Jacks and Jokers (62 page)

Lewis says Murphy had a valuable criminal informant named Norris who worked very close with Murphy. Lewis found Norris the type of person he himself would have found it hard to tolerate. ‘He was a criminal and he was a very, very bloody close informant for Murphy,’ Lewis recalls. ‘I don’t know whether [Shirley] Brifman ever was or whether she was just a bloody sexual object.

‘But Norris, I know was, because well I just know. And he was so … I think it was a relative that found out about Norris dogging on people and went to shoot him with a shotgun, and did in fact blow one arm right off but didn’t kill him. They’re the sort of people that I suppose, the life, the career that Murphy had, they’re the sort of people that he got friendly with.

‘And Murphy was with Jack Herbert for four years in the frigging Licensing Branch [1966–71]. Herbert says nobody that ever came there knocked him back.’

Lewis says he never saw Murphy take kickbacks but the word was out there. ‘It was certainly said by various people that he did take money. But again, I didn’t see it. And it was said that he was, when they were probably in the Licensing Branch they had these games going,’ adds Lewis.

‘Of course, Tony Robinson had a game going and Herbert and Murphy were supposed to be looking after that. But this is what you’re told. We were in the CIB or the JAB and you get these stories but you don’t follow them up. That’s the boss’s worry, that’s not my worry.

‘No, I really don’t think he was anybody that went out and blackmailed anybody or stood over people for money. I’d say it was highly likely that in the Licensing Branch like all the others there, he would have got some bloody money. But … according to Herbert and others, there was a whole heap of them that did.’

Tuesday 21 December was a pretty quiet day for Commissioner Lewis. He had some trivial duties and then went to see his doctor for a check-up. Later, he went and had a late afternoon drink with Sir Edward Lyons.

There were no formal festivities for retired Assistant Commissioner Anthony Murphy that night. A proper farewell befitting the great man would be held in the Police Union Building on the night of Monday 14 February 14 1983 – Valentine’s Day. Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen would be in attendance.

Jim Slade said Murphy was probably the most brilliant police officer he’d ever seen, and probably one of the toughest. In his prime, Murphy radiated power. In the Brisbane underworld they called him ‘The Boss’.

Slade says Murphy wasn’t a killer, like his counterpart Fred Krahe in Sydney. ‘But Murphy would make the bullets,’ says Slade.

Murphy may have suspected, on leaving the force, that he was entering the same twilight zone that had been inhabited by former commissioner Frank Bischof, his own mentor from the 1950s and 1960s.

He was born a policeman. There was nothing else in life that even remotely satisfied Murphy the way being a detective did. He absolutely adored the chase. He loved the company of like-minded tough men and he had relished the power the job gave him.

If anyone thought the frightening, feared, sometimes brutal and often begrudgingly respected cop Tony Murphy was walking away from the police force to quietly grow flowers, they had rocks in their heads.

Blue Skies

In the last week of 1982, Commissioner Lewis tidied a few things up before his 28 days’ annual leave.

He launched the exciting new ‘Kiss a Cop’ campaign prior to New Year’s Eve festivities and attended the opening of the 13th Australian Jamboree ‘by His Excellency Sir Ninian Stephen, Chief Scout for Australia’.

It had been another big year – his sixth as Commissioner. But Lewis could be well satisfied. He had what appeared to be an inviolable friendship with the Premier and had also made powerful friends in Sir Robert Sparkes and Sir Edward Lyons.

He had seen off Police Ministers who didn’t sit well with his philosophies and how he ran his ship, the latest being the formidable Russ Hinze. Earlier in the year his Police Force had survived yet another call for a royal commission into its corrupt ways, and Lewis and the government had established a Police Complaints Tribunal that, in the not too distant future, would be put in the hands of his old mate Judge Eric Pratt.

And though it may have taken six years, Lewis had dismantled and in most cases seen off the final clutch of pro-Whitrod supporters – Pitts, Jeppesen, Hicks, Campbell, Saunders and others.

In the world away from his big office in police headquarters and his home up on Garfield Drive, his old smooth-talking friend Jack Herbert had hooked into the Hapeta and Tilley money-making vice machine and was reeling in tens of thousands of dollars in corrupt payments for The Joke. Down at 142 Wickham Street, upstairs in the casino that didn’t exist, punters were enjoying the patronage of Geraldo Bellino, the drinks, the girls, and having a flutter into the early hours of the morning.

