Speaker 1: Before we begin. This podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence.
Speaker 1: This is a production by The Australian and our subscribers.
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Speaker 1: a U.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Checkers. It's pleasure being here at Checkers in Sydney.
Speaker 3: Now, of course it's pleasure.
Speaker 4: It's the winter of nineteen sixty eight and the popular
Speaker 4: American musical duo The Everly Brothers are on stage at
Speaker 4: Checkers Nightclub in Golden Street, in the heart of the
Speaker 4: Sydney CBD. For years, the club the place to See
Speaker 4: Be Seen, was known for its international acts Shirley Bassie,
Speaker 4: Sammy Davis Junior, Liza Manelli, and equally for its client
Speaker 4: tele from the rich and famous to the cream of
Speaker 4: the city's criminal underworld.
Speaker 2: We'd like to sing our favorite song for you.
Speaker 3: We think it's the most beautiful song we ever had
Speaker 3: the privilege of recording.
Speaker 4: Orchestra On this night, the Everly Brothers, Don and Phil
Speaker 4: played a few of their old hits like Bye Bye
Speaker 4: Love and Wake Up Little Susie, as well as the
Speaker 4: haunting ballad Let It Be Me.
Speaker 5: Less the Dear.
Speaker 4: Just a couple of years earlier, gangster Stewart John had
Speaker 4: celebrated his twenty first birthday at the fabled Checkers. He
Speaker 4: dressed in a nice suit and pencil thin tie with
Speaker 4: a white pocket handkerchief. There was a cream cake on
Speaker 4: a silver foil tray with twenty one candles. His mother, Claire,
Speaker 4: known by all as the Colonel, sat on one side
Speaker 4: of him at the table. Marg the partner he had
Speaker 4: fallen in love with at first sight when he was
Speaker 4: working as a King's Cross nightclub bouncer, sat on the other.
Speaker 4: A photograph was taken of a beaming Reagan cutting the cake.
Speaker 4: What the picture didn't show was the guest sitting on
Speaker 4: the other side of the table. That was a man
Speaker 4: called Frederick Paddles Anderson, a man who lived in the shadows,
Speaker 4: a man both police and criminals knew as the God
Speaker 4: of Sydney, the boss of Bosses. Mark remembers the celebration
Speaker 4: and the well dressed elderly gentleman at the table.
Speaker 3: I can still remember the outfit. He said, I'm buying
Speaker 3: you an outfit. You're coming to my twenty first the
Speaker 3: outfit was red velvet, opened a pel and saw the
Speaker 3: little button, and I had a red skirt. Now I've
Speaker 3: never owned anything about blood in my life, and you
Speaker 3: will wear this and we're going to have a nast night.
Speaker 3: I was very shy. I didn't speak to people. So
Speaker 3: I was here on the left hands on John was there,
Speaker 3: Claire was there, and Filman was there, and Parol Anson
Speaker 3: was on the other side. That was that Checkers, I think, yes, Checkers.
Speaker 6: That was a small group.
Speaker 3: Yes, if you see the picture, you can see him
Speaker 3: cuting his cake, which he was very happy. But in
Speaker 3: that picture you will see that mean in the corner
Speaker 3: was a battle Lansing. So he was mixing with these
Speaker 3: people and me not even not.
Speaker 6: So you didn't have a clue.
Speaker 3: I have no idea none.
Speaker 6: Time was he introduced to you as a friend or an.
Speaker 3: Uncle, or oh this is my business partner, my friend,
Speaker 3: and you know he was a very pleasant man to me.
Speaker 4: He was Mark was still in her late teens and
Speaker 4: here she was a fancy Checkers. Champagne was flowing. The
Speaker 4: boy from young had come so far so quickly. Now mentored,
Speaker 4: it seemed by this big businessman.
Speaker 6: Did he get along well with Claire?
Speaker 3: I didn't see any problem. Who was a nice snock?
Speaker 7: Did you ever query what business is it that your
Speaker 7: partner's in?
Speaker 3: No, who would never disclose it to me? I didn't
Speaker 3: even have even any thoughts. That's what was happening in
Speaker 3: this mantl because he was here, there, everywhere. Obviously he
Speaker 3: was meeting people that were cluels.
Speaker 6: So when do you think that started.
Speaker 3: I think it started at that age, Yes.
Speaker 8: I do.
Speaker 4: Paddles Anderson was there to celebrate Stuart John Reagan coming
Speaker 4: of age, and by the mid nineteen sixties he came
Speaker 4: of age alright, not just as a legal adult, but
Speaker 4: as one of the most dangerous and psychotic mobsters that
Speaker 4: the city of Sydney and the nation had ever witnessed.
Speaker 4: I'm journalist Matthew Condon and this is the Gangster's Ghost,
Speaker 4: a podcast from The Australian. This podcast started out as
Speaker 4: a clinical look at one of Australia's most reviled gangsters,
Speaker 4: but when the Reagan family came on board, the project
Speaker 4: took on another dimension and begged the question, how does
Speaker 4: a family cope with the generational stain of a murderer
Speaker 4: whose death was celebrated by criminals and police alike. This
Speaker 4: is episode five Into the Underworld. At the start of
Speaker 4: our investigation into Reagan, my co pilot Kelly Slater Reagan
Speaker 4: was brimming with optimism. She'd tracked down some of Reagan's
Speaker 4: old schoolmates in his hometown of Young and heard some
Speaker 4: decent things about the gangster when he was a boy.
