Jacks and Jokers (37 page)

Shallow Grave

The bodies of Douglas Wilson, 26, and his wife Isabel, 24, were found on 18 May, buried together in a shallow grave in the holiday town of Rye on Port Phillip Bay, south of Melbourne.

It was later ascertained they were actually executed on 13 April – just 19 days after Tony Murphy’s leaked story to Bolton was published. It was also understood Terry Clark was responsible for their deaths.

On hearing news of the murders, drug dealer John Edward Milligan and former Rat Packer and corrupt cop Glen Hallahan had several discussions about who knew what in relation to the murders and how much police knew about the Clark syndicate. There was also talk about Murphy leaking the story to Bolton.

‘Tony did Brian a favour,’ Milligan said. ‘And the result of that anyway [was] the Wilsons were murdered, and he [Bolton] laughed and said, “Well, Tony did have the Wilsons shot”.’

Curiously, on 29 May the
Courier-Mail
published a convoluted story out of Melbourne that said the Wilsons, in their interviews with Queensland police in 1978, told them how Clark’s massive drug syndicate had an ‘inside man’ in the Narcotics Bureau in Canberra who had access to a computer, and that the computer may have leaked the information about the Wilsons to Terry Clark, resulting in their murder.

On 1 June, Lewis noted in his diary: ‘Hon. Camm phoned re Premier saying that Prime Minister [Malcolm Fraser] has requested an all States Task Force to investigate deaths of Wilsons and others.’

Lewis says he was shocked at the death of the drug couriers and that he drafted a stern rebuke to his old friend Tony Murphy for talking to Bolton.

‘That resulted in their murders, no doubt at all,’ says Lewis. ‘I knew nothing about it until the shit hit the fan. It was a very, very stupid thing to do to ingratiate yourself with the media, to say the least.

‘I remember they got Clark. He was wanted in New Zealand. They charged him with possession of a firearm to hold him so they could get in touch with New Zealand and find out what’s what. I don’t know whether the gun was a present [planted] or he had it with him.’

Lewis ordered Murphy to answer in detail several questions about the Wilsons and the leak of information from the interview tapes to Brian Bolton of the
Sunday Sun
. It was a sharp snub to Murphy. Lewis had rarely, if ever, crossed swords with his colleague and friend.

‘I think Murphy might have slowly been wary of me from then on,’ says Lewis. ‘I was really, really upset about that one. But I always felt that if anybody was prepared to tell police something apart from their own ends, I mean … these two poor youngsters didn’t deserve to be murdered.’

One of the queries Murphy was required to answer was this: ‘It would appear that the willingness of the Wilsons to cooperate with the police led to their murders. Please comment on this aspect.’

And Murphy’s reply: ‘It does now appear as a possibility, that the WILSONS were murdered, because of the information passed on to the Police. If this be a sound premise, the question as to whether it was the initial information to the Queensland Police, the subsequent confirmation of same to the New South Wales Homicide Squad, or the recently alleged leakage from the Customs-Narcotics Computer, which led to their death, is of course a matter for conjecture.

‘It also remains open to conjecture, that their untimely ends may have resulted from other nefarious activities, entirely unrelated to CLARKE [sic] and his activities.’

A computer, nefarious activities, even the Wilsons themselves were perhaps responsible for their own murders. But not CIB chief Anthony Murphy.

The Fake Raid

On 8 June 1979, Sir Colin Woods was appointed the first Commissioner of the newly formed Australian Federal Police (AFP). It was expected the force would be operational by 19 October.

At the time of this announcement, Justice Williams’ Royal Commission of Inquiry into Drugs had been running since 1977, and was well advanced when Terry Clark’s Mr Asia syndicate came onto the radar of authorities courtesy of the Brisbane arrests a year later. It was also sitting when allegations of the involvement of police and parliamentarians in the drug trade were aired on the floor of Queensland parliament.

Parallel to this was Narcotics Bureau Agent John Shobbrook’s extraordinary Operation Jungle, and his tracking of John Edward Milligan, a one-time judge’s associate and business partner to former detective Glen Hallahan, supposedly farming in Obi Obi on the Sunshine Coast.

