Jacks and Jokers (27 page)

So they headed north – Petersen, the Wilsons, and their pet dog – in Petersen’s hugely powerful E-type Jaguar. At this stage, police were not yet aware of the magnitude of what they had stumbled across, but it involved drugs and large sums of cash and they followed through.

The CIB then immediately staked out the Terrace Motel for J. Petersen. They believed that a blue Jaguar sedan with New South Wales plates JSG-693 was owned by the suspicious Petersen.

Later that morning, a male was observed getting into the vehicle and driving it away. The Jaguar was followed to a motor repair workshop at 6 Dorsey Street, Milton. They soon discovered that the business was run by New Zealand criminal Ian Richard Henry. The man who had driven the vehicle from the motel was one of Henry’s mechanics, Stephen Thomas Harrison.

After a short time, a man called Stephen Brian Johnstone and J. Petersen left the workshop and were approached by Detective Sergeant Ron Pickering and Detective Senior Constable Barry O’Brien. Both men, along with Harrison, were arrested and taken in to headquarters.

Detective Jim Slade, Murphy’s hand-picked officer in the CIB, did not take part in the apprehension of J. Petersen but he did observe what happened. Slade remembers Pat Glancy and Barry O’Brien driving ‘this bloody massive E-type Jaguar’ back to headquarters. ‘It had all these pistons. They drove it back and we followed them.’

J. Petersen, it transpired, was the notorious international drug dealer Terrance (Terry) John Clark, a New Zealand criminal wanted on charges there. Later, Henry and another man, Kevin Walter Gower, were arrested at the Milton workshop.

It was decided that Constables Robson and Le Gros be placed in the cell with Clark, and later Shepherd. Robson went in at 10.50 a.m. that Friday, followed by Le Gros at 11.20 a.m. Robson told Clark he was in ‘for a bust’. Le Gros said he’d been pinched with ‘some grass’.

Clark told them he was wanted in New Zealand on heroin importation charges and for possession of a .357 Magnum. (Police found in Clark’s hotel room a Colt Python .357 Magnum revolver, known in firearms circles as the ‘Rolls-Royce’ of handguns.)

‘You’re a long way from home if you’re wanted in New Zealand,’ Le Gros quipped.

‘Yes,’ Clark said. ‘I’m up for 14 years back home.’

When Shepherd was put in the same cell, he and Clark immediately moved to one corner and spoke in low tones. Shepherd informed Clark that he had told police he was in Brisbane on a ‘punting trip on the horses’, and the others had said they were on a ‘sailing trip’. Both men laughed.

Clark then told Shepherd he had $3 million worth of heroin in Sydney and that Shepherd, when released, needed to go to Sydney and contact Clark’s de facto partner, Maria Muhary. She in turn would contact her brother Stephen who would show Shepherd where the drugs were buried in bushland around Sydney. He needed to hide the heroin and await further instructions.

Henry was then placed in an adjoining cell. ‘What are you in for?’ Henry asked Shepherd.

‘They got me for that money I had.’

‘How did they get onto you?’

‘You wouldn’t believe it but it was because we used the name Petersen,’ Shepherd said. ‘Apparently this Petersen, the Premier up here, has got a Jag the same as ours and they thought we were impersonating him.

‘They got me at the motel. I never liked motels. They always … mean trouble.’

Henry and Shepherd asked Clark what he expected to happen to him.

‘I’ll probably do two or three months here and then they’ll take me back to New Zealand to face the big one there,’ he said. ‘I don’t mind spending some time here. In fact, the longer I can spend here the better.’

In another part of the building Doug and Isabel Wilson were being interviewed separately. A story was beginning to emerge – the Wilsons were couriers for Terrance Clark and his huge international heroin trade. Police were incredulous to the point of disbelief.

Young Cliff Crawford of the Drug Squad was off duty that night but was called in after the importance of the arrests was understood. ‘We got the drum about Terry Clark on a number of occasions previously but whenever we arrived it was too late, he was gone,’ Crawford recalls. ‘At one stage he was supposed to be staying at a high-rise unit at Ascot, corner of Junction Road and Zillmere Road. It was a brick block of flats.

