WEBVTT - Episode 5: Into The Underworld 0:00:02.320 --> 0:00:06.480 Before we begin. This podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence. 0:00:07.880 --> 0:00:10.799 This is a production by The Australian and our subscribers. 0:00:10.840 --> 0:00:14.520 Here episodes first and get full access to photos, video, 0:00:14.760 --> 0:00:18.840 news stories and features plus all Australia's best journalism. Twenty 0:00:18.840 --> 0:00:22.439 four to seven. Join us at gangstersghost dot com dot 0:00:22.440 --> 0:00:22.640 a U. 0:00:35.200 --> 0:00:39.760 Welcome to Checkers. It's pleasure being here at Checkers in Sydney. 0:00:40.560 --> 0:00:42.839 Now, of course it's pleasure. 0:00:43.159 --> 0:00:46.640 It's the winter of nineteen sixty eight and the popular 0:00:46.680 --> 0:00:50.919 American musical duo The Everly Brothers are on stage at 0:00:51.000 --> 0:00:54.320 Checkers Nightclub in Golden Street, in the heart of the 0:00:54.320 --> 0:00:59.800 Sydney CBD. For years, the club the place to See 0:01:00.120 --> 0:01:05.240 Be Seen, was known for its international acts Shirley Bassie, 0:01:05.560 --> 0:01:11.280 Sammy Davis Junior, Liza Manelli, and equally for its client 0:01:11.360 --> 0:01:15.720 tele from the rich and famous to the cream of 0:01:15.800 --> 0:01:18.119 the city's criminal underworld. 0:01:22.080 --> 0:01:24.160 We'd like to sing our favorite song for you. 0:01:25.640 --> 0:01:28.560 We think it's the most beautiful song we ever had 0:01:28.560 --> 0:01:29.720 the privilege of recording. 0:01:30.480 --> 0:01:36.160 Orchestra On this night, the Everly Brothers, Don and Phil 0:01:36.480 --> 0:01:39.000 played a few of their old hits like Bye Bye 0:01:39.080 --> 0:01:42.640 Love and Wake Up Little Susie, as well as the 0:01:42.720 --> 0:01:45.240 haunting ballad Let It Be Me. 0:01:47.600 --> 0:01:49.800 Less the Dear. 0:01:57.160 --> 0:02:01.120 Just a couple of years earlier, gangster Stewart John had 0:02:01.160 --> 0:02:06.200 celebrated his twenty first birthday at the fabled Checkers. He 0:02:06.280 --> 0:02:09.320 dressed in a nice suit and pencil thin tie with 0:02:09.400 --> 0:02:13.560 a white pocket handkerchief. There was a cream cake on 0:02:13.639 --> 0:02:19.600 a silver foil tray with twenty one candles. His mother, Claire, 0:02:20.120 --> 0:02:23.560 known by all as the Colonel, sat on one side 0:02:23.560 --> 0:02:27.840 of him at the table. Marg the partner he had 0:02:27.880 --> 0:02:30.480 fallen in love with at first sight when he was 0:02:30.520 --> 0:02:34.399 working as a King's Cross nightclub bouncer, sat on the other. 0:02:35.760 --> 0:02:39.960 A photograph was taken of a beaming Reagan cutting the cake. 0:02:42.280 --> 0:02:45.320 What the picture didn't show was the guest sitting on 0:02:45.360 --> 0:02:48.520 the other side of the table. That was a man 0:02:48.560 --> 0:02:55.040 called Frederick Paddles Anderson, a man who lived in the shadows, 0:02:55.600 --> 0:02:59.720 a man both police and criminals knew as the God 0:03:00.200 --> 0:03:08.000 of Sydney, the boss of Bosses. Mark remembers the celebration 0:03:09.200 --> 0:03:12.720 and the well dressed elderly gentleman at the table. 0:03:16.320 --> 0:03:19.400 I can still remember the outfit. He said, I'm buying 0:03:19.440 --> 0:03:22.080 you an outfit. You're coming to my twenty first the 0:03:22.120 --> 0:03:25.680 outfit was red velvet, opened a pel and saw the 0:03:25.720 --> 0:03:28.160 little button, and I had a red skirt. Now I've 0:03:28.200 --> 0:03:31.040 never owned anything about blood in my life, and you 0:03:31.120 --> 0:03:33.200 will wear this and we're going to have a nast night. 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:36.840 I was very shy. I didn't speak to people. So 0:03:37.040 --> 0:03:39.560 I was here on the left hands on John was there, 0:03:40.200 --> 0:03:43.760 Claire was there, and Filman was there, and Parol Anson 0:03:44.000 --> 0:03:49.000 was on the other side. That was that Checkers, I think, yes, Checkers. 