Jacks and Jokers (45 page)

Then Inspector Basil ‘The Hound’ Hicks took the stand. Hicks said Billy McCulkin had telephoned him at the Crime Intelligence Unit in 1974 and said he believed his wife and children had been taken and murdered. Hicks said McCulkin was convinced O’Dempsey had murdered them.

At the time, Hicks had interviewed Janet Gayton, a friend of the young McCulkin girls who lived directly across the road. She told him she had seen two men enter the McCulkin house on 16 January and went over and asked the girls who their visitors were. They replied the men were their father Billy’s friends Vince O’Dempsey and ‘Shorty’.

Another neighbour, Peter Nisbet, told the court McCulkin had complained to him at the time that her husband Billy was giving her a hard time. Nisbet said he had had several conversations with her about the Torino and Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub fires in 1973. Barbara told him she would be able to ‘put him away for five years’ given the information she had on Billy and the fires.

In the end, the Coroner recommended that O’Dempsey and Dubois be charged with the murder of the McCulkins. He found there was a body of circumstantial evidence sufficient enough for a jury to find the two men guilty of murdering Barbara and the girls.

O’Dempsey told the Coroner: ‘I’m not guilty. I’ve never murdered anyone.’

A year later to the day, the Crown would drop all charges against O’Dempsey and Dubois. Attorney-General Sam Doumany entered a nolle prosequi.

The McCulkins would be added to the police department’s already bulging Cold Case files.

Milligan Takes the Stand

In early March in Sydney, Milligan pleaded guilty to the charges laid against him stemming from Shobbrook’s investigation. He appeared before Justice Barrie Thorley in the New South Wales Supreme Court.

Shobbrook, presenting the facts and antecedents, made sure Glen Patrick Hallahan’s involvement in the case was outlined to the court and entered into the record.

‘Has this man Hallahan been charged?’ Justice Thorley asked Shobbrook.

‘Not yet, your Honour.’

‘When he is charged I want him brought before my court.’

The judge asked Milligan if he would prepare a signed statement outlining Hallahan’s involvement in his case. Milligan stayed silent.

‘Well, Mr Milligan, I will postpone sentencing and remand you in custody for one week while you consider your answer to that question,’ Thorley said.

As prison officers prepared to take Milligan back to Long Bay Gaol, he indicated to Shobbrook he would get the statement together. He wrote the statement on 18 March and it was given to Federal Police officer Bill Harrigan.

The allegations in the statement included: that in 1977 Hallahan and Milligan discussed importing heroin into Queensland using light aircraft; that Hallahan provided $1000 to Ian Barron to charter a light aircraft to New Guinea on the first dummy run; Milligan took $3000 from Hallahan to buy the heroin in Thailand; that Hallahan was called on the telephone when the drugs were purchased and the drop was made over Jane Table Mountain; that when Milligan informed Hallahan the recovery of the drugs would be difficult, Hallahan ordered him to continue searching for them; that the single parcel recovered was sold in Sydney, and some of the proceeds were transferred into Hallahan’s Commonwealth Trading Bank account in King George Square, Brisbane.

On 19 March, Justice Thorley sentenced Milligan to 18 years’ gaol on three heroin charges – two pertaining to a conspiracy to import over the Jane Table Mountain situation, and a third to an unrelated importation involving a female federal undercover agent.

The next morning Milligan was escorted to Brisbane to appear before Williams’ inquiry. John Shobbrook was in the public gallery. Milligan asked the commission if his evidence could be heard in camera. Understandably, he felt his life was at risk if he gave evidence against Hallahan in an open court.

Justice Williams replied: ‘There has been too much said to this Commission off the record; if you have any allegations to make then you’ll make them in public.’

Incredibly, Williams expected Milligan to incriminate Shobbrook about the fabrication of the Operation Jungle evidence.

Milligan lied and told the commission he knew nothing of Hallahan’s involvement in drug trafficking. It may have saved his life.