Speaker 4: It encouraged Kelly that her second cousin was a bad man,
Speaker 4: but perhaps not the monster that everyone else depicted him as.
Speaker 4: But the more we learned, the more Kelly had her doubts.
Speaker 4: Here she is out on the farm with one of
Speaker 4: her audio diary entries.
Speaker 2: You know, up until I came back from Sydney last weekend,
Speaker 2: and I was really buoyed by the fact that Annie
Speaker 2: marg met Matt. You know, I thought we could tell
Speaker 2: us some of the good stuff that we'd found, you know,
Speaker 2: his friends from young saying he wasn't a psychopath. I mean,
Speaker 2: it just wasn't making him look like a monster. But
Speaker 2: in the last couple of days we've heard first hand
Speaker 2: accounts that really really conflict with that. You know, at
Speaker 2: the beginning, I said I wanted the truth and sometimes
Speaker 2: the truth isn't real pretty, And to be faired income
Speaker 2: with myself, I probably all along expected that it wouldn't
Speaker 2: be good. But there'd been this hope that he wasn't
Speaker 2: this monster, he wasn't this psychopath, he wasn't all these things.
Speaker 2: And then you know, you hear stories from people and
Speaker 2: you just shake your head and you feel sorry for
Speaker 2: these people. And how do you say, someone who's committed
Speaker 2: murders wasn't that bad? But then the whiskey, that fucking
Speaker 2: whiskey go go, and that shameful police investigation, that shameful
Speaker 2: whole thing. Yeah, I'm a bit rocked.
Speaker 4: I needed to tell Kelly that she'd better buckle her
Speaker 4: seat belt. It was Reagan's twenty first birthday that flicked
Speaker 4: a switch inside of him. He had firmly decided to
Speaker 4: come of age as a gangster, and he was in
Speaker 4: the right place at exactly the right time to achieve that.
Speaker 4: What did Paddles, who beat a murder charge in Melbourne
Speaker 4: as a young man, see in Reagan? How did they
Speaker 4: even meet? Did Paddles witness glimmers of his ambitious former
Speaker 4: self in this knockabout kid from rural New South Wales.
Speaker 4: This reform school graduate and brothel enforcer. Did he notice
Speaker 4: a formidable criminal mind at work, a prodigy? Or was
Speaker 4: Reagan's reputation as a violent, ruthless, unhinged maniac who'd bash, maim,
Speaker 4: or even kill without batting an eyelid in the forefront
Speaker 4: of paddles This boy could cause major problems for established
Speaker 4: gangsters who mostly worked harmoniously and stayed in their patch.
Speaker 4: This boy might need to be watched very carefully. And
Speaker 4: was there any meaning to be seen not just in
Speaker 4: public with Reagan but alongside his family celebrating a significant
Speaker 4: milestone in any adult's life. Was he giving Reagan permission
Speaker 4: to operate at the top tier. There has never been
Speaker 4: a time where youthful criminal ambition didn't try and push
Speaker 4: its way to the top. To get a sense of
Speaker 4: the generational doggy dog reality of the underworld, I talked
Speaker 4: to notorious comment Peter Foster, now in his early sixties,
Speaker 4: about the nineteen eighties when he first crossed paths with
Speaker 4: the dark side. Foster, at nineteen, was the world's youngest
Speaker 4: boxing promoter before he got into serious strife with various
Speaker 4: weight loss schemes that saw him convicted and jailed around
Speaker 4: the world, but thinking about his own youthful ambitions, he
Speaker 4: had a fascinating observation that was as true then as
Speaker 4: it was in the nineteen sixties in Sydney during Reagan's
Speaker 4: brutal fight to the top.
Speaker 9: You know, I didn't like that world. I much preferred
Speaker 9: the show business and the beautiful people, and the champagne
Speaker 9: lifestyle and the nice restaurants and just the nice people
Speaker 9: with good manners. I didn't like being around the thugs
Speaker 9: and the gangsters, and you know, I had too many
Speaker 9: moments of uneasiness. And you're dealing with psychopaths and sociopaths,
Speaker 9: and you're dealing with people with no empathy, and it's
Speaker 9: a dark underbelly. And I'm sure every city has it.
Speaker 9: And don't get me wrong, I've had some funny, charming
Speaker 9: nights out with some of the clever gangsters. You know,
Speaker 9: it was never going to be a place I wanted
Speaker 9: to spend too much time, But in the early days
Speaker 9: there wasn't much I could do. Now, as I'm an
Speaker 9: older man, I've done everything I can to keep myself
Speaker 9: away from that world as long as I can.
Speaker 4: There were moments when Foster trying to stay outside the underbelly,
Speaker 4: found himself caught in the vortex.
Speaker 9: You know, you own race horses and you mix with
Speaker 9: them in that circle, and occasionally you get dragged in.
Speaker 9: But it's amazing. All the gangsters want to be honest businessmen,
Speaker 9: and all the young honest kids want to be bloody gangsters.
Speaker 9: I just don't get it, you know. But all the
Speaker 9: wise old heads just want to be, you know, respectable businessmen.
