiry into police corruption, was Jerry Bellino identified as a leading criminal figure and jailed for paying off police.

It was said that at its peak, Jerry's crime syndicate, which included brothels and escort agencies, was kicking back up to twenty thousand dollars a month to police in the mid nineteen eighties.

His brother Tony denied any criminal involvement.

He said he was the proprietor of Pinocchio's nightclub.

And ran a spaghetti bar.

I had the pleasure of speaking to Tony shortly before he died in September twenty twenty two, and he told me a curious story in his heavy italianate English about a visit from Sydney crime boss Abe Saffron in the early nineteen seventies, just as the word was out that Brisbane vice was about to be hijacked by Southerners.

Do you remember where you met Abe Saffron.

When he was at Brisbane.

I remember him, Yeah, a little hat.

Do you remember where you had a meeting.

Upstairs?

Then?

So he came to your club?

Yeah?

Wow?

And you didn't know who he was then?

How do you know who he was?

Now?

How will I find out?

Did you talk that and never came back?

Might have been a good thing you didn't know who he was.

No, I would just make him ride in the fight and picked them how to pick them off?

Who he was?

I do you know he will have talked to me?

I said, yes, were your name?

I didn't even know his name was saved Severn?

I said what can I do for you?

What he said to me?

It was, well, I ran Sydney.

I said, so you run Sidney?

He said, oh yeah.

He said yes, you'll actually join us and we give the protection and you run Brisbane.

And I said, wait a minute, you mean to say, then I'm gonna run Brisbane.

What do you do stand over Texas?

They're gonna find money?

He said yes.

I said, not here.

I am very sorry, but not even Brisbane.

And I was really cranky.

And I get cranky, I really get cranky?

Can I get angry?

And I said, I am tradition.

I do well here.

I will never do that.

My father would have shot me so away.

He said, Okay, if you ever come to see me, come to see me.

I said, I don't come to see you.

I could talk to fancy Sydney.

I don't want to get mixed up with anything like that.

Then he told some of the boys there that they bring me up and said, you're bad from Sydney.

Wow, I said, bigger pardon.

Tony Bellino never heard from Saffron again.

With Reagan cooking up deals left, right and center, and John Andrew Stewart warning of a Sydney criminal takeover, with Lenny McPherson and Abe Saffron appearing out of nowhere, Brisbane was suddenly a pressure cooker.

Reagan had established a relationship with psychopath Vinco Dempsey, the man, as they said, who owned his own private graveyard to dispose of his murder victims, and through Oh Dempsey, Reagan hooked up with a rag bag group of petty crooks ominously called the Clockwork Orange Gang.

They were named after the violent Stanley Kubrick film based on the novel by Anthony Burgess.

The story centered on psychopath teenager Alex, who along with his gang members or druids, wore bowler hats.

There was any that is Alex and my three drus that is Pete, Georgy and Dim, and we sat in the Corova Milk Bar trying to make up our razoo docs what to do with the evening.

The Corova Milk Bar sold milk plus, which is what we were drinking.

This would sharpen you up and thank you ready for a bit of the old ultra violence.

Hi Hi, Hi, there my little druggies.

The Brisbane Clockworkers were petty criminals Gary Shorty Dubois, Peter Hall, Tommy Hamilton and Keith Meredith known as Jimmy O.

Dempsey.

A thug called Billy mcculkin and a grifter called Billy Stokes came in and out of the group.

They prowled the streets of Brisbane at night, committing burglaries.

They lifted goods off the backs of delivery vans.

They drank and took drugs and got into fights and caused mayhem.

Years ago, I.

Interviewed one of the former Clockwork gang members, Peter Hall, who moved away from crime, had a family and now leads a perfectly respectable suburban life outside Sydney back in the day.

Though he and his mates were dangerous tearaways.

You couldn't miss them on their turf on Brisbane's North side, cruising the streets in their American Studebakers Hall's was a British Racing Green nineteen sixty two.

GT.

Dubois had a violet Daytona and Hamilton a candy Apple red GT.

They also had another distinctive vehicle.

How the so called Clockwork Orange Gang began, or how it was even named Philly Stakes, so he named it.

He named it.

He's nicknamed for Tom Wood Clockwork because Tom had a bola hat that he used to wear and only had a top hat.

And Shorty and Jimmy never rode with us.

It was just me and him in the buick hearse we purchased, and we should drive around of a Sunday morning just being a pair of idiots in the hearse, you know, pulling up beside people on the side of the road.

