Jacks and Jokers (42 page)

That day, Lewis spoke with a fellow officer about the behaviour of Licensing Branch officer Bruce Wilby, called a Dr Ian Wilkie regarding an upcoming Child Accident Prevention Conference, and attended a cocktail party at the Crest Hotel in the city. Before that, however, he had reason to phone Dr Paul Wilson again regarding the academic’s ‘biased view and comments’ made on a
Nationwide
television report. There is no mention of Osborne or his death, despite talking with Osborne’s future biographer twice in two days.

On the Thursday, Lewis again remonstrated with Wilson regarding his ‘incorrect claims on
Nationwide
’. Wilson recalls that he later approached Lewis about the possibilities of interviewing detectives in relation to the Osborne case.

Dougal McMillan went out to the Mt Gravatt house after Osborne’s body had been removed. He took with him a Justice of the Peace. With Osborne dead, there was no one on whom to serve a search warrant.

‘There were stacks of files – some of them quite old – on all sorts of things,’ he recalls. ‘He’d also been conducting some bodybuilding in the backyard. He really had stuff there that wasn’t fit to broadcast. There were many photographs of boys at certain stages of development. They were not appropriate. We found out he’d had a big fire in the backyard on the night that he died.’

The Osborne files were moved to JAB headquarters on the fourth floor of the old Egg Board Building in Makerston Street and secured in a safe. ‘My understanding is the case went as high up as the Premier’s office because of who Osborne was,’ McMillan says.

Osborne was cremated in the last week of September. On Thursday 20 September, a small death notice appeared in the
Courier-Mail
. ‘Osborne, Clarence Henry, of Eyre Street, Mount Gravatt. Passed away at home 12.9.79. Sadly missed friend of John and Pauline and “Uncle” of Peter and Geoffrey. There will be no funeral service as requested.’

It wasn’t until 30 September that the
Sunday Mail
outlined details of the case of the MONSTER SNARED BY HIS CAMERA.

Detective Sergeant Don Reay, of the Juvenile Aid Bureau, reportedly said it would take three months for three officers to work through the Osborne material, stored in steel filing cabinets. ‘There must be a message in all this, but at this stage we can’t work it out,’ Detective Seargeant Reay said.

He encouraged Osborne’s victims to come forward. ‘We would like them to witness destruction of their files,’ Reay added. The files, he said, would be reduced to ashes following their analysis.

At the time of the ‘monster’s’ death, Dr Paul Wilson was galvanising his idea to write a book on the life and times of Clarence Osborne, having waded through a selection of the eccentric stenographer’s photographs, index cards and unpublished memoir. The book –
The Man They Called a Monster
– would be published two years after Osborne’s death. It would argue that Osborne had been misunderstood, and that he had basically acted as a father figure to young boys who had little or no meaningful communication with their own fathers.

In one of the notes accompanying the book, Wilson thanks a good friend for his help in being able to interview several detectives in the Juvenile Aid Bureau who worked on the Osborne case.

‘The Commissioner of The [sic] Queensland Police Force granted me permission to interview … detectives. His assistance in this respect is gratefully acknowledged.’

Boxes

Jim Slade was finally where he wanted to be.

He was working in the Bureau of Criminal Intelligence, and was being mentored by Tony Murphy, one of the finest police officers he’d ever worked under.

But after almost two and a half years of exciting, non-stop work in the bureau, he began to see things that didn’t quite fit. The lifestyles and habits of some of his colleagues weren’t matching their salaries.

‘Alan Barnes would go in on raids and it was nothing for him to take us all out to dinner later, and for him to sit down and drink two bottles of Dom Pérignon Champagne,’ Slade remembers. ‘When I found out it was $100 a bottle I nearly died. There was no way in the world he could afford $100 bottles of wine. I knew something was going on there.’

Another officer had a new car every year. Others had boats worth thousands of dollars, purchased without a loan. Some officers regularly bought and sold houses.