0:03:49.040 --> 0:03:50.120 That was a small group. 0:03:51.080 --> 0:03:53.440 Yes, if you see the picture, you can see him 0:03:53.440 --> 0:03:57.760 cuting his cake, which he was very happy. But in 0:03:57.800 --> 0:04:01.880 that picture you will see that mean in the corner 0:04:02.040 --> 0:04:05.960 was a battle Lansing. So he was mixing with these 0:04:06.000 --> 0:04:07.200 people and me not even not. 0:04:07.680 --> 0:04:08.640 So you didn't have a clue. 0:04:10.120 --> 0:04:11.640 I have no idea none. 0:04:11.800 --> 0:04:14.200 Time was he introduced to you as a friend or an. 0:04:14.120 --> 0:04:16.919 Uncle, or oh this is my business partner, my friend, 0:04:17.279 --> 0:04:19.240 and you know he was a very pleasant man to me. 0:04:20.160 --> 0:04:25.960 He was Mark was still in her late teens and 0:04:26.040 --> 0:04:31.120 here she was a fancy Checkers. Champagne was flowing. The 0:04:31.160 --> 0:04:37.200 boy from young had come so far so quickly. Now mentored, 0:04:37.200 --> 0:04:40.160 it seemed by this big businessman. 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:43.200 Did he get along well with Claire? 0:04:44.000 --> 0:04:46.640 I didn't see any problem. Who was a nice snock? 0:04:46.839 --> 0:04:49.680 Did you ever query what business is it that your 0:04:49.720 --> 0:04:50.240 partner's in? 0:04:51.040 --> 0:04:54.599 No, who would never disclose it to me? I didn't 0:04:54.600 --> 0:04:59.159 even have even any thoughts. That's what was happening in 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:03.680 this mantl because he was here, there, everywhere. Obviously he 0:05:03.800 --> 0:05:05.480 was meeting people that were cluels. 0:05:06.080 --> 0:05:07.640 So when do you think that started. 0:05:08.160 --> 0:05:11.159 I think it started at that age, Yes. 0:05:11.000 --> 0:05:11.160 I do. 0:05:13.520 --> 0:05:17.320 Paddles Anderson was there to celebrate Stuart John Reagan coming 0:05:17.360 --> 0:05:22.360 of age, and by the mid nineteen sixties he came 0:05:22.400 --> 0:05:27.000 of age alright, not just as a legal adult, but 0:05:27.080 --> 0:05:30.640 as one of the most dangerous and psychotic mobsters that 0:05:30.720 --> 0:05:34.440 the city of Sydney and the nation had ever witnessed. 0:06:01.920 --> 0:06:06.080 I'm journalist Matthew Condon and this is the Gangster's Ghost, 0:06:06.800 --> 0:06:12.200 a podcast from The Australian. This podcast started out as 0:06:12.200 --> 0:06:15.920 a clinical look at one of Australia's most reviled gangsters, 0:06:18.000 --> 0:06:21.440 but when the Reagan family came on board, the project 0:06:21.480 --> 0:06:27.360 took on another dimension and begged the question, how does 0:06:27.400 --> 0:06:31.599 a family cope with the generational stain of a murderer 0:06:32.080 --> 0:06:38.440 whose death was celebrated by criminals and police alike. This 0:06:38.600 --> 0:06:56.520 is episode five Into the Underworld. At the start of 0:06:56.560 --> 0:07:01.359 our investigation into Reagan, my co pilot Kelly Slater Reagan 0:07:01.920 --> 0:07:06.520 was brimming with optimism. She'd tracked down some of Reagan's 0:07:06.520 --> 0:07:10.240 old schoolmates in his hometown of Young and heard some 0:07:10.400 --> 0:07:13.440 decent things about the gangster when he was a boy. 0:07:14.600 --> 0:07:19.480 It encouraged Kelly that her second cousin was a bad man, 0:07:20.040 --> 0:07:24.560 but perhaps not the monster that everyone else depicted him as. 0:07:26.080 --> 0:07:31.320 But the more we learned, the more Kelly had her doubts. 0:07:31.960 --> 0:07:34.720 Here she is out on the farm with one of 0:07:34.760 --> 0:07:36.679 her audio diary entries. 