Speaker 1: Before we begin. This podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence.
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Speaker 1: a U.
Speaker 2: I can call it Australia's Barbary Coast, and there are
Speaker 2: a few pirates there for sure. Others call it sidon
Speaker 2: the city and the summer that around too, if you
Speaker 2: can believe what you read about it. The inhabitants make
Speaker 2: their living out of baker our dope, witch grant prostitutions,
Speaker 2: stripping them selling each other so larly.
Speaker 3: It's King's Cross, Sydney in the nineteen sixties. Stuart John Reagan,
Speaker 3: the good Catholic boy from young in Country, South Wales
Speaker 3: and fresh from several stints in a boy's correctional home,
Speaker 3: is about to step out into hedonistic sin city. He's
Speaker 3: still a teenager. One of the nicknames hand written on
Speaker 3: his criminal record is the Boy, though he already has
Speaker 3: a police rap sheet that should belong to someone twice
Speaker 3: his age, not a lame record of shoplifting or petty scams,
Speaker 3: but a Sultan robbery. At no point is he ever
Speaker 3: a lowly crime boss's dog's body, the Errand kid, or
Speaker 3: Smoko Fetcher. By eighteen, he's a brothel enforcer in charge
Speaker 3: of a handful of working girls. The jury is out
Speaker 3: on whether his own mother, Claire, known to all as
Speaker 3: the Colonel, set him up with a few working girls
Speaker 3: to get his career started. From the outset, Reagan cements
Speaker 3: a reputation as a violent enforcer with a hair trigger temper,
Speaker 3: willing to eliminate anyone who gets in the way of
Speaker 3: his ambition to be the most powerful gangster, not just
Speaker 3: in Sydney but Australia.
Speaker 4: There is a.
Speaker 3: Famous police mugshot of Reagan that is still used today
Speaker 3: whenever his name pops up in the media. We have
Speaker 3: used it for this podcast. It has become iconic and
Speaker 3: shorthand for Australian gangster. Reagan is clean shaven. His thick,
Speaker 3: slightly oiled hair flicks up off his forehead like black
Speaker 3: cockatoo wings. His expression is sullen, his eyes in deep
Speaker 3: sockets that are shaded by his brows. Those eyes are
Speaker 3: seriously intense and offer menace. One glance at this photograph
Speaker 3: and you think several things mean, violent, angry, stubborn. His
Speaker 3: face carries a peculiar and chilling contradiction both movie star
Speaker 3: good looks and a sense that he could hurt or
Speaker 3: kill you at will. The picture was taken in June
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty two, when he was just sixteen years old.
Speaker 3: It's difficult to reconcile family photographs of Reagan as an
Speaker 3: innocuous little country schoolboy just a few years earlier, and
Speaker 3: this teenage embodiment of pure hatred. You can already see
Speaker 3: the grown up mobster he is to become. It's as
Speaker 3: if the gangster was fully formed inside that teenage body.
Speaker 3: It just needed to be let loose, and it was
Speaker 3: when he left the Gosford Boys Home and returned to
Speaker 3: the loving embrace of his mother, The Colonel in Darlinghurst.
Speaker 3: A nineteen sixty four documentary called The Glittering Mile from
Speaker 3: the then Special Project's division of the National Nine Network
Speaker 3: and narrated by David Lowe, was so successful in capturing
Speaker 3: the seediness of the Cross at the time that it
Speaker 3: made the headlines for being rude and lewde.
Speaker 5: And that's the way it is that King's cross.
Speaker 4: But this is the other face of the cross, not.
Speaker 5: So harmless, not so friendly, not so.
Speaker 6: Easy to forget.
Speaker 2: The night face that it alternately.
Speaker 5: Laughing and scowling, seeking comfort or for guest sensation or satisfaction.
Speaker 5: Only here the search for something, whatever it is, goes
Speaker 5: on all through the night.
Speaker 3: The key to Reagan, to his rage and violence, lies
Speaker 3: somewhere in those formative years between Cherrytown and when he
Speaker 3: was released from Mount Penang with its boomerang on the
Speaker 3: front gate, when he was let off the leash in
Speaker 3: Big bad Sydney. What happened during that period not only
Speaker 3: shaped his short life, but also planted the seed of
Speaker 3: his death. He was always going to die horribly, as
Speaker 3: his own mother predicted, he was never destined to make
Speaker 3: old bones. What he did with just over a decade
Speaker 3: of adult life, from when he departed Gosford until he
Speaker 3: ended up on the Morgue slab is still being discussed
Speaker 3: half a century later. This podcast started out as a
Speaker 3: clinical look at one of Australia's most reviled gangsters, but
Speaker 3: when the Reagan family came on board, the project took
Speaker 3: on another dimension and begged the question how does a
Speaker 3: family cope with the generational stain of a murderer whose
Speaker 3: death was celebrated by criminals and police alike. This is
Speaker 3: episode four, Real Wild Child, The Wild One by Johnny O'Keefe.
Speaker 3: It could have been written with Reagan in mind. As
Speaker 3: for Sidney's King's Cross, a short walk from the house
Speaker 3: the Colonel shared with her sister Thelma in Liverpool Street, Darlinghurst,
Speaker 3: it was the perfect petri dish for Reagan's hyperkinetic some
Speaker 3: would argue psychopathic ambitions. The cross, on a ridge between
Speaker 3: the cities well to do inner eastern suburbs like Paddington,
Speaker 3: Edgecliffe and Double and Rose Bays and the gritty wharves
Speaker 3: on the eastern edge of the CBD, had long been
Speaker 3: a magnet for artists and poets, for the sort of
Speaker 3: dope smoking, carefree beatniks whose idealism had drifted across the
Speaker 3: Pacific from the United States and found a home in
Speaker 3: the pubs and bars and coffee shops and blocks of
Speaker 3: flats that line Darlinghurst and Bayswater Roads, Victoria and McLay Streets.
Speaker 3: It was no stranger to violence this place. In the
Speaker 3: late nineteen twenties and early nineteen thirties, the infamous Razor Gangs,
Speaker 3: led by mobsters Kate Lee and Tilly Devine, slashed away
Speaker 3: at each other in the back streets and lanes. Their
Speaker 3: violent lives have been the basis for a virtual cottage
Speaker 3: industry of books, films and television shows like Channel Nines
Speaker 3: Underbelly franchise.
Speaker 7: Judge says, Kate Lee must be the worst woman in Sydney.
Speaker 8: No mention of Tilly Divine.
Speaker 4: What do you want to be the worst woman in Sydney?
Speaker 9: Do you?
Speaker 7: I want to be recognized for what I am?
