Speaker 1: Before we begin.
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Speaker 1: I think his life changed, He changed completely. Sometimes in
Speaker 1: life greed and money and to be powerful came me
Speaker 1: into his world. I think that he loved it. He
Speaker 1: loved what he was doing. He loved the sense that
Speaker 1: he was mixing at those people. So biggest SMIs stata
Speaker 1: you have made in his life.
Speaker 3: This is Margaret Reagan, the gangster's widow. In the fifty
Speaker 3: years since Stuart John Reagan was murdered by three, possibly
Speaker 3: four gunmen in the back streets of Marrickville in Sydney,
Speaker 3: Mark has never spoken publicly about Johnny, about the gangster life,
Speaker 3: about Reagan's association with some of the most dangerous criminals
Speaker 3: of his era. She was with him for more than
Speaker 3: ten years, through the most volatile period of his career,
Speaker 3: to an hour or so before his death. She had
Speaker 3: three children with him, and she has never in her
Speaker 3: own words spoken out of school. Today, she still finds
Speaker 3: it difficult to understand why he changed from a decent
Speaker 3: young man to thug and petty crook to a violent mobster.
Speaker 3: She still wrestles with it. She saw the monster coming
Speaker 3: in the late nineteen sixties. It all started at home,
Speaker 3: behind closed doors. And it's still incredibly painful for marg.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a good person when it was good. But if
Speaker 1: he was angry and things like that, which I've seen
Speaker 1: several occasions, I can honestly say that I had not
Speaker 1: experiencing one occasion that he beat me. To forgive me
Speaker 1: when he hit me. Beating me beat me was that
Speaker 1: early on, but that time ran about that time.
Speaker 4: What happened when he struck you in that incident? What happened?
Speaker 1: You're not listening to me. I want you to do this.
Speaker 1: I can't remember what was about. I can't even remember.
Speaker 1: And he struck me across the first Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: ended up needing.
Speaker 4: Anything broken.
Speaker 1: No, and I'll have him at my bed betting mean
Speaker 1: to fitness. And I also had a policeman come and say,
Speaker 1: you told you now I know who did this to you.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're talking about. We had to
Speaker 1: need to survive. That was my life. I was taught
Speaker 1: you've got nothing to say and look at number plates
Speaker 1: in the back of my revision. Just to go out
Speaker 1: on an ordinary day out, that was my life.
Speaker 4: But you didn't grow up in a criminal lawn. Did
Speaker 4: you have to just adapt to that life?
Speaker 1: Yes, and you know the reason why. I'll probably put
Speaker 1: up with it for so long. You can't walk away
Speaker 1: from people like this. I want you to say that
Speaker 1: I know the real truth. I know what. I love him,
Speaker 1: and he wasn't by someone like it. He wasn't he
Speaker 1: became that person. Power and money does a lot of
Speaker 1: things to tchange people's lives.
Speaker 3: So in that Paddington house, how long did you stay there?
Speaker 1: Not long? I've always stood my peace. I learned to
Speaker 1: speak up. I knew my limits because I won't pass
Speaker 1: the limits. He could have done anything, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. But I knew my limits and I thought,
Speaker 1: I'm God, I got nothing to do it. He would
Speaker 1: chase me, he would please, please please. I'm sorry I
Speaker 1: didn't turn up. I'm sorry I didn't do this. I'm
Speaker 1: sorry I didn't do it. And when this went on
Speaker 1: for so I really didn't have a real time because.
Speaker 4: You are bright.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I'm journalist Matthew Condon and This is the Gangster's Ghost,
Speaker 3: a podcast from The Australian. This podcast started out as
Speaker 3: a clinical look at one of Australia's most reviled gangsters,
Speaker 3: but when the Reagan family came on board, the project
Speaker 3: took on another dimension and begged the question how does
Speaker 3: a family cope with the generational stain of a murderer
Speaker 3: whose death was celebrated by criminals and police alike.
Speaker 6: This is episode six heat.
Speaker 7: A man known as Big Barry was found yesterday with
Speaker 7: four bullet wounds in his head in jungle like undergrowth
Speaker 7: in Paddington. Police said the man, Barry Leonard Flock, twenty eight,
Speaker 7: had told a friend he had been marked down for
Speaker 7: execution by the underworld a week ago. His body was
Speaker 7: discovered yesterday just before noon by a woman she was
Speaker 7: exercising her dog in an extensive area of undergrowth part
Speaker 7: of the Scottish Hospital. Police believe Flock was lured or
Speaker 7: forced to march at gunpoint by his killer or killers
Speaker 7: into the thick undergrowth. Flock apparently put up his hands
Speaker 7: as the bullet smashed into him.
Speaker 3: It's Monday, January sixteenth, nineteen sixty seven, and Sydney has
Speaker 3: woken to what appears to be another ruthless gangland killing.
Speaker 3: The city is getting used to this sort of carnage.
Speaker 3: One newspaper at the time asked why the city had
Speaker 3: turned into Chicago with its open display of gangster carnage,
Speaker 3: and how come Sydney's mobsters were suddenly qualified for honorary
Speaker 3: citizenship of the Windy City in the United States. On
Speaker 3: that Monday, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that Barry Flock
Speaker 3: was a nurse cleaner and minor King's Cross identity who,
Speaker 3: at one hundred and eighty eight centimeters tall and one
Speaker 3: hundred and one kilograms in wait, worked as a bouncer
Speaker 3: for various gambling dens and nightclubs. He had somehow been
Speaker 3: lured into the undergrowth near the hospital and murdered.
Speaker 7: The report went on, baller entered his head, including one
Speaker 7: that first passed through his left hand near the right
Speaker 7: index finger. Detectives described the murder as a typically callous
Speaker 7: underworld execution.
Speaker 3: Stuart John Reagan was quickly suspected of the killing. The
Speaker 3: public record shows that this may have been his first murder.
Speaker 3: It was just four months since his twenty first birthday
Speaker 3: at Chequer's nightclub with mob boss Paddles Anderson. There were
Speaker 3: several good reasons for police to think Reagan was the shooter. Firstly,
Speaker 3: Flock was murdered just a couple of streets away from
Speaker 3: Reagan's mother's place at fifty one Liverpool Street on a
Speaker 3: still night. The colonel and auntie Thelma could have virtually
Speaker 3: heard the shots from their modest terrace, two blocks southwest
Speaker 3: of the murder scene. Secondly, newspaper reports said Reagan was
Speaker 3: well acquainted with the dense scrub land near the old hospital.
Speaker 3: This was from the Sun newspaper.
Speaker 8: When John Reagan was a little boy, he had a
Speaker 8: favorite hideout where the shrubs grew thick and the grass long,
Speaker 8: a tiny jungle in the heart of Sydney. His private
Speaker 8: world was a wasteland in the grounds of the Scottish Hospital.
Speaker 3: Given Reagan spent his childhood in young New South Wales.
Speaker 3: Seen beside the point. What was factual was that Flock had,
Speaker 3: in the weeks leading up to his death, gotten caught
Speaker 3: up in a business deal gone wrong with Reagan. Flock
Speaker 3: had been working at a health studio in Bondai on
Speaker 3: the recommendation of Reagan. The owner, Missus X, as the
Speaker 3: newspapers called her, had employed him with reservations. She did
Speaker 3: it as a favor to Reagan. At one point, Missus
Speaker 3: X had given Flock eight hundred dollars to look after.
