Speaker 1: Before we begin. This podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence.
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Speaker 1: a U. This is episode two of The Gangster's Ghost.
Speaker 1: To really get into this story here episode one first
Speaker 1: at Gangstersghost dot com dot AU.
Speaker 2: When I went on this venture with Matt, I knew
Speaker 2: that I would find a monster, and I wasn't really sure.
Speaker 2: I just knew I wanted to find the truth. And
Speaker 2: so far in John's childhood, I think I have found
Speaker 2: a monster, but that monster was certainly not John. What
Speaker 2: I'm finding is a little boy that was brought up
Speaker 2: in horrific circumstances, flogged by his grandfather, flogged by his mother,
Speaker 2: and then goes on to go to the Gosford's Boys' Home,
Speaker 2: where the head of the boy's home says to one
Speaker 2: of John's friends later in life, oh, we flogged it
Speaker 2: out of him too, Like everywhere this little boy turned,
Speaker 2: he got flogged. What does people expect or is that
Speaker 2: what was expected of him. You know, he goes down
Speaker 2: to his mother.
Speaker 3: This is Kelly Slater Reagan, former New South Wales copper,
Speaker 3: sheep farmer, wheat grower, and also the cousin to Johnny Reagan,
Speaker 3: one of the toughest, most feared and hated gangsters in
Speaker 3: Australian history. For years now, Kelly and I have been
Speaker 3: on the trail of the true story behind Reagan. In
Speaker 3: myth they called him the Magician, the man who could
Speaker 3: make people disappear. They say he murdered between eight and
Speaker 3: twelve people, including a child, But who was he really?
Speaker 3: Almost fifty years after he was gunned down in a
Speaker 3: Sydney suburban street by three assassins, aged just twenty nine,
Speaker 3: Kelly and her family want to know the truth about
Speaker 3: him and given his murder is one of New South Wales'
Speaker 3: most enduring cold cases. Who killed Reagan and why? From
Speaker 3: the beginning of our investigation, I asked Kelly to keep
Speaker 3: an audio diary to freely express what was going on
Speaker 3: in her mind and her heart as we sifted through
Speaker 3: the fact and fiction surrounding her notorious relative. So she did.
Speaker 2: He goes down to his mother.
Speaker 4: At school with a bloody nurse she wants.
Speaker 2: Don't come home to your bloody No hugs, no cuddles,
Speaker 2: no genuine affection or kindness. What sort of damage does
Speaker 2: that do to a little boy? Is what I'm thinking today.
Speaker 2: And the other thing I'm thinking is where was his
Speaker 2: father's family, my family? Where were they?
Speaker 3: You know, I've been fascinated by Stuart John Reagan for decades.
Speaker 3: He was the last of the old school gangsters. A
Speaker 3: pimp and standover man in his teens, a rapist and
Speaker 3: murderer by his mid twenties, A man so unpredictably violent
Speaker 3: that just the mention of his name struck fear into
Speaker 3: Sydney's criminal miliere, and not just a few police officers.
Speaker 3: Reagan wore a bulletproof vest and was always accompanied by
Speaker 3: a bodyguard. According to all reports, he was a bona
Speaker 3: fide psychopath with all the cliched traits, cruelty to animals,
Speaker 3: no empathy, cold and violent and brutal. When Kelly joined
Speaker 3: me on this journey into the world of her long
Speaker 3: dead cousin, we both knew there had to be more
Speaker 3: to him than a couple of brief television documentaries and
Speaker 3: the occasional cameo in true crime books, where he was
Speaker 3: invariably described as a man so heenous he thought nothing
Speaker 3: of killing and disposing of a toddler, the child of
Speaker 3: one of his lovers, because the infant annoyed him. Stuart
Speaker 3: John Reagan was the worst of the worst. Take this
Speaker 3: from Suburban Gangsters, a Channel nine true crime documentary series
Speaker 3: hosted by journalist Adam Shand that went to air in
Speaker 3: two thousand and nineteen.
Speaker 5: This is the story of the magician Stuart John Reagan.
Speaker 5: Reagan was a pimp, rapist, standover man, and child murderer
Speaker 5: who enjoyed inflicting pain.
Speaker 6: Stuart John Reagan was a malicious, vicious, violent criminal whom
Speaker 6: I would raid among one of, if not the worst
Speaker 6: criminal I ever came across during my retire police career.
Speaker 7: Of all the criminals I ever knew were dealt with
Speaker 7: as a crime reporter, Reagan would probably have been the
Speaker 7: most vicious and deadly of the lot, the most heartless.
Speaker 5: Stuart John Reagan was born in the quiet country town
Speaker 5: of Young New South Wales in nineteen forty five. Not
Speaker 5: much is known about his early life, apart from his
Speaker 5: love of violence.
Speaker 3: Well, if you're ever looking for a psychopath.
Speaker 8: Reagan ticks all the boxes.
Speaker 7: No one was surprised to learn that as a child
Speaker 7: he killed animals. He harmed animals. There was a story
Speaker 7: that he used to pitchfork to kill a possum. He
Speaker 7: killed kittens and dogs, and he just had no empathy
Speaker 7: for any living being whatsoever.
Speaker 3: These are the types of stories repeated over and over
Speaker 3: about Reagan. Kelly has heard them all, but she wanted
Speaker 3: to dig deeper, so we started at the beginning. Who
Speaker 3: were his parents, Claire Mary Raul and Alfred Frederick Reagan.