Speaker 3: That era spawned another criminal monster. His name was chow Hays,
Speaker 3: an utterly ruthless thief, gunman and murderer, and he has
Speaker 3: been credited as Australia's first true gangster. He came into
Speaker 3: his own during the brutal Razor Wars in Sydney in
Speaker 3: the nineteen twenties. He was jailed for murder in the
Speaker 3: nineteen fifties and was fighting and stealing into old age.
Speaker 3: Look at his police mugshot from the nineteen twenties and
Speaker 3: Reagan's from the nineteen sixties, and you'd swear they were
Speaker 3: father and son and they had something else in common.
Speaker 3: This is from journalist Adam Shan's television series is Suburban Gangsters.
Speaker 10: Those gangs were the breeding ground for the criminals. And
Speaker 10: in fact what happened to Hayes was he found himself
Speaker 10: at age fourteen, after half a husand convictions for shoplifting,
Speaker 10: being sent to Gosford Boy's Home, where he met at
Speaker 10: age fourteen and a half murderers. It was the university
Speaker 10: for criminals, and he learned everything by the time he
Speaker 10: was seventeen about being a criminal.
Speaker 3: By the time young Reagan was finding his way in
Speaker 3: the underworld in the early nineteen sixties, the Cross, that
Speaker 3: densely populated suburban patch of artists and freethinkers and troubled
Speaker 3: scribes was giving way to something else. Vice drugs and
Speaker 3: illegal gambling and prostitution found a receptive host in King's Cross,
Speaker 3: and then the virus, along with its enforces, simply took over.
Speaker 2: It's a no man's land worth something for everyone he
Speaker 2: There's no boundaries to its name and no limits to
Speaker 2: its way of light. In fact, the Cross is not
Speaker 2: a place but a state of might.
Speaker 3: Darlinghurst Road that ventricle from William Street to the El
Speaker 3: Alaman fountain and its many narrow offshoots was the beating
Speaker 3: heart of the Cross, and with its flashing neons and
Speaker 3: dark enclaves, was a landscape made for a gangster like
Speaker 3: Stuart John Reagan. Reagan embodied its state of mind, no boundaries,
Speaker 3: no limits to its way of life. If Reagan hadn't,
Speaker 3: by chance, been born into that time and place, it
Speaker 3: would have created him anyhow. With its rich night life,
Speaker 3: hatering for everything from cabaret to cocaine, supper clubs to prostitution,
Speaker 3: it attracted suburban punters and overseas visitors, and the men
Speaker 3: and women who would prey on them and their cash.
Speaker 2: From its hut, you can go about half a mile
Speaker 2: in any direction before you run out of the lights
Speaker 2: into the darkness of the outside world. A half mile
Speaker 2: there and back, a glittering mile of dreams, delusions, hopes
Speaker 2: and headaches.
Speaker 3: A glittering mile of dreams. And no other gangster in
Speaker 3: Sydney at the time had bigger dreams than Reagan. The
Speaker 3: famous brothel Madame Shirley Brifman, who arrived in Sydney from
Speaker 3: Brisbane in the early nineteen sixties and built a hugely
Speaker 3: lucrative Empire had several run ins with Reagan. The run
Speaker 3: ins is a bit mild. On one occasion, he actually
Speaker 3: tried to murder her. We'll hear more about Shirley in
Speaker 3: future episodes of this podcast, but Briffman said in a
Speaker 3: police interview that Reagan was not happy just trying to
Speaker 3: control wece in Sydney. He wanted to run it right
Speaker 3: across the country. He had a brain for business, both
Speaker 3: legitimate and illegal. He would go on to orchestrate one
Speaker 3: of the most successful scams in Australian history, but not yet.
Speaker 3: As a teen thug, he traded in violence and fear.
Speaker 3: Stories of his psychotic behavior, however they may have changed
Speaker 3: or been exaggerated over time, are still legion.
Speaker 11: I remember a story about Reagan being in King's Cross
Speaker 11: with a friend and he'd come across what he'd had
Speaker 11: a disagreement with, bashed himtok pulp and as the guy
Speaker 11: lay on the ground mortally wounded, Reagan turned to his
Speaker 11: friend who was smoking a cigarette, made him give him
Speaker 11: the cigarette, and he stubbed that lit cigarette in the
Speaker 11: person's eye. That's how vicious Reagan was.
Speaker 3: That's veteran Sidney crime reporter Norm Lipsyn. In journalist and
Speaker 3: author Adam Shann's television documentary series Suburban Gangsters.
Speaker 11: John Reagan built up a stable of prostitutes. He made
Speaker 11: quite a lot of money out of that arm, and
Speaker 11: he controlled them through fear and violence. If he found
Speaker 11: out that there was a customer who was misbehaving or
Speaker 11: wasn't paying, they'd be beaten within an inch of their lives.
Speaker 3: And this is the late New South Wales detective Roger
Speaker 3: Rogerson who would die in jail as a convicted murderer,
Speaker 3: also appearing on the Shan documentary.
Speaker 9: He was a pretty solid luck.
Speaker 12: He was pretty hard and you could not believe how
Speaker 12: strong as basket was. If he grabbed you, he had you,
Speaker 12: you couldn't get away.
Speaker 3: I spoke at length to both Norm Lipson and Roger
Speaker 3: Rogerson before the latter was arrested, charged and ultimately convicted
Speaker 3: of murder several years ago about Reagan. As a young
Speaker 3: reporter in Sydney, I looked up to Norm. It was
Speaker 3: the sort of older crime journalist who had a million
Speaker 3: contacts and always seemed to get the best scoops. It's
Speaker 3: a measure of the power of the Reagan name. Still
Speaker 3: that Norm expressed some concerns about offering his thoughts on
Speaker 3: the dead gangster for this podcast and whether there might
Speaker 3: be repercussions from the Reagan family.
Speaker 13: Well, I know what I'm coming after me. I've still
Speaker 13: got a lot of hard friends. But that's not the point,
Speaker 13: you know.
Speaker 3: In a career filled with underworld characters, he clearly remembers Reagan.
Speaker 13: I grew up in the Southeastern suburbs and Reagan used
Speaker 13: to knock around the Bondai Junction. I knew people who
Speaker 13: knew him, and they used to tell me stories about him,
Speaker 13: horrendous stories. And I was in their company and met
Speaker 13: him a couple of times. He got the nickname the Magician,
Speaker 13: and it wasn't because of his wizardry. It was because
Speaker 13: he made people disappear. He used to beat people up
Speaker 13: for nothing. A friend of mine who knew him, tell
Speaker 13: me a story about how he was upset with somebody,
Speaker 13: a guy once, and he was so upset that he
Speaker 13: went and bashed this guy, put a dog collar and
Speaker 13: a chain around his neck and made him walk to
Speaker 13: a pub on all fours and sat him in the
Speaker 13: pub with this dog collar and chain like a dog.