Speaker 4: If Reagan had ambitions to be the next Paddles Anderson,
Speaker 4: he must have known that by the mid to late
Speaker 4: nineteen sixties it was a pretty crowded junkyard and he'd
Speaker 4: have to do something extraordinary to get noticed.
Speaker 2: Made.
Speaker 10: Lenny McPherson Australia's mister Bid. He was the feared head
Speaker 10: of Sydney's underworld for over thirty years. George Freeman race fixer,
Speaker 10: casino king, organized crime boss and cold hearted executioner, the
Speaker 10: self styled lucky Gambler to be a cold, calculating killer
Speaker 10: whose reign over Sidneys.
Speaker 11: Under the half a century. Abe Saffron is the Vice
Speaker 11: King of Sydney. He controls the illegal gambling, prostitution and
Speaker 11: liquor rackets. By bribing and blackmailing police and politicians. He's
Speaker 11: accused of arson and even murder, but like al Capone,
Speaker 11: Abe Saffron only goes to jail because of evasion.
Speaker 4: Lenny McPherson, George Freeman, Abe Saffron, These were Sydney's top
Speaker 4: gangsters when Reagan was trying to flex his youthful muscle,
Speaker 4: and as the song goes, it was a jungle out there.
Speaker 4: Reagan quickly became a recognizable face in the Darlinghurst and
Speaker 4: King's Cross neighborhood, and that face was instantly associated with violence.
Speaker 4: Former detective and best selling author Duncan McNabb, an expert
Speaker 4: on the period, says Reagan's pathway to crime was in
Speaker 4: a way predestined, starting at the front door of that
Speaker 4: terrace house in Liverpool Street, Darlinghurst, one.
Speaker 5: Liverpool Street, from Hyde Park through to where it stops
Speaker 5: in Paddington was just slums, brought a little Laneway's crims.
Speaker 5: It's where in part of Jason's where the razor Gains
Speaker 5: were working in the thirties and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 5: So Raffer's guts have gentrified about twenty years ago. In
Speaker 5: that case, if he's living in Liverpool Street. There's a
Speaker 5: reasonable charge. He just started hanging around the crust like
Speaker 5: so many of them didn't. They found him useful because
Speaker 5: he didn't have much in the way of moral so
Speaker 5: he do whatever he was asked.
Speaker 4: Local John Waddy, who would go on to become an
Speaker 4: internationally renowned fashion photographer, was a big socializer during the
Speaker 4: nineteen sixties and knew everybody around the cross. In fact,
Speaker 4: his father, doctor Bryan Woddy, had some close encounters with Reagan.
Speaker 12: My dad owned the house on the corner of Bruverpool
Speaker 12: Street and darling Hurst Road, and our house was opposite
Speaker 12: the Royal Sovereign, which is the pub, and that's where
Speaker 12: he had We had the big house there and he
Speaker 12: built a little surgery the office thing there. That's where
Speaker 12: he saw his patients. And Reagan came in as a
Speaker 12: patient wants to and I said, told me about it,
Speaker 12: and I said, God, you're kidding. I'd be a bit
Speaker 12: careful of him, you know. He said, oh no, He
Speaker 12: said to me, you know you take cash. He noticed
Speaker 12: that had the cashtraw there. He said, anybody ever attached you?
Speaker 13: What do you do?
Speaker 12: You kick him in the knee and heaved up a
Speaker 12: lesson a fight, and I said that get to I
Speaker 12: invite him up into the house and to meet the family.
Speaker 12: You know, he's not good people, but kings. It wasn't
Speaker 12: fantastic and we had Yeah. I knew every shopkeeper and
Speaker 12: every paper boy, and you know, it was a fantastic life.
Speaker 4: That era when the Cross was a frantic hive of
Speaker 4: crooks and curious civilians, corrupt police, seen slees and everything
Speaker 4: in between is long gone. I lived on the edge
Speaker 4: of the Cross in the late nineteen nineties and it
Speaker 4: was par for the course to end up on a
Speaker 4: barstool late at night in the famous Bourbon and beefsteak
Speaker 4: bar near the El Alamaine Fountain and strike up a
Speaker 4: conversation with a bloke who'd been released from Long Bay
Speaker 4: jail just that morning. There were street fights, bashings, drug busts,
Speaker 4: you name it. It was a place permanently on edge,
Speaker 4: not anymore. Kelly decided she wanted to try and walk
Speaker 4: in the footsteps of her famous relative, so we headed
Speaker 4: out on foot together. We started outside the site of
Speaker 4: the old Whiskey Ego Go nightclub in Busy William Street.
Speaker 4: So it's disappeared, it is to be destroyed. Obviously beautiful, vile.
Speaker 2: Building, but it would have been around soft after the Cross.
Speaker 2: You see the neon lights.
Speaker 4: Absolutely so for those that didn't want.
Speaker 2: To party in the Cross, as would you go to
Speaker 2: then you want? And this is where Marg went and
Speaker 2: too many yeah, and the whiskey and go go. So
Speaker 2: she went there with a friend on a night out
Speaker 2: and that's when he said to her, I'm going to
Speaker 2: marry you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, straight off, straight off. Never did marry her though, no, no,
Speaker 4: And he was the discotheque promising ten thousand feet of
Speaker 4: entertainment and the right decor for every mood, along with
Speaker 4: its little cage circular stages for scantily clad female dancers
Speaker 4: had been consigned to the distant past. But on this
Speaker 4: spot Reagan got his entree into King's Cross and to Marg,
Speaker 4: so I think he's probably got a job.
