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Speaker 2: Stewart John Reagan, he was the maniac gangster shotgun Johnny Nano,
Speaker 2: the magician gunned down at the age of just twenty
Speaker 2: nine after terrorizing the East Coast of Australia throughout the
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties and seventies. It was said he killed up
Speaker 2: to twelve people, including an innocent toddler, and vanished their bodies.
Speaker 2: At the height of his notoriety, evil, his violence, his
Speaker 2: hair triggered temper. His reputation as a vendor of death
Speaker 2: was distilled into a single word, Reagan. He terrified crooks
Speaker 2: and coppers alike. He was the monster with movie star
Speaker 2: good looks. Women fawned over him, men tried to imitate
Speaker 2: the teetotaling tough guy. What set him apart was his
Speaker 2: hair trigger temper from zero to lethal boiling point in
Speaker 2: the blink of an eye. His few friends said he
Speaker 2: had a tiger inside of him. His own murder at
Speaker 2: the hands of three gunmen in a grubby Sydney laneway
Speaker 2: in broad daylight remains unsold, and half a century later,
Speaker 2: police deal don't want to know about it. He was
Speaker 2: crazy by any measure, a standout psychopath in a criminal
Speaker 2: era that had its fair share of them. Reagan roared
Speaker 2: through the underworld like a flame thrower before eight bullets
Speaker 2: to the body and the head stopped the chaos. That's
Speaker 2: where the story should have ended, but not for the
Speaker 2: Reagan family. His name and reputation have soiled a family
Speaker 2: tree from rural New South Wales that is filled with
Speaker 2: pioneers and war heroes. For them, it's time to set
Speaker 2: the record straight. Was Stuart John Reagan as bad as
Speaker 2: history has portrayed him, Did he actually kill Little Carlos
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy four, and who in turn murdered Reagan
Speaker 2: a few months later. After years of investigation, the family
Speaker 2: now has some answers. In this podcast, we will reveal
Speaker 2: a new theory about Reagan's assassination as possible retribution for
Speaker 2: Carlos's death. How Reagan tried to kill whistleblowing Madame Shirley Brifman,
Speaker 2: who died in mysterious circumstances shortly afterwards. How domestic violence
Speaker 2: perpetrated by Reagan's terrifying mother Claire, set him on the
Speaker 2: path to crime and into history. How Reagan was brutalized
Speaker 2: at a boy's home that was little more than an
Speaker 2: academy for Australia's leading criminals, including Chow Hayes, Neddie Smith,
Speaker 2: Lenny McPherson and George Freeman. We'll expose for the first
Speaker 2: time Reagan's role in the Whiskeyer Go Go nightclub massacre
Speaker 2: in Brisbane in nineteen seventy three, which killed fifteen innocent people.
Speaker 2: And incredibly, you will hear the voice of Johnny Reagan
Speaker 2: himself from old real to real tapes hidden away for
Speaker 2: years in a black suitcase. Welcome to the nether world
Speaker 2: of Australia's last old school gangster. I'm journalist Matthew Condon
Speaker 2: and this is the gangster's ghost episode one dead man talking.
Speaker 2: How on earth did I end up here? A couple
Speaker 2: of days ago, I was at home in far northern
Speaker 2: New South Wales, having a surf with my kids, surrounded
Speaker 2: by beautiful beaches, and lush rainforests. Now Here. I am
Speaker 2: on a farm outside the country town of Young, on
Speaker 2: the southwestern slopes of New South Wales, more than one thousand,
Speaker 2: one hundred kilometers away, the landscape gently rolling with patchwork
Speaker 2: wheat and canola fields, surrounded by hundreds, no thousands, of
Speaker 2: grubby sheep. I was only here because of a local farmer,
Speaker 2: Kelly Slater. I was here because Kelly contacted me and
Speaker 2: asked if I was interested in finding out the truth
Speaker 2: about a gangster she had in her family tree. If
Speaker 2: the Reagans were looking for any redemption here, it was
Speaker 2: going to be difficult to find. What if the family
Speaker 2: came on this journey and found a monster even more
Speaker 2: vile and horrific than they could possibly imagine, They had
Speaker 2: to be prepared for the worst. But standing out there
Speaker 2: in those dusty paddocks, thinking about Reagan, how he was
Speaker 2: a boy here, how he played bush rangers in the
Speaker 2: local creeks and went to chapel with his schoolmates, how
Speaker 2: he breathed in the very same country air. I was
Speaker 2: taking in Kelly's offer of joining the family in this
Speaker 2: hunt for the real Stuart John Reagan was already irresistible
Speaker 2: they had documents, letters from Reagan in prison. Even Reagan's
Speaker 2: de facto partner and mother to three of his children,
Speaker 2: Margaret was prepared to speak for the first time about
Speaker 2: her life with the gangster. But they had something else,
Speaker 2: something I had to hear, quite literally to believe testing one, two,
Speaker 2: three for five. As a crime writer, you encounter a
Speaker 2: lot of dark and surprising things. Sometimes you hear stories
Speaker 2: you wish you could unhear. But the first time I
Speaker 2: sat down and listened to the old tapes hidden in
Speaker 2: a suitcase for decades, I was speechless.