Speaker 13: To humiliating things like that this is a fellow who
Speaker 13: used to torture and kill animals.
Speaker 3: I tell you a funny thing. When he was a kid,
Speaker 3: he was an only child in young in country New
Speaker 3: South Wales. We've spoken to people who witnessed this. His
Speaker 3: mother chained him to a post in the backyard and
Speaker 3: she would flog him with a stock whip.
Speaker 13: Oh no, wonder he turned out the way he did.
Speaker 13: But he embraced violence. He embraced it. He loved it.
Speaker 13: As I say, he embraced violence and random violence. It
Speaker 13: didn't matter. He just loved hurting people.
Speaker 3: Norm agreed that Reagan had big plans for his future.
Speaker 3: I've looked at the record of interview that Briffman did
Speaker 3: in seventy one when she blew the whistle, and she
Speaker 3: said that Reagan wanted to be not just the boss
Speaker 3: of New South Wales but all of Australia. He seemed
Speaker 3: to be very ambitious.
Speaker 13: I think he just wanted to be revered and feared
Speaker 13: by all, and that's probably what led to his eventual demise.
Speaker 13: This guy just wanted to take over everything, to be
Speaker 13: feared by everybody and bowed to and revered, And a
Speaker 13: lot of people suffered before he.
Speaker 3: As for Rogerson, he had no doubt that Reagan was
Speaker 3: an absolute psychopath. Perhaps it took one to know one.
Speaker 3: Rogerson argued that there were three uncontrollable criminal maniacs on
Speaker 3: the loose during the heyday of his policing career in
Speaker 3: the nineteen sixties and seventies. The first was Brisbane born
Speaker 3: Raymond Ducky O'Connor, shot dead in a Sydney nightclub in
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty seven, supposedly by the mob boss Lenny Mister
Speaker 3: Big McPherson standover man. Ducky had a formidable reputation for
Speaker 3: being a loose cannon. Police described him as mad and crazy.
Speaker 3: The second was another Brisbane criminal, John Andrew Stewart. Stuart,
Speaker 3: a graduate of yet another notorious boy's home, Westbrook outside
Speaker 3: to Woomba, west of Brisbane, was also considered by fellow
Speaker 3: criminals and detectives alike, a complete psychopath who could and
Speaker 3: did kill at will. Incredibly, Stuart's own short and violent
Speaker 3: life became significantly entangled with Reagan's, and you'll hear more
Speaker 3: about that soon. The third on Rogerson's lunatic list was,
Speaker 3: of course Reagan. The type of criminals so unhinged, that
Speaker 3: they became dangerous not just to the public and police,
Speaker 3: but the underworld itself.
Speaker 12: Lenny McPherson said me, watch Matt, he said Roger, he said,
Speaker 12: you can control a bad man, but you can't control
Speaker 12: a madn forgotten.
Speaker 4: That's a great quotion in it.
Speaker 12: That came from Annie McPherson, and I've created a few times,
Speaker 12: you know, because that's exactly what he said. And it's
Speaker 12: fucking right, because these blokes are just as dangerous to
Speaker 12: the criminalal use who is that terminology? They are more
Speaker 12: sometimes dangerous to them than to the public.
Speaker 3: And what a middle year it was when Reagan was
Speaker 3: trying to make his way to the top. If Australia
Speaker 3: ever had a Gilded Age of gangsters, then this was it.
Speaker 3: Michael Duffy is a publisher, broadcaster and the author of
Speaker 3: several crime novels, as well as two classic works of
Speaker 3: historical non fiction that lay bare the Reagan era in
Speaker 3: Sydney World War Noir and Sydney Noir The Golden Years,
Speaker 3: both of which he co authored with Nick Horden. Michael
Speaker 3: explained that there were a number of reasons why Reagan
Speaker 3: flourished as a mobster, in the nineteen sixties and into
Speaker 3: the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 4: Was that policing was much harder.
Speaker 14: Back then, it was much harder to lock people up
Speaker 14: legally anyway, because police didn't have the resources they have now.
Speaker 14: If you think about things like modern forensics, DNA, CCTV,
Speaker 14: phone tapping, none of this was available. I mean there
Speaker 14: were technological there were scientific limitations, and so really the
Speaker 14: most powerful weapon in a CoP's armory when he was
Speaker 14: usually he was trying to solve a crime was an informer.
Speaker 14: Because the crooks would blab about what they'd done. The
Speaker 14: informer would come and tell the detective, and the detective
Speaker 14: would know because he knew he had a reliable informer,
Speaker 14: he'd know who did the crime, but he couldn't really
Speaker 14: prove it.
Speaker 4: Really, even if you're an honest cop. Honest maybe in
Speaker 4: inverted commerce, in order to get convictions, they had the
Speaker 4: load and they had the verbal, and they loaded evidence
Speaker 4: onto the criminal they knew had done the crime, or
Speaker 4: they verbal them they basically signed made them. You know, well, they.
Speaker 14: Drew up their own false confessions for these crooks because
Speaker 14: it was the only way of locking them up.
Speaker 3: The police verbal was the bane of being a criminal.
Speaker 3: Reagan went on about the verbal in his secretly recorded
Speaker 3: phone calls with other criminals.
Speaker 15: Interesting, you're laying in the third flight, where can they picture?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 9: Right, Actually, are you a riad of us? Had they
Speaker 9: led you?
Speaker 3: Duffy went on.
Speaker 14: So if even honest cops for doing this thing called
Speaker 14: noble cause corruption, you can imagine the opportunities that then
Speaker 14: opened for dishonest cops to come along and yeah, just
Speaker 14: start doing whatever they like and basically start letting off
Speaker 14: the crooks they wanted to let off, and loading up
Speaker 14: the competition of those crooks the other crooks, and that
Speaker 14: led to these alliances between crooks and cops, such as
Speaker 14: the famous one between Lenny McPherson and Ray Kelly, who
Speaker 14: was the primary leading cop in the early sixties, which
Speaker 14: did so much to contribute to corruption. So these things
Speaker 14: are really important.
Speaker 3: According to Duffy. Reagan also landed in Sydney's Inner East
Speaker 3: at a time of social change. From the mid nineteen fifties,
Speaker 3: suburban clubs in New South Wales were allowed to feature
Speaker 3: poker machines, effectively transforming them into mini casinos. The money
Speaker 3: flooded in. With that cash injection, the clubs flew in
Speaker 3: famous and famously expensive entertainers from around the world. You
Speaker 3: could see great singers or lavish musicals in your local clubs.
Speaker 3: King's Cross lost its appeal.