0:07:39.760 --> 0:07:42.880 You know, up until I came back from Sydney last weekend, 0:07:43.520 --> 0:07:46.200 and I was really buoyed by the fact that Annie 0:07:46.280 --> 0:07:48.720 marg met Matt. You know, I thought we could tell 0:07:48.760 --> 0:07:50.680 us some of the good stuff that we'd found, you know, 0:07:50.720 --> 0:07:54.720 his friends from young saying he wasn't a psychopath. I mean, 0:07:55.000 --> 0:07:57.880 it just wasn't making him look like a monster. But 0:07:58.560 --> 0:08:01.760 in the last couple of days we've heard first hand 0:08:01.840 --> 0:08:07.240 accounts that really really conflict with that. You know, at 0:08:07.280 --> 0:08:10.200 the beginning, I said I wanted the truth and sometimes 0:08:10.280 --> 0:08:13.040 the truth isn't real pretty, And to be faired income 0:08:13.760 --> 0:08:17.080 with myself, I probably all along expected that it wouldn't 0:08:17.120 --> 0:08:20.120 be good. But there'd been this hope that he wasn't 0:08:20.160 --> 0:08:24.680 this monster, he wasn't this psychopath, he wasn't all these things. 0:08:25.720 --> 0:08:29.920 And then you know, you hear stories from people and 0:08:29.960 --> 0:08:31.680 you just shake your head and you feel sorry for 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:35.720 these people. And how do you say, someone who's committed 0:08:35.760 --> 0:08:39.080 murders wasn't that bad? But then the whiskey, that fucking 0:08:39.120 --> 0:08:44.400 whiskey go go, and that shameful police investigation, that shameful 0:08:44.600 --> 0:08:47.800 whole thing. Yeah, I'm a bit rocked. 0:08:49.080 --> 0:08:52.800 I needed to tell Kelly that she'd better buckle her 0:08:52.840 --> 0:08:59.400 seat belt. It was Reagan's twenty first birthday that flicked 0:08:59.400 --> 0:09:04.360 a switch inside of him. He had firmly decided to 0:09:04.480 --> 0:09:07.520 come of age as a gangster, and he was in 0:09:07.600 --> 0:09:11.640 the right place at exactly the right time to achieve that. 0:09:13.800 --> 0:09:17.280 What did Paddles, who beat a murder charge in Melbourne 0:09:17.280 --> 0:09:21.520 as a young man, see in Reagan? How did they 0:09:21.559 --> 0:09:28.000 even meet? Did Paddles witness glimmers of his ambitious former 0:09:28.120 --> 0:09:32.000 self in this knockabout kid from rural New South Wales. 0:09:32.840 --> 0:09:38.600 This reform school graduate and brothel enforcer. Did he notice 0:09:38.760 --> 0:09:46.960 a formidable criminal mind at work, a prodigy? Or was 0:09:47.040 --> 0:09:54.320 Reagan's reputation as a violent, ruthless, unhinged maniac who'd bash, maim, 0:09:54.880 --> 0:09:59.120 or even kill without batting an eyelid in the forefront 0:09:59.160 --> 0:10:05.640 of paddles This boy could cause major problems for established 0:10:05.720 --> 0:10:11.160 gangsters who mostly worked harmoniously and stayed in their patch. 0:10:12.760 --> 0:10:19.320 This boy might need to be watched very carefully. And 0:10:19.520 --> 0:10:21.760 was there any meaning to be seen not just in 0:10:21.960 --> 0:10:28.080 public with Reagan but alongside his family celebrating a significant 0:10:28.120 --> 0:10:34.640 milestone in any adult's life. Was he giving Reagan permission 0:10:35.480 --> 0:10:42.280 to operate at the top tier. There has never been 0:10:42.320 --> 0:10:46.440 a time where youthful criminal ambition didn't try and push 0:10:46.480 --> 0:10:50.320 its way to the top. To get a sense of 0:10:50.360 --> 0:10:55.320 the generational doggy dog reality of the underworld, I talked 0:10:55.320 --> 0:10:59.839 to notorious comment Peter Foster, now in his early sixties, 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:05.040 about the nineteen eighties when he first crossed paths with 0:11:05.160 --> 0:11:11.040 the dark side. Foster, at nineteen, was the world's youngest 0:11:11.120 --> 0:11:15.720 boxing promoter before he got into serious strife with various 0:11:15.840 --> 0:11:20.640 weight loss schemes that saw him convicted and jailed around 0:11:20.640 --> 0:11:26.960 the world, but thinking about his own youthful ambitions, he 0:11:27.040 --> 0:11:31.439 had a fascinating observation that was as true then as 0:11:31.480 --> 0:11:36.040 it was in the nineteen sixties in Sydney during Reagan's 0:11:36.040 --> 0:11:37.640 brutal fight to the top. 0:11:38.280 --> 0:11:42.959 You know, I didn't like that world. I much