Speaker 3: Was Reagan like a chemical compound, the amalgam of two
Speaker 3: evil forces? Was he a natural born killer? Or did
Speaker 3: something happen to him in his formative years? What occurred
Speaker 3: in his childhood that might betray a future of violence
Speaker 3: and a complete lack of respect for human life? This
Speaker 3: was the puzzle Kelly and I were faced with. She'd
Speaker 3: also need to take a long, hard look at herself,
Speaker 3: So we started our search in the tiny township of Young,
Speaker 3: the cherry capital of Australia on the southwestern slopes of
Speaker 3: New South Wales, where Reagan was born and where this
Speaker 3: whole story began. Young is a small country town the
Speaker 3: Reagans were one of the pioneering families in this part
Speaker 3: of Australia, and there are still Reagans in the phone book.
Speaker 3: We needed to go back to his school, find schoolmates,
Speaker 3: if any were still alive, go to his childhood homes
Speaker 3: and discover what his life was like as a kid.
Speaker 3: We had to piece together the birth of a gangster,
Speaker 3: and crucially, we had to uncover that monster that has
Speaker 3: haunted this story for decades, Reagan's mother, Claire, the woman
Speaker 3: they called the Colonel. I'm journalist Matthew Condon and This
Speaker 3: is the Gangster's Ghost, a podcast from The Australian. In
Speaker 3: this investigation, we uncover previously unreported facts about the short
Speaker 3: lived criminal career of Stuart John Reagan, speak to his family,
Speaker 3: friends and business associates who go on the record for
Speaker 3: the first time, link him to one of the most
Speaker 3: notorious mass murders in Australian history, and uncover secret audio
Speaker 3: recordings that will bring the ghost of Johnny Reagan back
Speaker 3: to life. This podcast started out as a clinical look
Speaker 3: at one of Australia's most reviled gangsters, but when the
Speaker 3: Reagan family came on board, the project took on another
Speaker 3: dimension and begged the question, how does a family cope
Speaker 3: with the generational stain of a murderer whose death was
Speaker 3: celebrated by criminals and police alike. This is episode two
Speaker 3: the Colonel. In the early days of this investigation, I
Speaker 3: took it for granted that Kel, a strong and uncompromising woman,
Speaker 3: loyal to family and with an unwavering moral compass, would
Speaker 3: take this plunge into her family history in her stride.
Speaker 3: But as time went on, I understood how deeply the
Speaker 3: whole thing affected her. The more we learned, the more
Speaker 3: it went straight to the heart. This is another entry
Speaker 3: in Kelly's personal audio diary.
Speaker 2: Years later. I'm sitting in a police recruitment interview, being
Speaker 2: grilled on a boy that turned into a monster and
Speaker 2: a man. And now I'm starting to think, well, the
Speaker 2: monster was created, and then the myth was created to
Speaker 2: fit the monster, and it's just wrong. It's so wrong.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 2: I'm open and prepared to see that John was a
Speaker 2: murderer and that he committed atrocious crimes. I understand that,
Speaker 2: But I'm finding a little boy that's stuck up for
Speaker 2: the underdog, didn't allow the big kids to bully the
Speaker 2: little kids. I'm saying that a murderer was created, but
Speaker 2: I'm not saying a child murderer, So I guess we
Speaker 2: continue to dig.
Speaker 3: That digging took us to the small town of muham Borough,
Speaker 3: only about thirty kilometers south of Young Claire. Mary Raoul
Speaker 3: was born there in nineteen thirteen. Her father, John Patrick,
Speaker 3: was a farmer. From the outset, it appears Claire wasn't
Speaker 3: backwards in coming forward. In her twenties, she was training
Speaker 3: and racing greyhounds at the murham Borough Coursing Club and
Speaker 3: was regularly in the winner's circle. In nineteen thirty eight
Speaker 3: in the Kurrawong Stakes, she came second with her dog
Speaker 3: Jim's Lass, and at some point she met sheepsharer Alfred
Speaker 3: Frederick Reagan from Young Kelly has vague memories of her
Speaker 3: great uncle.
Speaker 4: Alf Uncle alf used to be a shearer and he
Speaker 4: used to travel around like all the western areas back
Speaker 4: in those days.
Speaker 9: Ready for the first run. Each man bring homes and
Speaker 9: cutters for the hand piece. The rest of the machinery
Speaker 9: belongs to the owner of the ship. There were flanel shirts.
Speaker 4: Of travel out and you'd cheer four weeks and ended
Speaker 4: at shearing sheds all around this place, like Hillstone and
Speaker 4: Griffith and everywhere else.
Speaker 9: In this game, more hayes means less speed and damaged
Speaker 9: seap as well.
Speaker 2: So I've been told he was a very good sharer.
Speaker 4: But the problem with Uncle Alf was that once he
Speaker 4: finished hearing, he'd come home and then he would drink.
Speaker 4: But I can remember him being down the main street.
Speaker 4: He used to sit outside the old Tafe building which
Speaker 4: is just up from the Australian Hotel, which is where
Speaker 4: he drank. And he used to sit out there on
Speaker 4: a bench and wait for us kids to come and
Speaker 4: we run across the road because Dad's shop was over
Speaker 4: the other side, and he'd give us too.
Speaker 2: Bob to go and get some lollies.
Speaker 4: He used to always tip his hat to ask the
Speaker 4: ladies as they walked past. He was a very very
Speaker 4: old gentlemanly person like he was always.
