Jacks and Jokers (29 page)

Set-up or not, somewhere along the line some of the mud hurled at Basil Hicks was bound to stick.

Circumstantial Evidence

William Anthony (Billy) Stokes went to trial for the murder of Tommy Hamilton on Monday 21 August 1978. Stokes pleaded ‘not guilty’ to charges of murder and deprivation of liberty.

The Crown’s case was that a man identified as Billy Stokes wore a mask and armed with two pistols entered a house in Atkinson Street, Hamilton, on 10 January 1975. He then held a gun to Hamilton’s head and forced him out of the house and into a blue car.

As the
Telegraph
reported: ‘The Crown case was that Stokes and Hamilton had been good friends until Stokes refused to pay a fine for Hamilton and some of his companions who had been convicted on a drug charge at Caboolture in 1973.

‘Justice Connolly said it was common ground that Hamilton bore a grudge against Stokes and he received numerous telephone calls from Hamilton and his companions mocking him, threatening and making obscene suggestions about Stokes’ estranged wife.

‘He said Hamilton had told his companions that he was trying to “crack the chicken”.’

Stokes, defending himself, said the Crown had not proved its case. He did not call witnesses or give evidence. He addressed the jury for a few minutes.

At 3.40 p.m. on Thursday the jury retired to consider its verdict but had not reached a decision by 9.15 p.m. The jury was locked up overnight.

The next day, at 10.15 a.m. their verdict was delivered – guilty.

Stokes, in the dock, shook his head and reportedly said: ‘How could you?’

Detectives at the back of the court room shook hands in congratulations. Stokes was jailed for life.

The case didn’t warrant a mention in the Commissioner’s diary. On that Friday he fielded a call from reporter Pat Lloyd of the
Telegraph
regarding a ‘civic parade’ for Tracey Wickham. (The 16-year-old Brisbane schoolgirl had just won gold medals in the 400-metre and 800-metre freestyle events at the Commonwealth Games being held in Edmonton, Canada.) Superintendent Tony Murphy called about meeting Police Minister Ron Camm. The Commissioner later addressed the Queensland Press Club on ‘Juveniles, Crime and Demonstrations’ at the Crest Hotel down by City Hall.

Meanwhile, Stokes was transferred to his cell.

Five years after the Whiskey Au Go Go tragedy and the arrest and conviction of John Andrew Stuart and James Finch, aspects of the story were still bobbing up in various court cases and missing persons investigations. So too the mysterious case of Barbara McCulkin and her missing daughters – it, like the supposed drug overdose of the prostitute and whistleblower Shirley Margaret Brifman in a small bedroom in a flat in Clayfield in March 1972, wouldn’t go away.

Barbara McCulkin had been married to petty gangster Billy ‘The Mouse’ McCulkin until late 1973 when he left the family home in Dorchester Street, Highgate Hill, and took up with another woman. Barbara and Billy had two daughters, Vicky Maree, almost thirteen, and Barbara Leanne, eleven.

Following the bombing of the Torino nightclub in the Valley and the Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub in March 1973 that claimed 15 lives – Barbara McCulkin heard innumerable stories about Billy and the involvement of other criminals, such as John Andrew Stuart and Tommy Hamilton of the Clockwork Orange Gang and a host of other suspects. Stuart had supposedly had an affair with Barbara McCulkin before the fire at the Whiskey.

Upset by her marriage breakdown, Barbara was making noises to blow the whistle on her husband and his associates. Then, in January 1974, she and her two daughters vanished from their Highgate Hill home without a trace.

In prison, Stokes would be reunited with John Andrew Stuart. Gossamer webs seemed to connect many people and crimes in the 1970s. There were many tiles in the mosaic. But what was the big picture?

In Queen Street

Fred Collins, a former Queensland police officer, was in Queen Street in the Brisbane CBD around this time when he bumped into an old friend – Jack Herbert.

Collins had known Herbert since the late 1950s, when Herbert sold him a motor vehicle. He also saw him socially at various functions over the years. Collins had left the force in 1971, having worked for five years with Terry Lewis in the Juvenile Aid Bureau.