It's want to earn a couple of dollars.

We got one in the back here that needs to be buried.

And they used to give us a look or a couple of times we managed to run into a real hearse we're going to a funeral and pulled up alongside them.

That were you or Tommy?

Actually influenced by the film of The Clockwork Orange.

No, we've seen it, liked it.

I thought it was funny that you never called urself clockwork garage king or anything like that.

That was Stokes.

In early nineteen seventy three, when Adempse offered the gang a substantial sum to torch a restaurant called to Reno's in Fortitude Valley, they jumped at the chance.

They broke into the restaurant, lashed patrol around and set it alight, not accounting for the fumes erupting into a fireball.

They nearly killed themselves, but they got away with it, and the crime remained unsolved for over forty years until Hall finally confessed during Odempsey's trial for a triple murder in twenty seventeen.

A Dempsey told Shorty to tell us that it was an insurance job that the owners of the nightclub were going belly up and they wanted want it out, and it seemed pretty feasible at the time that that's what it was, because they said the person that lived on the premises won't be there on this night, and that was the night we were to go in and set fire to the joint.

It later dawned on Peter Hall that there appeared to be a pattern in a string of fires around Brisbane before and after the Torino's job.

We never got offered another job.

That there was a few other burnings too that I think were all mixed into the Saints and that's for people behind it.

One source would later tell police that he offered his services to Odempsey and Mculkin in several of the arson jobs, hoping to win his way into the gang.

The gang would often steal from the premises before they were torched.

The keen but hapless newcomer was seriously burned during one job.

He was told that the arsons were ordered by Stuart John Reagan.

One of those jobs, the fire bombing of the Whiskey, a Go Go nightclub on Saint Paul's Terrace in Fortitude Valley, got completely out of hand?

Did Reagan order the burning of the whiskey?

The Whiskey of Go Go was bombed at ten past two on the morning of March the eighth, nineteen seventy three.

It was a mass murder which sent a wave of outraids through a country which is often apathetic about crime, and.

The Whiskey of Gogo saga is murky, complicated and riddled with lies.

Critical documents associated with the case of disappeared chief witness statements were unsigned.

Corrupt police worked overtime to control the Whisky narrative, and the biggest crooks of the day did the same.

It was and remains one of the country's biggest criminal cover ups.

Fifty years after the event, the public is still awaiting a coronial inquest report into the mass murder.

Worse still, the Whisky case has a long and seemingly unending tale.

A domino of murders followed the firebombing to silence potential witnesses.

People with information are still in fear for their lives, and the families of the victims have waited more than half a lifetime for some sort of explanation as to who set fire to those two drums of petrol in the downstairs foyer of the club in the early hours of March eighth, nineteen seventy three, flicked a match and started a blaze that would see fifteen innocent men and women perish within minutes.

Remember John Andrew Stewart and James Finch, the two wannabee gangsters who tried to murder Reagan in that daytime gunfight in Sydney.

Both were charged with and convicted of the Whisky murders in twenty seventeen.

After Odempsey and Dubois were found guilty of murdering Barbara mcculken, wife of clockworker Billy, and her two daughters in nineteen seventy four, possibly in an attempt to silence Barbara given her knowledge of the whiskey attack, the Queensland Attorney General ordered a new inquest.

The state's worst mass killings will be the subject of another coronial inquest more than forty years after the Whiskey Go Go fire.

The Attorney General believes a fresh investigation may entice witnesses to reveal what really happened.

Stewart had already died in prison in nineteen seventy nine.

Du Bois would be found dead in his prison cell a month before the new in quest, and just prior to the second set of hearings for the refreshed inquest.

James Finch, who had been deported back to the UK in nineteen eighty eight, also turned up dead.

James Finch also was meant to testify from overseas, but it was revealed in court he died in the past few months.

That will leave some questions unanswered.

But how did shotgun Johnny Reagan fit into all of this?

The story repeated for half a century was that Reagan was in Sydney when the whiskey went up in Brisbane.

Then, out of the goodness of his heart and as a strange sort of public service, Reagan flew north to assist police in bringing the primary suspects, Stuart and Finch to justice.

He offered his expertise as a gangster free of charge and would bring the fugitives in There was no love lost between these three criminals.

When Stewart and Finch were captured by police a few days after the blaze, Reagan returned to Sydney.

That story, it now appears, was a total lie.