Speaker 3: That's black man, and he said, I'll buy the diamonds
Speaker 3: back off you for that amount.
Speaker 4: He's okay when the time period elapsed.
Speaker 3: I didn't want to sell under the Norman Carter and
Speaker 3: he's hold he had amagant.
Speaker 2: It's difficult to describe the sensation of hearing for the
Speaker 2: first time the actual voice of a notorious killer he'd
Speaker 2: only read about in books and ancient newspaper clippings. It
Speaker 2: felt like I was sitting in the same room as
Speaker 2: a ghost. This ghost, however, may have murdered a dozen
Speaker 2: people in cold Blood during the mid nineteen sixties until
Speaker 2: his own death in nineteen seventy four. Police were also
Speaker 2: convinced he murdered an innocent toddler. The child's body has
Speaker 2: never been found. So let's cut to the chase here.
Speaker 2: Reagan was crazy by any measure, lethal, a dangerous, loose cannon,
Speaker 2: and clearly a psychopath.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, we'll put him with the others, right Reagan, of course. Now,
Speaker 5: Reagan was shot dead by three Shepherd guns. I'm out
Speaker 5: at Mary Crew near Henson Park.
Speaker 2: This is the notorious foreman New South Wales detective and
Speaker 2: convicted murderer Roger Rogerson, who talked to me over the
Speaker 2: fern many years ago about Johnny Reagan.
Speaker 5: Lenny Macpherson said to me once, Matt, he said Roger.
Speaker 5: He said, you can control a bad man, but you
Speaker 5: can't control a madman. And I've never ever forgotten.
Speaker 2: That's Roger's dead now. But he knew a bad man
Speaker 2: when he met one, and he knew Reagan was out
Speaker 2: of control.
Speaker 6: I just thought you might be interested in seeing this.
Speaker 2: I still vividly remember when Kelly Slater Reagan herself a
Speaker 2: former New South Wales copper, first contacted me. This is
Speaker 2: Kelly reading an email she sent me.
Speaker 6: Hi, I'm an ex police officer and cousin of Johnny Reagan.
Speaker 6: We're looking at doing a podcast on him, the good,
Speaker 6: the bad, the ugly, mostly the two latter, but his
Speaker 6: childhood as well. We have letters and recordings that have
Speaker 6: never been heard. Looking for help to make it work,
Speaker 6: Kelly Slater Reagan.
Speaker 2: So I phone Kelly. We talked about how the family
Speaker 2: needed the truth after all these years, and almost as
Speaker 2: an afterthought, she added, then there's the tapes. The tapes.
Speaker 2: What tapes, I asked Johnny. She said, We've got secret
Speaker 2: tapes of Johnny on the phone back in the day,
Speaker 2: hours of them before he was murdered. Opened the door,
Speaker 2: and that's how the ghost of this long dead gangster
Speaker 2: strode into the room and started talking to me and
Speaker 2: now to you. Reagan loved technology and at some stage
Speaker 2: decided to tape his home phone calls. He rigged up
Speaker 2: his nineteen sixties rotary doll telephone with a micro fern
Speaker 2: and a real to real tape deck recorder. He even
Speaker 2: took a concealed miniature cassette recorder out into the streets
Speaker 2: of King's Cross and Darlinghurst and captured conversations with other
Speaker 2: criminals and crooked cops. You know you've got a good
Speaker 2: defense for this. Those lost tapes are filled with Reagan's
Speaker 2: wheeling and dealing, his superior knowledge of the law, and
Speaker 2: his relentless quest to get around it. We shouldn't have
Speaker 2: had that card interested in your lying in a third flight,
Speaker 2: and the names of many of the coppers he could
Speaker 2: either work with or manipulate with cash under the table,
Speaker 2: which is him mate? What he look he schnoker plaid.
Speaker 5: He's probably a mate of Sturdon.