Commissioner Lewis had unexpectedly lost a great ally in Tony Murphy, a colleague who he had worked alongside and admired from the late 1940s. Murphy had taught Lewis a lot, and had been indispensable in ridding the force of Ray Whitrod and opening the Commissioner’s door to Lewis.

And while on paper – certainly according to the department’s annual reports – Lewis was doing a stellar job, his administration in the eyes of many still carried about it the stench of corruption.

It was not difficult to understand why.

The 1970s in Queensland, and particularly Brisbane, had seen the evolution of a bona fide underworld, where crime syndicates had formed and carved out their turf. Like anywhere else in the world, criminal real estate was closely protected and transgression from rivals was often met with violence. Quaint little Brisbane, with its jacarandas and poinsettias, its church raffles and hollering paper boys at the main city intersections, had not been spared the growth of the drug and vice trade, and the attendant criminals that presided over it.

Indeed, those involved in the city’s underworld in the 1970s and into the 1980s described the local scene, straight-faced, as being just as violent and dangerous as anywhere else in Australia.

The body count was testimony to such observations. In 1973, the Whiskey Au Go Go inferno was the greatest mass murder in the country’s history to that point. There was the controversial ‘drug overdose’ of Shirley Margaret Brifman, the assassination of National Hotel manager Jack Cooper, the murder of boxer Tommy Hamilton, the disappearance of prostitutes Margaret Ward and Simone Vogel, and the vanishing of Barbara McCulkin and her two young daughters. The bulk of these cases, and many others, had attracted the suspicion of police involvement.

When Commissioner Whitrod had moved on the so-called Rat Pack – Lewis, Murphy and Hallahan – he was ultimately removed, fleeing the state in fear of his life.

Case after case in Queensland courts against alleged corrupt police, illegal casino operators or friends to crooked officers fell over like dominoes.

Within the force, police officers who dared voice their opinions against a corrupt regime were forced out of the job and the state, drank themselves to death, or lost their families under the pressure of the need to do what was right. Hundreds of promising careers were destroyed, further perpetuating a cycle of corruption by leaving behind those who toed the line.

And Jack Herbert, master conman and liar, organised supremely a corrupt system that flourished in the Lewis era and proved resilient to everything thrown at it. Over time, its impact was far greater than its original intention – the effort to keep it hidden from sight and the wheels moving smoothly in turn reached into the public service, the judiciary and into the halls of government itself, and began buckling them out of shape.

Lewis’s need to please and impress Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen had worked brilliantly for both men. Within a year of Lewis taking the chair, Bjelke-Petersen controlled a Police State. Ordinary civil liberties disappeared and would only be returned when and if the Premier deemed it appropriate to return them. With the Queensland Police Force covering his back, Bjelke-Petersen was impervious.

On the eve of 1983, Lewis – always a fine details man, always the master of the small picture, of controlling the day to day – may not have understood the bigger mosaic or the part he was playing in changing the direction of Queensland society. In fact, he may have been thinking about renovating the family home up on Garfield Drive, in finally making a house that befitted his status.

And, set to celebrate his fifty-fifth birthday, he may have been thinking about a little unit down on the Gold Coast, a place he loved, where he and wife, Hazel, could spend some quality time together as they approached retirement.

It was blue skies ahead for Lewis. Indeed, he may have been entertaining in his mind informal discussions he had had with Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen about securing a diplomatic posting in Los Angeles or London when his time as Commissioner of Police was done. Without doubt, a Knighthood had to be in the offing. All in all, Lewis could see nothing but good times stretching before him.

It had taken an enormous amount of work, and there’d been a lot of collateral damage, but he was where he wanted to be – in control and working for a man who was in control. By and large his enemies were behind him, and most importantly he had men he trusted in important positions throughout the force.

On the last day of 1982 – a Friday – Lewis attended to some trivial paperwork then fitted in some revolver practice. It may have been portentous.

Beyond the blue skies, and the curve of the earth, the first scuds of cloud were gathering. Over time they would knit together then gain force before building into a storm of such ferocity that it would destroy everything in its path.