Collins and Herbert had a chinwag, particularly about Herbert’s cancer scare. Collins had noticed Herbert had lost a lot of weight.

Herbert also went on about how the Southport Betting Case and its prohibitive legal fees had cleaned him out. He had had to sell his home. The whole thing had left him broke, he told Fred. ‘He then went on to say that he was then engaged in the pinball machine business and was placing them in clubs,’ Collins later attested in a statement. ‘He then told me he had been to the United States and had visited Las Vegas as a guest of the Mafia.

‘He said that the reason for this was that because he was an ex-policeman and said that he knew Terry Lewis, who was then the Commissioner of Police, they assumed that he would have the right connections in having the pinball machines placed in the most profitable places.

‘He said that this assumption about Terry Lewis was bullshit but he let them believe it and that he was in a position to assist them.’

It was a curious exchange. Could Herbert have been throwing around the Commissioner’s name to line his own pockets? But what of their friendship? The dinners? The family occasions?

Lewis says he was used by numerous people who he thought were loyal.

‘They could abuse me very easily,’ he reflects. ‘They could have said, “Oh I’m seeing Terry down at the Crest Hotel tonight” or whatever, and we’ll have a couple of drinks so you can see that we’re mates. I’ve no hesitation in saying Herbert in particular [did that] and maybe [Tony] Murphy and maybe [Glen] Hallahan, I don’t know, I don’t know if I can think of any others at the moment but there was probably others.’

As for the friendship between Lewis and Herbert, what was the truth?

The Zebra

In late August the likeable John Goleby, National Party member for Redlands, south-west of the city and in the heart of Brisbane’s so-called ‘salad bowl’, telephoned Basil Hicks.

Backbencher Goleby was a committed Christian and he had struck up a close friendship with Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen. It was Goleby who had put the Premier and Alec Jeppesen together just a couple of months earlier. Now he asked if Hicks would also confidentially meet with the Premier.

It was a curious period for Commissioner Terry Lewis and his top brass. Lewis had been diligently running the police force as per the Premier’s wishes. He was, for example, immediately acquiescent when it came to enforcing the anti-protest legislation, among other things. At the same time he had done everything in his power to hose out any remnants of the Whitrod era. He had demoted, moved or forced the resignation of Whitrod loyalists. He had dismantled many of Whitrod’s initiatives.

Yet less than two years into Lewis’s stewardship, Bjelke-Petersen was hearing stories. The Rat Pack was back.

Coupled with cage-rattler Kevin Hooper’s ceaseless denigration of the force and its implicit corruption on the floor of Parliament House, there was an odour about the police that resembled the days of Frank ‘Big Fella’ Bischof. Given that the corrupt Bischof had mentored Lewis, the Premier and some of his trusted National Party colleagues began making their own enquiries.

On Monday 4 September, Hicks joined Bjelke-Petersen and Goleby at the Zebra Motel on George Street in the heart of the city, opposite the government’s Executive Building.

Commissioner Lewis had no idea of the meeting. Earlier that day he had spoken at length on the telephone to Stan Wilcox, the Premier’s personal secretary, about a variety of matters including Bjelke-Petersen’s security, bail for demonstrators and the ‘transfer of Insp. Jeppesen’.

The Premier made it patently clear to Hicks that he was worried that Superintendent Tony Murphy was ‘going to get involved in prostitution again’, and it concerned him. It was mildly ironic that the Premier had to seek advice from one of ousted Commissioner Ray Whitrod’s most trusted lieutenants, rather than his own Police Commissioner.

Bjelke-Petersen said he planned to move Murphy out of the CIB. The Premier was tired of Lewis never allowing him to make any decisions when it came to the police department. Would Hicks replace Murphy and take over the running of the CIB?

Hicks agreed. He added that when news leaked out – which it inevitably would – ‘they’ would launch a monumental smear campaign against him. Hicks would be painted as ‘the greatest villain in the world’.