Speaker 2: He even thinks out loud about putting a bullet in
Speaker 2: an enemy's head, just as casually as you and I
Speaker 2: might wonder out loud what we'll have for breakfast.
Speaker 3: You mark my words.
Speaker 2: I'm not telling you a line.
Speaker 5: I'll give you to your ideas, Tomas, you want to
Speaker 5: go true with him?
Speaker 2: If not, well, you know. Reagan kept his tapes hidden
Speaker 2: away in a suitcase in his mother's house in Sydney.
Speaker 2: When he died, that suitcase stayed inside a dark cupboard
Speaker 2: until his own mother, Claire Reagan, or the Kernel, as
Speaker 2: they called her, passed away in nineteen eighty eight. The tapes,
Speaker 2: magnetic recording reels, each as big as a bread plate,
Speaker 2: were lost for years. As recently as a couple of
Speaker 2: months ago, these historical artifacts sounded like something out of
Speaker 2: an audio museum, muffled, garbled ancients. Then lightning struck the
Speaker 2: Australians in house sound maestro Jasper Leak had come across
Speaker 2: an artificial intelligence program that he thought might just might
Speaker 2: help clean up Reagan's amateur recordings. It was worth a shot.
Speaker 2: Here's Jasper.
Speaker 7: I'm always on the lookout for new software, and I
Speaker 7: came across this one earlier in the year DX Revive.
Speaker 7: It's called by accenties. Think of it a bit like
Speaker 7: a pencil sketch that's only been partially completed. Imagine if
Speaker 7: you could put that drawing into a machine and it
Speaker 7: would finish the picture for you and make it look
Speaker 7: better than you could have done yourself. It would add
Speaker 7: color and shadows and depth. This tool does that, but
Speaker 7: for old bad audio.
Speaker 2: Then our other audio guru, Leah Sammaglu, spent hundreds of
Speaker 2: hours feeding the Reagan tapes through this AI software, fine
Speaker 2: tuning for neessing and draw out voices and sounds from
Speaker 2: half a century ago.
Speaker 8: Really, it's like now we can hear Johnny's voice clearly,
Speaker 8: we can also hear the voices of the people that
Speaker 8: he's talking to, like the ones on the other end
Speaker 8: of the phone. When I heard it for the first time,
Speaker 8: I got chills down my spine. It's like a miracle.
Speaker 2: This is Johnny captured on the raw digital file of
Speaker 2: the Reagan tapes.
Speaker 9: The cops and what they're doing and what they're trying
Speaker 9: to cops, all I will.
Speaker 2: And this is the same audio after Jasper, Leah and
Speaker 2: our new best friend artificial intelligence performed their wizardry. Have
Speaker 2: you heard the whispers? Learning heard wister read the cops
Speaker 2: and what they're doing and what they're trying to do? Look,
Speaker 2: you know yourself, nobody gallant coppers?
Speaker 6: Will I will?
Speaker 2: This journey has made me rethink all the trepidation and
Speaker 2: debate surrounding artificial intelligence, particularly in the feel of journalism.
Speaker 2: Would AI ultimately replace journalists as we'd been warned? Would
Speaker 2: it take over the world. The experience with the Reagan tapes, however,
Speaker 2: is an exciting, in this case jaw dropping example of
Speaker 2: how AI is far from the bogey man. For the podcast,
Speaker 2: it has proved to be a phenomenal tool. You will
Speaker 2: soon be hearing a lot of the gangster's ghost as
Speaker 2: clear as if the killer himself had pulled up a
Speaker 2: chair at your kitchen table and settled down for a
Speaker 2: cup of tea and a chat. The first and most
Speaker 2: obvious thing for me to do was to go to
Speaker 2: Young to meet Kelly. We needed to talk about her
Speaker 2: dead gangster cousin, which I guess from the outset made
Speaker 2: this something of a ghost story, replete as it was,
Speaker 2: with real bullets and bloodshed. Time and again, as Kelly
Speaker 2: and I burrowed closer to the truth about this complex man,
Speaker 2: strange things happened, ridiculous coincidences and wild strokes of luck.
Speaker 2: If you believed in that sort of thing, it was
Speaker 2: as if the gangster's ghost was pulling some strings and
Speaker 2: guiding our research. Here's Kelly, We're sitting at her kitchen
Speaker 2: table at that farm in Young.
Speaker 6: Honestly, I don't know exactly what we'll find. I know
Speaker 6: we'll find that he probably killed people. I've accepted that fact.