Speaker 2: Yeah by night, yeah, working his other angles by day.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and meeting other criminals, absolutely, and starting to get
Speaker 4: it to find his feet.
Speaker 2: Well, you couldn't be this close as the Cross and
Speaker 2: not have your age saffrons. McPherson's your freeman's No could yeah.
Speaker 4: No, And don't forget his mother didn't live far from here.
Speaker 2: Oh no, bless her.
Speaker 4: Yeah, just would have been just over to it. So
Speaker 4: this boocame his neighborhood very.
Speaker 2: Quickly, and you can see the Coca Carla side.
Speaker 4: Yeah. We went up to Darlinghurst Road and strolled through
Speaker 4: what was once a magic mile of depravity. Strip clubs,
Speaker 4: Vice Denz, Legal Casinos, the Pink pussy Cat, the Mayfair Hotel,
Speaker 4: the Rex Hotel, lay Girls all gone the place. Gentrified.
Speaker 4: Sanitized might be a better word. It's all I like it.
Speaker 4: So here we are col Darlinghurst Road, Darla back in
Speaker 4: your relatives old, Yeah, stomping ground. What do you reckon?
Speaker 4: She's changed a lot, hadn't it even in five to
Speaker 4: ten years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been sad really because it was so much fun.
Speaker 2: I mean it was always grotty, but it's this. It
Speaker 2: was grotty with a spit of sponge cappen into it.
Speaker 2: I think in today's terms we say not much of
Speaker 2: a vibe.
Speaker 4: Yes, but can you imagine him here?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, you can imagine him walking up and down. I
Speaker 2: can see him in a leather jacket. Yeah, do you reckon?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Looking for a quid?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And back then you could make it in all
Speaker 2: sorts of ways. But it's funny because once you listen
Speaker 2: to the tapes and you hear all the names, and
Speaker 2: you can sort of put yourself there, can't you.
Speaker 4: Like, yeah, like the Groovy Room. Yeah, you that groovy room.
Speaker 4: I admit I felt a bit nostalgic for the King's Cross.
Speaker 4: I remembered just a quarter century ago. Yeah, well, I am,
Speaker 4: well twenty five years ago. It was still electric, you know,
Speaker 4: I didn't come awake until midnight. No, and the neon
Speaker 4: lines and blue lights of the police cars all the time,
Speaker 4: the ambos, the big bounces in their bow ties.
Speaker 2: Absolutely absolutely black shirt, bow.
Speaker 4: Tie, and it was still it was a bit dangerous
Speaker 4: still go oh, go the Cross. What time is it?
Speaker 4: You know, what time of day do you want to go?
Speaker 4: It was still a possibility of danger right oh yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: She was rough and tumbled, absolutely rough and tumbled. There
Speaker 2: was all the American sailors and she was a dent
Speaker 2: iniquityquity with the big girl and a cake of Carla
Speaker 2: signing off.
Speaker 9: You go.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: It would have been amazing though back in the mid sixties.
Speaker 2: You just I can imagine it with the jags and
Speaker 2: the old cars coming up.
Speaker 4: The street and the little ballman, yeah.
Speaker 2: You know, and the music pumping everywhere, and drugs are
Speaker 2: only just coming in. You've got Vietnam veterans everywhere.
Speaker 4: Even the clubs were pretty by today's standards, weren't exactly
Speaker 4: you know, wildly riscue right, No, exactly, girls with little
Speaker 4: things on the tassels, the tassel kitty tassels, the beef
Speaker 4: and bourbon.
Speaker 2: You'd always find the King's Cross detective in there if you're.
Speaker 4: Looking for one. But now it's like, you know, there's
Speaker 4: young families pushing prams up the main drag. We popped
Speaker 4: over to the famous Tradesman's Arms Hotel on the corner
Speaker 4: of Palmer and Liverpool Streets in Darlinghurst and what would
Speaker 4: have been a quick walk from the Colonel and Reagan's
Speaker 4: place in the nineteen sixties. This was one of your
Speaker 4: true blue gangster pubs, the mobster tilly divine's favorite watering
Speaker 4: hole in the late nineteen twenties, and an establishment with
Speaker 4: a dangerous reputation through most of the twentieth century. For Reagan,
Speaker 4: it would have been a handy port of call for
Speaker 4: either something he needed like a weapon, or a person
Speaker 4: he wanted to get in touch with through the criminal
Speaker 4: telegraph network. He could also do business out of the
Speaker 4: corner pub, and with his back to the wall, he
Speaker 4: could see who was coming from at least two directions.
Speaker 4: It's now a funky gastro pub called East Village. That's
Speaker 4: an say, And we're actually not very far from where
Speaker 4: the colonel.
Speaker 2: Lived, the Colonel's one way, and Darling's first police stations
Speaker 2: the other.
Speaker 4: Right in the middle of it yea dead set.
Speaker 2: And here because Arnie mag suggested we.
Speaker 4: Come and have a little bit back in the real world.