‘It was quite obvious to me and Norm [Sprenger] that some of them were on the take,’ says Slade.

Other officers were often exceedingly violent against certain offenders. One had a depth of violence that shocked even Slade.

‘He possessed an incredible violence,’ Slade recalls. ‘He was a very, very good boxer. He just showed no mercy. Where another police officer would hit once, this guy couldn’t stop. He’d absolutely just tear that person down.

‘If he was sent to do a job by anyone … whoever he was set upon they’d have to watch their p’s and q’s.’

To Slade’s mind, some of them were not only capable of grievous bodily harm, but murder. ‘By that time in life I was able to pick some of the corrupt people, and a most interesting thing came to my attention,’ he says. ‘Most people that were protégés of most people I knew to be corrupt turned out to be corrupt. But most people who were protégés of people who were honest like Fred Maynard and a few others were never corrupt.

‘When I say corrupt I’m talking about going in, picking up a briefcase full of money, and walking out with it and splitting it.

‘Another interesting thing I reckoned was that most of those people not corrupt had really strong family backgrounds, the corrupt ones didn’t. Maybe the importance of family was a consideration with the corruption side of things.

‘I was able to put them in boxes. You work with him? I’m going to have to look out for you. Nine times out of ten I’d be right.’

Slade said he never personally saw Murphy or Barnes take money.

Then again, by his own admission, he wasn’t looking very hard. ‘I tried to explain to my wife that I was so engrossed in what I was doing – it was nothing for me to have major investigations like Terry Clark, the painters and dockers … undercover operations where we were running informants for other detectives,’ says Slade.

‘I cursed myself for not identifying it and doing more about it. But when you’re in that situation … if it’s not affecting you, maybe you let it go.’

Spy vs Spy

In the first week of November 1979 an extraordinary collision of events rang alarm bells not just with Lewis and the other members of the old Rat Pack, but within government, both state and federal.

Firstly, Terrance Clark, head of the Mr Asia drug syndicate, was arrested and held in London following the discovery of the handless body of Christopher Johnstone in a quarry in Lancashire. Clark had been wanted for questioning over the Wilson murders, among others, after he had slipped the net in Brisbane.

Secondly, the interim report of Justice Williams’ Royal Commission of Inquiry into Drugs recommended that the Federal Narcotics Bureau, described as inefficient and only mindful of its own image, be disbanded and its duties taken over by the new Australian Federal Police Force.

Thirdly, Justice Woodward in New South Wales tabled his own report into drug trafficking, and in it named several major gangs responsible for the bulk of Australia’s drug importations. One was ‘The Milligan Group’.

Brisbane-based Federal Narcotics Agent John Moller, recuperating from a serious motorcycle accident, was incensed at the proposed dismantling of the bureau, and was nominated by his fellow agents to defend the bureau on a local talkback radio show. He spoke on condition of anonymity. His quotes about Milligan and his links to Queensland police and politicians were subsequently picked up by the
Courier-Mail
.

As a result, the newspaper ran a sensational page-one story on 8 November. POLITICIANS LINKED TO DRUG RINGS, the headline said. ‘Narcotics agent tells of secret files.’

The report revealed: ‘Several Queensland politicians were named in confidential Federal Narcotics Bureau files as having had connections with people in the drug smuggling world,’ a narcotics agent said yesterday. ‘We do not have files on the politicians. But they are mentioned on files as being connected with people in a drug organisation.’

That organisation was Milligan’s. Moller also revealed that the bureau had recently interviewed ‘a former Queensland policeman [Hallahan]’.

‘There is no doubt he [the former policeman] was connected with that syndicate and he was assisting them. We know he still has connection with senior police and they have helped certain members of that syndicate to get off charges that they should not have got off.’

Moller, the unidentified source, said the day would come when he could name those involved in the Milligan syndicate, and added: ‘People are being killed because they are involved. We’re past the days of busting people with deals of grass. We are closing in on the big fish.’