Speaker 6: Will we find did he kill that little boy like
Speaker 6: that is? That's something I'd really like to learn, Carlos,
Speaker 6: did he or did me? And I'm resigned to the
Speaker 6: fact that if he did, Like but I'm hopeful that
Speaker 6: they didn't the whiskey of go Go? What was his
Speaker 6: involvement in that? Was he a psychopath? Like they said?
Speaker 6: Is the stories that they tell about him true?
Speaker 4: Why do you want to know this right now?
Speaker 3: In history?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 6: It's funny, isn't it, Like when you you know, they
Speaker 6: talk about war veterans and all that, and they they
Speaker 6: talk about it when they get older, and I think
Speaker 6: history you get to a certain age where you just
Speaker 6: think you want to know. But I've got a curious mind,
Speaker 6: Like I've been a day drama since the day I
Speaker 6: was born, and I've got a really curious mind. And
Speaker 6: I'm not afraid to you know, I love a chat,
Speaker 6: so I'm not afraid to ask questions. And I'm yeah,
Speaker 6: just I guess never been in the right time. But again,
Speaker 6: like who am I going to do it with? We'd
Speaker 6: get boring, wouldn't it? Like who do you share fun with?
Speaker 5: So?
Speaker 4: Yeah, who do you?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 4: The most important thing will be to bounce.
Speaker 2: Just a quick note here. I really want you to
Speaker 2: like Kelly. She's a great laugh, as it turns out,
Speaker 2: a ruthless researcher, and as honest as the day is long.
Speaker 2: I knew from the outset that I had well a
Speaker 2: partner in crime.
Speaker 6: Here, curious min and I'm not afraid.
Speaker 2: That first day I met Kelly and we sat at
Speaker 2: her kitchen table. We were awaiting someone else. Margaret Reagan
Speaker 2: Johnny's long term some might say long suffering, de facto
Speaker 2: wife and mother to three of his children. She was
Speaker 2: due at the farm soon. I wondered how much she knew,
Speaker 2: not just about the day Johnny Reagan was assassinated, or
Speaker 2: even about his criminal career. Did she know anything about
Speaker 2: who might have wanted him dead? The seemingly untouchable Stuart
Speaker 2: John Reagan, who often wore a bulletproof vest and always
Speaker 2: had a bodyguard by his side, was there one minute,
Speaker 2: larger than life, and gone the next, a corpse bleeding
Speaker 2: out on a Sydney side street. His substantial assets seemed
Speaker 2: to have disappeared with him. The so called millionaire gangster
Speaker 2: was a violent standover man and a pimp for sex workers,
Speaker 2: but he was also a property developer. If the family
Speaker 2: has the story right, he owned substantial real estate assets
Speaker 2: in New South Wales and Queensland. When he was murdered,
Speaker 2: he'd flip houses for a profit. He also had a
Speaker 2: taxi in car rental business, and prior to his death
Speaker 2: he had developed what may have been the greatest land
Speaker 2: scam in Australian history, which we'll examine in detail later
Speaker 2: in this podcast.
Speaker 4: What does it say that suddenly all lines of investigation,
Speaker 4: query asking questions all stopped upon his death. Well, it's
Speaker 4: still an active cold case his murder.
Speaker 6: Well you think so, wouldn't you, because they never closed.
Speaker 6: There's no statute of limitations on murder. And here is
Speaker 6: one of the biggest gangsters. So who's killed one of
Speaker 6: the biggest gangsters? Wouldn't you want to know? Out of
Speaker 6: curiosity and with all the talk because over the years
Speaker 6: I have spoken to people, I met a guy up
Speaker 6: in Nelson's Bay. So what had happened is I was
Speaker 6: at the station and a guy brought me in a
Speaker 6: scrap book. I can't even remember who he was, and
Speaker 6: he said, I just thought you might be interested in
Speaker 6: seeing this. I know he was your uncle or your cousin.
Speaker 6: I went, oh, right, and I had to look, and
Speaker 6: here's the scrapbook of Allah and he brought it in.
Speaker 6: So I was sitting out in the meal room and
Speaker 6: I was just having a look at it, and it
Speaker 6: was just sitting on the table. Now, what's the chances
Speaker 6: of Assistant commissioner, former member of the armed hold up squad?
Speaker 6: So I've been told pops in and he sees this
Speaker 6: thing there and he says, oh, please looking at this
Speaker 6: and I said, oh, that's me. And he said, oh,
Speaker 6: what's what's your interest in Reagan? And I said, well,
Speaker 6: he's my dad's first cousin. Oh, oh, well, I can
Speaker 6: put you in contact with someone who can tell you.