preferred 0:11:43.440 --> 0:11:46.400 the show business and the beautiful people, and the champagne 0:11:46.400 --> 0:11:49.640 lifestyle and the nice restaurants and just the nice people 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:52.480 with good manners. I didn't like being around the thugs 0:11:52.480 --> 0:11:55.000 and the gangsters, and you know, I had too many 0:11:55.880 --> 0:12:00.160 moments of uneasiness. And you're dealing with psychopaths and sociopaths, 0:12:00.200 --> 0:12:04.040 and you're dealing with people with no empathy, and it's 0:12:04.040 --> 0:12:08.160 a dark underbelly. And I'm sure every city has it. 0:12:08.720 --> 0:12:11.440 And don't get me wrong, I've had some funny, charming 0:12:11.520 --> 0:12:15.000 nights out with some of the clever gangsters. You know, 0:12:15.120 --> 0:12:18.199 it was never going to be a place I wanted 0:12:18.240 --> 0:12:20.920 to spend too much time, But in the early days 0:12:21.040 --> 0:12:23.480 there wasn't much I could do. Now, as I'm an 0:12:23.480 --> 0:12:27.439 older man, I've done everything I can to keep myself 0:12:27.480 --> 0:12:30.120 away from that world as long as I can. 0:12:31.080 --> 0:12:35.920 There were moments when Foster trying to stay outside the underbelly, 0:12:36.640 --> 0:12:39.280 found himself caught in the vortex. 0:12:40.679 --> 0:12:43.280 You know, you own race horses and you mix with 0:12:43.320 --> 0:12:46.360 them in that circle, and occasionally you get dragged in. 0:12:46.400 --> 0:12:50.199 But it's amazing. All the gangsters want to be honest businessmen, 0:12:50.240 --> 0:12:52.679 and all the young honest kids want to be bloody gangsters. 0:12:52.720 --> 0:12:55.280 I just don't get it, you know. But all the 0:12:55.360 --> 0:12:58.520 wise old heads just want to be, you know, respectable businessmen. 0:12:59.240 --> 0:13:02.240 If Reagan had ambitions to be the next Paddles Anderson, 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:04.640 he must have known that by the mid to late 0:13:04.720 --> 0:13:10.000 nineteen sixties it was a pretty crowded junkyard and he'd 0:13:10.080 --> 0:13:13.640 have to do something extraordinary to get noticed. 0:13:20.080 --> 0:13:20.320 Made. 0:13:20.400 --> 0:13:24.560 Lenny McPherson Australia's mister Bid. He was the feared head 0:13:24.600 --> 0:13:29.200 of Sydney's underworld for over thirty years. George Freeman race fixer, 0:13:29.320 --> 0:13:34.520 casino king, organized crime boss and cold hearted executioner, the 0:13:34.600 --> 0:13:38.240 self styled lucky Gambler to be a cold, calculating killer 0:13:38.280 --> 0:13:39.880 whose reign over Sidneys. 0:13:39.559 --> 0:13:42.439 Under the half a century. Abe Saffron is the Vice 0:13:42.559 --> 0:13:46.840 King of Sydney. He controls the illegal gambling, prostitution and 0:13:46.920 --> 0:13:52.240 liquor rackets. By bribing and blackmailing police and politicians. He's 0:13:52.280 --> 0:13:56.439 accused of arson and even murder, but like al Capone, 0:13:56.640 --> 0:14:00.720 Abe Saffron only goes to jail because of evasion. 0:14:03.600 --> 0:14:11.080 Lenny McPherson, George Freeman, Abe Saffron, These were Sydney's top 0:14:11.120 --> 0:14:15.720 gangsters when Reagan was trying to flex his youthful muscle, 0:14:17.120 --> 0:14:21.960 and as the song goes, it was a jungle out there. 0:14:24.920 --> 0:14:28.520 Reagan quickly became a recognizable face in the Darlinghurst and 0:14:28.680 --> 0:14:35.160 King's Cross neighborhood, and that face was instantly associated with violence. 0:14:37.000 --> 0:14:41.880 Former detective and best selling author Duncan McNabb, an expert 0:14:41.920 --> 0:14:46.040 on the period, says Reagan's pathway to crime was in 0:14:46.080 --> 0:14:50.880 a way predestined, starting at the front door of that 0:14:51.160 --> 0:14:56.480 terrace house in Liverpool Street, Darlinghurst, one. 0:14:56.360 --> 0:14:59.600 Liverpool Street, from Hyde Park through to where it stops 0:14:59.760 --> 0:15:06.000 in Paddington was just slums, brought a little Laneway's crims. 