Milligan was then asked to confirm that Shobbrook was lying. Instead, the convicted drug importer said: ‘It is unfair to Shobbrook to say anything that infers that we concocted a story or he was concocting a story. He believed that what he was doing was in the best interests of the Bureau and was honest. So it is untrue to say that … he wanted as much information as I could give him.’

Milligan said he did not invent things.

‘You are not saying he [Hallahan] ever had anything to do with drugs are you?’ he was asked.

‘Well, I don’t wish to answer that question,’ Milligan replied.

One investigator attached to the commission reflects: ‘Milligan made some very serious allegations against Lewis, Murphy and Hallahan going back to the 1960s. Those allegations were swept under the carpet by the Williams Royal Commission.’

Milligan was again asked if he had any information relating to Hallahan and drug trafficking.

‘No,’ he said.

‘No further questions.’

Shobbrook was flummoxed. He was shocked that the five-page statement of allegations against Hallahan, ordered to be produced by Thorley in Sydney, wasn’t introduced and that Milligan wasn’t asked about it.

Around this time, senior Canberra-based officers for the Australian Federal Police flew to Brisbane to ‘counsel’ Shobbrook. In short, he was told to lay off Hallahan and the entire investigation.

Shobbrook broke down. His work had been for nothing.

Within a couple of months he would be superannuated out of the force, deemed ‘medically unfit’. He was 32.

In 1981 Justice Williams would be knighted.

Super Saturday

Constable David Moore was doing such a good job in public relations that he was put in charge of the unit.

He designed posters that depicted police officers as human beings, and began to modernise school presentations about ‘stranger danger’ and other important educational messages. He produced pamphlets and eye-catching stickers. The PR office was next door to the Crime Prevention Bureau down in Makerston Street, and the small unit used to have a few laughs at the ‘hick show’ their office neighbours put on week after week.

Moore, in turn, was given a ‘long leash’, and his class presentations in schools across Brisbane were proving popular. The police force was getting some substantial congratulatory feedback courtesy of Moore’s initiatives.

One day he was summoned to Ron Redmond’s office.

‘What are you doing on Saturday?’ Redmond asked Moore.

‘Why?’

‘You’re going up on television,’ Redmond said.

‘No, I’m not,’ he replied emphatically.

Producers of the popular children’s program,
Super Saturday
, hosted by Fiona MacDonald, television celebrity Jacki MacDonald’s sister, wanted a policeman to appear in a small slot.

Moore, contrary to his outgoing character, hesitated. He was a bit cautious of the television medium. Still, he did as he was ordered, and appeared on the show.

During his segment he was paired with the show’s wildly popular and satirical puppet Agro, a cross between a Muppets character and a bath mat. Agro was witty, cynical, and managed to extol humour that simultaneously appealed to children and adults. Agro was the mischievous imp, harassing the show’s host, eating flies and committing naughty acts.

‘They put him [Moore] on TV with him. At that time Moore was a Constable First Class,’ recalls a colleague. ‘This was a one-off. They wanted someone to talk about stranger danger or road safety. So he sat there. Agro came on. He absolutely took the piss out of Moore.

‘He [Agro] called him “Constable Economy” because he was Constable First Class. He [Moore] thought, you little bastard. He gave it back to him.

‘The thing was Moore could speak; he wasn’t the perception of a dumb cop.’

The episode descended into chaos.

‘At one point Moore was breaking up with laughter so much he couldn’t breathe,’ the colleague recalls. ‘Everyone was in fits of laughter. In the end the producer came up to Moore and she said that that was the most fantastic thing. All weekend he worried about it. He thought he was going to be in trouble.’

Host Fiona MacDonald remembers Moore as a good-looking, likeable young man. ‘He was a charming and gregarious young policeman,’ she says. ‘He had a very easy-going way about him and he was eager to chat. We all liked him a lot.

‘He was a great communicator. He shared a lot of interesting information and stories. He was Mr Nice Guy.’

On the following Monday, Moore was summoned to his superior Sergeant Ross Melville’s office. ‘You’re going back up there again next Saturday,’ Melville told Moore. ‘The switchboard lit up. You were a huge hit and they want you back.’