Speaker 6: So that's when he gave me old mate's number. He said,
Speaker 6: I'll meet you at the golf course in Nelson's Bay.
Speaker 6: It was real cloak and dagger, and he handed me
Speaker 6: a letter that I had to destroy.
Speaker 4: What was the matter.
Speaker 6: It was just sort of saying that, you know, he
Speaker 6: knew John, that he'd arrested him, that he was he
Speaker 6: went to the hospital when he'd broken Marg's jaw and
Speaker 6: tried to get him, tried to get Mard to give
Speaker 6: a statement, which you wouldn't give a statement. It was
Speaker 6: sort of just about that, and I'm like, is there
Speaker 6: anything else? Do you know who killed? No? No, no, no,
Speaker 6: no no no? Do you did he kill Carr? Yeah?
Speaker 6: Dead set killed that baby. He killed that baby. And
Speaker 6: I'm like, oh right, okay, yep, yep, right here, and
Speaker 6: then off he went. So every time someone would find
Speaker 6: out that my name was Reagan and I was from
Speaker 6: young and it was a police officer they and they
Speaker 6: were senior, they'd all way, oh, yeah, yeah, do you
Speaker 6: know Johnny Reagan? Yeah, yeah, I do. Yeah. In the end,
Speaker 6: sometimes I'd just say no, no, don't know who talked about, right,
Speaker 6: but yeah, it was. It was always there. And so
Speaker 6: I asked the senior, like a guy that was a
Speaker 6: detective at Newtown at the same time, I said, if
Speaker 6: you were there in seventy four, do you remember Stuart
Speaker 6: John Ray? Oh yeah, yeah I do. I said, well
Speaker 6: he was my cousin. He said, all right. I said,
Speaker 6: do you ever know who killed him? He said, well,
Speaker 6: we were told that in the area at the time
Speaker 6: there was a car with four detective you've seen in it.
Speaker 6: They were wearing these bowler hats or something and they
Speaker 6: had police coats on. And he said there was always
Speaker 6: a whisper that it was Rogerson's first hit.
Speaker 9: Roger Rogerson.
Speaker 2: Roger Caleb Rogerson, the notorious former New South Wales police
Speaker 2: detective sergeant implicated in killing's assault, verbaling, drug dealing and
Speaker 2: corruption during a tumultuous career that saw him both admired
Speaker 2: and hated. At his peak from the late nineteen sixties
Speaker 2: through to the early nineteen eighties, he associated with all
Speaker 2: the corrupt cops and Sydney gangsters that formed Johnny Reagan's millieure.
Speaker 2: Rogerson was one of the lead detectives who investigated the
Speaker 2: Whisky Go Go nightclub bombing in Brisbane in nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 2: which left fifteen people dead. This incredibly brought him into
Speaker 2: the orbit of Reagan, but more of that later. Rogerson
Speaker 2: became infamous after shooting dead drug dealer Warren Lanfranci. It
Speaker 2: was suspected too, that he was involved in the attempted
Speaker 2: murder of one of his own colleagues, police officer Michael Drury,
Speaker 2: who had refused to take a bribe. Rogerson was dismissed
Speaker 2: from the New South Wales Police Force in nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 2: hit the pub circuit telling tall stories about his infamous
Speaker 2: career before being charged in twenty fourteen with the murder
Speaker 2: of Sydney drug dealer Jamie Gow. Rogerson was found guilty
Speaker 2: of that crime. He died in Sydney's Long Bay jail.
Speaker 2: Last year when he was convinced of the Gow murder.
Speaker 2: A Sydney newspaper ran a headline, serial killer with a badge.
Speaker 6: And I said, what do you mean, his first hit?
Speaker 6: And they said, since the forties and fifties has always
Speaker 6: been a hit man in the cibur. I said, you
Speaker 6: can't generation. Yes, I said, you can't be serious. He said, Oh,
Speaker 6: the rank and file would never know about it. He said,
Speaker 6: but when detectives, when we'd all go out and we'd
Speaker 6: all be having a beer and lips would loosen a beer.
Speaker 6: He said, there was always talk of that sort of stuff.
Speaker 4: Who told you that story?
Speaker 2: The observation that each generation of police might have a
Speaker 2: professional killer in its ranks is far from outlandish, given
Speaker 2: the history of corruption in the New South Wales Force.