Unlike the thunder and lightning that Lewis had watched as he sat out in the Petrie Terrace police barracks in Brisbane the night before he was sworn in as a young officer in 1949, this storm – a confluence of speed and fronts from unlikely directions – would take years to build.

But it would seemingly have a single target in its sight. And that target was Commissioner Terence Murray Lewis.

Author’s Note and Acknowledgments

Following the publication of
Three Crooked Kings
it became apparent that only a trilogy could do justice to the life and times of former Queensland commissioner of police, Terence Lewis, and all the attendant political intrigue and social history of the era. I am once again grateful to Terry for his cooperation and patience. As with the first volume, I have made every effort in
Jacks and Jokers
to offer a balanced story, and with the numerous narrative threads, Lewis was again offered the right of reply.

Again, I thank Doug Hall for his early encouragement.

I want to express my appreciation to current and former State and Federal police officers who gave me their time for this project. They include: Jim Slade, John ‘Bluey’ O’Gorman, Ron Edington, the family of the late Robert Walker, Barry Krosch, Les Lewis, Keith Smith, Peter Dautel, Dennis Koch, Ken Hoggett, John Huey, Geoff Pambroke, Ron Lewis, Arthur Volz, Bruce Wilby, the late Noel Creevey, Cliff Crawford, John Moller, Ian Hatcher, the late Abe Duncan, Fred Collins, Pat Glancy, Greg Early, Ross Beer, John Paul Lewis, Max Rogers, Brian Bennett, Bill Harrigan and the family of the late Tony Murphy.

I am particularly indebted to former Federal Narcotics Bureau agent John Shobbrook for his recollections and also for kind permission to quote from his extraordinary unpublished memoir. Courtesy of this project, I have been fortunate to establish another wonderful friendship with a man of integrity, former Licensing Branch officer Kingsley Fancourt, whose role in this saga has, I hope, been rightfully restored. Kingsley, you’re an inspiration, and here’s to many long conversations in the future. The Lewis trilogy has attracted many generous friends, none more so than former Licensing Branch detective and key whistleblower prior to the announcement of the Fitzgerald Inquiry in 1987, Nigel Powell. Thank you Nigel for all of your advice, assistance and camaraderie. Your friendship means an enormous amount. And thank you, Georgia.

Similarly, a heartfelt thanks to Mary Anne Brifman and her family for allowing me into their lives and for being so kind and generous.

I’m again enormously grateful to journalists Chris Masters and Phil Dickie for their epochal work and for their friendship. I would also like to pay tribute to a couple of other trailblazers – Quentin Dempster and Evan Whitton. Cheers also to Peter James, Tony Koch, Alan Hall, Paul Weston, Nan Dwyer, Trent Dalton, Ken Blanch and Michael McKenna. A special thanks to Hedley Thomas and Des Houghton. Thanks once more goes to former colleagues Michael Crutcher and David Fagan of News Queensland for unqualified support, continued with this book through the kindness and understanding of Christopher Dore, editor of the
Courier-Mail
and Peter Gleeson, editor of the
Sunday Mail
.

During the writing of this book, friend and Brisbane-based journalist Tony Reeves died suddenly while on vacation overseas. Mate, you are sorely missed, but live on in your books and your generosity of spirit. And thank you again to another gentleman, Ian Alcorn.

These books have been aided by the recollections and knowledge of an enormous number of people. I would like to pay tribute to: Sir Llewelyn Edwards, Peter Beattie, Mike Ahern, Terry White, Bill Hewitt, Henry Palaszcuk, Russell Grenning, Paul Braddy, Malcolm McMillan, Ross and June Fels, Edgar Bourke, Anne Marie Tilley, Debbie Kilroy, William Stokes, Carolyn Scully, Leonie Bahnemann, former Justice Bill Carter, Des Sturgess, Lee Kear, Richard Spencer, Andre Look, Ken Lord, Ruth Whitrod Blackburn, Ian Whitrod, Mervyn Carey, Jean Hudson, Dr Harry Akers, John Wayne Ryan, Dr Paul Wilson, Fiona McDonald, Terry O’Gorman, Richard Spencer and Jean Bowra, who transcribed the bulk of the Lewis interviews.