Speaker 3: Reagan would later say Flock spent the money. Flock would
Speaker 3: tell Missus X he had given it to Reagan. Someone
Speaker 3: was lying. Reagan denied Flock's assertions. Reagan's heavies started harassing him.
Speaker 3: Flock lived with his wife and daughter in London Street,
Speaker 3: Enmore in Sydney's in a West, and at one point
Speaker 3: the family temporarily fled to the safety of a friend's
Speaker 3: house after being threatened. But what was the big deal
Speaker 3: over a paltry eight hundred dollars here's the sun again.
Speaker 8: Naturally, Reagan was pulled in for questioning over Flock's death.
Speaker 8: He told detectives that although he had arranged to meet
Speaker 8: Flock at Victoria Barracks, he'd been with a bird and forgot.
Speaker 8: When he did remember, he had telephone Flock and called
Speaker 8: off the meeting. It was all very suspicious, and detectives
Speaker 8: are now sure Reagan killed Big.
Speaker 3: Barry Mark remembers Flock, thank you John of murdering Barry
Speaker 3: flap Ye what do you think.
Speaker 4: Of that you knew Arry?
Speaker 5: What?
Speaker 1: Yes? I did just now new Thocott.
Speaker 4: And John's relationship with him.
Speaker 1: Oh, I could see you, as I say, Nothing was
Speaker 1: ever discussing me. Nothing I could not see to you,
Speaker 1: and so honestly dont to you all I would as
Speaker 1: I heard any conversations about what he was doing or whatever.
Speaker 1: Obviously he's out there doing it, that wouldn't relate to me.
Speaker 3: Reagan was not charged with the murder, but according to
Speaker 3: Reagan's official consorting records, he was being watched very closely
Speaker 3: by police. The heat was on. Police noted he'd been
Speaker 3: seen driving around in a sky blue nineteen sixty six
Speaker 3: Jaguar registration EDZ double four to three. Two months later,
Speaker 3: police observed him getting about town in a gun metal
Speaker 3: gray nineteen sixty three Jaguar registration e k F nine
Speaker 3: seven six Business. It seemed was good for Reagan. In
Speaker 3: the months after Flock's murder, Reagan was in and out
Speaker 3: of court for various matters, including consorting and possession of
Speaker 3: an unlicensed pistol, and always by his side was his
Speaker 3: dutyful lawyer Michael Seymour. As marg told us, no one
Speaker 3: was closer to John than Seymour. Seymour was one of
Speaker 3: a handful of people who Reagan trusted, but who was he.
Speaker 3: With the police heat intensifying on Reagan, he needed virtually
Speaker 3: a lawyer on tap. He found one by proxy in
Speaker 3: the mid nineteen sixties. Michael Thomas Seymour was a young
Speaker 3: solicitor doing his articles for the Sydney law firm Lang
Speaker 3: and Anderson. When that practice dissolved, Seymour inherited one of
Speaker 3: their more colorful clients, Stuart John Reagan. They got on instantly.
Speaker 3: As far as Seymour knew Reagan had tow truck and
Speaker 3: panel beating businesses. He thought Reagan, despite having little education,
Speaker 3: was intelligent, enterprising, and ambitious. Seymour remained Reagan's confidante and
Speaker 3: legal counsel until his client's murder in nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 3: Seymour was struck off in the early nineteen eighties and
Speaker 3: worked in later years as a migration agent. We'll come
Speaker 3: to that later. Whichever way you looked at it, Seymour
Speaker 3: would be a treasure trove of information about Reagan and
Speaker 3: his life and times. Given Reagan's numerous prosecutions, Seymour had
Speaker 3: the inside rail on how Reagan's mind worked, especially under pressure.
Speaker 3: More importantly, he might even have a good idea about
Speaker 3: who murdered his gangster client, if only we could get
Speaker 3: even a fraction of what he knew held inside that
Speaker 3: legal safety deposit box known as lawyer client privilege. Kelly
Speaker 3: and I wondered if Seymour was even still alive. If so,
Speaker 3: he'd have to be in his late seventies or possibly
Speaker 3: nudging his eighties. So Kelly set out to find him,
Speaker 3: and a few months later she phoned in, Okay.
Speaker 9: So I've got a bit of exciting news. I've just
Speaker 9: got an email come up on my phone that says
Speaker 9: Michael Seymour has sent me a message.
Speaker 10: So I'm just going to go into it now.
Speaker 9: And have a look at what that message is and
Speaker 9: see if I have actually found Michael Seymour that was
Speaker 9: John's solicitor.
Speaker 10: How exciting if it is, Like, how cool would that be?
Speaker 3: Kelly had sent an initial message to a Michael Seymour
Speaker 3: explaining that she was Reagan's cousin and that she and
Speaker 3: Mark wanted to reach out to him. Was he, in fact,
Speaker 3: the Michael Seymour who was Reagan's solicitor in the namenineteen
Speaker 3: sixties and seventies.
Speaker 9: And he's just replied to me and said, wow, that
Speaker 9: well that is a blaster in the past. Yes, I
Speaker 9: was John Reagan's lawyer and would be interested in talking
Speaker 9: to marg And then gave all these contact details let
Speaker 9: me know where he's resided and said thanks for the message.
Speaker 10: So how exciting.
Speaker 9: I mean, great if my auntie mag gets to speak
Speaker 9: to Michael. But I'd just love to speak to him.
Speaker 9: Like for me, that's as close as I'm going to
Speaker 9: get to speaking to John, Like he would.
Speaker 8: Know so much.
Speaker 9: Whether he wants to talk or not, I'm not sure,
Speaker 9: but you know, just finding him was pretty is pretty cool.
Speaker 9: So I found him.
Speaker 3: By Seymour is mentioned numerous times in Reagan's secret tapes.
Speaker 3: The gangster clearly held him in high regard, so much
Speaker 3: so that Reagan didn't hesitate to wreck amend him to
Speaker 3: friends in trouble with the law.
Speaker 11: You know you've got a good defense for this down
Speaker 11: make a statement of SayMore and say that's the reason
Speaker 11: why you're fined. Get that Ora Worseley. But everything worsely
Speaker 11: says then and say more statement And that's the India case.
Speaker 11: You know that Dadger he down to discussed it all right,
Speaker 11: if you can tie that day on, even if the
Speaker 11: Copple just says it to you from him's way after
Speaker 11: your mat if he just says it to you and
Speaker 11: you make a statement about it, the same work and
Speaker 11: down take steps. You gotta get a barrister. They are
Speaker 11: going to give you a sea. Get it by called
Speaker 11: dayson w kill oh barrister my days he killed?
Speaker 1: And whatever?
Speaker 12: Mate?
Speaker 11: What's his lying? You keep saying More a solicitor man
Speaker 11: because he's the best solicit in Australia. I'm not kidding me.
Speaker 3: After many weeks of negotiation, see More agreed to meet me,
Speaker 3: Kelly and marg for lunch at his favorite Chinese restaurant
Speaker 3: in Castle Hill in outer northwestern Sydney. Kelly and I
Speaker 3: discussed the lunch meeting and tried to work out a strategy.