Speaker 2: That reputation began with the arrival of the first fleet
Speaker 2: in seventeen eighty eight and has never abated. Corruption flourished
Speaker 2: in Sydney during the Second World War and became a
Speaker 2: fine art in the hands of men like Ray Gunner
Speaker 2: Kelly and Fred Froggy Cray. From the nineteen fifties to
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies. Roger Rogerson was part of the new
Speaker 2: generation that carried that crooked Batton forward. The Wood Royal
Speaker 2: Commission into the New South Wales Police Service between nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety five and nineteen ninety seven examined the extent of
Speaker 2: corruption in the force. It exposed countless examples of misconduct
Speaker 2: and hundreds of officers were forced to resign. Kelly Reagan
Speaker 2: was treated with extreme suspicion when she applied to join
Speaker 2: the police. A relative of this violent killer wanted to
Speaker 2: sign up to keep the peace in New South Wales.
Speaker 2: I was interested in whether having Reagan in her family
Speaker 2: tree actually inspired Kelly to com that crime. She had
Speaker 2: been fascinated with Johnny Reagan since she was a little girl.
Speaker 6: See, the family was always told that he was killed
Speaker 6: by police, and it was you know, if they were,
Speaker 6: they were very brazen because they used thirty eight's, So
Speaker 6: it was always said that they were killed by police. Well,
Speaker 6: he was killed by police.
Speaker 4: I don't want to overstretched the metaphor, but in the
Speaker 4: one family you've got a toorious gangster and a New
Speaker 4: Southwest Police officer.
Speaker 6: I know, don't worry. When I went for my job
Speaker 6: interview I was expecting three serving senior serving, but there
Speaker 6: was five on the panel and that's mostly all they
Speaker 6: asked for about. So Kelly Reagan from young Yep, what's
Speaker 6: your relationship to Stuart John Reagan? Well, I never met him.
Speaker 6: Here's my dad's cousin. And then it was just question
Speaker 6: after question after question.
Speaker 4: Do you think you became an officer because you had
Speaker 4: an arch villain in the family.
Speaker 6: No. A maide of mine joined and she dared me,
Speaker 6: and I thought, ye, why not? As a kid grow
Speaker 6: I've always wanted to be in the mound of police
Speaker 6: working in the state bank, do I? And she was
Speaker 6: at the NAB in Brooklab and we're live in together,
Speaker 6: and she joined and she said, yeah, it's super easy
Speaker 6: get in, all right? So put performed in the next
Speaker 6: thing I'm in.
Speaker 4: I guess one of the things we're going to have
Speaker 4: to target is why there is so little information about them?
Speaker 4: Is what has what the flow of information about Stuart
Speaker 4: John Reagan. There's books on learning person, George Freeman, Abe Saffroum,
Speaker 4: you name it. There is almost nothing on Reagan.
Speaker 6: And nowadays there is podcasts and this podcast on everything
Speaker 6: to do with crooks and gangsters, isn't it like Melbourne?
Speaker 6: If you even got arrested for a break in any
Speaker 6: you've got a podcast on about you. But in Sydney
Speaker 6: you've got the same players. But here you've got someone
Speaker 6: who's supposed to be one of Sydney's biggest, most notorious gangsters,
Speaker 6: and you've got sickery do squad boy, you've got the
Speaker 6: same rhetoric as what's been marched out psychopath as a
Speaker 6: child killed, the child killed, Ruddy Clark signed his death
Speaker 6: Barrit got.
Speaker 2: Only two people were ever truly on the inside when
Speaker 2: it came to Reagan, Margaret and Reagan's mother, Claire Claire
Speaker 2: Mary raul Reagan outlived her son and only child by
Speaker 2: fourteen years, and she's been resting in the Catholic lawn
Speaker 2: section of Sydney's Rookwood Cemetery Plot two six' five three
Speaker 2: Since september nineteen eighty. Eight after just a couple of
Speaker 2: days In young and talking to The reagan, family it
Speaker 2: soon became a parent that this story had another shadowy,
Speaker 2: figure and that Was Claire, reagan a figure so malevolent
Speaker 2: that to this day she is still reviled In. Young back,
Speaker 2: then everyone called her The colonel by all, accounts she was, manipulative, controlling, violent,
Speaker 2: intimidating and. Cruel she horsewhipped her son and terrified his
Speaker 2: teachers at the Local catholic. SCHOOL i Asked kelly about
Speaker 2: the family's view Of reagan's childhood and the colonel childhood
Speaker 2: and young.
Speaker 6: LOOK i think it was tough with his. Mother she
Speaker 6: was a. Tyrant she was. Cruel she would flog him.