The day after the story was published Detective Sergeant Alan Barnes contacted Commissioner Lewis with some vital information.

Lewis diarised: ‘Det. Sgt. Barnes called re John Moller being Narcotics Agent speaking to media; bugging Murphy and Hallahan’s phones; Hallahan still claiming friendship with Murphy and me and an anonymous call re me heading Drug Smuggling ring.’

As for Moller, whose identity was so swiftly uncovered and reported back to Lewis, he received a volley of telephone threats at his home in Carseldine in the city’s north. ‘I had the usual stuff – “we know where you live,” ’ John Moller remembers. ‘But they also told me they knew that my son [Scott, then three] played on a particular footpath of an afternoon.

‘They told me to back off.’

Scandal in the House

Hot on the heels of the growing drugs scandal was Labor opposition leader and the member for Mackay, Ed Casey.

After just one year in the job as Labor head, the affable Casey was a competent and steady parliamentary performer without wit or flair, unlike his predecessor Tom Burns.

A former truck business operator and bank clerk, and a keen sportsman in his youth (he would later be a devoted patron of the Queensland Table Tennis Association), the Catholic Casey wanted to capitalise on the Moller revelations and used the privilege of parliament to do so. He thought he had an opportunity to inflict huge damage on the government.

So on Tuesday 20 November, at 11.34 a.m., Casey rose in the House: ‘On 7 November 1979, an allegation was made on Brisbane radio that several Queensland politicians were named in Federal Narcotics Bureau files as having had connections with people in the drug-smuggling world.’

Minister for Local Government and Main Roads Russ Hinze immediately rose to a point of order, hosing down Casey. ‘I query the authenticity of the document that is being presented to the House by the Leader of the Opposition, and I ask whether he is making a ministerial statement, a personal explanation, or just what he is doing.’

Casey was again permitted to speak, citing subsequent newspaper reports on the narcotics scandal. ‘Through resources available to me,’ Casey went on, ‘I have been able to locate the said Narcotics Bureau agent and have spoken with him on this subject.

‘I want to make it quite clear that, as a result of discussions with him, I am satisfied that no member of the state parliamentary Labor Party is named in the files to which he referred and that the parliamentarians concerned are from the Government coalition parties in this House.

‘I have learned that the Narcotics Bureau in Sydney possesses the taped record of the interrogation of a notorious international drug runner following his recent arrest. In this taped record of interview, which I understand was also witnessed, I am informed that the drug operator refers by name to a senior member of this Queensland coalition Government.’

The Premier himself rose on a point of order and tried to flip the entire thing back on Casey: ‘All I want to say is that the Leader of the Opposition knows that his policy is to legalise the use of drugs.’

Casey ploughed on. He argued that as former Queensland police officers had also been named, the Woodward Royal Commission ‘clearly shows that there is overwhelming evidence to indicate the presence of a drug-smuggling ring in Queensland of huge proportions.’ He claimed that further evidence would be forthcoming in the impending Williams Royal Commission of Inquiry into Drugs, and called on the Premier and the Queensland Government to set up its own royal commission.

The Speaker interjected and said Casey would not be permitted to make any further personal explanations and was asked to resume his seat. Casey’s motion to be further heard on the matter was voted down 49 to 20.

By mid-evening, following the television news where Casey had been interviewed about the drugs scandal, Police Minister Ron Camm stood in the House and fired back. ‘Is this another Casey lead balloon? Is this another statement from the Leader of the Opposition that has no substance in fact and cannot be proved by any action that may be taken by the Police Force in this State?’

Deputy Premier and Treasurer Dr Llew Edwards also weighed into the fracas: ‘… when questioned by the reporter, the Leader of the Opposition refused to give information and squirmed in his seat. He said that he would make it available to parliament tomorrow. For that reason parliament is now giving the Leader of the Opposition and, indeed, all Opposition members, an opportunity to make the allegations now.’