Speaker 3: So Simour says, and it's interesting because the second time
Speaker 3: he's mentioned this. But he says at the end of
Speaker 3: the email, let's see what the podcast can flush out.
Speaker 3: He says, it's a dangerous exercise. He's used that exact
Speaker 3: phrase twice in the last month. Then he says, but
Speaker 3: at my age of eighty years, nothing bothers me anymore.
Speaker 3: So I think we've hit a sweet spot with him, thankfully. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's going to be incredible.
Speaker 13: I love the one above it where he says, I
Speaker 13: don't know if any of the police involved in the
Speaker 13: matters are still on this planet or not, but if alive,
Speaker 13: would be in their eighties and on the home run,
Speaker 13: carrying the ailment of aging along with possible type two
Speaker 13: diabetes and a guilty conscience, praying their sins of the
Speaker 13: past will.
Speaker 10: Never catch up them, at least on this earth. It's interesting,
Speaker 10: is it?
Speaker 9: Because but this is exactly what my father said to
Speaker 9: me at the very beginning when I first said I
Speaker 9: was going to contact you, and Dad's like, oh, just
Speaker 9: be really careful, like and I said, tongue in cheek, Oh, Dad,
Speaker 9: anybody around it?
Speaker 10: We chasing us on scooters Like I reckon. I can
Speaker 10: outrun a scooter.
Speaker 14: It's interesting that Michael has probably said to me in texts,
Speaker 14: probably four or five times, it's dangerous. I'm not seeing
Speaker 14: the danger probably from the same level as he is.
Speaker 14: I'm probably thinking he's paranoid, but his car was shot up.
Speaker 10: He lived in there.
Speaker 9: He got run through the mill like he stood up
Speaker 9: to them, and the constant dialogue of fear is relevant.
Speaker 9: Don't you reckon like these people wielded an unyielding knife
Speaker 9: like it's just.
Speaker 3: The Chinese restaurant was the type you find right across
Speaker 3: suburban Australia. The round tables, white tablecloths, the lazy Susan,
Speaker 3: the center packed to the rafters and busy with chatter
Speaker 3: and the clinking of plates and cutlery. Seymour was there
Speaker 3: before we arrived. He was the opposite of what I expected.
Speaker 3: I had somehow frozen him in time and thought we'd
Speaker 3: be met by a youngish man in a good suit,
Speaker 3: a loyally type, perhaps, with dark hair and horn rimmed glasses.
Speaker 3: Instead we were met by an old man in a
Speaker 3: short sleeved shirt, shorts and long socks, with disheveled gray hair.
Speaker 3: He looked like any pensioner out for some spring rolls
Speaker 3: and a bowl of sweet and sour pork. One thing
Speaker 3: I wasn't disappointed with he talked a big game. His
Speaker 3: language was slightly formal and jam packed with legal ease.
Speaker 3: Though he hadn't just in New South Wales for forty years.
Speaker 3: He was a little bit haughty. He had with him
Speaker 3: a shopping bag containing some documents. The restaurant was incredibly noisy,
Speaker 3: but for a while Seymour delved back into the past.
Speaker 3: I asked him how he first came to legally represent
Speaker 3: Reagan a warning. When we talked, we were surrounded by
Speaker 3: dozens of other eager dynas John first became a pie.
Speaker 15: I think I read briefly in here that the company
Speaker 15: you were working for dissolved and Reagan was on their books.
Speaker 16: But I was like the law clerk who Langy did
Speaker 16: commercial work. Anderson came into the last year that I
Speaker 16: was there. Anderson work with Phil Roach got good experience
Speaker 16: in Pimmelwell, so.
Speaker 4: This is nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 5: Four. How old were you then?
Speaker 16: I was a minute to practice February sixty five?
Speaker 5: How old were you more than forty two? So your
Speaker 5: early twenties. So I was a young feller.
Speaker 16: Now Anderson was leaving the firm to go to the bar.
Speaker 16: Anderson was a bit slippery in my view when he
Speaker 16: talked to you. It's bent over and Phil correct harshires
Speaker 16: free quiet Reagan wanted to follow me.
Speaker 3: But how did you become acquainted legally?
Speaker 4: Initially? Was it through the law Phil.
Speaker 16: The FIV firm was pg le FEV and I agreed
Speaker 16: to act for John on the right case in which
Speaker 16: Tony Boleno and dars Anderson appeared. It was a trial
Speaker 16: the dowling Hurst and not not killed him.
Speaker 5: Uh after that?
Speaker 13: Yeah?
Speaker 16: When about that time John was charged with being a
Speaker 16: possession of und licensed pistol?
Speaker 15: Did you appear for John from the unlicensed pistol charge?
Speaker 5: He was arrested take the Downinghurst.
Speaker 16: I went up there he was arrested and I said, no,
Speaker 16: he's upstairs being interviewed. I wait downstairs? Whe hours? Do
Speaker 16: I know who I was? And so you know I am,
Speaker 16: for quite sake, my client's upstairs. So then after they
Speaker 16: leave John wasn't but upstairs they had taken him somewhere else.
Speaker 16: I think there was an unsigned regular interview with the
Speaker 16: verbal yeah whatever. So we were able to show that
Speaker 16: the police officer's diaries and their notebooks didn't correspond in
Speaker 16: like two the four detectives who picked him up from
Speaker 16: two interviewed him.
Speaker 5: Who had the running of the case.
Speaker 16: That was before one of the few motor strikes that
Speaker 16: understood reasonable doubt. One document in Evers shot doing a fortune,
Speaker 16: so he was acquitted on that.
Speaker 3: Seymour clearly recalled that Reagan would often wear bulletproof vests.
Speaker 3: He remembered the assassination attempt on Reagan by Stuart and
Speaker 3: Finch outside Barrick Motors in Paddington in late nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 5: There were no love lies between Finch John.
Speaker 16: Because at Barrack Motors one day in broad daylight, since
Speaker 16: she called a revolver on John badly shared him. I
Speaker 16: just missed the bullet record showed off.
Speaker 12: Uh.
Speaker 5: Finch took off. John took off another rocky drying put
Speaker 5: in finding.
Speaker 16: Later Finch was chart with the Cptain murder ncamuson be
Speaker 16: the ACRA. I said I can't, I said, yeah, Sharp
Speaker 16: and client to kill Tyne.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: We wanted to know what Reagan was like when, as
Speaker 3: Mark observed, his personality changed when the monster stepped out
Speaker 3: of the shadows, when he was in and out of
Speaker 3: police stations like well, a dish on a lazy Susan
Speaker 3: in a suburb in Chinese restaurant.
Speaker 5: And how was how did he strike you?
Speaker 4: In those early years as.
Speaker 5: A like he was a likable fellow.
Speaker 12: Uh.
Speaker 5: He regali intelligence.
Speaker 16: Ever on his guard, seeful of being loaded up by
Speaker 16: the police. He didn't keep the best of company in
Speaker 16: the underworld. But in reputations, what.
Speaker 4: Was his reputation?
Speaker 5: Firstim to be feared physical violence?
Speaker 16: Yeah, I suppose, but he was only convicted of one
Speaker 16: fun of song, which was interesting case.
Speaker 5: How the pencil self defense. The beginning of that was that.
Speaker 16: Reagan was I think of bouncing in a nightclub with
Speaker 16: King's Christian and the closing time came, people asked to leave.