Speaker 6: Mercilessly the other kids were terrified of the brothers at
Speaker 6: the school were terrified over when when he got hurt one,
Speaker 6: day they sent the kids over to tell her because
Speaker 6: they were terrified of her and the. Brothers you know
Speaker 6: what the brothers could be. Like and then you, know
Speaker 6: but he also had really good. Friends he enjoyed his you,
Speaker 6: know he had a great. Imagination he played down on
Speaker 6: the creek bed and at, school you, know they all
Speaker 6: thought he was a lovely. Kid all his friends loved.
Speaker 6: Him but she was. Cruel she was, Cruel she was a.
Speaker 2: Monster we would soon be learning all about this. Monster
Speaker 2: around the kitchen table In kelly And rod's. Farmhouse just
Speaker 2: the mention of the colonel triggered fevered.
Speaker 6: Debate they think that that's what happens in everyone's head.
Speaker 6: Exactly they tell anyone they, think they think that's. Commonplace
Speaker 6: that's what.
Speaker 9: Happened so the sort of control that The colonel had
Speaker 9: her Son, john it's so complete that the total control
Speaker 9: is terrified to.
Speaker 3: Me and he would always he.
Speaker 4: Could never please.
Speaker 6: Her oh, yeah because you just want to.
Speaker 10: Please that's like when When David patterson talks about the
Speaker 10: story of Taking john down to his mother because he'd
Speaker 10: been had His Paul.
Speaker 6: Gibson it's punched him and he had a bleeding nose
Speaker 6: and she got a dirty rag off the, thing wiped
Speaker 6: it and, said now go back and before you came,
Speaker 6: home make sure he's bleeding worse than what you. Were
Speaker 6: and this.
Speaker 2: We would discover many curious and appalling things about the
Speaker 2: colonel and her strange magnetic hold on her Son, stewart
Speaker 2: about his childhood in young his alcoholic, father alf the
Speaker 2: marriage breakup that Saw claire and Little johnny move To,
Speaker 2: sydney and a Teenage reagan's descent into serious. Crime then
Speaker 2: there's the enduring family rumor that When Claire reagan went
Speaker 2: to live In, sydney she actually ran a few prostitutes
Speaker 2: out of the house In, Liverpool, Street darlinghurst to.
Speaker 6: Survive the family never liked her at, all but there
Speaker 6: was always this thing that she Got johnny into crime
Speaker 6: because when she went To, sydney that she ran girls,
Speaker 6: herself and he stood over those girls that she.
Speaker 2: Ran so the story in the family is That Claire,
Speaker 2: reagan when she left young and left her Husband alf
Speaker 2: took her young son To sydney and they ended up
Speaker 2: settling In, Livero Bull street And. Darlinghurst and the word
Speaker 2: in the family was that she ran essentially a small
Speaker 2: brothel to make, it to make.
Speaker 6: It, yep that's WHAT i always remember is that she
Speaker 6: was the one that got him into that side of the.
Speaker 2: GAME i, mean if, that if that was just a wild,
Speaker 2: rumor why did it persist in the family?
Speaker 10: Law?
Speaker 6: Oh one hundred. Percent and this is like it's always
Speaker 6: been the same stories repeated over and over and over.
Speaker 6: Again so far as that she had she'd run the,
Speaker 6: brothels and that he'd worked for her and that's how
Speaker 6: he got started in.
Speaker 3: It, well but.
Speaker 2: First we had to meet Marg Johnny reagan's de facto,
Speaker 2: wife mother to his Daughters helen And claire and to
Speaker 2: their Son John. Junior could she take us inside the
Speaker 2: world of the last Of sydney's old time gangsters during
Speaker 2: his heyday in the nineteen. Sixties could she help us
Speaker 2: understand his murderous, temper his taste for, violence and why
Speaker 2: history would attach anywhere up to twelve murders to his,
Speaker 2: name including an innocent three year old. Boy and what
Speaker 2: happened on that last day When, reagan unarmed and, unprotected
Speaker 2: was a gunned down, mercilessly with one of the killers
Speaker 2: delivering a final point blank headshot to make sure the
Speaker 2: boy From cherrytown was well and truly. DEAD i had
Speaker 2: a frank discussion With kelly about what marg might or
Speaker 2: might not decide to tell. Us, cooperative you think by her,
Speaker 2: nature she, might like most, people hold something. Back what
Speaker 2: do you reckon.