‘Constable Dave’ was born. He appeared with Agro every Saturday and ultimately presented his own segment about police work.

‘He started to involve other police,’ Moore’s colleague said. ‘He would take traffic branch police up. He even had John “Bluey” O’Gorman up there, blowing up a piece of mince wrapped in alfoil in the bush outside the studios to demonstrate how you don’t play with bombs or firecrackers.

‘It was every Saturday of his life. He couldn’t do anything. A taxi would take him up and bring him back.’

Then Moore had a masterstroke idea. Why not induct Agro as a police constable? ‘He approached Terry Lewis,’ the colleague said. ‘By this time Moore had quite a lot of contact with Terry Lewis. He needed permission to do stuff. What could he do or say, what couldn’t he do or say on television?

‘Moore went to Greg Early and Greg would ring him back and say – the boss has approved that. He had direct access to Early and often the boss would be there and he would come out and speak with Moore about what was happening.’

Fiona MacDonald says the program also began to develop a strong relationship with Commissioner Lewis. ‘Lewis was close to us,’ she recalls. ‘I remember him being up in the studio a lot. It was very good publicity for the police image.’

Constable Dave quickly became a celebrity in small-town Brisbane and soon started working on local radio. It was here he would meet and befriend the popular and successful ABC broadcaster, William Hurrey.

Another Briefcase Full of Cash

In the lead-up to the 1980 state election in late November, Dr Denis Murphy, newly elected Queensland President of the ALP, received a remarkable communique from Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen.

Bjelke-Petersen suggested they meet on some urgent political business, and Dr Murphy obliged. He met the Premier in his office in the Executive Building on George Street.

Denis Murphy was an extraordinary conciliator as well as a respected academic and author. He had managed to negotiate an internal reorganisation of the Labor Party – the change from the Old Guard to the New Guard – without much long-standing fallout or enmity, and was determined to not only modernise and replenish the Party’s finances but to make the ALP a viable election force. But nothing could have prepared him for the offer Bjelke-Petersen was about to put on the table.

The then Federal Leader of the Opposition, former Queensland police officer and minister during the Whitlam era, Bill Hayden, was keeping an eye on Labor candidates for the state election when his attention was drawn to the Party’s man standing for Ipswich – Joe Sciacca. Sciacca was up against the formidable Llew Edwards.

‘I didn’t give him much chance of beating Edwards because Edwards was very highly respected and popular, although he wasn’t a populist sort of political operator,’ says Hayden. ‘He [Joe] was a very private person. And the family had a coal mine … a coal miners’ background. His father worked in the mines. They’d been busted by the Depression.

‘All of a sudden Joe’s spending money, got a TV company in. And I thought, Jesus, this is going to be costly. And I said, “Where are you getting that money from, Joe?” And he said, “It’s coming from head office. I don’t ask any questions. I just take it.” And it’d be thousands.’

Hayden was nonplussed, so he paid Dr Murphy a visit.

‘Denis Murphy … told me that Bjelke-Petersen had contacted him and offered him so many thousands,’ Hayden recalls. ‘It was a … five figure amount and a very big five figure amount. And he [Murphy] went up and had a talk with [Bjelke-]Petersen and [Bjelke-]Petersen said, “Well, we’ll give this money to you but you’ve got to spend it on these campaigns.” They were all … seats that the Liberals held. Edwards was one and I don’t know who the others were, but Joh wanted to get rid of them.’

According to Hayden, Denis Murphy was to proceed to the offices of broking business Bain & Company to pick up the money. He was then handed a cheque.

‘[Dr Murphy] said, “Oh, no. I’m not going to accept a cheque. I want money in a … in a briefcase. I want new notes”,’ Hayden recalls. ‘And he told me he got all that money later in notes in the briefcase. And … he said, “I couldn’t take bloody [ALP State Secretary] Manfred Cross. He’s been a boy scout for too long. He won’t be part of this.”