Speaker 16: There was a bunch of Google slabs who refused to go.
Speaker 16: They went, and I think Regan obviously made some remarks
Speaker 16: about them. And then the place is closing down and
Speaker 16: back come about up. A dozen Yugoslavs were the belting.
Speaker 16: He tells, well, he's on the stage up there with
Speaker 16: a chair. Kevino was bay And then whilst that if
Speaker 16: you all was occurring, someone finds the police and the
Speaker 16: police arrived.
Speaker 5: That's it. So Reagan thought, I'll get.
Speaker 16: One of these guys one day. So a few years
Speaker 16: later he was in a restaurant and he tells me
Speaker 16: that he saw one of those blogs that assaulted him
Speaker 16: and threatened him. So his defense was, I walked up
Speaker 16: to the tables to excuse me. I think you were
Speaker 16: the person who threatened assaulted me some time go. Where
Speaker 16: upon the Yugoslas get stuffed and sap John John retaliate
Speaker 16: the Crown's case was up. Came John, grab a lot
Speaker 16: of scup of the neck and said you are so
Speaker 16: and who tried to belt me with six other Ligoslavs whacked.
Speaker 5: There was a difference in the evidence.
Speaker 16: By the time I didn't got up the trial, John
Speaker 16: was a bit bigger, he flying up a bit.
Speaker 5: He looked pretty tough.
Speaker 16: Basically before a jury over against yugoslav The jury convicted him.
Speaker 5: He got tour bucks.
Speaker 17: Hyeah and.
Speaker 3: Seymour had other amusing but relatively innocuous anecdotes about Reagan.
Speaker 3: He was more preoccupied with his own legal difficulties. In
Speaker 3: the wake of Reagan's death, which saw him struck off.
Speaker 3: The Sydney Morning Herald reported the following. On Thursday April fifteenth,
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty.
Speaker 18: Two, a solicitor alleged to have been involved in check forgery,
Speaker 18: bail offenses and land fraud was struck from the role
Speaker 18: of solicitors yesterday for professional misconduct. The Court of Appeal
Speaker 18: made the order against Michael Thomas Seymour. Seymour did not
Speaker 18: defend the action, and the joint application by the Law
Speaker 18: Society and the Prothonotory of the Supreme Court to have
Speaker 18: him struck off was heard exparte. The President of the
Speaker 18: Court of Appeal, Justice Moffatt, said evidence against Seymour on
Speaker 18: any one of four matters in the summons would have
Speaker 18: been sufficient to warrant his being struck off.
Speaker 3: One of these matters reached way back to nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: three seventy four and his client Johnny Reagan. The Paper wrote.
Speaker 18: In the fourth matter, it was alleged that Seymour was
Speaker 18: an active particip and knowingly participated in a scheme set
Speaker 18: up by John Stuart Reagan, then a well known criminal
Speaker 18: for whom Seymour acted and with whom it was alleged
Speaker 18: he was associated in another company.
Speaker 3: In the end, the three presiding Justices unanimously ordered that
Speaker 3: Seymour be struck off over our lunch. I was keen
Speaker 3: to quiz Seymour on Reagan's famous so called land scams,
Speaker 3: the subject of the fourth matter. In his hearing before
Speaker 3: the Court of Appeal forty years earlier. The scam involved
Speaker 3: buying up cheap blocks of land in country areas and
Speaker 3: falsely advertising them as fully sewered and electrified parcels with
Speaker 3: astonishing views and access to great facilities. Will examine Reagan's
Speaker 3: scam in detail in an upcoming episode of the podcast.
Speaker 3: But as far as Michael Seymour was concerned, it was legit.
Speaker 3: It admit real estate business.
Speaker 5: Luckily, I.
Speaker 16: Invested wisely in real estate and to build luck and
Speaker 16: the gay mugs.
Speaker 5: But the pressure on all these things that builds up
Speaker 5: in terms of your own legal votes.
Speaker 3: But the land, the land hers themselves, that was a scam, right.
Speaker 16: No, no, no, they were legitimate transactions. He got titled
Speaker 16: and he conveyed titland.
Speaker 5: Now detective too.
Speaker 16: He just running my notes again this morning, Sill he
Speaker 16: come to seemly, uh said, I want to interview about
Speaker 16: Brigand's land transactions.
Speaker 5: And so I've had to talk you such a use
Speaker 5: lad of professional privilege. Oh we'll just fraud here. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I see.
Speaker 16: If you charge you with a fraud, I can tell
Speaker 16: you now you'll fail and I'll be shoving you for
Speaker 16: malicious prosecution. He then said oh, but I discovered here
Speaker 16: that he said, I have no a bit about the law.
Speaker 16: I'm starting law of just about finish the bab He
Speaker 16: said he's sold some blocks of land before he had title.
Speaker 16: I said, well, you don't understand what the law is.
Speaker 16: He'd taken the contract to buy before he'd settled on
Speaker 16: the purchase. He has a legal right to convey that
Speaker 16: right to someone else.
Speaker 15: I've interviewed a couple of people in Queensland who were
Speaker 15: involved in this sales adventure up around Harvey Bay and
Speaker 15: around regions like that, and I've spoken to one of
Speaker 15: the head salesman essentially contracted out by John to sell
Speaker 15: blocks of land that they'd acquired of council. And there
Speaker 15: were advertisements placed in Sydney newspapers in relation to this
Speaker 15: is a phenomenal purchase, the use of the beach major
Speaker 15: shopping center going up next year.
Speaker 4: All of it false. As he admitted to.
Speaker 5: Me, if you enter into a.
Speaker 16: Contract of sale to buy a property, he could either
Speaker 16: as sign your interest in that or sell to a
Speaker 16: third party pending completion of the title that you're in
Speaker 16: the process of acquiring. There's done a lot when people
Speaker 16: are moving home and they were to buy and sell
Speaker 16: at the same time, and.
Speaker 4: That was that.
Speaker 3: Besides, he had another matter he wanted to discuss. This
Speaker 3: is what stunned the table in that Chinese restaurant that day.
Speaker 3: Seymour claimed that a on Reagan's death, his client owed
Speaker 3: him about seven thousand dollars in outstanding legal bills. Given
Speaker 3: the amount of research and effort he'd acquitted prior to
Speaker 3: our lunch meeting, and as recompense for his future involvement
Speaker 3: in The Gangster's Ghost, he thought it only fair that
Speaker 3: he be paid ten thousand dollars that at the very
Speaker 3: least would square Reagan's ledger, even though the debt had
Speaker 3: allegedly been outstanding for half a century. We set our
Speaker 3: farewells to Michael Seymour and left the restaurant and then
Speaker 3: Castle Hill on the plane back home North. I thought
Speaker 3: this should not be surprising, because we have ventured into
Speaker 3: the world of Stuart John Reagan. No matter how many
Speaker 3: years have passed, was still outstanding monetary debts, moral debts,
Speaker 3: debts to historical accuracy, debts to the truth. Kell and
Speaker 3: I discussed the extraordinary meeting with mister Seymour. I mean,
Speaker 3: from my point of view, and probably both of ours,
Speaker 3: because we've been researching this for so long. The name
Speaker 3: Michael Seymour became almost mythical in that we knew he
Speaker 3: was very close to John right up to his death,
Speaker 3: had legally represented him for about nine years from about
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty five sixty six. So we were highly excited
Speaker 3: to meet a man who we thought would have all
Speaker 3: this incredible knowledge in his head right, and.