I'd been told that as part of Reagan's power play in Brisbane, he'd started his own nightclub in the city.

Arrival to the Whiskey Checkers and the Jet Club, as well as other venues.

His club I was told was called Blinkers in Albert Street, right in the heart of the CBD.

Could this be true?

The rumor was that Reagan owned a half share in the horse racing themed club with Sydney mob boss Lenny McPherson.

It sounded far fetched, really an entire nightclub.

Then I learned that not only did Blinkers exist, but it had an opening night party and wait for it, that celebration was held just hours before the Whisky a Goo Goo was firebombed on the evening of Thursday, March seventh, nineteen seventy three.

Present at Blinkers was Brisbane lawyer Noel Barbie.

You met Noel in our last episode, who done some real estate work for Reagan.

The partner sticks out with me more than anything else was that it was either the night after or the night itself of the Whiskey a Go Go bombing, and there was a little nightclub in Albert Street called Blinkers like the horse Blinkers and the Pungarians that ran it called Nemathy later bought the Saint Bernard's Hotel up at Tambourine.

But coming back, I remember in Blinkers Reagan was there and I'm sure that when I was sitting with him like that he was either wounded or cupped or something had happened to him, because he's had a slight cut or bleeding or something not.

So what happened to he said, I either a bit of a staple or something like that, because he was a solid boy, you know, mean like like you wouldn't want to pick anything with him because his solid, thick, muscular Oh yeah.

Yeah, and you know he wouldn't have any problem getting into a fight.

But remember this night, and I don't know it was that close to that whiskey at Go Go time.

I think either Blinkers opened on the same night and it was a disaster of it, or the night after.

It was very close in time.

You'd probably be able to find that somewhere Blinkers not there anymore, of course, but.

Reagan was in town when the whiskey went.

Oh yeah.

The choint I'm getting at is that he was at the nightclub and it was just it just I just remember that part with him.

The trouble with a lot of this stuff is your memory tends to add scenes that are not factual.

But that time there that I know that there be no doubt in my mind that he was in Brisbane at the time of that a go go business.

According to police records, the Blinkers grand opening was indeed on March seventh, nineteen seventy three, just before the Whisky went up at two ten a m.

On March eight, whiskey owner Brian Little and his manager John Bell attended the Blinkers party before returning to the Whiskey close to midnight, just a couple of hours before the fire bombing.

According to the late investigative journalist Tony Reeves, Reagan had dropped into the Whisky nightclub on several occasions in the days before the fire.

McPherson and Paddles Anderson had also been seen there.

Reeves was also told that the notorious Roger Rogerson, then a hot shot young detective who had been assigned to help investigate the Whisky firebombing, had also been seen in Brisbane before the Whisky went up.

The official story.

Always was that Rogerson had flown up from Sydney on the day of the fire with his mentor, Detective Noel Moury.

Before his death last year, Rogerson, in jail for life for murder, appeared as a witness at the New Whiskey inquest.

Appearing by video length from Long Bay Correctional Center, Rogerson looked frail, dressed in prison greens and making jokes before being called compelled by the coroner to answer questions, The eighty one year old denied Finch was verbaled.

I know I was present when the record of interview was being conducted.

It was factual and it took place.

He couldn't remember details or recall how Finch was given his statement, but doubted it was put in his pocket.

He went on to describe whiskey killer John Stewart as a rat bag whose Sydney criminals wanted nothing to do it, saying Stuart was an idiot.

Rogerson was asked whether he was associated with Sydney criminals who was said to be jealous of a heroine operation being run out of the Whiskey and who had threatened to burn the club, declaring I had nothing to do with the Whiskey Go go.

So did Johnny Reagan shotgun Johnny Nano the Magician have a hand in the Whiskey mass murder.

Was Reagan sipping his orange juice or tonic water and nursing some sort of mysterious wound at the opening of his new nightclub, Blinkers, as innocent clubgoers at the Whiskey were screaming and suffocating on carbon monoxide just two kilometers or a casual thirty minute walk away in Fortitude Valley.

In the next episode of The Gangster's Ghost.

I saw a white light.

Sounds stupid mind taking over.

I was on point of clap, but I honestly, totally, utterly believe I was on the point of dying.

The Gangster's Ghost is a production of The Australian.

It's written and presented by senior writer Matthew Condon and produced and edited by multimedia editor le at Sama Group.

Our executive producer is me editorial director Claire Harvey.

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