0:15:06.000 --> 0:15:08.440 It's where in part of Jason's where the razor Gains 0:15:08.440 --> 0:15:10.240 were working in the thirties and all that sort of stuff. 0:15:10.280 --> 0:15:13.680 So Raffer's guts have gentrified about twenty years ago. In 0:15:13.680 --> 0:15:16.800 that case, if he's living in Liverpool Street. There's a 0:15:16.840 --> 0:15:19.040 reasonable charge. He just started hanging around the crust like 0:15:19.080 --> 0:15:21.360 so many of them didn't. They found him useful because 0:15:21.360 --> 0:15:22.760 he didn't have much in the way of moral so 0:15:22.800 --> 0:15:23.840 he do whatever he was asked. 0:15:25.280 --> 0:15:28.400 Local John Waddy, who would go on to become an 0:15:28.440 --> 0:15:33.760 internationally renowned fashion photographer, was a big socializer during the 0:15:33.840 --> 0:15:39.560 nineteen sixties and knew everybody around the cross. In fact, 0:15:39.600 --> 0:15:45.680 his father, doctor Bryan Woddy, had some close encounters with Reagan. 0:15:46.680 --> 0:15:49.240 My dad owned the house on the corner of Bruverpool 0:15:49.320 --> 0:15:52.680 Street and darling Hurst Road, and our house was opposite 0:15:52.760 --> 0:15:56.000 the Royal Sovereign, which is the pub, and that's where 0:15:56.040 --> 0:15:58.320 he had We had the big house there and he 0:15:58.400 --> 0:16:01.520 built a little surgery the office thing there. That's where 0:16:01.520 --> 0:16:05.040 he saw his patients. And Reagan came in as a 0:16:05.120 --> 0:16:08.640 patient wants to and I said, told me about it, 0:16:08.760 --> 0:16:10.840 and I said, God, you're kidding. I'd be a bit 0:16:10.880 --> 0:16:13.760 careful of him, you know. He said, oh no, He 0:16:13.840 --> 0:16:17.200 said to me, you know you take cash. He noticed 0:16:17.240 --> 0:16:21.600 that had the cashtraw there. He said, anybody ever attached you? 0:16:21.640 --> 0:16:22.080 What do you do? 0:16:22.120 --> 0:16:25.840 You kick him in the knee and heaved up a 0:16:26.000 --> 0:16:32.480 lesson a fight, and I said that get to I 0:16:32.640 --> 0:16:35.280 invite him up into the house and to meet the family. 0:16:35.440 --> 0:16:41.800 You know, he's not good people, but kings. It wasn't 0:16:41.880 --> 0:16:45.360 fantastic and we had Yeah. I knew every shopkeeper and 0:16:45.720 --> 0:16:50.360 every paper boy, and you know, it was a fantastic life. 0:16:52.160 --> 0:16:55.400 That era when the Cross was a frantic hive of 0:16:55.520 --> 0:17:02.160 crooks and curious civilians, corrupt police, seen slees and everything 0:17:02.160 --> 0:17:07.680 in between is long gone. I lived on the edge 0:17:07.720 --> 0:17:11.239 of the Cross in the late nineteen nineties and it 0:17:11.280 --> 0:17:13.600 was par for the course to end up on a 0:17:13.640 --> 0:17:17.680 barstool late at night in the famous Bourbon and beefsteak 0:17:17.720 --> 0:17:21.879 bar near the El Alamaine Fountain and strike up a 0:17:21.920 --> 0:17:24.880 conversation with a bloke who'd been released from Long Bay 0:17:25.000 --> 0:17:31.600 jail just that morning. There were street fights, bashings, drug busts, 0:17:32.400 --> 0:17:38.879 you name it. It was a place permanently on edge, 0:17:38.920 --> 0:17:43.879 not anymore. Kelly decided she wanted to try and walk 0:17:44.280 --> 0:17:50.280 in the footsteps of her famous relative, so we headed 0:17:50.359 --> 0:17:54.800 out on foot together. We started outside the site of 0:17:54.840 --> 0:17:59.280 the old Whiskey Ego Go nightclub in Busy William Street. 0:18:04.600 --> 0:18:09.240 So it's disappeared, it is to be destroyed. Obviously beautiful, vile. 0:18:09.119 --> 0:18:13.080 Building, but it would have been around soft after the Cross. 0:18:13.960 --> 0:18:15.200 You see the neon lights. 