Speaker 10: I thought he'd be keeper of the gate, like you know.
Speaker 19: He told Arnie Margie had documents, and then he tells
Speaker 19: us he's got nothing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So then Mark and I showed up and absolutely
Speaker 3: not what I expected. And he did produce some Manila
Speaker 3: folders of some scattered documents. A lot of them were
Speaker 3: to do with him defending himself having been struck off
Speaker 3: in about nineteen eighty two and then losing a defamation
Speaker 3: action against the ABC in the early to mid eighties.
Speaker 3: So a lot of the documents were how he had
Speaker 3: been hardly done by and decisions were incorrect and it
Speaker 3: had essentially ruined his life.
Speaker 19: But he couldn't even get our names right, Like he
Speaker 19: was giving me Marg's documents. Here you go, Marg, And
Speaker 19: she wasn't even there and I'm like, no, no, I'm Kelly.
Speaker 10: Marg's the old girl.
Speaker 20: Like I think.
Speaker 3: When we got down to wanting to actually talk about
Speaker 3: why we were there, and that was to get the
Speaker 3: inside rail on Johnny Reagan, everything seemed to be a
Speaker 3: little bit blurry.
Speaker 10: Well it was just weird. Like you spot on, his
Speaker 10: recollection of himself was on point. But what strun me was,
Speaker 10: you know, John and I were close and yeah, you know,
Speaker 10: we had a working relationship, but we were close, and
Speaker 10: you know, he had no father, so you know, I
Speaker 10: tried to guide him and get him into legitimate businesses
Speaker 10: and everything. But all he did was call him Reagan.
Speaker 10: The whole time. He called him Reagan Reagan, and there
Speaker 10: was no he was blaming. There was. It was like
Speaker 10: he was talking about someone he'd met for five minutes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, whether he was intentionally just being on his guard
Speaker 3: with us. It was our first meeting with him, Yeah,
Speaker 3: but not Mark. You know, Marg said that they'd had
Speaker 3: a real terrific relationship from when he was Reagan's solicitor
Speaker 3: up until Reagan's death. When Seymour simply and totally disappeared
Speaker 3: from the scene, Off the Reagan scene, he didn't go
Speaker 3: to the funeral.
Speaker 10: Didn't go the inquest, didn't talk.
Speaker 3: To marg until only a few months ago. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, listeners to this podcast have heard people we've
Speaker 3: interviewed who were involved in the selling of those properties.
Speaker 3: So it was exactly what it was. But Seymour is
Speaker 3: standing his ground on that. But also what came out
Speaker 3: of the meeting and has persisted now for some weeks
Speaker 3: is incredibly Michael Seymour is asking for restitution of Johnny
Speaker 3: Reagan's unpaid legal bills dating from the late nineteen sixties.
Speaker 10: Yes, E would produced the invoice.
Speaker 3: The invoice and has imposed upon us what he considers
Speaker 3: not an unreasonable demand, and that is ten thousand dollars
Speaker 3: to settle the Reagan account. Yes, and then photocopying in binders,
Speaker 3: and with that money in his account, he'll then assist us.
Speaker 10: Yes, bless Yes.
Speaker 3: In the wake of the Flock murder in early nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty seven, Reagan had a phenomenally busy year engaging with
Speaker 3: police and the courts. He was a marked man, shadowed
Speaker 3: relentlessly by detectives. Month after month. He faced a string
Speaker 3: of charges which included possession of an unlicensed pistol, consorting
Speaker 3: obtaining property by forged instrument, false pretenses, stealing, driving in
Speaker 3: a dangerous manner, negligent driving, assault and robbery, uninsured vehicle conspiracy,
Speaker 3: intimidating a witness, assault, and conspiracy to pervert and defeat
Speaker 3: the course of justice. Then a milestone occurred in Reagan's life.
Speaker 3: On December sixth, nineteen sixty seven, his partner marg gave
Speaker 3: birth to their first child, John Patrick Reagan. He would
Speaker 3: become known within the family as JP. At this precise time, however,
Speaker 3: new father Johnny was in and out of jail for
Speaker 3: the first time in his career. You'll remember back in
Speaker 3: episode one when he introduced you to Reagan's secretly recorded
Speaker 3: telephone conversations and how the tapes were hidden for years
Speaker 3: in a suitcase. Well, not only did that suitcase contain
Speaker 3: the clandestine recordings, it also held several documents. One of
Speaker 3: those was a handwritten letter Reagan sent to his mother
Speaker 3: from jail. It was dated September seven, nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 3: Little JP was just nine months old. The letter provides
Speaker 3: an incredible insight into not just his interests and preoccupations,
Speaker 3: but his manic state of mind. Here's some extracts from
Speaker 3: that two page letter.
Speaker 21: Dear Mum, sorry no male. Recently, could Arnie and yourself
Speaker 21: please send me out two books for my birthday, A
Speaker 21: self Hypnosis by Joan Bradden and b Raji Yoga. These
Speaker 21: books could be attained from Dimmick's Bookstore, George Street City
Speaker 21: or Graham's Bookstore. I suggest you ring these bookstores and
Speaker 21: give the authors et cetera, and they will inquire et
Speaker 21: cetera and set aside for you, et cetera.
Speaker 3: Reagan then immediately pivots to business matters.
Speaker 21: Tell solicitor Tom to give your diamonds to you. Also
Speaker 21: ask solicitor how much for woodwood QC. So far please, m'am,
Speaker 21: this is important. Also, get solicitor to come out and
Speaker 21: see me about four hundred pounds off a friend of mine.
Speaker 21: This is important, and he hasn't visited me yet. If
Speaker 21: he doesn't come soon, I will lose the four hundred
Speaker 21: pounds priority.
Speaker 3: Another sudden shift of focus, this time from urgent business
Speaker 3: to personal issues involving some mysterious woman not is to
Speaker 3: facto Margaret.
Speaker 21: I hope you don't think for a minute I'll marry
Speaker 21: Joe or anyone else. I don't intend to get married
Speaker 21: till I am at least twenty six or twenty seven
Speaker 21: and a lot more experienced. Please Mum, when you write,
Speaker 21: don't keep writing your opinions. I know them more. I
Speaker 21: will do what I want to do. You, Mum, have
Speaker 21: to be the diplomat neutral. You're involved in the middle,
Speaker 21: so bear with it for my sake.
Speaker 3: But it's back to business this time. That inner tiger
Speaker 3: asserts itself.
Speaker 21: Would appreciate some correspondence from my hotel brokers as soon
Speaker 21: as possible. That was a good investment. How much return
Speaker 21: till I get from the above twenty old ones it
Speaker 21: should be they have to see more and save the
Speaker 21: rest for rainy day. Don't let that money go to waste.
Speaker 21: Order one more book, please, mum, Yoga Uniting East and West.
Speaker 21: If you can also acquire a book of any nature
Speaker 21: on psychokinesis, I would be glad.