‘We arrived there one day and he’d left two weeks before. The drum was right but it was too late. All we knew was that this guy Terrance Clark was a big importer from New Zealand.’

It was decided that the Wilsons needed to be interviewed at length and that the interviews had to be recorded on tape.

Detective Sergeant Sprenger also contacted Commander Max Rogers of the Federal Narcotics Bureau, Queensland chapter, who was in Sydney at the time.

Meanwhile, the name of the panel shop owner, Ian Richard Henry, rang a bell with Detective Sergeant O’Brien. He later recorded in a statement: ‘In about 1976, while attached to the Drug Squad, I participated in making inquiries on behalf of New Zealand Police to locate a notorious drug runner Terrance John Clarke [sic]. While Clarke was not located, inquiries showed that while in Brisbane he associated with an Ian Richard Henry, and this information was inserted in the Drug Squad collating system.

‘In 1978 I assisted in inquiries [relating to] an active criminal named William Anthony [Billy] Stokes for the murder of Thomas Ian Hamilton. During the investigation, Stokes’ residence at Broadbeach on the Gold Coast had been kept under surveillance and visitors photographed.

‘One male person visited the premises driving a vehicle which was registered to Ian Richard Henry of Dorsey Street, Milton.’

On Saturday 10 June, both Henry and Shepherd were released on bail. They caught a taxi to Henry’s workshop in Dorsey Street, then to his flat in Gregory Terrace. Shepherd made his way to the TAA terminal at Eagle Farm and caught Flight 406 to Sydney. He travelled First Class. In the rear stalls was Detective Norm Sprenger, keeping an eye on him.

It was decided that the Wilsons would be re-interviewed together on Monday 12 June. They specifically asked that the interview not be taped. It took place in the office of Detective Sergeant Terry Ferguson, the Officer in Charge of the Queensland Drug Squad. Prior to the 10.30 a.m. start, Norm Sprenger had set up two recording devices, the microphone installed behind Ferguson’s desk.

‘Tony Murphy would have had a hand in the interview from the early stages,’ says Cliff Crawford. ‘When these people started talking about all these murders, the detectives started wondering – is this fair dinkum? It was bizarre. You didn’t get that sort of thing in Queensland.’

Present were Detective Sergeants Syd Churchill and Fred Maynard. They were joined soon after the start of the interview by Narcotics Bureau Investigator Robert Turner.

During the next three hours and 27 minutes, the Wilsons revealed that they were part of a major global drug smuggling ring headed by Clark. The couple told the police that in May 1978 – just a month earlier – Clark had mentioned to them that he had shot a lot of people including a man called Harry ‘Pommie’ Lewis who had had a falling out with Clark.

They said the shooting took place when Clark was travelling down from Brisbane. They didn’t know the location of the body, but said it had happened some distance from Brisbane in bushland.

The Wilsons said they collected money for Clark. Clark would have the heroin delivered and the Wilsons, pretending to be jewellery sales consultants, picked up the gear. Money for drugs was always paid into the so-called Sydney importing agency, Cross and Mercer.

They told detectives they collected at least $100,000 a week for Clark. Alarmingly, the police learned that Clark had a top-level informant in the Federal Customs Narcotics Squad who gathered information for Clark and gave him tip-offs. The officer was paid an annual stipend of $25,000, and additional money for new information.

Wilson indicated he was terrified that Clark would find out that he and his wife had squealed on him. ‘… I’m quite fucking frightened, serious, about it, you know. I know if he thinks for one moment that I’ve given him up, you know, if he can possibly organise it, he’ll have me shot, without any compunction …’ Doug Wilson said.

Seven tapes were made during the course of the interview. Detective Sergeant Sprenger immediately set up transcription equipment for typist Mrs Robyn Whipps and Homicide/Consorting Squad typist Miss Neroli Taylor.

Queensland police only made available transcripts of the first five tapes to the Federal Narcotics Bureau. As Assistant Commissioner, Crimes and Services, L.R. Duffy reported later in a confidential statement to Commissioner Terry Lewis: ‘Although there were seven tapes, it was decided by Detective Sergeant Churchill and Detective Sergeant Maynard, that in view of phone numbers of persons being mentioned in the final two tapes as associates of the Wilsons and also because there had been an allegation made against a senior narcotics officer, that the transcript of the last two tapes be not made available to the Narcotics Bureau at that juncture.’