Speaker 3: How Alf and Claire actually met is lost to history.
Speaker 3: Was he shearing in her neck of the woods? Did
Speaker 3: they meet in a pub? The Regans don't know. Perhaps
Speaker 3: Alf and Claire took the steam train, a short thirty
Speaker 3: kilometer ride between Young and mum Burro when they were courting,
Speaker 3: But courting maybe the wrong word to use in this case.
Speaker 3: That would imply a conventional romance, the thrill of falling
Speaker 3: in love. Nothing was conventional about this relationship. It was
Speaker 3: odd from the start and quickly became peculiar. Alf and
Speaker 3: Claire were married in nineteen forty four at Hillston, a
Speaker 3: small town three hundred kilometers west of both Young and Murramborough.
Speaker 3: The family can only speculate why they married so far
Speaker 3: from their respective homes. Perhaps Alf was shearing in the
Speaker 3: region at the time. There's a theory that Claire was
Speaker 3: working as a bar maid at a hotel there. Still,
Speaker 3: it was an odd start to a marriage that very
Speaker 3: quickly proved to be a mistake. In every family, there
Speaker 3: is an outlier, a person whose life becomes a satellite
Speaker 3: to the main family game, a curio not worthy of
Speaker 3: consideration or even basic respect, just as sick pigeons are
Speaker 3: rejected by the flock. Alf's life upon marrying Claire seemed
Speaker 3: to have been jettisoned from the normal functioning of the
Speaker 3: Greater Reagan family. In fact, Claire's existence was completely ignored.
Speaker 3: This is Kelly talking to her dad Lindsey about this
Speaker 3: strange affair.
Speaker 8: I never knew that Uncle alf Ever got married. I
Speaker 8: didn't know that Uncle alf Ever was involved with the
Speaker 8: woman because I'd never ever seen him with the lady.
Speaker 3: Tell me what this seems extraordinary? Given the size of
Speaker 3: young in the nineteen forties and the influence of the Reagans,
Speaker 3: how could they not know about the Colonel Kelly suspects
Speaker 3: the family may have rejected Claire Raoul outright, given the
Speaker 3: families deep and some might say pedigreed roots going right
Speaker 3: back to the foundations of the town. Claire, as they say,
Speaker 3: did not come from the right side of the tracks.
Speaker 3: Here's Kelly with her dad again.
Speaker 8: I'm down?
Speaker 4: And what about the comparisons? Like the three Reagan boys
Speaker 4: all married Carwell girls. Now back in the thirties, the
Speaker 4: call Walls were quite a well to do family, you
Speaker 4: could call them land a gentry.
Speaker 2: They were both pioneering families.
Speaker 4: I would imagine that those three weddings would have been
Speaker 4: quite celebrated and compared to the Carbel girls, Claire would
Speaker 4: have been fair to say if she felt intimidated when
Speaker 4: she's coming into a family of that dynamics, do you reckon?
Speaker 8: Certainly would just from my experience, once again, I didn't
Speaker 8: know her or in their girls, but I don't think
Speaker 8: that she ever was in the family setting.
Speaker 2: So never come for Christmas, never family gathering, never.
Speaker 8: Ever, never ever, I would say she was never asked,
Speaker 8: never even spoken of, because I know they well as
Speaker 8: I saying it was fifteen or something, and I never
Speaker 8: even knew he existed? Was John Reagan?
Speaker 3: Claire and Alf settled in young not long after their marriage,
Speaker 3: or did they. Some family members say now that Alf
Speaker 3: never stopped living with his mother, even when Claire was
Speaker 3: residing in town as his new wife. Still, there were
Speaker 3: very early signs that this was a fatally mismatched couple.
Speaker 3: Alf disappeared for weeks at a time on the Shearing circuit.
Speaker 3: Claire took a job as a barmaid at the Australian
Speaker 3: Hotel in the main drag Burrower Street. This pub, formerly
Speaker 3: the Shamrock Inn back in the gold rush days, would
Speaker 3: inevitably become the sinking ship of the Reagan marriage. When
Speaker 3: he was in town, Alf had his favorite stool there
Speaker 3: while the Colonel captained the bar. Today, the Australian Hotel
Speaker 3: is a vibrant family pub with fantastic food at very
Speaker 3: reasonable prices. We paid a visit and had lunch, and
Speaker 3: quickly learned from the new owners that it, like almost
Speaker 3: everyone and everything in this story, had its ghosts, Claire
Speaker 3: and Alf included.
Speaker 10: My grandmother used to work here, and my mom did
Speaker 10: so work upstairs, jens and cleaning, and I.
Speaker 3: Used to drink here all the time. But it needs
Speaker 3: to be a brothel in the early early days.
Speaker 7: This is what I've.
Speaker 10: Been informed of late eighteen hundred.
Speaker 8: Where did your mum wear?
Speaker 4: Oh my god, your grandmother would have worked here, Claire raw, Claire.
Speaker 3: And you're over lunch In the noisy pub, we discussed
Speaker 3: Claire and ELF's doomed marriage. So why does a couple
Speaker 3: not get married in the town as they have to
Speaker 3: go somewhere else to actually get married? In the pub,
Speaker 3: like everywhere else in Young it felt as if you
Speaker 3: could almost reach out and touch the past. It didn't
Speaker 3: require a great stretch of an intimation to see Claire
Speaker 3: here behind the bar pulling beers, and her still the husband, Alf,
Speaker 3: drinking away his wages across the counter. They must have
Speaker 3: glanced at each other over the damp via mets and
Speaker 3: wondered about their future together. Perhaps they sensed it was
Speaker 3: finished before it had even started. Then Claire fell pregnant.