Speaker 3: In a single letter, he is wheeling and dealing, demanding
Speaker 3: books on yoga and psychokinesis or the ability to move
Speaker 3: objects with the power of thought and confiding intimate relationship
Speaker 3: information about a woman who was not his long term
Speaker 3: partner and the mother of his first child. Who was
Speaker 3: Joe and why would Reagan be confessing this to his mother,
Speaker 3: given his infant child, and Margaret were waiting for him
Speaker 3: to get out of jail. As we already know, there
Speaker 3: was nothing even remotely normal about the colonel, and a
Speaker 3: situation soon arose that would defy belief even by her standards.
Speaker 3: The colonel took possession of little JP. Yes you heard
Speaker 3: that right. Reagan gave his firstborn son to his own mother.
Speaker 3: It was the colonel who raised JP. He and a
Speaker 3: distraught marg was helpless to fight back.
Speaker 1: There JP. He loved j P. He was good to JOP.
Speaker 1: He would always put him on his shoulders. And this
Speaker 1: is when I was told it might not taking your
Speaker 1: son from my mother's house. Obviously, relationship went on and
Speaker 1: on and on because I had two other children like him.
Speaker 1: But in that time when that happened, Michael Seman was
Speaker 1: John Solister for many many years. I went to him
Speaker 1: and said, she will not be met that JP.
Speaker 4: When this happened.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, like a todd lare no older two, so
Speaker 1: I can't remember. Really, No, they really had one.
Speaker 4: Child and that child went to Claire.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she loved JP. Clear I could see, just wanted
Speaker 1: to have this child, to have that this is a strong reason, son.
Speaker 1: It will stay in my house, It'll be brought up
Speaker 1: by me and whatever. That's what happened to me.
Speaker 3: So Johnny told you this, our child is going to
Speaker 3: my mother's.
Speaker 1: Don't go into any solicitors or anything, because it won't
Speaker 1: be happeny. That's true.
Speaker 3: I had difficulty comprehending what marg was telling me that
Speaker 3: the colonel literally stole her baby.
Speaker 4: Boy.
Speaker 3: I mean, you're a young mother as your first child,
Speaker 3: and now the child.
Speaker 4: Is going to clare Reagon.
Speaker 1: So I was like a visitor my son.
Speaker 4: Did you talk to Michael Seymour about the situation?
Speaker 1: You spoke, Yeah, he's got very angry, very angry about him.
Speaker 4: Why do you think the mother wanted that baby?
Speaker 1: Because this is John Stuart Ruthing's son. Even though there
Speaker 1: was probably more sons out there somewhere, this is John
Speaker 1: Ruthen's son. Everybody knew that.
Speaker 5: I was supposedly is a woman.
Speaker 1: I don't know why. So it was really hard for me. Yep,
Speaker 1: the person can take control to that extent.
Speaker 3: The loss of her child still perplexes Marg. She was
Speaker 3: left in the unenviable position of having to get permission
Speaker 3: from the colonel to see little JP.
Speaker 4: So how often would you go and visit your son?
Speaker 1: Quite often visit my son, good presence, birthdays, whatever. I
Speaker 1: know for a fact that when she did pass, a
Speaker 1: lot of the things that I had given to him
Speaker 1: over the years, even though we had that connection, was
Speaker 1: just popped. Anything that his mother would want it would
Speaker 1: be there. Different to her to me, because we've god
Speaker 1: remember from here. She had the control of him from
Speaker 1: when he was a child. That's why I look at
Speaker 1: it all to be wrong. It's a CONTROLSI. This is
Speaker 1: a grown man that hung around with crims and whatever,
Speaker 1: but was still controlled both his word.
Speaker 3: To add to Marg's confusion, she says Reagan told her
Speaker 3: nothing about his business dealings. She sensed he was involved
Speaker 3: in criminal activity, no question, but she had no idea
Speaker 3: about how deeply he was involved in the Sydney underworld
Speaker 3: until he started taking her out to dinner to the
Speaker 3: homes of some of his special new friends. Up to
Speaker 3: that moment, she had been kept oblivious of this dark world.
Speaker 1: He hadn't anice question it it. It sounds like it's
Speaker 1: something that you would I Okay, needs to clean all
Speaker 1: better leaves. It don't work out way.
Speaker 4: But he knew at some point. Was there any specific
Speaker 4: thing that happened that it when? I guess now I understand.
Speaker 1: Or I just felt it, just new it. No, he
Speaker 1: would not involve me in any of that. He would
Speaker 1: not tell me what he was doing. I know that
Speaker 1: he makes sweets, damn Psmith. And then my first, how
Speaker 1: did you know that? Because I met them?
Speaker 4: I'm under what circumstances? Do he took me to their
Speaker 4: houses like for dinner or meetings?
Speaker 11: Or do you not?
Speaker 5: Really?
Speaker 4: So tell me about lending me first?
Speaker 1: Well, that's I leading him at first? And was they
Speaker 1: trade of old Chase? And his house was a Ford
Speaker 1: terrace and things like that, which is correct. I can't
Speaker 1: even remember where it was.
Speaker 4: Did you know who he was before he went there?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 1: I didn't know what his connection was, but later on
Speaker 1: I did, certainly him Saint Smith. I went to San
Speaker 1: Smith's house. He taught me to all those places.
Speaker 3: So socializing with these George Freeman, who do you think
Speaker 3: John was more close to of all of those men?
Speaker 4: Battle mans?
Speaker 1: He kept popping up. He was an older man and
Speaker 1: he he was lurged by this man into this world.
Speaker 4: Do you think he wanted to be him.
Speaker 1: Yes, he wanted to have the power that this man had.
Speaker 4: Definitely, what do you think it is about Johnny and power?
Speaker 4: I mean, do you think that might even come somehow
Speaker 4: from Claire? Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1: Power. There's a different thing between power and greed and selfishness,
Speaker 1: And it's a terrible thing that, you know, to hurt someone,
Speaker 1: to hurt anybody, to acquire that he's just not quite
Speaker 1: normal all life is about. I didn't know I was
Speaker 1: going out with a so called monsa in which they
Speaker 1: had said several times until later on, and most of
Speaker 1: it was kept the secret, like of course, what's I
Speaker 1: went to let my first in thousands Smith's house and
Speaker 1: things like that. I was quite aware who they were.
Speaker 4: I was at that age.
Speaker 1: I knew who they were. But to me, there was
Speaker 1: no occasions that I could, honestly if they did anything happen.
Speaker 7: They're not.
Speaker 4: Do you remember what they talked about?
Speaker 1: You don't talk about, you don't never talk about in
Speaker 1: front of your female the woman gets in our room.
Speaker 1: I don't mind what they do with their wise, but
Speaker 1: I know what he did with me. Yeah, it wasn't
Speaker 1: that way.
Speaker 3: To understand Reagan's criminal miliere, you have to know about
Speaker 3: the other side of the grubby underworld game. The corrupt
Speaker 3: Sydney police of the day, there were a couple that
Speaker 3: stood head and shoulders above the rest. Although he retired
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty, Ray Gunner Kelly set the gold standard
Speaker 3: for a murderous and crooked cop. He killed in the
Speaker 3: line of judy, arranged bank robberies and extorted abortionists. It
Speaker 3: was said he was the master to a young apprentice
Speaker 3: by the name of Roger Rogerson. Frederick Claude Cray or
Speaker 3: Freddie Cray joined the New South Wales Police in nineteen
Speaker 3: forty and, like Kelly, was early in his career a
Speaker 3: respected detective. But by the nineteen sixties Cray, seemingly taking
Speaker 3: Kelly's mantle, had devolved into a violent, drunk and criminal.