By 1979, Justice Williams’ disdain for the Narcotics Bureau was gathering a head of steam. He saw the bureau officers as poorly trained and poorly organised. He railed against their work and their defence of their professionalism. With the formation of the AFP, and Williams’ public berating of the bureau, the writing was on the wall for the Narcs.

Undercover operative Detective Jim Slade was working happily under the guidance of Tony Murphy at the Bureau of Crime Intelligence, when an extraordinary job came his way.

Slade had been taught well by Murphy, and he loved his work. He was developing rapidly into one of the state’s top undercover agents, able to infiltrate anything from criminal gangs to drug-dealing networks. On this occasion, he was ordered to perform surveillance on a house on the Sunshine Coast. The word was that there were enormous quantities of drugs on the premises.

‘I don’t know why this came about,’ remembers Slade. ‘I don’t know where this letter came from, whether it was sent in from the public or whether it was a letter generated by Tony Murphy, or generated by Justice Williams.

‘Williams sent this letter, a copy of the letter, to Tony Murphy, even though Tony knew about it prior to the letter coming, and one to the Narcotics Bureau, and left it at that.

‘Justice Williams told Tony Murphy to do a big thing on it and that he would use that as part of [his exposé of the] inadequacies and inefficiencies of the Narcotics Bureau.’

Slade did his job. He conducted surveillance for several weeks and eventually realised that the massive quantities of drugs and human traffic to and from the house, as the intelligence suggested in the letter, were simply not materialising.

Slade claims that senior officers close to Tony Murphy got a raid going. ‘They took in the most incredible amount of drugs and busted these people,’ he said.

‘The whole thing was bullshit. Acting on that, Justice Williams recommended that the Narcotics Bureau be disbanded.

‘That whole thing was worked out between Williams and Murphy.’

Big Bucks

Jack ‘The Bagman’ Herbert was always receptive to some cash in hand, and he struck a mother lode when he went into business with Tony Robinson, described often as Brisbane’s most notorious operator of illegal baccarat games.

Tony and son Tony Jnr had entered the gaming machine industry and were looking for someone with enough connections to help them convince pubs and clubs to install in-line ticket machines – a sort of peasant’s poker machine, where for a coin the player could yield a piece of paper and the potential to redeem a prize. The prizes were free games on the machine, but it quickly became known that the free games could be exchanged for cash.

Herbert himself saw a cash cow. ‘Robinson introduced me to Jack Rooklyn, who ran a company that hired out in-line machines to licensed clubs,’ said Herbert. ‘[He] wasn’t a man to fool with. He was the Australian distributor for the American Bally poker machine company, which had links with the Chicago Mafia.

‘Soon I started working for Rooklyn, travelling around Queensland putting in-line machines into clubs. The clubs had to get permission to operate them from the Justice Department. The clubs kept 50 per cent of the profits from each machine, and we took the rest.’

The Robinsons’ in-line empire expanded and during his working relationship with both men Herbert soon learned they were paying Don Lane, member for Merthyr, a monthly kickback, as he had contacts in the Department of Justice.

Terry Lewis was aware of Lane’s relationship with Rooklyn. ‘I know Lane knew him,’ he says. ‘Lane told me he had visited Rooklyn in Sydney and had gone out on his yacht. Apparently Rooklyn had a beautiful mansion overlooking the harbour.

‘Lane said if I ever wanted to go out on Rooklyn’s yacht and sail around the harbour I should let him know. I didn’t.’

Around this time Herbert began to see Lewis again socially, and told him both Lane and a senior public servant with the Licensing Commission were receiving money protecting the in-lines. Herbert, in turn, arranged for Robinson Snr. to meet Lewis who, according to the Bagman, was also put on the payroll. Herbert alleged Lewis received $2000 per month from Rooklyn and Robinson.