Speaker 9: A short time ago, an American aeroplane dropped one bomb
Speaker 9: on Hiroshima. It is an atomic bomb.
Speaker 11: The Japanese have accepted our terms fully. This, ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 11: is the end of the Second Worldwide.
Speaker 3: It's August nineteen forty five, and the world rejoiced when
Speaker 3: Japan formally surrendered on September two. Even in rural Young
Speaker 3: in western New South Wales, with its statues in the
Speaker 3: main street commemorating the sacrifice of local men in the
Speaker 3: First World War, they would have been celebrated too, blowing
Speaker 3: the froth off a cold one at the Australian Hotel.
Speaker 3: Less than two weeks later, on September thirteenth, nineteen forty five,
Speaker 3: Stuart John Reagan, the only child of Claien Alf, was
Speaker 3: born in Young. It should have been a happy moment
Speaker 3: for the extended Reagan family in the immediate wake of
Speaker 3: peace across the world, but it appears nobody in the
Speaker 3: wider Reagan clan even you of the birth, just as
Speaker 3: very few were aware that Alf was even married. Alf
Speaker 3: built a ramshackle house for his new family by the
Speaker 3: Creek in smythe Lane a couple of minutes walked from
Speaker 3: his mother's house near the corner of Thornhill and Spring Streets.
Speaker 3: But there's a curious dispute in the family as to
Speaker 3: whether alf Ever domiciled with his wife and son. I
Speaker 3: talked to Kelly about it and asked the question where
Speaker 3: was alf living when baby Johnny came home from the hospital.
Speaker 2: Alf would have been with his mother. I don't think
Speaker 2: he ever moved out, to be honest.
Speaker 3: So he might have still been living with his mother
Speaker 3: while five hundred meters away his wife and son are
Speaker 3: living by the creek.
Speaker 2: Correct.
Speaker 3: She does mention in and there's documents that he dropped
Speaker 3: in and out when he felt like it.
Speaker 4: Maybe at the very beginning he might have lived with
Speaker 4: them when he built that, But I think he built
Speaker 4: the house for Aaron john Yeah. Dad certainly doesn't remember
Speaker 4: Uncle ELpH being anywhere but with his mother or away hearing.
Speaker 3: So this was little Johnny Reagan's strangulated world in a
Speaker 3: small country town, his father coming and going, and his
Speaker 3: mother the colonel ruling the roost. Reagan attended the local
Speaker 3: Catholic school, Saint Joseph's, not far from his home, by
Speaker 3: the Creek from kindergarten to grade three. He then went
Speaker 3: on to the Christian Brothers College. We went and saw
Speaker 3: Father Alan Crowe at Reagan's old college. You could almost
Speaker 3: see the site of the former Reagan home from a
Speaker 3: corner of the school playground. Father Crow had gone to
Speaker 3: the school himself. He explained how Reagan would have started
Speaker 3: kindergarten in nineteen fifty at Saint Joseph's and by year
Speaker 3: three transitioned to the nearby Christian Brothers College. In preparation
Speaker 3: for our visit, Father Crow had retrieved some old yearbooks
Speaker 3: from the library we set up in his office.
Speaker 4: So he would have started king year nine fifty, wouldn't it.
Speaker 7: Yes, you were behind John.
Speaker 12: Worne fifty four, more than the year he started at
Speaker 12: Christian Brothers.
Speaker 3: Reagan appeared sporadically in the yearbooks, a serious young boy.
Speaker 3: In his black and white class photographs, he did not
Speaker 3: smile in a single picture. Kelly tracked down several of
Speaker 3: Reagan's old schoolmates. Some remembered him fondly, others had a
Speaker 3: harsher assessment. However, all of them, bar none, recalled with horror,
Speaker 3: even after seventy years.
Speaker 8: The Colonel.
Speaker 3: One of those schoolmates was Brian English.
Speaker 10: John was a slightly lonely, sort of angry kid, not
Speaker 10: many friends, and kids were a bit frightened of it.
Speaker 10: I'm not saying he was a bully, but you wouldn't
Speaker 10: cross it, and the teachers in the school were afraid
Speaker 10: of Claire. I remember on one occasion we used to
Speaker 10: play cricket in the schoolyard and kids would take its
Speaker 10: turn to be in the bat and John was not playing.
Speaker 10: He was just standing in the yard and Suddody belted
Speaker 10: a cricket ball right up in the air, came down
Speaker 10: and hit John right on the top of his head,
Speaker 10: knocked him out there. He went down like a kind
Speaker 10: of bricks. I was standing about two meters away from
Speaker 10: when that happened, and one of the Christian brothers came
Speaker 10: over and another kid and I sat John up and
Speaker 10: we said, you know, his mother lives over there, and
Speaker 10: the teacher said, I'm not going there. Other kid and
Speaker 10: I took John hame to Claire and explained what had happened.
Speaker 10: And John was a bit adult, but we took him home.
Speaker 10: So the teachers didn't want to get involved with Claire.
Speaker 3: The colonel still haunts Brian.