Speaker 4: Our hunt for official paperwork in relation to Reagan's life
Speaker 4: and death became what could only be described as a
Speaker 4: bureaucratic practical joke. Kelly set herself the task of getting
Speaker 4: some of the most critical documents Reagan's criminal record and
Speaker 4: the file for the coronial inquest into his murder in
Speaker 4: nineteen seventy seven. From the outset. It felt like she
Speaker 4: was hacking her way through thick Lantana. Kelly decided to
Speaker 4: keep a record of the battle with our audio diaries.
Speaker 2: How hard can it be? Like, you know, everyone's saying
Speaker 2: in the seventies it was really bad record keeping, but
Speaker 2: people weren't stupid. In the seventies, they could still put
Speaker 2: things back in a box that's clearly labeled. And how
Speaker 2: do you lose the criminal record of one of Sidney's
Speaker 2: most notorious criminals, who suspected of murdering twelve people? When't
Speaker 2: you have a criminal record in his antecedents in each
Speaker 2: one of those murder boxes. Like, it's really hard to
Speaker 2: just blame cleric error. It's like, it's very, very frustrating.
Speaker 4: Reagan's voluminous police file. A source told me it amounted
Speaker 4: to about ten boxes of material remained sealed away from
Speaker 4: the public because his death was still an active cold case.
Speaker 4: But Kelly didn't give up, and she never took no
Speaker 4: for an answer. The first paperwork to bob to the
Speaker 4: surface after almost fifty years was Reagan's police consorting cards. Consorting,
Speaker 4: associating or communicating with at least two people who have
Speaker 4: previously been convicted of an indictable offense is an offense
Speaker 4: under the Crimes Act if prior to that consorting you'd
Speaker 4: received an official warning by police. It's a law aimed
Speaker 4: at disrupting organized criminal activity. In the nineteen sixties, the
Speaker 4: persistent monitoring of criminals like Reagan not only kept them
Speaker 4: on their toes, but was a legal path to detaining
Speaker 4: them for questioning. Naturally enough, many criminals saw it as
Speaker 4: official harassment. The consorting information on Reagan, where he was seen,
Speaker 4: who he was seen with, what vehicle he was driving,
Speaker 4: was a treasure trow for us. Here were more than
Speaker 4: thirty five digitized pages of information on Reagan that had
Speaker 4: never been made public before. The consorting cards were literally
Speaker 4: the old fashioned, lined four by six inch index cards
Speaker 4: used in pre computer offices as a convenient way to
Speaker 4: accumulate and store information. Reagan's first card was written up
Speaker 4: in the early nineteen sixties, and whether by accident or
Speaker 4: Reagan's cunning, they had his name wrong. They typed John
Speaker 4: Stuart Reagan and had Stuart John Reagan along with John
Speaker 4: Stuart Carlton and the boy as alias's. He was described
Speaker 4: as five foot eight inches or one hundred seventy two
Speaker 4: centimeters tall, of medium build and complexion, with brown hair
Speaker 4: and blue eyes. Under peculiarities, it stated scar left side
Speaker 4: upper lip. His occupation was laborer. The first date was
Speaker 4: July twenty, nineteen sixty two, when Reagan was sixteen, and
Speaker 4: listed an assault and robbery a year later there was
Speaker 4: another a salt of Fence in May nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 4: he was seen driving a dark green Rover Sedan registration
Speaker 4: an X zero three five. We'll come back to the
Speaker 4: consorting cards throughout the podcast, given they literally run until
Speaker 4: a matter of days before he was shot dead. In
Speaker 4: nineteen seventy four, while we didn't yet have Reagan's criminal
Speaker 4: record or the inquest paperwork, Kelly began pressing the New
Speaker 4: South Wales Cold Case Homicide Unit for a meeting with
Speaker 4: herself and Reagan's widow, Marg She phoned Detective Inspector Nigel
Speaker 4: Warren of the New South Wales Unsolved Homicide Squad. Interestingly,
Speaker 4: Detective Warren has also been a point of contact for
Speaker 4: the Australian's hit podcast Bronwyn, which investigates the disappearance of
Speaker 4: lennox head mother Bronwyn Winfield. In nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2: Three, I toiy might applied for the coronial file and
Speaker 2: it would take twelve months, and then he said, oh,
Speaker 2: that we probably wouldn't get a homicide file because it's
Speaker 2: seen to still be an active case. And he said,
Speaker 2: like they're never suspended, they're just sitting there waiting for
Speaker 2: more information. And I said, oh, so when was the
Speaker 2: review done And he said, well, we didn't investigation into
Speaker 2: the death of two thousand and four, and then in
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen the matters were reviewed again and they plan
Speaker 2: on revealing them every five to ten years. And I said, well,
Speaker 2: nobody from my family was contacted, and my Auntie marg
Speaker 2: wasn't contacted. He said, oh no, and I thought, well
Speaker 2: that's a bit strange. And then he said, look, we're
Speaker 2: a bit gun shy giving out information because there was
Speaker 2: a podcast where the next of Kim did a podcast
Speaker 2: on Lynett Dawson.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's the teacher's pet by at least correct. Kelly
Speaker 4: said she was told that the Reagan Police murderphile contained
Speaker 4: more than one hundred witness statements.
Speaker 2: Well, I did say that to Nigel. I said, you
Speaker 2: do realize of those one hundred statements you've got, probably
Speaker 2: seventy five of them are deceased. We're getting to the
Speaker 2: bottom of the barrel when it comes to people who
Speaker 2: were even alive then. And if we don't, I mean,
Speaker 2: the people are there. They could go back and speak
Speaker 2: to them, but from what I gather when you review it,
Speaker 2: they haven't. Because he did say to me on Nowadays
Speaker 2: we've got all CCTV, but back then it saw footwork.