0:18:16.920 --> 0:18:19.280 Absolutely so for those that didn't want. 0:18:19.119 --> 0:18:20.919 To party in the Cross, as would you go to 0:18:21.040 --> 0:18:26.359 then you want? And this is where Marg went and 0:18:26.520 --> 0:18:31.200 too many yeah, and the whiskey and go go. So 0:18:31.240 --> 0:18:34.080 she went there with a friend on a night out 0:18:34.480 --> 0:18:36.000 and that's when he said to her, I'm going to 0:18:36.040 --> 0:18:36.480 marry you. 0:18:36.960 --> 0:18:41.280 Yeah, straight off, straight off. Never did marry her though, no, no, 0:18:41.880 --> 0:18:46.159 And he was the discotheque promising ten thousand feet of 0:18:46.280 --> 0:18:52.080 entertainment and the right decor for every mood, along with 0:18:52.160 --> 0:18:57.080 its little cage circular stages for scantily clad female dancers 0:18:57.840 --> 0:19:03.600 had been consigned to the distant past. But on this 0:19:03.760 --> 0:19:10.280 spot Reagan got his entree into King's Cross and to Marg, 0:19:14.920 --> 0:19:16.560 so I think he's probably got a job. 0:19:16.720 --> 0:19:21.280 Yeah by night, yeah, working his other angles by day. 0:19:21.440 --> 0:19:26.600 Yeah, and meeting other criminals, absolutely, and starting to get 0:19:26.640 --> 0:19:27.720 it to find his feet. 0:19:28.040 --> 0:19:29.760 Well, you couldn't be this close as the Cross and 0:19:29.800 --> 0:19:34.920 not have your age saffrons. McPherson's your freeman's No could yeah. 0:19:34.960 --> 0:19:37.560 No, And don't forget his mother didn't live far from here. 0:19:37.800 --> 0:19:40.080 Oh no, bless her. 0:19:40.320 --> 0:19:42.639 Yeah, just would have been just over to it. So 0:19:42.720 --> 0:19:45.080 this boocame his neighborhood very. 0:19:44.920 --> 0:19:47.360 Quickly, and you can see the Coca Carla side. 0:19:47.680 --> 0:19:54.160 Yeah. We went up to Darlinghurst Road and strolled through 0:19:54.200 --> 0:19:58.600 what was once a magic mile of depravity. Strip clubs, 0:19:58.720 --> 0:20:04.520 Vice Denz, Legal Casinos, the Pink pussy Cat, the Mayfair Hotel, 0:20:05.119 --> 0:20:12.640 the Rex Hotel, lay Girls all gone the place. Gentrified. 0:20:13.720 --> 0:20:19.520 Sanitized might be a better word. It's all I like it. 0:20:19.720 --> 0:20:23.600 So here we are col Darlinghurst Road, Darla back in 0:20:23.680 --> 0:20:27.960 your relatives old, Yeah, stomping ground. What do you reckon? 0:20:28.520 --> 0:20:32.359 She's changed a lot, hadn't it even in five to 0:20:32.400 --> 0:20:32.960 ten years. 0:20:33.160 --> 0:20:35.960 Yeah, it's been sad really because it was so much fun. 0:20:38.320 --> 0:20:40.480 I mean it was always grotty, but it's this. It 0:20:40.520 --> 0:20:42.800 was grotty with a spit of sponge cappen into it. 0:20:43.680 --> 0:20:45.879 I think in today's terms we say not much of 0:20:45.880 --> 0:20:46.480 a vibe. 0:20:46.840 --> 0:20:50.040 Yes, but can you imagine him here? 0:20:50.400 --> 0:20:54.040 Absolutely, you can imagine him walking up and down. I 0:20:54.040 --> 0:20:57.000 can see him in a leather jacket. Yeah, do you reckon? 0:20:57.200 --> 0:20:59.480 Yeah? Looking for a quid? 0:21:00.000 --> 0:21:02.360 Absolutely, And back then you could make it in all 0:21:02.400 --> 0:21:09.600 sorts of ways. But it's funny because once you listen 0:21:09.680 --> 0:21:12.560 to the tapes and you hear all the names, and 0:21:12.600 --> 0:21:15.320 you can sort of put yourself there, can't you. 0:21:15.359 --> 0:21:21.320 Like, yeah, like the Groovy Room. Yeah, you that groovy room. 0:21:21.440 --> 0:21:25.280 I admit I felt a bit nostalgic for the King's Cross. 0:21:25.320 --> 0:21:32.439 I remembered just a quarter century ago. Yeah, well, I am, 0:21:32.680 --> 0:21:38.399 well twenty five years ago. It was still electric, you know, 0:21:38.440 --> 0:21:41.840 I didn't come awake until midnight. No, and the neon 0:21:41.960 --> 0:21:46.359 lines and blue lights of the police cars all the time, 0:21:47.000 --> 0:21:50.560 the ambos, the big bounces in their bow ties. 0:21:50.400 --> 0:21:53.120 Absolutely absolutely black shirt, bow. 0:21:52.920 --> 0:21:58.160 Tie, and it was still it was a bit dangerous 0:21:58.160 --> 0:22:02.239 still go oh, go the Cross. What time is it? 0:22:02.280 --> 0:22:03.719 You know, what time of day do you want to go? 0:22:05.080 --> 0:22:08.399 It was still a possibility of danger right oh yeah. 0:22:08.440 --> 0:22:09.120 Absolutely. 