Speaker 14: And so the Cross basically repurposed itself, and throughout the
Speaker 14: sixties and seventies it gradually turned from a bohemian entertainment precinct,
Speaker 14: you know, into a sleezy place selling sex and later
Speaker 14: on drugs, and that sort of led to the rise
Speaker 14: of the Cross as a focal point for crime, especially towards.
Speaker 4: The end of the sixties into the seventies.
Speaker 3: As for the criminal top dogs who prowled this new
Speaker 3: sleezy King's Cross as Reagan arrived on the scene, Michael
Speaker 3: Duffy says one particular mob boss cast a huge shadow
Speaker 3: over this era, and yet very few people have heard.
Speaker 4: Of him, Paddles Anderson.
Speaker 14: He had very big feet, or some people say I
Speaker 14: had big hands, but I think it was big feet.
Speaker 4: So Paddles was a somewhat shadowy figure.
Speaker 14: But from what we've been able to work out, he
Speaker 14: was by far the most influential person, probably to the
Speaker 14: sixties and into the seventies. And it's a mark of
Speaker 14: his skill that he remains so little know. Abe Saffron
Speaker 14: is a more interesting figure because I mean he was
Speaker 14: almost like a real estate figure slash would be entertainment
Speaker 14: entrepreneur who just happened, who just had to get engaged
Speaker 14: in a bit of crime, because you had to if
Speaker 14: you're in that line of business.
Speaker 3: But yeah, there's a fascinating photo I have of Reagan
Speaker 3: cutting a cake at Checkers for his twenty first birthday,
Speaker 3: which would have been September nineteen sixty six, and sitting
Speaker 3: opposite him at the table is Frederick Paddles Anderson.
Speaker 4: That's a good photo to have, But it's.
Speaker 3: Interesting how a twenty one year old just turned twenty
Speaker 3: one could have this huge crime figure at his little
Speaker 3: birthday party at Checkers.
Speaker 4: It is extraordinary. It suggests that who is very well regarded,
Speaker 4: doesn't it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, there's discussions in the family about Uncle
Speaker 3: Paddles and they just seem to have been a relationship
Speaker 3: there that I can't get to the origins of.
Speaker 14: But no, and we've been it's been very difficult to
Speaker 14: find out anything at all about Anderson. I mean, he
Speaker 14: spent some time in Melbourne, he came back. He was powerful.
Speaker 14: But it's extraordinary how secretive he was. If you talk
Speaker 14: to older crooks Carbonat and people like that, a lot
Speaker 14: of them talk about Anderson has been this very influential figure.
Speaker 3: Would that suggest that he's one of the Master's apprentices
Speaker 3: in that Anderson has in a way taking him under
Speaker 3: his wing in a sense. Or is it that's stretching
Speaker 3: too far.
Speaker 14: I think that sounds likely because there had to be
Speaker 14: an implicit agreement amongst all these powerful crooks that they
Speaker 14: each had their particular area, and if Rogan was, you know,
Speaker 14: it was making ways and everything, there's no way they
Speaker 14: would have let him do that without trying to draw
Speaker 14: him in, as it were. I'm not aware of any
Speaker 14: you know, any crooks that are operating at a high
Speaker 14: level that were completely independent. I think at some point
Speaker 14: they all had to form a sort of working agreement.
Speaker 3: By the time Stuart John Reagan was released from Mount
Speaker 3: Penang around nineteen sixty three, the Swinging sixties were well underway.
Speaker 3: It was during this time that he secured what may
Speaker 3: have been the one legitimate job in his short life,
Speaker 3: as a bouncer at the fabled Whisky You Go Go
Speaker 3: nightclub in William Street near King's Cross's Magic Mile of
Speaker 3: strip clubs and prostitution dens. The Whisky was managed by
Speaker 3: a man called Ivor Balmaine, the father of Revel Balmain,
Speaker 3: a sex worker who famously vanished and was presumed murdered
Speaker 3: in Sydney in the nineteen nineties. Back in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 3: Balmain trumpeted the whisky as a beacon of respectability amidst
Speaker 3: the sodoms and gomorahs of the Cross. The club was
Speaker 3: popular with American soldiers on R and R from Vietnam,
Speaker 3: and Balmaine had some very firm ideas about the sort
Speaker 3: of women he expected to see in his club. This
Speaker 3: is from an ABC four Corners report in nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 6: We like the family type of girl, a night type
Speaker 6: of girl. You know, I don't particularly like these type
Speaker 6: of girls that people say hang around the Cross. That's
Speaker 6: a much used term, of course, But a girl that
Speaker 6: I think I'd be glad to talk to, to screen
Speaker 6: them at all in a way. Yes, we have two permissionaires.
Speaker 6: We have two men of the rope down just before
Speaker 6: they're going to the dining room. Then myself, we like
Speaker 6: to see a girl that looks pretty wide open, feminine, type.
Speaker 6: Nice hair, hasn't got that vindictive block on our face?
Speaker 2: How do you actually measure them? What sort of yardstick
Speaker 2: do you use for a respective ODB?
Speaker 6: I don't like these. Sweat has very heavy tan bag makeup.
Speaker 6: His atrocious looking glass. I like to see a nice
Speaker 6: way out girl, a good little swinger. It's neatly dressed.
Speaker 6: I suppose that's about the only thing I'd looked for. Really.
Speaker 3: Reagan was one of those men down on the rope
Speaker 3: near the front doors, as iver Belmaine put it, and
Speaker 3: it was while working at the Whiskey that he met
Speaker 3: perhaps his one and only true love, Margaret. The first
Speaker 3: time he laid eyes on her, he was smitten. She would,
Speaker 3: he knew, immediately become the gangster's wife. Margaret Reagan's wife
Speaker 3: and mother to three of his children. Margaret, the suburban
Speaker 3: Sydney girl whose life was changed one night when she
Speaker 3: made the innocent decision to go dancing with a girlfriend
Speaker 3: at a nightclub, the Whiskey, a go go in King's
Speaker 3: Cross on Friday night. Margaret, daughter to respectable parents, who
Speaker 3: went into that famous club for a bit of fun
Speaker 3: and stumbled almost literally into the arms of Stuart John Reagan.
Speaker 3: Marg has never talked in public about her relationship with Reagan.
Speaker 3: She has never said a word outside the family about
Speaker 3: being the gangster's wife until now. I sat down with
Speaker 3: Marg for the first time out at Kelly's sheep farm
Speaker 3: in Young Deep in Reagan Country. Kel used the opportunity
Speaker 3: of Marg's visit to bring the entire clan together, her
Speaker 3: brother Jeff, some of her children, Daniel and Carli, and
Speaker 3: it had been quite a journey for Marg, who lives
Speaker 3: on the New South Wales central coast. She hadn't been
Speaker 3: too young in years. As we settled down to talk
Speaker 3: to Marg in the farmhouse kitchen, Kell and the family
Speaker 3: started drifting out of the room to give us privacy,
Speaker 3: but Marg extended her arms and called everyone back in.