Speaker 4: Kelly's hard work bore fruit. She and Marg were invited
Speaker 4: for a meeting at the New South Wales Unsolved Homicide
Speaker 4: Squad offices in Parramatta, west of the Sydney CBD. Kelly
Speaker 4: drove in from the farm in Young and met Marg
Speaker 4: in Sydney. It was the first time Mark had spoken
Speaker 4: to police about Reagan since his murder in September nineteen
Speaker 4: seventy four. Kelly rang me straight after the meeting in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty. You too, Hey, Matt, good akel. You just
Speaker 4: got out of your meeting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, ready to report in.
Speaker 4: This was a big moment for Kelly, the Reagan family
Speaker 4: and especially Marg. Who did you meet with?
Speaker 2: So we met with Detective Inspector Nigel Warren, who's the
Speaker 2: head of Unsolved Thomicide and he's offsideer Andrew.
Speaker 4: Did they allow you to record that meeting?
Speaker 2: I said, I brought a record. He said no, we
Speaker 2: won't be recording on it.
Speaker 4: Right, okay, So tell me what happened off the bat well?
Speaker 2: He just said to me, can I ask you what
Speaker 2: your motivation is? I said, Look, originally I wanted to
Speaker 2: know two things. I said, You've got to understand all
Speaker 2: my life, I've had this thrown at men, and I
Speaker 2: wanted to know the truth. So primarily I wanted to know, ay,
Speaker 2: was he a psychopath? Be it murdered this little child?
Speaker 4: Dominant?
Speaker 2: And then when I started picking and looking and contacting people,
Speaker 2: I started to get another picture. And then I wanted
Speaker 2: to dig more. And then I wanted to dig more,
Speaker 2: and now I want answers. And he said, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: well we get some people, you know, the media get
Speaker 2: onto and they want to do their documentary, you know,
Speaker 2: and the families driven by the media. And I said,
Speaker 2: I'm the one doing the driving here.
Speaker 4: Police assured Kelly that they would once again review the
Speaker 4: material at hand, and an official decision would be made
Speaker 4: on whether to formally reopen the Reagan investigation. That decision
Speaker 4: would take three years to materialize. Before Reagan had even
Speaker 4: blown out the candles on his cake at Checkers, he
Speaker 4: would be agitating the local underworld enough to be wearing
Speaker 4: a bulletproof vest out in public and keeping a bodyguard
Speaker 4: in tow. It was like he was daring sydney biggest
Speaker 4: criminals and police to take him on I dare you,
Speaker 4: Reagan was saying, Reagan's office, if you'd like to call it.
Speaker 4: That was a business called Barrack Motors in Oxford Street, Paddington,
Speaker 4: not far from where he was living with his mother,
Speaker 4: the Colonel, in Liverpool Street. It was from here that
Speaker 4: Reagan controlled his fledgling empire. Run of the mill extortion,
Speaker 4: of course, petty theft goods that fell off the backs
Speaker 4: of trucks and stolen consignments of electronic goods. But Reagan
Speaker 4: saw the bigger picture. He saw money in the towing business,
Speaker 4: in car rentals, in the taxi game, retail outlets and
Speaker 4: flipping houses. In the property market, good old fashioned legitimate
Speaker 4: buying and selling real estate itself, bricks and mortar, nothing
Speaker 4: like it. Reagan was a relentless wheeler dealer. If he
Speaker 4: wasn't concocting ways to earn a quid, he was on
Speaker 4: the telephone keeping across business in the Sydney underworld. Who
Speaker 4: was doing what, who had knocked off whom, who had
Speaker 4: nailed a big score. Meanwhile, his manic brain was trying
Speaker 4: to solve his own and his friend's legal problems. Like
Speaker 4: his poor old mate Arthur. This was captured on the
Speaker 4: secret Reagan tapes.
Speaker 13: Yeah, is Arthur there? Both they.
Speaker 12: That allow Arthur?
Speaker 8: What do you doing John?
Speaker 4: The area?
Speaker 14: Bugger?
Speaker 13: You're out of the prime.
Speaker 5: What are we out there?
Speaker 14: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I know I heard about it.
Speaker 4: The yes said drugs. I was talking.
Speaker 13: I hadn't.
Speaker 5: Oh, I know, I was in a better week ago
Speaker 5: at your piece for drugs or something.
Speaker 13: Yeah.
Speaker 14: Good, pop's got your pitch man, Hi Fay wildly.
Speaker 4: World. Here's the other bloke. I haven't known the other fellows.
Speaker 4: Reagan here mentions a detective by the name of Worsley.
Speaker 4: Reagan is familiar with him. It would be Worsley who
Speaker 4: would track Reagan's movements before his death and ultimately deliver
Speaker 4: the story of Reagan's murder at his inquest. That version
Speaker 4: of events has never really been challenged in fifty years.
Speaker 4: What they do?
Speaker 9: Like?
Speaker 4: Yo?
Speaker 14: Kay?
Speaker 4: What do they say?
Speaker 12: They could said?
Speaker 4: Hey, whatever they said, I just put the stuff in
Speaker 4: it said you had it?