0:22:09.200 --> 0:22:12.560 She was rough and tumbled, absolutely rough and tumbled. There 0:22:12.600 --> 0:22:17.400 was all the American sailors and she was a dent 0:22:18.760 --> 0:22:23.359 iniquityquity with the big girl and a cake of Carla 0:22:23.440 --> 0:22:24.000 signing off. 0:22:24.000 --> 0:22:24.200 You go. 0:22:26.920 --> 0:22:30.600 Yeah. 0:22:31.720 --> 0:22:34.040 It would have been amazing though back in the mid sixties. 0:22:36.080 --> 0:22:39.240 You just I can imagine it with the jags and 0:22:39.280 --> 0:22:40.760 the old cars coming up. 0:22:40.720 --> 0:22:43.120 The street and the little ballman, yeah. 0:22:42.680 --> 0:22:46.679 You know, and the music pumping everywhere, and drugs are 0:22:46.720 --> 0:22:49.640 only just coming in. You've got Vietnam veterans everywhere. 0:22:50.280 --> 0:22:54.280 Even the clubs were pretty by today's standards, weren't exactly 0:22:55.119 --> 0:22:59.320 you know, wildly riscue right, No, exactly, girls with little 0:22:59.320 --> 0:23:04.200 things on the tassels, the tassel kitty tassels, the beef 0:23:04.240 --> 0:23:04.760 and bourbon. 0:23:06.480 --> 0:23:09.359 You'd always find the King's Cross detective in there if you're. 0:23:09.200 --> 0:23:15.160 Looking for one. But now it's like, you know, there's 0:23:15.520 --> 0:23:21.200 young families pushing prams up the main drag. We popped 0:23:21.240 --> 0:23:24.840 over to the famous Tradesman's Arms Hotel on the corner 0:23:24.880 --> 0:23:29.400 of Palmer and Liverpool Streets in Darlinghurst and what would 0:23:29.400 --> 0:23:32.400 have been a quick walk from the Colonel and Reagan's 0:23:32.400 --> 0:23:37.280 place in the nineteen sixties. This was one of your 0:23:37.400 --> 0:23:42.880 true blue gangster pubs, the mobster tilly divine's favorite watering 0:23:42.880 --> 0:23:47.720 hole in the late nineteen twenties, and an establishment with 0:23:47.760 --> 0:23:54.640 a dangerous reputation through most of the twentieth century. For Reagan, 0:23:55.160 --> 0:23:57.359 it would have been a handy port of call for 0:23:57.520 --> 0:24:01.479 either something he needed like a weapon, or a person 0:24:01.520 --> 0:24:04.000 he wanted to get in touch with through the criminal 0:24:04.040 --> 0:24:08.399 telegraph network. He could also do business out of the 0:24:08.480 --> 0:24:12.600 corner pub, and with his back to the wall, he 0:24:12.640 --> 0:24:16.120 could see who was coming from at least two directions. 0:24:19.040 --> 0:24:28.240 It's now a funky gastro pub called East Village. That's 0:24:28.280 --> 0:24:33.119 an say, And we're actually not very far from where 0:24:33.119 --> 0:24:34.160 the colonel. 0:24:33.800 --> 0:24:37.640 Lived, the Colonel's one way, and Darling's first police stations 0:24:37.680 --> 0:24:37.920 the other. 0:24:38.760 --> 0:24:40.719 Right in the middle of it yea dead set. 0:24:41.440 --> 0:24:43.600 And here because Arnie mag suggested we. 0:24:43.560 --> 0:24:45.679 Come and have a little bit back in the real world. 0:24:46.000 --> 0:24:49.880 Our hunt for official paperwork in relation to Reagan's life 0:24:49.880 --> 0:24:54.480 and death became what could only be described as a 0:24:54.560 --> 0:25:00.879 bureaucratic practical joke. Kelly set herself the task of getting 0:25:00.960 --> 0:25:05.840 some of the most critical documents Reagan's criminal record and 0:25:05.880 --> 0:25:09.520 the file for the coronial inquest into his murder in 0:25:09.600 --> 0:25:13.919 nineteen seventy seven. From the outset. It felt like she 0:25:14.160 --> 0:25:19.399 was hacking her way through thick Lantana. Kelly decided to 0:25:19.520 --> 0:25:23.159 keep a record of the battle with our audio diaries. 