Speaker 3: She wanted her family around her when she told her story.
Speaker 16: I don't want to keep repeating myself for everybody. It's
Speaker 16: better to sell everyone here. Okay, that's I want that, Okay,
Speaker 16: So what do you want to know now?
Speaker 3: Marg grew up in a modest house in Arncliffe, southwest
Speaker 3: of the Sydney CBD and not far from the airport
Speaker 3: at Mascot.
Speaker 16: I was seventeenth and I met this girl that was
Speaker 16: a hairdresser, and she asked me, Mark, do you want
Speaker 16: to come to the city, And I can't tell my father,
Speaker 16: is how am I going to do? I lied, Indeed,
Speaker 16: I've never been out of ever in the King's cross
Speaker 16: Wing Street, nothing in my whole life, never been anywhere.
Speaker 16: I was the shyest person. You wouldn't think that now.
Speaker 16: I came from an ordinary suburban house that was made
Speaker 16: of fiber and stinkham hot in summer, cold in winter.
Speaker 16: That's how we leave. So anyhow, we decided we go
Speaker 16: to the city. So we went to the city in
Speaker 16: the train. So we trotted off to the city and
Speaker 16: then we decided to go to a place called Whiskey
Speaker 16: a Go. So Whiskey a Go Go in those days
Speaker 16: was like a disco. So we get to the front
Speaker 16: door and there's a glass there like this. As you
Speaker 16: go down the steps, it was like steps.
Speaker 9: Was he like a bouncer or a doormant or a doormanus?
Speaker 16: I was very naive, but then very nive. And as
Speaker 16: I'm going to go, he's come over to me and
Speaker 16: he's gone.
Speaker 9: What's your name?
Speaker 16: And I didn't need to and he's gone, I'm coming
Speaker 16: down I'm going to have a dance with you later.
Speaker 9: Oh my god, this is not this is you. Who
Speaker 9: is this guy? What did he look like to you? Handsome? Handsome,
Speaker 9: very strong looking.
Speaker 16: Man's sort of stubby but strong build, beautiful eyes, very
Speaker 16: good looking man.
Speaker 9: I never I wasn't. I wouldn't know.
Speaker 16: Like if you said to me, is that we're good looking?
Speaker 16: Man who knows says, I wouldn't know what you were
Speaker 16: talking about. Okay, So I'm gone to my friend. Oh
Speaker 16: what's that all about?
Speaker 9: Sort of thing?
Speaker 16: So how goes downstairs, and about half an hour to
Speaker 16: an hour lady came over again. And because he'd been
Speaker 16: working there, I didn't think he was supposed to be
Speaker 16: taking the patrons and dancing on the floor. Okay, well,
Speaker 16: when I think about it now, he comes up to
Speaker 16: me again and he leans over and he says to me,
Speaker 16: I want to see you again.
Speaker 9: I'm going to marry you.
Speaker 17: This is croop.
Speaker 9: I think, what creep, But I've never experienced that. I'm
Speaker 9: going to marry you. Yep.
Speaker 16: And I said to my friend that man just said,
Speaker 16: and that man I didn't know who was. So we
Speaker 16: stayed there for a little while and we left and
Speaker 16: he asked me for the phone number, and I didn't
Speaker 16: give it to him. But if I remember back then,
Speaker 16: I think my friend ain't give him the phone number.
Speaker 16: So weeks went past, weeks went past.
Speaker 9: The ponies.
Speaker 16: And it was his pursy and he said I want
Speaker 16: to see you with you and that's how it.
Speaker 8: Also, the naive young Mark was nervous, not.
Speaker 3: About the type of person reading was. She knew nothing
Speaker 3: about him, just his brazenness and how her family might
Speaker 3: react to this nightclub bouncer suddenly on the scene. On
Speaker 3: the surface, it all appeared entirely respectful. On their first day,
Speaker 3: a young man called John was coming to take Margu
Speaker 3: for a pleasant sunday. What could possibly go wrong?
Speaker 16: And he used to travel from then Paddington Well down
Speaker 16: to unc look by train, knock on the door and
Speaker 16: say on John, eaton lot and drink taking or saying
Speaker 16: that's okay. He would say, mother, that's okay. Is it's
Speaker 16: a Sunday today, and so you make sure she's home
Speaker 16: by five o'clock. That's what's the rules?
Speaker 9: Did you stick by the rule?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 16: From the train where we traveled to Paddington. At that
Speaker 16: time he didn't have a car, so he used to
Speaker 16: come out and get me and we're traveling and we'll
Speaker 16: go to Paddington.
Speaker 3: Marg ended up outside the house in Liverpool Street where
Speaker 3: Reagan lived with his mother. Marg wasn't invited inside on
Speaker 3: that first date or many to follow, but she could
Speaker 3: hear from inside the house the ravings of the woman
Speaker 3: she would come to know as Reagan's mother. It was
Speaker 3: the first time marg had encountered the cyclone that was the.
Speaker 16: Colonel Haddington had this tree out the front of this house,
Speaker 16: and he would say, so it won't bear my mother.
Speaker 16: I'm just going in to change my clothes my mother,
Speaker 16: and that's here. And I could hear this woman in
Speaker 16: the house saying, you don't bring any ass lucks in
Speaker 16: the ear or whatever. You know, you know, she's not
Speaker 16: allowed to and blah.
Speaker 18: Blah blah blah.
Speaker 16: I was like, what's going on? And she would say
Speaker 16: that every time that I would wait out the front.
Speaker 16: She did it to me about four or five times,
Speaker 16: and to one day I says.
Speaker 9: I don't want to go in your bloody house. It's
Speaker 9: that day on I was allowed in.
Speaker 3: Now, what young Margaret didn't know was that, despite her
Speaker 3: suitor's youth, he already had a burgeoning criminal record. On
Speaker 3: January twenty four, nineteen sixty three, aged just seventeen, Reagan
Speaker 3: was charged with living on the earnings of prostitution charges dismissed.
Speaker 3: March twenty two, nineteen sixty three. Charged with assault charge
Speaker 3: dismissed April five, nineteen sixty three. Charged with selling liquor
Speaker 3: without a license, fined thirty pounds. April twenty six, nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty three, Charged with the use of indecent language, fined
Speaker 3: three pounds. July three, nineteen sixty three, charged with a
Speaker 3: salt occasion in actual bodily harm. Here he is committed
Speaker 3: to an institution, which may have been his first stint
Speaker 3: in the Gostford Boys Home. Then in nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 3: the year he met Marg, he was charged on April
Speaker 3: twenty six with speeding in a vehicle, driving without his
Speaker 3: ELM plates, and driving unaccompanied by a licensed driver. He
Speaker 3: was fined a total of thirty four pounds. This might
Speaker 3: explain why he had to resort to public transport when
Speaker 3: he was first dating Mark. In July nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 3: he was also charged with a salt but again the
Speaker 3: case was dismissed. Meanwhile, he pursued the attractive brunette from Arncliff.