Speaker 6: During mark's formative, years she's With, john and you know
Speaker 6: the skills she's being taught by him is, it's you,
Speaker 6: know to say, nothing to keep your mouth, Shut just
Speaker 6: keep your mouth. Shut SO i THINK i think she
Speaker 6: really wants to to open and tell all that she.
Speaker 6: Knows but but you, know there's still that. Thing imagine
Speaker 6: If anie marg did know something and then she tells
Speaker 6: the family like that's you, know the backlash to that
Speaker 6: that she would perceive would be. Huge SO i think
Speaker 6: she'll tell. US i think she wants to tell, us
Speaker 6: BUT i don't know if she'll get over the.
Speaker 2: Line, well why do you think after all these decades
Speaker 2: she's she has agreed to talk to us?
Speaker 6: Now, WELL i think partly because well she you, know
Speaker 6: she loves, Us she loves. Us The reagan side don't
Speaker 6: know she. Does what does she? Know like she lived with,
Speaker 6: him she had three children with, Him, yes, yeah, hard hard.
Speaker 2: One and you.
Speaker 6: Know you get to a certain age where you just
Speaker 6: want TO i just want to, talk LIKE i think
Speaker 6: at that age now where she probably does want to
Speaker 6: and she sees how PASSIONATE i am about.
Speaker 2: It do you think she still has a residue of?
Speaker 6: Fear, NO i think she's as tough as old.
Speaker 2: Bootstraps now that, Afternoon Mark reagan arrived with one of her.
Speaker 2: Daughters she hadn't been too young in many. Years now
Speaker 2: in her, seventies you could still see the stunning good
Speaker 2: looks that had Attracted Johnny reagan all those years ago
Speaker 2: In Sydney's King's, cross where he worked as a bouncer
Speaker 2: on the door of The Whisky Go go nightclub In Williams.
Speaker 2: Street The slaters And reagans fired up the, barbie and
Speaker 2: later we set up microphones At kelly's long kitchen, table
Speaker 2: the scene of so many family, gatherings to begin our
Speaker 2: interviews With. Marg the family started to drift out of the,
Speaker 2: room But marg stop. Them she wanted them around her
Speaker 2: when she. Talked she didn't want to do this. Alone, NO.
Speaker 3: I don't want to keep repeating myself for. Everybody it's best,
Speaker 3: said everyone's. Here, okay that's. GREAT i want that you're
Speaker 3: not putting me. Off you don't put me. OFF i
Speaker 3: got emotional WHEN i talk about my. Father, Okay so
Speaker 3: for me to do, this you won't have to ask
Speaker 3: me what. HAPPENED i know you guys know what happened
Speaker 3: Because i've explained it to, Her but the lights Of
Speaker 3: daniel And jeffrey and they don't. KNOW i have a boy, Here,
Speaker 3: daniel that asked me, today what DID i say with this?
Speaker 3: Me i'm going to tell YOU i Told. Daniel AND
Speaker 3: i appreciate That daniel was mean enough and strong enough
Speaker 3: to ask me that, question because that means there's appearing
Speaker 3: person there in that person that wants to know what really, happened,
Speaker 3: okay and this is Why i'm doing, This, Okay so
Speaker 3: what do you want to lear?
Speaker 2: Now in the next episode Of The Gangster's, ghost we
Speaker 2: take you Inside reagan's earliest years in Country New South
Speaker 2: wales and the rocky relationship between his mismatched.
Speaker 6: Parents that marriage never had a, chance and we.
Speaker 2: Find another monster lurking in the shadows of this, Story
Speaker 2: reagan's own, mother the formidable and Feared, claire known to
Speaker 2: all as The.
Speaker 3: Colonel she belted him hat with a Stockwet she drove
Speaker 3: him home like he was at least so he had a.
Speaker 6: Tough, mother a, tough tough.
Speaker 11: Lady The Gangster's ghost is a production Of The. Australian
Speaker 11: it's written and presented by senior Writer Matthew condon and
Speaker 11: produced and edited by multimedia Editor leat Samaglu Our executive
Speaker 11: producer Is, Me editorial Director Claire. Harvey special thanks To Lara,
Speaker 11: Kamenos Erica, Rutlidge Kristin, Amiot Jasper, Leik Stephanie, Coombs Sean Callanan,
Speaker 11: Laughlin Clear Ryan, Osland Amanda Winnie, Williams Christine, Kelle Tarren,
Speaker 11: Blackhurst Magdalena, Zajack Gisel, Buetti Genevieve, Brammel Lauren, Bruce Sus
Speaker 11: rolf And Jachini. Carlson we can only do journalism like
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