Did either man know that that campaign was already in train? Commissioner Lewis had been aware since April that there were suggestions that Hicks might replace Murphy.

Bjelke-Petersen asked Hicks to bring the necessary transfer papers to him in person. Hicks planned to do that on Thursday 7 September.

Incredibly, given the only participants were the Premier, Goleby and Hicks, the meeting in the Zebra Motel was leaked. Less than 48 hours after Hicks and the Premier talked, and the day before the transfer papers for Hicks were to be delivered to the Executive Building, Deputy Commissioner Vern MacDonald recorded in his diary for 6 September that he had been visited in his office by jailed prostitute Katherine James who made a further statement about having sex with Hicks.

Prison records confirmed that James indeed visited police headquarters on 6 September. There were no records for her alleged earlier visit to Deputy Commissioner MacDonald’s office in late April.

Why would James make a statement in the first week of September, when Commissioner Lewis had already received her statement about the Hicks scandal in April? Was Lewis lying in his diary or was MacDonald?

As promised, on the night of Thursday 7 September, Hicks dropped off the transfer papers to the Premier’s office.

On the Saturday night he received an anonymous phone call at home to be told ‘a job had been done’ on him, and on Monday, officer Noel Creevey informed Hicks that a statement from a prostitute called Katherine James, outlining a sexual relationship with him, had been shown to the Premier.

That Monday night, according to Lewis’s diary, the Commissioner met with Superintendent Tony Murphy to discuss ‘Juvenile Bureaux and B & E of Surveyor-General’s office’. They no doubt had a quiet word about Basil Hicks.

Lewis and company had worked swiftly and efficiently to snooker the Hound.

Hicks, in turn, had only one option. He needed to go to Brisbane Prison and meet face to face with the prostitute Katherine James.

A Delegation

Lorelle Saunders, like many other policewomen in the force, had been appalled at Tony Murphy and Brian Marlin’s so-called ‘Lesbian Investigation’.

She was also generally dismayed, since the exit of Whitrod, at the lack of opportunities for female police officers. Although she had just been transferred to a new and exciting unit – the Regional Task Force, set up to handle the protestors and civil libertarians who were pitting their war for basic human rights against Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen on the streets of Brisbane. It may have emboldened her.

Just as she did with the petition over the wearing of slacks, she went into action. Along with Constable Judy Newman, Sergeant Evelyn Hill and Senior Sergeant Bill Hannigan, Saunders took her delegation to meet with none other than Robert Sparkes, President of the Queensland National Party, and Charles Holm, the vice-president.

At the meeting, a wide range of issues were talked about, including the lesbian inquiry and the rights of female officers compared to their male counterparts. Thinking the meeting was confidential, Saunders also discussed aspects of police corruption she’d come across or been told about. She let the political heavyweights know that massage parlours in Fortitude Valley were being protected by the Licensing Branch in exchange for money. She mentioned the World by Night strip club (run by the Bellinos). And she dropped the name Jack Herbert in the mix.

The inspector in charge of the task force was Sergeant First Class Allan Lobegeiger. One of Saunders’ first duties was to drive Lobegeiger around, particularly on Friday and Saturday nights. When Lobegeiger was chosen to attend the superintendent’s course at the Australian Police College in Sydney, he was required to complete an assignment. He gave it to Saunders to do for him.

After her top-level delegation with the National Party brass, Lobegeiger gave her several warnings.

‘Lobegeiger often told me that the current police administration regarded me as “highly dangerous” due to my knowledge of certain corrupt officers and practices and believed that I was a member of a group of dissident officers who had sworn to bring about the downfall of the current administration,’ she later recalled.

‘He repeatedly asked me the identity of a group of dissident officers known in the press as the “Committee of Eight”. It was believed I was secretary to the “Committee of Eight”.

‘He also told me to stop attending political meetings and criticising the police administration.’

On 14 September 1978, Lewis noted in his diary: ‘Allen Callaghan phoned re 3 p/women having deputation to Mr. R. Sparkes.’ Four days later he telephoned his Police Minister, Ron Camm, to discuss the same matter.