Speaker 18: So in the early days of the courtship, what things
Speaker 18: did you do?
Speaker 9: Let's go swim in?
Speaker 16: Where'd you go swimming at Bondi Because of the time
Speaker 16: that we had for me leaving my home to come
Speaker 16: into the city to go so's we didn't have much time.
Speaker 16: So it's just more like hanging around time because he
Speaker 16: really didn't do nothing. It was either him going in
Speaker 16: and changes go. Once I was allowed in that house,
Speaker 16: perhaps soul would have something to eat, and that's when
Speaker 16: I met Thelma and I met his mother. The house
Speaker 16: it was a very dark house because it was something detached,
Speaker 16: true story. It was filled with older type dark furniture.
Speaker 16: Had a kitchen with a round table that you know
Speaker 16: in the olden days, and my mother used to do that.
Speaker 9: She used to meet the.
Speaker 16: Sauce in the paper and salt and sometimes a bother
Speaker 16: on the middle of the table, and the conuments in
Speaker 16: the middle of the table would stay there all day
Speaker 16: with a table cross underneath it. Very small, but I
Speaker 16: had an upstairs, so John's room was upstairs.
Speaker 9: I can't at the front. At the front front.
Speaker 16: Very rarely I was allowed to go upstairs to that room,
Speaker 16: not with erdie, not that I did. I never went
Speaker 16: there upstairs to that room.
Speaker 3: It was at this time that marg finally met the
Speaker 3: Colonel Regan's domineering and formidable mother face to face. From
Speaker 3: the outset, their relationship did not bode well for the future.
Speaker 9: In the matter.
Speaker 18: What did she look like sound like?
Speaker 9: Can you describe her? Angry? Always angry?
Speaker 18: Was she a big, big, white, small woman.
Speaker 16: She's a German Irish background and very solid book, very strong,
Speaker 16: rookly except woman. So she was a very angry woman,
Speaker 16: screaming all the time, just screaming at him. What are
Speaker 16: you doing John or whatever? You're not screaming all the time.
Speaker 16: But her sister, Delma. It was just like a little
Speaker 16: person in the corner that had no sale or nothing
Speaker 16: in even though that was her house. The control was
Speaker 16: not only to her son, and she controlled John for
Speaker 16: many many years. I don't think it was the biggest
Speaker 16: gangster or whatever she had the control. John was still
Speaker 16: controlled by his mother. Even at the latest station in
Speaker 16: his life. He would say, they're pay any attention to him,
Speaker 16: It's okay.
Speaker 4: It's all right.
Speaker 16: But she could be quite hurtful. I think she kept
Speaker 16: for him, but carrying and John and Yer inst too
Speaker 16: different closes.
Speaker 4: And bit.
Speaker 3: Reagan in many ways was still just a kid, and
Speaker 3: Margaret saw that side to him very early in their relationship.
Speaker 16: If I wasn't allowed out on a Sunday and my
Speaker 16: father saying not going next men and derby a ambulance
Speaker 16: at the front of the house. My father I never
Speaker 16: ran an ambulance or he would bring a fibrigade there,
Speaker 16: and all the time he was up in what they
Speaker 16: call the red phone boxes. Then I knew that he
Speaker 16: was there, but I couldn't say anything. I didn't tell
Speaker 16: my parents it's John doing this because I wasn't allowed out.
Speaker 16: So he used to be up there and he ring
Speaker 16: the ambulance, he ring the fibrigade, he ring.
Speaker 9: The police. I think he didn't want to. My father
Speaker 9: was like pulling his hair out. What's going on here?
Speaker 9: He better not be that boy that you're hanging around with.
Speaker 4: It.
Speaker 9: Better not be that guy well with a big him,
Speaker 9: you know what I mean. They were fun times. It
Speaker 9: was funny.
Speaker 16: It was funny, and he'd gone, you tell your father
Speaker 16: you better be out out next week. Well, I'll be
Speaker 16: doing the same thing. Again, he had that little bit
Speaker 16: of devil went in him. That was funny and interesting.
Speaker 9: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: To Mark.
Speaker 3: He was an interesting, devilish young man who had not
Speaker 3: one but two jobs when him he was employed, obviously
Speaker 3: had the whiskey he goes.
Speaker 18: Did he ever talk about his work or no?
Speaker 9: He also had a job as a toe jack.
Speaker 18: You never heard that.
Speaker 9: So he would have been all around.
Speaker 16: Those streets in Paddington, across the industreet or whatever.
Speaker 9: He would have been all around me.
Speaker 3: I didn't meet the monster, Mark says of the young Reagan,
Speaker 3: but the monster was evolving slowly but surely. In late
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty five, Reagan was charged with rape. Police alleged
Speaker 3: that Reagan nineteen, a laborer of Victoria Street, King's Cross,
Speaker 3: along with two accomplices, had raped a nurse in the
Speaker 3: Cross Earlier that year. Police said Reagan and his two
Speaker 3: offsiders had let to scar the seventeen year old woman's
Speaker 3: male companion with a hot poker if she didn't submit
Speaker 3: to intercourse. During a court hearing leading up to the
Speaker 3: rape trial, Reagan complained that he'd been bashed by police.
Speaker 3: I'm not a criminal, he told the court. I was
Speaker 3: asked to go in a lineup. When I refused, I
Speaker 3: was bashed by five policemen. I didn't do anything to anybody.
Speaker 3: Reagan was ultimately acquitted of the rape charge, but he
Speaker 3: was keeping some dangerous company in the mid nineteen sixties.
Speaker 3: You might remember corrupt cop Roger Rogerson talking about the
Speaker 3: handful of certified psychopathic criminals that were around in his day.
Speaker 3: Reagan was one. The others were John Andrews Stewart and
Speaker 3: Raymond Ducky O'Connor. Stewart and Ducky were both young Brisbane
Speaker 3: crooks down in Sydney trying to cut it with the
Speaker 3: big boys. Stuart, when he wasn't behind bars, was inseparable
Speaker 3: from his good mate and fellow reformatory boy James Finch.
Speaker 3: Ducky O'Connor would not be around for long. He was
Speaker 3: shot dead in a nightclub in Sydney in nineteen sixty
Speaker 3: seven in a brazen and totally insane attempt to assassinate
Speaker 3: underworld heavy Lenny Mister Big McPherson. Ducky was shot in
Speaker 3: the head. McPherson didn't cop a scratch. The obituaries weren't
Speaker 3: kind to Ducky. Crime reporter Bill Archigord wrote in The
Speaker 3: Sun it was as if a mad dog had been
Speaker 3: put down in the interests of public safety. He was mean,
Speaker 3: vicious and crazy, a standover who would sooner threaten you
Speaker 3: with death than say Giday. John Andrew Stewart and Stuart John.