Speaker 10: On another occasion, there's a bit of a gully that
Speaker 10: runs down behind the old house into the tree, and
Speaker 10: my brother, sister and I were there with him, playing
Speaker 10: around there, and Claire apparently had been calling for John
Speaker 10: to come out, and I can honestly say not one
Speaker 10: of us heard it, but we literally did not hear Claire.
Speaker 10: But the next thing, she came down the lane with
Speaker 10: a stockwhip and she felted him home. She drove him
Speaker 10: home like he was being so he had a tough mother,
Speaker 10: a tough tough lady.
Speaker 3: David Pattinson, who sadly passed away shortly after speaking to
Speaker 3: us during the making of this podcast, was in the
Speaker 3: same primary school class as Reagan. He too heard about
Speaker 3: the monster that was the Colonel.
Speaker 10: I remember.
Speaker 8: He god.
Speaker 12: He actually had a fight at school with Paul Gibson,
Speaker 12: who all gave him my bloody nose. Then another took
Speaker 12: him down to his mother and she's worked with the
Speaker 12: behind the bar and she came out with it with
Speaker 12: the cloth of the bar wiped his face, said you
Speaker 12: get out of him and get back there and give
Speaker 12: him a bleating nose.
Speaker 3: Another of Reagan's school friends, Michael Rule used to have
Speaker 3: a sleepover at Reagan's place. When Johnny and the Colonel
Speaker 3: stated her parents farm just outside town. During Alf's drinking belts,
Speaker 3: Michael said if he and Johnny did anything wrong, Claire's father,
Speaker 3: Johnny's grandfather would chase them with a stock whip. Real
Speaker 3: confirmed that the Colonel also whipped Johnny. That violence, it seemed,
Speaker 3: had rubbed off on Stuart John Reagan, who told his
Speaker 3: friend about his inner tiger. Michael explained it to Kelly.
Speaker 10: Jarley, I don't think you played.
Speaker 13: He used to take people because he.
Speaker 8: Is to fly.
Speaker 14: He liked people, and then again you don't know what
Speaker 14: city want and they have become a bisiness.
Speaker 8: He wasn't that good dad either.
Speaker 14: Short pees I said to me one day, I said,
Speaker 14: you had the shortest fo years to go a buy her,
Speaker 14: he said, he said, I've learned to control. When you control,
Speaker 14: Beena Tiger, you have got a lot of control.
Speaker 3: Brian had pitiful memories of Reagan's father Alf.
Speaker 10: The other thing you had with John was that Alf
Speaker 10: was apparently a good worker when he wasn't drinking. But
Speaker 10: Alf was a fiendish drinker. Other kids than I used
Speaker 10: to see Alf in the city in the gutter outside
Speaker 10: the Australia drinking lass flagans stuff. It wasn't there, it
Speaker 10: was there was a fortified wine and I saw in
Speaker 10: the one city in his own Europe in the gutter.
Speaker 3: Another schoolmate, John Woods, or Woodsy as he was known
Speaker 3: as a kid, had fond memories of Reagan.
Speaker 13: Were any Mass once and there were some kids talking
Speaker 13: in Mass and I sort of just turned around and said, hey, hey,
Speaker 13: stop it, we're in Mass and they jumped on my
Speaker 13: black told me I'm not the bloody bullied them or
Speaker 13: something like that.
Speaker 8: Norlady was just so quiet.
Speaker 14: Anyway.
Speaker 13: Johnny came across and grab the bloke and I said,
Speaker 13: you're him alone. He's you know, he's not caught in
Speaker 13: any trouble, and he's just at different times.
Speaker 14: He was always not protective of me, but courteous, plot
Speaker 14: whatever whatever.
Speaker 13: Word you want to use.
Speaker 6: He was just always just a nice bloke.
Speaker 3: Kelly asked Woodsy about the allegations of animal cruelty against Reagan,
Speaker 3: pitchforking possums to death, killing kittens and dogs.
Speaker 4: Now, when you were growing up with John, like at
Speaker 4: the school, did you ever see him hurt any animals?
Speaker 2: Animals that's one.
Speaker 4: Of the things they've portrayed him as that he as
Speaker 4: a child he was a psychopath and he used to
Speaker 4: kill animals, which I can find no proof of. He
Speaker 4: put a stake through a possum, is the allegation. It's
Speaker 4: not out of up and I would have murdered.
Speaker 8: Look awesome.
Speaker 12: I think it'd be more quite the opposite.
Speaker 3: Of local Kevy. Powdery also had no recollection of Reagan
Speaker 3: and his so called psychopathic streak. He debunked the often
Speaker 3: repeated myth that Reagan, as a boy, had run a
Speaker 3: pitchfork through a possum. Kevy it was a class below
Speaker 3: Reagan at school and set up an ingenious lunchtime scam.
Speaker 3: When the marble craze hit Saint Joseph's in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 15: We were getting all the marbles in the school by
Speaker 15: having a game with all the holes in the board,
Speaker 15: and people used to fire their hole their marbles at it,
Speaker 15: and if they got it through the hole, you got
Speaker 15: paid the amount of marbles and whatever the number was
Speaker 15: on them and at the mess and it didn't go through,
Speaker 15: I got the marble, and after about two days I'd
Speaker 15: taken every marble out of the school and in the
Speaker 15: finish when I was taking the last of them and
Speaker 15: no one had any marbles, And then the bigger kids
Speaker 15: in the classes above came in and was going to
Speaker 15: take the board and the marbles off me. Then Johnny
Speaker 15: came along and told them to piss off, that there
Speaker 15: was nothing wrong with what I was doing. You know,
Speaker 15: if you don't want to play, don't play. They all left.