Speaker 2: Ah?
Speaker 3: Where did they get your cron Where did they pinch
Speaker 3: upon and plash from vision?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 5: I just want a name because you're not about to
Speaker 5: found out of it.
Speaker 14: Because visuals fuck can't.
Speaker 4: I'm not a bay Shadier. In late nineteen sixty five. However,
Speaker 4: death came to Reagan's office in Oxford Street. That insane
Speaker 4: Brisbane crook John Andrew Stewart, part of the Brisbane mafia
Speaker 4: at the time that tried to crack the Sydney underworld,
Speaker 4: and his reform school buddy, the English born James Finch,
Speaker 4: decided to pay Reagan a visit at Barrack Motors. It
Speaker 4: was five days before Christmas and Stuart had already been
Speaker 4: on a rampage across Sydney. On November twenty six, Stuart,
Speaker 4: brandishing a sawn off twelve gage shotgun, had tried to
Speaker 4: murder gangster Robert Lawrence Steele at Wallara. In court. Steel
Speaker 4: stayed staunch. He said he couldn't see who had shot
Speaker 4: at him. Then, on December four, Stuart impersonated a New
Speaker 4: South Wales police officer and raped a woman in Elizabeth Bay.
Speaker 4: Stuart on bail, turned up outside Barrick Motors with Finch
Speaker 4: on December twenty and a gunfight broke out. Reagan was wounded.
Speaker 4: A stray bullet hit Giuseppe Kappa, one of the Barrack
Speaker 4: Motors employees. Kappa survived. Why had Stuart and Finch lashed
Speaker 4: out at Reagan. Stuart was twenty four, Reagan was twenty.
Speaker 4: Was it a brash attempt from Stuart to eliminate the
Speaker 4: rising criminal star that was Reagan? Incredibly girlfriend Mark remembers
Speaker 4: Johnny coming home that day covered in blood.
Speaker 3: I remember, not the actual, isn't it? But I remember
Speaker 3: john coming to his mother's house with Benes all over
Speaker 3: his last name, black T shirt and I think there's
Speaker 3: a picture there somewhere really with black T shirt and
Speaker 3: on his left shoulder, Yeah, whatever shoulder it was in
Speaker 3: behind the T shirt and his mother. By now, his
Speaker 3: mother didn't have priet, so I don't know. I think
Speaker 3: he wouldn't ask able. Okay, he is to accuse Johnny.
Speaker 6: You remember him talking about James Finch.
Speaker 3: I think for that he said that I was shot,
Speaker 3: but he accused. I think his words were, James Spinch,
Speaker 3: Did you wonder why you did it? I thought, where?
Speaker 3: What's going on? This is a new world I've walked
Speaker 3: into it.
Speaker 7: Do you think it was around this period that things
Speaker 7: started getting different in terms of him escalating and is
Speaker 7: diversifying in.
Speaker 6: Terms of his work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I said it started.
Speaker 14: Then.
Speaker 6: Did you ever ask about the shooting?
Speaker 3: You weren't supposed to ask questions. You don't ask questions,
Speaker 3: is what it is.
Speaker 4: Tell I knew this.
Speaker 3: I learned how to drive in the back streets, okay,
Speaker 3: in those narrow streets, just meaning him. Okay, if I
Speaker 3: didn't do the right thing, he was, get out of
Speaker 3: the car. I'll get out of the car and I'll
Speaker 3: sit on the fence. I told you a million times.
Speaker 3: I had drunk this time, and you pie, if we plant,
Speaker 3: you're not listening. And you listened to what I was saying.
Speaker 3: Now let's try again. I learned how to read number plates.
Speaker 3: This is when my life changed. I learned to have
Speaker 3: to read number plates from the looking through the vision mirror.
Speaker 3: What number plate is that one behind me?
Speaker 13: Mark how it was?
Speaker 4: That's when it started.
Speaker 6: And wasn't assumed that you didn't ask questions.
Speaker 3: You don't ask questions. So I know now it was
Speaker 3: paddlings and it wasn't his business partners. I think his
Speaker 3: life changed. He changed completely. And sometimes in life, greed
Speaker 3: and money and to be powerful came me into his world.
Speaker 3: I think that he loved it.
Speaker 4: He loved what he was doing.
Speaker 3: He loved the sense that he was mixing with those
Speaker 3: people so biggest mistati of manly his life.
Speaker 4: The deepening of Reagan's violence was beginning to show by
Speaker 4: the time he turned twenty one. Before that he had
Speaker 4: attracted attention for various instances of assault, and by the
Speaker 4: end of nineteen sixty five he had crossed over by
Speaker 4: mixing with those people. As marg had described it. Now
Speaker 4: firearms had entered the Reagan picture. He had already engaged
Speaker 4: in a Wild West style shootout with other criminals in
Speaker 4: a public street, and he was arming himself with a
Speaker 4: variety of weapons. Guns too, were suddenly being hidden in
Speaker 4: the various places he lived in and frequented. There was
Speaker 4: no turning back. Young Probationary Constable John Burks first posting
Speaker 4: in the early nineteen sixties was Darlinghurst Police Station and
Speaker 4: he served there for eleven years. He would come to
Speaker 4: know all the crooks, and he would never forget Stuart John.
Speaker 14: Reagan going back in those days. And they said there
Speaker 14: was no drugs, Yes, no, I mean you know there was.