(Earlier in the year, Lewis’s police diary noted that Robinson came to see him at his office to ‘introduce’ Rooklyn on 20 March 1978. ‘Mr Rooklyn inquired re starting a “Health Studio” on the Gold Coast, informed him if prostitution involved prosecution would be certain.’ Then in late November 1978, the diary stated again: ‘Jack Rooklyn called inquiring if massage parlours are being legalised; I assured him they are not.’ There was debate in New South Wales at the time over liberalising prostitution laws, resulting in the
Prostitution Act 1979
under the government of Neville Wran.)

While Lewis would later deny knowing Rooklyn, he now says: ‘Jack Herbert would have said, “Would you come down and have a sandwich?” I’m sure I saw him at the Crest. Rooklyn, Herbert and me. He [Rooklyn] said he wanted to put poker machines in the Police Club. I said no way in the world. Rooklyn was not a big deal as far as I was concerned.’

Lewis says he had known Tony Robinson since the war days. ‘Tony Robinson, I don’t know if he’s a crook,’ Lewis adds. ‘I think he was just a … he had no criminal record – he had one conviction, possession without a licence, concealment of a firearm during the war.

‘He had a men’s clothing shop in Albert Street … opposite was the Metro [Theatre] and next to it was a jeweller’s shop … But anyhow, Tony Robinson was known to most of us because he had a flash car and in those days after the war hardly anybody had a flash car and they could park in the city indefinitely. And then when I got on the Consorting Squad I met him because he had a little nightclub down in the Petrie Bight … La Boheme, or something, anyhow we knew him then.

‘He was a smartie, but he was certainly not a bloody criminal. A ladies man of course and bloody dressed like a million dollars and he must have got in with Rooklyn somewhere along the line and Herbert along the line and away it went from there.’

Lewis said he had no idea who Rooklyn was. ‘I don’t know if he was ever bloody convicted the bastard,’ Lewis adds. ‘I mean, I did meet him once and he was an unlovable looking bastard … there’s no doubt in the world he was very friendly with Don Lane, and he was very friendly with Jack Herbert as time showed.

‘But he was a famous bloody, well, race bloke that had heaps of money apparently … I might be wrong, but I doubt if he had a criminal record. They had an inquiry in Sydney by somebody that showed he was, that’s right, he was an associate of some of the Mafia or whatever you like from America. Used to come out and they were friends …’

What was a bigger deal to Lewis was that just four days after the Crest luncheon, it was announced that he had been awarded the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

That night – Saturday 16 June – Commissioner Terry Lewis, OBE, and Hazel sat in the special VIP area at Lang Park and enjoyed a rugby league Test between Australia and Great Britain along with 23,049 other punters.

The Kangaroos belted the Poms 35 to nil.

Global Girls

Geoff Crocker was having his ups and downs with his fledgling massage parlour empire in 1979, as were Tilley and Hapeta.

One of the primary reasons was the work of a new Licensing Branch officer, Ron Lewis. Lewis surveyed the landscape and came up with a new way to attack the vice lords. He would go after the owners of the buildings who leased out premises to the likes of Crocker, Holloway, Hapeta and Tilley.

‘What I did introduce was – and again you’ve got to get back to your political masters, they wanted us to “control” [the scene] to a certain degree … so we came up with a control measure,’ recalls Ron Lewis.

‘We were prosecuting the prostitutes and managers, but quite often the owners of the business weren’t touched. If you rented a premises knowing they were used for prostitution, it was considered an offence.’

Ron Lewis soon discovered that the problem with this approach was that if you said to the owner of a building, ‘Do you know it’s being used for prostitution?’, they could defend themselves by denying any knowledge. He started approaching the owners of the brothel buildings and asked them directly: ‘Do you know your property is being leased as a brothel?’

‘I’d inform them that several prosecutions had taken place on their particular premises, showed them the Act, and told them they were liable for prosecution.

‘Six months later I’d come back, produce the convictions that had occurred in the last six months [relating to their property] and charge them.’

The impact was enormous.

Out of the city’s 36 or so brothels running at the time, 24 of them shut down after Ron Lewis’s blitz.