Speaker 15: No one was going to come and stand it to
Speaker 15: me because Johnny said piss off. He was bigger than
Speaker 15: all the other kids. He just stood up for the
Speaker 15: littler kids.
Speaker 3: So what does all this say about Reagan as a child,
Speaker 3: That he disliked bullies and defended smaller children, that nobody
Speaker 3: could recall his cruelty towards animals. As per the myth
Speaker 3: about him that has continued to this day, the Colonel
Speaker 3: we heard struck fear into adults and children alike, and
Speaker 3: alf was a booze sodden ghost. As for Johnny Reagan,
Speaker 3: his upbringing had been unstable from the outset. He was
Speaker 3: subjected to cruelty at the hand of his own mother.
Speaker 3: She was physically aggressive towards him and encouraged him to
Speaker 3: be aggressive towards others. Her answer to a problem, it appeared,
Speaker 3: was violence. One serious byproduct of all this, as Michael
Speaker 3: Rule witnessed and others would experience firsthand through Reagan's brief
Speaker 3: but explosive career as an underworld figure, was his notorious
Speaker 3: short fuse, deadly force could seemingly come out of nowhere.
Speaker 3: What's heartbreaking about this story is that on many occasions
Speaker 3: a young Reagan actually snuck out of the family home
Speaker 3: and young and went around to his paternal grandmother's house,
Speaker 3: that's Alf's mum. He would see his father there and
Speaker 3: be a part of a family, his family when his
Speaker 3: mother was working behind the bar at the Australian Hotel.
Speaker 3: Kelly and I discussed this. So the picture we're getting here,
Speaker 3: from when he was a little boy to even leading
Speaker 3: up to his death in his late twenties is that
Speaker 3: you have a child sneaking around trying to connect with
Speaker 3: an actual family, but doing so and trying to conceal
Speaker 3: that connection from his own mother. What is that saying
Speaker 3: about the Colonel.
Speaker 4: Well, it's not saying much about her, but it's also
Speaker 4: not saying much about some of the Reagans either, that
Speaker 4: they let that little boy stay with her when they
Speaker 4: knew what she was like?
Speaker 3: Do you think they would have known or are we
Speaker 3: giving them the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 4: I think giving them the benefit of the doubt would
Speaker 4: be a bit rich because they would have had to
Speaker 4: have known. Pop and Uncle Jack were certainly pillars. They
Speaker 4: were well known in the community. They would have been
Speaker 4: around the pubs. They would have known what Claire was like.
Speaker 4: Talk would have come back to them for sure. Like
Speaker 4: It's only a small town. Population would have been around
Speaker 4: two or three thousand, I'd imagine.
Speaker 3: So how do you hide a sister in law and
Speaker 3: a nephew in a town of that size.
Speaker 2: I don't think you would have hidden. It was kind
Speaker 2: of they knew, but they didn't know, do you know
Speaker 2: what I mean?
Speaker 4: Like wasn't talked about, or they probably didn't even know
Speaker 4: that it was a secret and Dad was at a
Speaker 4: different school.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very weird.
Speaker 3: But it's safe to say from the stories with her
Speaker 3: thus far, that the common element at the heart of
Speaker 3: this fractured family is Claire Reagan. Everyone's tiptoeing around the.
Speaker 4: Colonel, absolutely tiptoeing or completely shutting her out. That marriage
Speaker 4: never had a chance.
Speaker 3: The true depth of misery that was going on behind
Speaker 3: closed doors in Reagan's various childhood homes, and what we
Speaker 3: would say now were factors that contributed to a future
Speaker 3: life of violence would soon be made public. By the
Speaker 3: time Reagan was in his teens, the profession awaiting him
Speaker 3: was almost inevitable gangster. In April nineteen forty six, less
Speaker 3: than two years after they were married, Claire Reagan took
Speaker 3: out what was called a prohibition order against her husband
Speaker 3: Alf in the New South Wales Supreme Court. We don't
Speaker 3: know the precise contents of the order, but given his
Speaker 3: problem with alcohol, it may have contained directions that he
Speaker 3: not be permitted inside a licensed premises purchase alcohol, or
Speaker 3: even that he stay away from his wife and nineteen
Speaker 3: month old son. Alf's drinking by this time was out
Speaker 3: of control. According to court documents, Claire said that whenever
Speaker 3: he was in town, he would head to the pub
Speaker 3: on Saturday morning and returned home at night already drunk
Speaker 3: and with more alcohol supplies, including a bottle of rum
Speaker 3: and four bottles of wine, which he would drink throughout
Speaker 3: the night. If he ran out of supplies, he would
Speaker 3: head into town for more. We have used a voice
Speaker 3: actor to read some excerpts from actual documents in Claire
Speaker 3: Reagan's divorce court case. She said of the prohibition order,
Speaker 3: according to those court documents.
Speaker 16: One of his brothers approached me and informed me that
Speaker 16: he and the other brother had lodged an appeal and
Speaker 16: pleaded to me to stand down from the appeal, which
Speaker 16: I did. They said if he continued with the drinking bouts,
Speaker 16: they would take out a prohibition order themselves against him,
Speaker 16: to give him a chance. I did not turn up
Speaker 16: to the appeal.