Speaker 3: Reagan's lives would, however, become messily and almost fatally entangled.
Speaker 3: Stuart was also mean, vicious and crazy, committed to Callen
Speaker 3: Park Asylum in Sydney after bashing a police officer unconscious.
Speaker 3: The newspapers reported that Stuart had been certified as insane
Speaker 3: during one of his stints in Longbay Jail. He was,
Speaker 3: to put it mildly, an habitual offender. Stuart and Ducky O'Connor,
Speaker 3: before Ducky had his head partially blown off by McPherson,
Speaker 3: were charged with raping two prostitutes in the mid nineteen sixties.
Speaker 3: When the matter came to court, Reagan threatened one of
Speaker 3: the women with death if she appeared as a witness.
Speaker 3: She didn't. Here's an assessment of Stuart from people who
Speaker 3: knew him from the ABC podcast Danny's Inferno by journalist
Speaker 3: Frank Robson.
Speaker 4: John was feared he was very fair mane. He's such
Speaker 4: a strong, tough bugger and he.
Speaker 9: Could fight, you know.
Speaker 2: No, he was a pretty intractable prisoner as well.
Speaker 10: You know, he was a hard case inside and everyone
Speaker 10: feed him inside, including the prison officers, just they couldn't
Speaker 10: manage him.
Speaker 4: He was just too handy, you know.
Speaker 3: People like Stuart were Reagan's associates. As he was pranking Margaret,
Speaker 3: circling her as his future wife and clearly steering her
Speaker 3: clear off his subterranean gangster life. He was also playing
Speaker 3: the field when it came to women, carousing his way
Speaker 3: through the cross with thieves and working girls and promising
Speaker 3: them the world. In the course of my investigations down
Speaker 3: the years, I was lucky enough to become friends with
Speaker 3: a woman called Dorothy Edith Knight. Dorothy was a self
Speaker 3: confessed knockabout and did time in jail for fraud before
Speaker 3: starting work as a sex worker in Brisbane and Sydney
Speaker 3: in the nineteen sixties. She would go on to become
Speaker 3: the lover of corrupt Queensland detective and member of the
Speaker 3: so called rat Pack of crooked cops, Glenn Hallahan, ultimately
Speaker 3: in trapping him in a sting operation, but Before that,
Speaker 3: she plied her trade in Sydney. Her best friend back
Speaker 3: then was a thief called Gloria, And through Gloria, Dorothy
Speaker 3: met Stuart John Reagan. She used to see him in
Speaker 3: the saloon bar of the old deco Mayfair Hotel on
Speaker 3: Bayswater Road in the Cross. Tell me about Stuart John Reagan.
Speaker 7: He used to drink occasionally at the Mayfair. And if
Speaker 7: you knew anything about this Gloria, if you knew what
Speaker 7: charges she'd been up to, it could be the same person.
Speaker 7: She was on with him for a lot of years,
Speaker 7: but as she never lived together and they used to
Speaker 7: have terrible fights and he'd blacken her eye, and no,
Speaker 7: she was a petty thief flog. I met her in
Speaker 7: jail in Bogga Road and they stole it us safe
Speaker 7: and they put it on the back of the body
Speaker 7: use and coming down the range they were taking it
Speaker 7: into the bush to blow it up. The blood is safe.
Speaker 7: Couldn't get it open, so they had it in the
Speaker 7: use and it fell off the frecrant and the bloat
Speaker 7: behind them ranged the cops and I think they got
Speaker 7: eighteen months each. She knew every cream, She knew him
Speaker 7: all don't worry.
Speaker 4: She knew what was what?
Speaker 3: So you met Reagan in the Mayfair in Sydney.
Speaker 7: Yeah, in the Mayfair. Gloria broke up with him eventually,
Speaker 7: and he used to come in quite often and have
Speaker 7: a drink. And I knew he liked me, and actually
Speaker 7: I liked him.
Speaker 9: I liked him too.
Speaker 7: Anyway. I think I said something to Glory and I said, look,
Speaker 7: he's invited me out, and she said, well, body go
Speaker 7: with him. So she said, I'm never going to have
Speaker 7: anything more to do with him. She said, the thing
Speaker 7: I'll tell you is that he's mixed up in a
Speaker 7: lot of stuff. She didn't tell me exactly what, and
Speaker 7: she said, he's got a very very bad temper and
Speaker 7: if he gets on the grove heavy look out. If
Speaker 7: he's in one of his moods, you'd give you a
Speaker 7: black eye as quick as a look at you. So
Speaker 7: I went out with him and I finished up going
Speaker 7: to the cop with him, and I liked him. He
Speaker 7: never did the wrong thing by me. I have to say.
Speaker 7: He used to go to this night club in Sydney
Speaker 7: and he had a lot to do with the manager there,
Speaker 7: and he would take me there for drinks and maybe
Speaker 7: something to eat, and he disappeared for half an hour
Speaker 7: and in the office with this bloke. So I don't
Speaker 7: know really what they're up to. I'll tell you it
Speaker 7: was caught. There's something cat, the pink pussy Cat.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think it was on the corner there near
Speaker 7: the Mayfair. I'm pretty sure that was the one.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 3: How do you remember how he dressed? It was just
Speaker 3: like the suits in the sixties.
Speaker 7: You know, pretty respectable. Yeah, loved a gamble. I know
Speaker 7: that he got pretty heavy on the races and used
Speaker 7: to go to a lot of these nightclubs and there
Speaker 7: was a room out back and you could play cards
Speaker 7: the big money.
Speaker 9: He was into that a lot.
Speaker 3: Do you know if he carried a gun?
Speaker 16: Glory told me he did.
Speaker 7: He had it in his you know where they put
Speaker 7: a thing around your leg, down the bottom. He carried
Speaker 7: a little gun there.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I'm pretty sure she did a lot of jobs with him.
Speaker 7: I'm almost certain, but I can't tell you what because
Speaker 7: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Well, Reagan never mistreated Dorothy. She saw the damage she
Speaker 3: inflicted on her friend Gloria.
Speaker 4: God.
Speaker 7: He used to go off. She walked into the Mayfair
Speaker 7: and she had the biggest black eyron cup of her
Speaker 7: teeth out and said, oh, bashed the shit out of
Speaker 7: me last night.
Speaker 9: That's the end of it.
Speaker 16: But she kept going back.