0:25:24.200 --> 0:25:26.560 How hard can it be? Like, you know, everyone's saying 0:25:26.600 --> 0:25:29.760 in the seventies it was really bad record keeping, but 0:25:29.920 --> 0:25:32.720 people weren't stupid. In the seventies, they could still put 0:25:32.800 --> 0:25:36.320 things back in a box that's clearly labeled. And how 0:25:36.359 --> 0:25:39.320 do you lose the criminal record of one of Sidney's 0:25:39.440 --> 0:25:43.719 most notorious criminals, who suspected of murdering twelve people? When't 0:25:43.720 --> 0:25:45.960 you have a criminal record in his antecedents in each 0:25:46.000 --> 0:25:49.399 one of those murder boxes. Like, it's really hard to 0:25:49.640 --> 0:25:54.040 just blame cleric error. It's like, it's very, very frustrating. 0:25:55.240 --> 0:25:59.720 Reagan's voluminous police file. A source told me it amounted 0:25:59.760 --> 0:26:04.520 to about ten boxes of material remained sealed away from 0:26:04.600 --> 0:26:08.840 the public because his death was still an active cold case. 0:26:10.560 --> 0:26:15.159 But Kelly didn't give up, and she never took no 0:26:15.400 --> 0:26:19.199 for an answer. The first paperwork to bob to the 0:26:19.320 --> 0:26:29.160 surface after almost fifty years was Reagan's police consorting cards. Consorting, 0:26:30.119 --> 0:26:34.359 associating or communicating with at least two people who have 0:26:34.560 --> 0:26:39.720 previously been convicted of an indictable offense is an offense 0:26:39.840 --> 0:26:44.320 under the Crimes Act if prior to that consorting you'd 0:26:44.359 --> 0:26:50.359 received an official warning by police. It's a law aimed 0:26:50.400 --> 0:26:57.720 at disrupting organized criminal activity. In the nineteen sixties, the 0:26:57.800 --> 0:27:03.400 persistent monitoring of criminals like Reagan not only kept them 0:27:03.400 --> 0:27:07.560 on their toes, but was a legal path to detaining 0:27:07.600 --> 0:27:12.640 them for questioning. Naturally enough, many criminals saw it as 0:27:12.720 --> 0:27:19.840 official harassment. The consorting information on Reagan, where he was seen, 0:27:20.480 --> 0:27:23.880 who he was seen with, what vehicle he was driving, 0:27:24.920 --> 0:27:28.720 was a treasure trow for us. Here were more than 0:27:28.800 --> 0:27:33.080 thirty five digitized pages of information on Reagan that had 0:27:33.160 --> 0:27:38.800 never been made public before. The consorting cards were literally 0:27:39.160 --> 0:27:43.520 the old fashioned, lined four by six inch index cards 0:27:44.080 --> 0:27:47.840 used in pre computer offices as a convenient way to 0:27:47.920 --> 0:27:54.919 accumulate and store information. Reagan's first card was written up 0:27:55.119 --> 0:28:02.639 in the early nineteen sixties, and whether by accident or 0:28:02.840 --> 0:28:08.560 Reagan's cunning, they had his name wrong. They typed John 0:28:08.800 --> 0:28:13.720 Stuart Reagan and had Stuart John Reagan along with John 0:28:13.840 --> 0:28:20.600 Stuart Carlton and the boy as alias's. He was described 0:28:20.640 --> 0:28:23.760 as five foot eight inches or one hundred seventy two 0:28:23.800 --> 0:28:28.600 centimeters tall, of medium build and complexion, with brown hair 0:28:28.960 --> 0:28:36.080 and blue eyes. Under peculiarities, it stated scar left side 0:28:36.359 --> 0:28:42.200 upper lip. His occupation was laborer. The first date was 0:28:42.320 --> 0:28:48.000 July twenty, nineteen sixty two, when Reagan was sixteen, and 0:28:48.160 --> 0:28:52.280 listed an assault and robbery a year later there was 0:28:52.320 --> 0:28:56.280 another a salt of Fence in May nineteen sixty five, 0:28:56.680 --> 0:29:01.680 he was seen driving a dark green Rover Sedan registration 0:29:02.320 --> 0:29:06.560 an X zero three five. We'll come back to the 0:29:06.560 --> 0:29:11.360 consorting cards throughout the podcast, given they literally run until 0:29:11.400 --> 0:29:14.640 a matter of days before he was shot dead. In 0:29:14.720 --> 0:29:18.640 nineteen seventy four, while we didn't yet have Reagan's criminal 0:29:18.680 --> 0:29:24.080 record or the inquest paperwork, Kelly began pressing the New 0:29:24.120 --> 0:29:27.880