Speaker 3: Nothing changed, so on February five, nineteen forty nine, she
Speaker 3: petitioned for a divorce. They had been married for just
Speaker 3: over four and a half years and little Johnny was
Speaker 3: three and a half years old. The petition also asked
Speaker 3: that she be given custody of the child and weekly
Speaker 3: maintenance payments. During the hearing before Judge Byrne, the Colonel
Speaker 3: painted a scathing picture of husband alf as a habitual
Speaker 3: drunk who had been hospitalized several times for alcohol abuse.
Speaker 3: She said he had lost jobs because of his drinking
Speaker 3: and that he regularly suffered the horrors.
Speaker 16: I was going to work one morning and he came
Speaker 16: out and he asked me if he could see the
Speaker 16: child he was standing out in the rain, and I
Speaker 16: said yes, And he came in and he was scared
Speaker 16: out of his wits. He said there were men chasing him.
Speaker 16: I was a bit doubtful myself, and I did not
Speaker 16: know what he was talking about. He said, chaps with
Speaker 16: tortoise were chasing him. My father informed me he was
Speaker 16: in the horrors.
Speaker 3: Her legal counsel, Mister Clements, then asked about Alf's temperament
Speaker 3: when he was drunk, when he was in these bouts.
Speaker 8: What was his attitude towards you? Was he treatment kind? No?
Speaker 16: It was not. If I said the wrong thing, I
Speaker 16: was likely to have a blow come at me. Would
Speaker 16: it be with a closed fist, yes, closed fist.
Speaker 1: Did you receive them regularly.
Speaker 16: Oh, yes, quite frequently.
Speaker 3: Claire was also asked about a specific visit by Alf
Speaker 3: in October nineteen forty six.
Speaker 1: What was his condition when he came to see you?
Speaker 16: He was practically drunk the whole time I was there.
Speaker 16: He came home and he was very drunk and he
Speaker 16: hit me and as a result I had to bring
Speaker 16: Constable Bagnol to my assistance. He hit me with his
Speaker 16: fist on the face.
Speaker 1: Did he do anything to the baby On that occasion.
Speaker 16: He pulled the baby and me both out of bed.
Speaker 16: He pulled the tick right off the bed.
Speaker 3: Claire told the court that Alf had struck her or
Speaker 3: attempted to pull out her hair more than twenty times
Speaker 3: during their short marriage. For the bulk of it, Claire
Speaker 3: and the baby lived with her parents on their farm
Speaker 3: on the edge of young On Boxing Day nineteen forty eight,
Speaker 3: there was another major drama. Claire told the court.
Speaker 16: He came out on Sunday and had a bottle of
Speaker 16: beer and insisted on me having a drink. But I
Speaker 16: had never drink at all. I'm a non drinker. I
Speaker 16: did not mind him having a bottle, seeing it was
Speaker 16: Christmas time. With a result, I only thought he had
Speaker 16: a beer, and then I went to a neighbor's place.
Speaker 16: I was away about three quarters of an hour when
Speaker 16: it came back. A bottle of OPI rum was nearly
Speaker 16: empty on the table.
Speaker 8: She said.
Speaker 3: Alf was splayed across her bed, unable to speak. She
Speaker 3: got him off the bed and out of the house.
Speaker 3: Alf then roused, went to the back door and kicked
Speaker 3: it in. Claire went on.
Speaker 16: My father interfered then and said you'll have to pay
Speaker 16: for that door.
Speaker 8: Alf.
Speaker 16: With a result, he pulled my father out of the
Speaker 16: door and put the boot in his head. I stood
Speaker 16: between them and he hit me again. My father had
Speaker 16: to go to the hospital. Needless to say, I hit
Speaker 16: my husband two on that particular occasion.
Speaker 1: What did you hit him with with a bottle?
Speaker 3: In the end, Judge Byrne decided unanimously in Claire Reagan's favor.
Speaker 17: I accept the petitioner's evidence and all the other evidence
Speaker 17: in this case. She appears to me to be a
Speaker 17: particularly good type of woman, and I have no hesitation
Speaker 17: at all in accepting her evidence. I find the three
Speaker 17: issues in the affirmative.
Speaker 3: The colonel's recollection of Alf in her evidence as some
Speaker 3: wife bashing, hair pulling, door destroying maniac while under the influence,
Speaker 3: didn't match the Reagan family's memory of him. He is
Speaker 3: Kelly talking to her father, Lindsey, who was Alf's nephew.
Speaker 4: Now, Dad, can you tell me what you remember about
Speaker 4: Uncle Alf.
Speaker 8: To anybody to say that Uncle Alf was violent, he
Speaker 8: is absolutely a joke. I knew him very well. I
Speaker 8: never ever saw him get upset, cranky, or even nasty
Speaker 8: because Uncle Alf never had a violent bone in his body.
Speaker 8: I used to see him on a very regular basis,
Speaker 8: because he would come in the office when he was
Speaker 8: in young and when he was saber, he would come
Speaker 8: in and say. One day he came in, he said
Speaker 8: to me something about I hadn't done the right thing,
Speaker 8: or I'd done something wrong. He wasn't cranky, he wasn't nasty,
Speaker 8: and he walked out, and quarter of an hour later
Speaker 8: he came back in tears, apologizing to me that he
Speaker 8: went cook on me. Now, that was the sort of
Speaker 8: person he was. I don't think he ever swore at
Speaker 8: anybody in his life. I don't think he ever raised
Speaker 8: his voice to anybody. I certainly never heard him do
Speaker 8: it anyhow.