Speaker 7: But in the end, I mean she really had had enough,
Speaker 7: because she said she was so terrified in the end
Speaker 7: that in knocker and she hit her head and she
Speaker 7: died and she lived.
Speaker 3: Dorothy said she was aware at the time that Reagan
Speaker 3: had a partner, Margaret.
Speaker 9: Yes, that's right.
Speaker 7: Knew about her. Yes, I knew about that.
Speaker 3: Did Gloria ever talked about Margaret?
Speaker 7: No, she didn't like the idea, of course, because I
Speaker 7: mean he told her that he loved her more than
Speaker 7: anyone else, and he more or less told me the
Speaker 7: same thing, that they were going to separate. She's still alive.
Speaker 3: She's still alive. How would she be she'd be a
Speaker 3: mid to late seventies.
Speaker 7: Oh, okay, I'm wonder hash. I hope she got on
Speaker 7: her in life.
Speaker 3: Dear Dorothy passed away last year after an extended illness.
Speaker 3: For such a petit woman, she lived a big life
Speaker 3: and took a lot of extraordinary stories of the underworld
Speaker 3: with her. Around this period when Reagan was playing the field,
Speaker 3: a strange entry appeared on his police record. On November sixteenth,
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty six, Reagan was charged at Sydney's Central Police
Speaker 3: Station with breaching the Wireless Act to wit being in
Speaker 3: possession of a radio transceiver. He received a fine. This
Speaker 3: is interesting because it showed that Reagan was what we
Speaker 3: might call today an early a doctor of technology, not
Speaker 3: just because it satisfied his feverish brain, but because it
Speaker 3: might be useful to further or protect himself and his
Speaker 3: criminal enterprises. I rang my old mate, former Queensland detective
Speaker 3: and undercover operative, Jim Slade, and asked him to try
Speaker 3: and explain the charge. What on earth did you have
Speaker 3: to do to contravene the Wireless Act. Jim said that
Speaker 3: prior to nineteen fifty seven, if you had a radio
Speaker 3: in your home, you were required to have a license
Speaker 3: at two pounds per year. After nineteen fifty seven you
Speaker 3: were required to have a license for your radio and TV.
Speaker 3: If no license was held, a substantial fine was imposed.
Speaker 3: From nineteen fifty eight onwards, the fine was fifty pounds.
Speaker 3: Jim said this was used by police to hurt someone
Speaker 3: who they wanted to harass. Police were inspectors under the Act,
Speaker 3: and to be ourseholes. Jim said they would use this,
Speaker 3: along with sections of the Vagrants, Gaming and Other Offenses
Speaker 3: Act to come down on targets and make life difficult.
Speaker 3: Being charged under the Wireless Act by police would have
Speaker 3: been to load the bastard up, said Jim. And we
Speaker 3: now know Reagan was partial to secretly recording phone calls,
Speaker 3: as well as taking mini recorders into the field and
Speaker 3: capturing conversations with other people, including his sex workers, criminals,
Speaker 3: and police.
Speaker 18: Season in masur if, I said, John, look, I want
Speaker 18: you to sign this.
Speaker 9: I want you to do that.
Speaker 18: Here's the money, here's that he done it. Do you understand, Give.
Speaker 19: Me the Simons Civilly and then he can't take criminalation,
Speaker 19: get the civil summons.
Speaker 3: On his official police consorting cards, the very first one
Speaker 3: carries a warning in capital letters, believe to carry tape
Speaker 3: recorder concealed under his coat to tape police going to.
Speaker 13: Be as loud as that talks. It's recording and what
Speaker 13: we're saying here and be picked up very it's recording.
Speaker 9: Now. While we took three five.
Speaker 3: By the time Reagan hooked up with marg he was
Speaker 3: a whiz with those clandestine recordings. Put in the war high.
Speaker 3: In some of the tapes, you can actually sense marg
Speaker 3: or his mother, the Colonel somewhere in the background. Reagan
Speaker 3: will bark out and aside with his usual scatter gun
Speaker 3: speed during a phone conversation.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I wouldn't wear makeup.
Speaker 15: You're pretty well, you're pretty all.
Speaker 3: In one instance, it seems he's deciding on what to
Speaker 3: have for breakfast.
Speaker 15: The other thing, I won't belong well, well, watch the radiator, Jesus.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And the constant in all the tapes, the one thing
Speaker 3: that everything gravitates around is determined by and ruled by money.
Speaker 19: He signed and he's brother told him to sign it,
Speaker 19: and then his brother said, you should have made the
Speaker 19: document more water to I'd say that he's shyl the
Speaker 19: diamonds to you. I said, now, I'm going to do
Speaker 19: it legally. But no, Blue, I've given him a kind
Speaker 19: period to give him the money back.
Speaker 8: He doesn't.
Speaker 18: He loses the money, he said, all right, he's brothers.
Speaker 19: All right, I'll see he doesn't get I remember once before,
Speaker 19: when he first insured him, his idea was to have
Speaker 19: him stolen or get bashed or robbed off him, and then.
Speaker 18: He was going to report them. Starle un claiming insurance.
Speaker 3: Remember that Reagan's mad brain never stopped cooking up money
Speaker 3: making schemes. He quickly graduated from the ten Knuckles school
Speaker 3: of business to scams that teetered on the edge of legitimacy.
Speaker 3: By the mid to late sixties, he was well and
Speaker 3: truly on his way to becoming a millionaire gangster. As
Speaker 3: you will hear in the next episode of The Gangster's Ghosts.
Speaker 3: That was not before Reagan hit a few snags and
Speaker 3: dodged a f few bullets along the way. He'd be
Speaker 3: involved in an almost Wild West shootout in a major
Speaker 3: Sydney street in broad daylight with fellows psychopath John Andrew Stewart,
Speaker 3: and he'd be pursued by police in a high speed
Speaker 3: car chase.
Speaker 4: It's coming back.
Speaker 17: I looked Graven Street to my right and what he done?
Speaker 17: He'd followed me so soon? Yes, So then a chase
Speaker 17: his shirt. I've chased him in my car and we've
Speaker 17: had a about the five hundred around Kentington, and he's
Speaker 17: gone a street called day Avenue and stops one at
Speaker 17: the top.
Speaker 4: And I was screaming up and had to stop me.
Speaker 17: When he's turning in a punchl Avenue. So I've fired
Speaker 17: four shots, Chaddy.
Speaker 20: Well, unfortunately I was firing right handed. I'm left handed.
Speaker 20: So one of them was an air wing and three
Speaker 20: of them penetrated the back of each car.
Speaker 4: Anyway, he got away.
Speaker 1: The Gangster's Ghost is a production of The Australian. It's
Speaker 1: written and presented by senior writer Matthew Condon and produced
Speaker 1: and edited by multimedia editor Leat samaglu Our Executive producer
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