Speaker 14: Well I first went there. All the lanes were open
Speaker 14: Woods Lane, and that you know, all the brothels, yes,
Speaker 14: and all the strip clubs were going up the cross,
Speaker 14: you know at Surf city there at the top of
Speaker 14: the cross there at William and Darlings Road. Well, they
Speaker 14: used to have all the top acts beal he thought,
Speaker 14: from the Aztecs raying Brown on the whispers and the
Speaker 14: joint was really rocking, you know.
Speaker 8: But there was no.
Speaker 14: A lot of violence, but there was no drugs. I
Speaker 14: can remember as a protective was my mate. We saw
Speaker 14: this blake shifting back in the village and what's he doing?
Speaker 14: We're pulling up listening here with you and what do
Speaker 14: you do? Anyway, we searched him and he had a
Speaker 14: match box with a bit of grass in it. Yes,
Speaker 14: probably enough to roll a joint.
Speaker 4: You did you have any words one on ones with
Speaker 4: I know you'd had a check car chase, but with
Speaker 4: Reagan in the streets.
Speaker 14: Oh yeah, quite a few times.
Speaker 4: And what was he like was he shifting?
Speaker 14: I know it was just to fall on you know.
Speaker 14: You can't talk to me, you can't do you know.
Speaker 14: He was sort of right face. He's that sort of blake,
Speaker 14: very violent, vicious bloke, and would if he thought you
Speaker 14: were some sort of a threat to him, he would
Speaker 14: just try and make up things about you. He was
Speaker 14: a real snake in the grass.
Speaker 3: He was no good.
Speaker 14: It's probably one of the worst blokes I ever had
Speaker 14: him to do it, very violent, yeah, always.
Speaker 4: One morning and off, Judy Burke spotted Reagan driving in
Speaker 4: Sydney's Inner East.
Speaker 14: And one day I was on the day off actually,
Speaker 14: but I had an old court matter down at Central
Speaker 14: and I left home and in the morning, and I
Speaker 14: had my daughter with me. I was dropping her at school. Anyway,
Speaker 14: I come out and I had my gun and handcuff,
Speaker 14: my shoulder in one hand and my coat over my shoulder.
Speaker 14: I'll put him on the bottom of the car and
Speaker 14: unlocked the card let my daughter. Anyway, I had back
Speaker 14: to Susy raid and I heard this car coming but
Speaker 14: I didn't look, and I drove around passed me. When
Speaker 14: I looked, I thought it was a green Jaguar and
Speaker 14: it was Reagan. I didn't say I recognized the car,
Speaker 14: and I thought he's going down there the Jet street.
Speaker 14: Each other's face, and I knew at the time he
Speaker 14: was wanted for rape because it was in the days
Speaker 14: the name pg Fanes and I'm trying to think, where's
Speaker 14: a phone box. Anyway, I dropped a girl and then
Speaker 14: when I was coming back, I looked Graven Street to
Speaker 14: my right, and what he done, he'd followed me, so
Speaker 14: then a chase ensued. I've chased him in my car
Speaker 14: and we've had a bathist five hundred around Kensington.
Speaker 4: Burke screamed at Reagan to stop.
Speaker 14: He didn't, and he's gone up a street called Day
Speaker 14: Avenue and there's a stop sign at the top. So
Speaker 14: I've fired four shots that he was but unfortunately I
Speaker 14: was firing right handed. I'm left handed, so one of
Speaker 14: them was an air squink. Three of them penetrated the
Speaker 14: back of his car. Anyway, he got away.
Speaker 4: Reagan was dicing with death, and the only thing not
Speaker 4: on his books, as far as anyone knew, was murder.
Speaker 4: Until January seventeen, nineteen sixty seven, a.
Speaker 8: Man known as Big Barry was found yesterday with four
Speaker 8: bullet wounds in his head in jungle like undergrowth in Paddington.
Speaker 8: Police said the man, Barry Leonard Flock, twenty eight, had
Speaker 8: told a friend he had been marked down for execution
Speaker 8: by the underworld a week ago. His body was discovered
Speaker 8: yesterday just before noon by a woman she was exercising
Speaker 8: her dog in an extensive area of undergrowth part of
Speaker 8: the Scottish Hospital. Police believe Flock was lured or forced
Speaker 8: to march at gunpoint by his killer or killers into
Speaker 8: the thick undergrowth. Flock apparently put up his hands as
Speaker 8: the bullet smashed into him.
Speaker 4: For the first time. Johnny Reagan was now a murder suspect.
Speaker 4: In the next episode of The Gangster's Ghost, Thank You John.
Speaker 13: Murdering Barry Flock, What was he like an new time?
Speaker 13: And John's relationship with him I could see.
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 leatsamaglu Our. Executive producer is Me,
Speaker 1: Editorial director Claire Harvey. Special thanks to Lara Kamenos, Erica Rutlidge,
Speaker 1: Kristin Amiot, Jasper Leik, Stephanie Coombs, Sean Callanan, Lachlan Clear,
Speaker 1: Ryan Osland, Amanda Willim Williams, Christine Kellet, Taron Blackhurst, Magdalena Zajak,
Speaker 1: Gisel Boetti, Genevieve Brammel, Lauren Bruce, sus Rolf and Jachina Carlson.
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