Speaker 4: With a badge.
Speaker 3: As head of the Breaking Squad, he was getting kickbacks
Speaker 3: across the criminal spectrum and was heavily involved with the
Speaker 3: city's sex workers, particularly Vice Queen Shirley Briffman, who operated
Speaker 3: brothels out of Point and King's Cross. Briffman had come
Speaker 3: down from Queensland in the early nineteen sixties after she
Speaker 3: became notorious during the National Hotel role Commission in nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty three. The inquiry was probing police corruption and prostitution
Speaker 3: out of the National Hotel in Brisbane. Briffman was closely
Speaker 3: associated with the corrupt trio of Brisbane officers known as
Speaker 3: the rat Pack, Terence Murray Lewis, who would go on
Speaker 3: to be Commissioner before he was jailed for corruption, Tony
Speaker 3: Murphy and Glendon Patrick Hallahan. In Sydney. Briffman built an empire.
Speaker 3: The operation, facilitated by graft paid regularly to crooked New
Speaker 3: South Wales and Queensland police until she blew the whistle
Speaker 3: on all of them, including Cray and Hallahan. In doing so,
Speaker 3: Brifman signed her own death warrant and it put Stuart
Speaker 3: John Reagan onto her tale. When Britman's loose lips blew
Speaker 3: up the underworld, Reagan was sent in to shut her mouth.
Speaker 3: Cray was rotten through and through. Years ago before his death,
Speaker 3: I spoke to former detective and convicted murderer Roger Rogerson
Speaker 3: about his association with Cray in the nineteen sixties and
Speaker 3: into the early nineteen seventies.
Speaker 12: Well Fred, It was a tragedy about Fred. Fred was
Speaker 12: one of the smartest bunks you'd ever met in your life.
Speaker 12: He was a cadet when the war was on, the
Speaker 12: Second World War, and he was a bloody a very
Speaker 12: very clever bloke, a great organizer and you know, did
Speaker 12: some bloody great investigations here in Sydney, a lot of
Speaker 12: the thallium cases. And yet you know later on in
Speaker 12: life now he and Neil more in my work day
Speaker 12: they both worked together on the safe Arson squat. Fred
Speaker 12: was a little bit saying and Il a bit older.
Speaker 12: But Fred was. He become an alcoholic in here, you know,
Speaker 12: he drank a bottle Scotch and his opposite day, you know,
Speaker 12: God that he was just cranky as all shit. You know,
Speaker 12: you could never you could never hold a conversation with him.
Speaker 12: He was just lost it, you know. And I don't know,
Speaker 12: I mean, there's no excuse for it. But as I said,
Speaker 12: I the Brisbane thing that was all to do with prostitution,
Speaker 12: wasn't it.
Speaker 3: Someone who also didn't think much of Cray was the
Speaker 3: former ratpacker Queensland Police Commissioner, a Knight of the Realm,
Speaker 3: Terry Lewis. Lewis had been Commissioner from nineteen seventy six
Speaker 3: to nineteen eighty seven until he was brought down by
Speaker 3: the Fitzgerald Royal Commission into Police and political corruption in Queensland.
Speaker 3: He was ultimately convicted of several counts of official corruption
Speaker 3: and jailed. It was by any count a spectacular fall
Speaker 3: from In two thy ten I met Lewis and he
Speaker 3: expressed his desire to have me write his memoir. So
Speaker 3: every fortnight for three years I went to his place
Speaker 3: in Brisbane's Inner North and interviewed him as research for
Speaker 3: my Three Crooked Kings trilogy of books about his life
Speaker 3: and times and the history of police corruption in Queensland
Speaker 3: from the end of the Second World War until Lewis's downfall.
Speaker 3: Lewis passed away in twenty twenty three. In our talks,
Speaker 3: Lewis had a lot of time for Gunner Kelly, whom
Speaker 3: he met several times as a young detective in Brisbane,
Speaker 3: but not Fred Froggy Cray. The recording is a little
Speaker 3: scratchy given the equipment I used back in the day,
Speaker 3: but Lewis's memories are sharp as attack. We were talking
Speaker 3: about the importance of police having a good, solid criminal
Speaker 3: informant in the nineteen fifties and sixties, and how crooks
Speaker 3: like George Freeman and Lenny McPherson could be invaluable to
Speaker 3: a top flight detective.
Speaker 17: I think that was renowned in Sydney, if you might
Speaker 17: remember the days he was a bloody good detective to
Speaker 17: ray Kelly, Ray Kelly and cray and all those fellows.
Speaker 17: Was renowned that they had Freeman and others would kept
Speaker 17: their information as long as they fed you with somebody
Speaker 17: there on the line.
Speaker 3: Although Kelly and Crayon are now notorious, aren't they.
Speaker 17: I didn't like cray not at all, but I like Kelly.
Speaker 17: Kelly was he was a tough man and he joined
Speaker 17: the police, so they got twenty six years of age
Speaker 17: or something. Been a country or a really tough man.
Speaker 17: And I can still remember part of it. He was
Speaker 17: in uniform by himself, I think Surry Hillson somewhere one
Speaker 17: night and he came across four crim steel in the
Speaker 17: car or something, and they all attacked him. So he
Speaker 17: shot one, wounded the other three, and naturally that probably
Speaker 17: got him into the c ib on. But then the
Speaker 17: funny mote of it later on he said he really
Speaker 17: liked ray Kelly. Said ray Kelly only shot people who
Speaker 17: deserved to be shot coming from a jail, I said.
Speaker 3: As part of the investigation and research for my books,
Speaker 3: I became obsessed with the life and ultimate death of
Speaker 3: Shirley Briffman. Shirley had paid corrupt police for her entire
Speaker 3: career as a sex worker and later a brotheloner. She
Speaker 3: counted many of them as lovers. One of those lovers
Speaker 3: was Fred Cray. In the late nineteen sixties, it was
Speaker 3: proposed to Shirley that she trained her teenage daughter, mary
Speaker 3: Anne Brifman to go into the sex trade. Shirley refused.
Speaker 3: As a result, she was literally tortured by Fred Cray.
Speaker 3: I was lucky enough to have lengthy conversations with Mary Anne.
Speaker 3: She was gracious, frank and honest. She remembered detectives using
Speaker 3: the Briffman household in Sydney as a storehouse for stolen
Speaker 3: goods and Cray turning on her mother.
Speaker 1: Yes, Oh, he was very violent.
Speaker 22: You know the guy that followed him, Roger Rogerson or
Speaker 22: whatever you know, for naughty detectives. He was boring it
Speaker 22: to shoot people. These people did this very colorfully, you know,
Speaker 22: there was a lot of They tortured them and tormented
Speaker 22: them and mentally tortured them before. They may have killed
Speaker 22: them because he was involved in quite a lot of
Speaker 22: torture and it already hurt my mother physically as well.
Speaker 22: So the thing is, nobody asked us about what happened.
Speaker 3: Surely had made another major mistake. She'd been talking to
Speaker 3: the press. Suddenly stories were appearing about Shirley Brifman, Sydney's
Speaker 3: glamorous vice queen. The last thing the police on her
Speaker 3: payroll wanted was media attention. She was also toying with
Speaker 3: writing a memoir, The Housewife's Best Friend.