Slade remembers the day the Wilsons talked. ‘We were the first police force in Australia to start on the Wilsons,’ Slade says. ‘We came straight out [of the recorded interviews] and gave a copy of the tape to Tony Murphy.’

Murphy had in his hands an extraordinary tale of drugs, greed and murder. It was dynamite. But was it true? It was not every day that Brisbane’s drug squad was regaled with tales of murder and international heroin trafficking worth millions of dollars. Were the Wilsons legitimate, or just addled junkies?

Just seven years earlier, Queensland police had been told wild tales of crime and corruption by a prostitute by the name of Shirley Margaret Brifman. She too put on the table a complicated tale of corrupt police and the underworld that also stretched credulity.

But $100,000 a week? More than $5 million a year? And a man called ‘Pommie’ Lewis with half his head blown off and his hands amputated somewhere south of Brisbane?

Terrance Clark was extradited back to New Zealand. Meanwhile, a souvenir of Clark’s time in Brisbane was left behind. ‘Clark had this crocodile-skin briefcase,’ says Jim Slade. ‘This briefcase, they [the police] knew where it was. A senior officer got it and it was full of money. He had that briefcase for years.’

Top of the Valley, Top of the World

Not long after leasing the Top Hat off parlour entrepreneur Geoff Crocker, Hapeta and Tilley expanded.

It was surprising to Crocker. Here was the physically huge Hector Hapeta, walking with difficulty and a man who couldn’t read or write, spreading his wings having only been in Brisbane for five minutes. Crocker would later notice that Hapeta had considerable organisational skills.

Around this time, friends of Crocker and his wife, Julie, were talking of getting engaged in Sydney. They decided to take a few days off and drive down to the Emerald City. Just two days into the trip Crocker’s friend Billy Hayes phoned.

‘Everything alright?’ Crocker asked.

‘I went past the Top Hat the other night – it’s closed,’ Billy replied. ‘There’s a note on the door – any customers wishing to see girls from these premises should now go across the road. That old Fantasia place where they used to gamble upstairs. Hector and his missus have moved in there and closed your joint up.’

The newcomers had moved lock, stock and barrel into the Top of the Valley at 187 Barry Parade. Fantasia had been run successfully by Katherine James before she was imprisoned on drug charges. She paid rent to Luciano Scognamiglio and her business co-existed with Scognamiglio’s game at the Top of the Valley during the mid-1970s.

‘I never worked there [at the illegal casino], but I used to go down there often enough because I worked down the hallway at the parlour,’ recalled James. ‘Gerry and Tony Bellino would come there at least once a week to collect the money. Either one of them would attend each week. It was usually Gerry, but Tony would also attend. They very rarely came together. While one or the other of them was there, from time to time I would hear them give directions to Scognamiglio about the running of the place.

‘I should also add that at about this time I was having a sexual relationship with Gerry Bellino. I would discuss business with him, but he never sought to take over my business nor to direct me in any way. The relationship with Gerry Bellino ended in about July 1975. It could have been as late as the end of 1975.

‘From his discussions with me I can say that the only business interests that Gerry Bellino had at that stage was Pinocchio’s and the other gambling place at Top of the Valley. He had no interest in massage parlours that I knew of. He showed no interest in that kind of work either.’

Crocker was incredulous at the move from Top Hat to the Top of the Valley. Hapeta and Tilley had promised they’d be renting his place for at least a year. Had they done a runner? What was going on?

He hopped on the next plane back to Brisbane. ‘I went around to Hector’s,’ he said. ‘I went around there and blew up. I said, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? You told me you’d lease the place for a year”.’

‘Yeah, I am,’ Hapeta supposedly replied. ‘Here’s a cheque.’ Hapeta handed over the rest of the year’s due rent.

Hapeta and Tilley had set the cat among the pigeons in the Brisbane vice scene by agreeing to split takings fifty/fifty with their parlour girls. The workers’ wages had never been that high. Other parlours were complaining.