Speaker 3: So what was true? There is ample evidence that Alf
Speaker 3: was a hopeless alcoholic, also that he had an endearing
Speaker 3: side to him, and this is the phrase often used
Speaker 3: by family and friends when he was sober. But Claire
Speaker 3: Reagan's court testimony about his alleged violence is excruciatingly emotive, detailed,
Speaker 3: and on the written page, even after seventy five years,
Speaker 3: difficult to dismiss. This was not the end of the affair.
Speaker 8: For years in the.
Speaker 3: Town of Young As Johnny Reagan got hit on the
Speaker 3: head by cricket balls at school and defended small children
Speaker 3: from bullies and got horsewhipped in public by his mother.
Speaker 3: His father Alf passed out in the town gutters, and
Speaker 3: the Colonel pulled biers at the Australian. As Alf lived
Speaker 3: with his parents and Claire lived with hers, their matrimonial
Speaker 3: war continued to play out. When Johnny was six years
Speaker 3: old in nineteen fifty one, his father was sent to
Speaker 3: a mental institution in Morrissett, south of Newcastle for twelve months.
Speaker 3: The Colonel relentlessly pursued Alf for alimony payments. This went
Speaker 3: on for several years. Very few people in town by
Speaker 3: this stage would not have heard of the ongoing saga
Speaker 3: that was Reagan versus Reagan. Then came a major turning
Speaker 3: point in the late nineteen fifties. Alf, hopelessly behind on
Speaker 3: his alimony payments, was sentenced to a short stint in
Speaker 3: Long Bay Jail in Sydney, and Claire and Johnny would
Speaker 3: disappear from Young. The Colonel went from her parents strawberry
Speaker 3: farm outside a country town to a narrow townhouse in
Speaker 3: Liverpool Street, Darlinghurst, in the heart of Sydney's Red Light district,
Speaker 3: and Johnny would serve time in one of New South
Speaker 3: Wales's most fertile schools for future criminals, the Mount Penang
Speaker 3: Home for Boys in Gosford on the New South Wales
Speaker 3: Central Coast. There he would meet boys who would become
Speaker 3: in just a few short years the toughest gangsters and
Speaker 3: most ruthless killers in the Sydney Underworld, men Reagan would
Speaker 3: mix with and do business with on the outside, and
Speaker 3: ad men who may have played a role in Reagan's
Speaker 3: actual murder in distant nineteen seventy four. Families have their
Speaker 3: fair share of secrets, But when your clan has featured
Speaker 3: not just one of Australia's most notorious crook's killers in
Speaker 3: Stuart John Reagan, but a man whose murder has remained
Speaker 3: unsolved for fifty years, unexpected facts, hidden or forgotten can
Speaker 3: rise to the surface over time. For the Reagans, one
Speaker 3: story has never gone away. After Reagan's stretch at Mount Penang,
Speaker 3: he would return to the Colonel in Liverpool Street, primed
Speaker 3: and ready for a criminal career. History shows he quickly
Speaker 3: went to work as a standover man in Darlinghurst and
Speaker 3: King's Cross, a teenage pimp and protector known for his
Speaker 3: explosive temper and extreme violence. He would soon come to
Speaker 3: the attention of Sydney's underworld boss Frederick Paddles Anderson meet
Speaker 3: his future de facto wife marg In a go go bar,
Speaker 3: and bash and bludgeon his way up the criminal ladder.
Speaker 3: But exactly how did this boy straight out of a
Speaker 3: reformatory school almost instantly find himself a fixture in Sydney's
Speaker 3: shadowy criminal world. Kelly remembers a shocking family anecdote about
Speaker 3: the Colonel, a story that may explain, after half a century,
Speaker 3: how this country kid Cherrytown transformed overnight into a budding gangster.
Speaker 18: So we've worked out with John it looks like he
Speaker 18: left young after year five because we can't find a
Speaker 18: year six photo of him, so he's obviously gone to Sydney. Then,
Speaker 18: it's just feels strange that if she's petitioning for prohibition
Speaker 18: and divorce in nineteen forty six, it's just two years
Speaker 18: after they've been married. Obviously they have stayed in town
Speaker 18: for reasons unknown, and then they've gone to Sydney. It
Speaker 18: just seems a bit strange like we know that during
Speaker 18: her time in young she worked at the Australian Hotel,
Speaker 18: which to my mind was always just a local pub
Speaker 18: in town. But we've been told by the current owners
Speaker 18: of the Aussie Hotel now that grandmother worked back in
Speaker 18: the day and that it was actually a brothel, which
Speaker 18: I had not known, but had tied in with the
Speaker 18: things that the family had always talked about that when
Speaker 18: she'd gone to Sydney, she'd set up a brothel. When
Speaker 18: John comes out of Nang the Boys Home, he's got
Speaker 18: a ready made job there.
Speaker 2: His mother's got a brock a running.
Speaker 4: She's already got girls working and that's where he got
Speaker 4: his start.
Speaker 3: In the next episode of The Gangster's Ghost, the.
Speaker 19: One strange thing at Mount Ernanga like thel, when you
Speaker 19: go in the front gate is a boomerang. I couldn't
Speaker 19: work out why they had this boomerang over the entrance.
Speaker 19: It was really quite simple and you come here, you're
Speaker 19: going to come back.
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
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