Speaker 4: She was going to call it.
Speaker 3: And if this wasn't enough, she'd hosted a party at
Speaker 3: her apartment in the Reef Complex in Elizabeth Bay and
Speaker 3: invited several corrupt police, including Fred Cray. Somehow the story
Speaker 3: of the party made it into the newspapers. It was
Speaker 3: getting dangerous. One day, Mary Anne Riffman returned to the
Speaker 3: family's Thornleigh home after school and saw a man trying
Speaker 3: to strangle her mother to death. She's convinced it was
Speaker 3: Johnny Reagan.
Speaker 23: My mother was home and when you walked in the
Speaker 23: door of the hallway in that lounge room to that house,
Speaker 23: it had two sliding doors that would joined together, you know,
Speaker 23: to sline up, and it was really odd. I'd never
Speaker 23: seen that the two doors were closed, you know, something
Speaker 23: that the housekeeper would never have had done. And we'd
Speaker 23: never seen the lounge room closed off from that little
Speaker 23: bit of the hallway.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so what do you do?
Speaker 12: Straight away?
Speaker 1: Me?
Speaker 23: When I come in, I opened the door, just opened
Speaker 23: the two doors. And then my mother standing between the
Speaker 23: lounge and the dining room where we did the ironing,
Speaker 23: where the television you know you could best see it.
Speaker 1: And there's this guy that's got.
Speaker 23: The wire coat hanger undone, well it was already undone,
Speaker 23: and he was he was trying to strangle her, right,
Speaker 23: he was in the middle of strangling her with iron
Speaker 23: undone coat hanger. And you think it'd be a rope
Speaker 23: or something, wouldn't you, But no, the code hanger or
Speaker 23: maybe he got in closed the door. He must have
Speaker 23: come in on a pretense that she let him in, yes,
Speaker 23: because you just don't come in and close two.
Speaker 12: Doors like that.
Speaker 23: No one else was home by then, and then of
Speaker 23: course when I just walked in, he's thinking he's waiting
Speaker 23: to hear the car or the kids come or something else.
Speaker 23: So I get in that and then this guy gets
Speaker 23: such a shock he doesn't He takes bang out through
Speaker 23: the dining room, through that kitchen to the back door
Speaker 23: and gone. Not that I looked where he went, you know,
Speaker 23: but he fleed out the back door that seemed to
Speaker 23: be open to my knowledge, because he didn't nearly filling
Speaker 23: with the door. And there's my mother and you know,
Speaker 23: all the things that we all had to take in
Speaker 23: our stride. But it was very fortunate that I came home.
Speaker 10: I never asked her.
Speaker 12: Who did that?
Speaker 23: You know, sometimes you just there's some question and you
Speaker 23: didn't ask. But there's just so many things that are
Speaker 23: just so I think that was worry, maybe a threat
Speaker 23: because of all the wealthy people that were involved, do
Speaker 23: you know what I mean? But that's very powerful to
Speaker 23: come down like that. That could be if that looked
Speaker 23: more than a scare, that guy was doing it.
Speaker 3: Shortly after this, Shirley Briffman was charged with an offense
Speaker 3: for the first time ever, and her corrupt copper mates
Speaker 3: in both Sydney and Brisbane refused to help her out.
Speaker 3: It was the last straw she decided to blow the
Speaker 3: whistle on the lot of them. On National TV. In
Speaker 3: the fallout from her expose, a brifman fled north, convinced
Speaker 3: by ratpacker Tony Murphy that she'd be safer in Brisbane
Speaker 3: than in Sydney, with the likes of Cray and Reagan
Speaker 3: out for her blood. In Brisbane, living in a series
Speaker 3: of supposed safe houses, she gave several formal police interviews
Speaker 3: and not only tipped in a lot of her former
Speaker 3: copper mates, but had a lot to say about Johnny Reagan.
Speaker 3: She said Reagan wasn't satisfied with being the big boss
Speaker 3: of Sydney. He had ambitions to become the biggest gangster
Speaker 3: in Australia. Just prior to fleeing to Brisbane, she'd hidden
Speaker 3: out in King's Cross again in a supposed safe house.
Speaker 3: That's when the magician came calling. She later told police
Speaker 3: what happened.
Speaker 24: For a start, I was protected. Now I am not protected.
Speaker 24: I paid all these years for protection. I was in
Speaker 24: fear for my life. Do you remember the night you
Speaker 24: two called to see me. Johnny Reagan came there at
Speaker 24: four o'clock. He was one out. Reagan said, don't talk.
Speaker 24: If you talk, you are dead.
Speaker 3: Shirley made it to Brisbane with her family. As it happened,
Speaker 3: Reagan wasn't far behind. He decided to open, for want
Speaker 3: of a better phrase, a branch office of the Reagan
Speaker 3: Empire north of the border. He was off to Queensland.
Speaker 3: Reagan would have been fully aware of the criminal scene
Speaker 3: and its main players in the Deep North, but he
Speaker 3: was the big Sydney gangster, and according to sources, he
Speaker 3: was ready to introduce Chicago style mobster tactics to Australia's
Speaker 3: East Coast. As usual, he reaped havoc and he just
Speaker 3: may have gotten away with not one murder but fifteen
Speaker 3: when the Whiskey a Go go nightclub in Brisbane's Fortitude
Speaker 3: Valley was firebombed in March nineteen seventy three. That inferno
Speaker 3: still smolders today, and while he didn't strike the match,
Speaker 3: the magician just may have been a driving force behind
Speaker 3: one of the worst mass murders in Australian history. He
Speaker 3: hooked up with drug dealers, He did business with a
Speaker 3: local group called the Clockwork Orange Gang. He invested in property,
Speaker 3: and he freely displayed brutish behavior, living up to his
Speaker 3: now well known reputation as a killer, scaring some of
Speaker 3: the locals half to death. In the next episode of
Speaker 3: The Gangster's Ghost, matt I was scared.
Speaker 5: I'm no hero.
Speaker 20: I've never been tough. This was something I hadn't come
Speaker 20: into contact with before.
Speaker 5: Genuinely scary.
Speaker 20: He uttered a threat along the lines of if you
Speaker 20: don't do this, I'm going to shoot.
Speaker 5: You in the kneecaps.
Speaker 20: Now I remember vividly it was in the kneecaps. Having
Speaker 20: seen the other guy with the gun, I thought, these
Speaker 20: guys aren't kid. You put all that together and that's
Speaker 20: a pretty convincing argument that you should not be there.
Speaker 2: The Gangster's Ghost is a production of The Australian. It's
Speaker 2: written and presented by senior writer Matthew Condon and produced
Speaker 2: and edited by multimedia editor Leat samaglu Our, Executive producer
Speaker 2: is Me, Editorial director Claire Harvey. Special thanks to Lara Kamenos,
Speaker 2: Erica Rutlidge, Kristin Amiot, Jasper Leek, Stephanie Coombs, Sean Callanan Laughlin,
Speaker 2: Clear Ryan Osland, Amanda Willim Williams, Christine Keller, Tarn Blackhurst,
Speaker 2: Magdalena Zajak, Gisel Boetti, Genevieve Brammel, Lauren Bruce, sus Rolf
Speaker 2: and Jokina Carlson. We can only do journalism like this
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