Speaker 1: Before we begin. This podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence
Speaker 1: and allegations of sexual abuse and adult language. This is
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Speaker 2: Before I met Kelly Slater Reagan, before I traveled to
Speaker 2: her and husband Rodney's farm in far Flung Young in
Speaker 2: southwestern New South Wales, bounced about in the back of
Speaker 2: a ute through sheep, paddicts and fields of canola, sat
Speaker 2: down around a huge country homestead kitchen table with the
Speaker 2: Slater Reagan clan and debated their notorious relative Stuart John Reagan,
Speaker 2: and realized how digging up the past might upend Lowe
Speaker 2: as we all knew it, and unleashed dark forces that
Speaker 2: none of us had anticipated. There was, in the early
Speaker 2: days of this investigation, an unspoken truth to the whole
Speaker 2: saga that we all skirted around, not so much the
Speaker 2: elephant in the room, but the dead gangster, fair and
Speaker 2: square in the center of this family's history. And that
Speaker 2: truth was the immovable corpse of Stuart John Reagan. The
Speaker 2: ghost was already uncomfortably close when the audio team at
Speaker 2: The Australian resurrected his secret telephone recordings. He could have
Speaker 2: been sitting with us at that kitchen table.
Speaker 3: Have they tried to steen over you on or put
Speaker 3: the hard one on it?
Speaker 4: So you can't charge you for civil e n gay you?
Speaker 5: So if he paid civil action won't be a backsiler.
Speaker 2: But given Kelly was a former New South Wales police
Speaker 2: officer and I investigated crime as a journalist, there was
Speaker 2: a singular question that two of us could not avoid.
Speaker 2: Who killed Reagan exactly fifty years ago? That was something
Speaker 2: that has remained steadfastly unresolved. Why you would think that
Speaker 2: if a criminal was gunned down in cold blood today,
Speaker 2: not just by one shooter but three in a Sydney
Speaker 2: suburban street early on a Sunday evening, then answers would
Speaker 2: be sought. You would think, given rumors circulated almost immediately
Speaker 2: after Reagan's slaying that corrupt police might have been involved,
Speaker 2: that answers might not only be urgently he sought, but
Speaker 2: demanded from the top of the New South Wales police hierarchy.
Speaker 2: Remember from episode one when Kelly was told by a
Speaker 2: retired officer that not only were police possibly involved in
Speaker 2: Reagan's murder, but the infamous killer cop Roger Rogerson himself.
Speaker 6: At the same time, I said, if you were there
Speaker 6: in seventy four, do you remember stut John Ray? Oh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: I do. I said, well, he was my cousin. He said,
Speaker 6: all right, I said, do you ever know who killed him?
Speaker 6: He said, well, we were told that in the area
Speaker 6: at the time there was a car with four detectives
Speaker 6: seen in it. They were wearing these bowler hats or something,
Speaker 6: and they had police coats on. And he said there
Speaker 6: was always a whisper that it was Rogerson's first hit,
Speaker 6: Roger Rogerson.
Speaker 2: Yet, could anyone reasonably explain how a high profile criminal
Speaker 2: could be shot dead in broad daylight, just meters from
Speaker 2: a busy pub and a main without a single witness.
Speaker 2: Irrespective of Reagan's infamous deeds, the appalling allegations that still
Speaker 2: swirl around him, the certainty in some minds that he
Speaker 2: was in fact a serial killer responsible for up to
Speaker 2: a dozen murders, and the unthinkable possibility that he may
Speaker 2: have slaughtered a toddler in cold blood, the assassination of
Speaker 2: Stuart John Reagan in September nineteen seventy four was and
Speaker 2: remains to this day a stone cold unsolved homicide case. Naturally,
Speaker 2: as a member of Reagan's family, Kelly had dozens of
Speaker 2: questions she wanted to ask New South Wales police had
Speaker 2: a review into Reagan's murder ever been conducted, and if so,
Speaker 2: what were the conclusions. Why had the family, including Reagan's
Speaker 2: de facto wife Margaret formerly known as Margaret Yates, never
Speaker 2: heard a word from police since he was blasted to
Speaker 2: death on that spring afternoon in nineteen seventy four. Were
Speaker 2: detectives still looking into this half century old unsolved case.
Speaker 2: So Kelly did what Kelly does. She wrote an email
Speaker 2: to Detective Inspector Nigel Warren of the New South Wales
Speaker 2: Cold Case Homicide Squad based in Paramatta in Western Sydney,
Speaker 2: to try and satisfy her curiosity and to get the
Speaker 2: ball rolling. This is Kelly reading her first email, dated
Speaker 2: Thursday March twenty four, twenty twenty five two two Detective
Speaker 2: Inspector Nigel Warren, head of the New South Wales Cold
Speaker 2: Case Homicide Unit.
Speaker 6: While writing these, it occurred to me that This is
Speaker 6: probably what you discuss with any family while dealing with
Speaker 6: a relative's death. I am disappointed this discussion has taken
Speaker 6: forty eight years, but that is predominantly due to my
Speaker 6: family's lack of interest or compassion leading to this point. Also,
Speaker 6: the lack of police in the seventies to even give
Speaker 6: a shit helped, I imagine, but I did myself wonder
Speaker 6: if other relatives two more palatal desks had been asked
Speaker 6: to do similar questions.
Speaker 2: Kelly remains incredulous that after five decades, the family had
Speaker 2: never been contacted about Reagan's murder. She discovered that two
Speaker 2: reviews of his cold case had been conducted without the
Speaker 2: family's knowledge or cooperation. Both reviews had come to nothing.
Speaker 6: Email went on, I am aware that you and the
Speaker 6: current crop of police are not responsible for the investigation,
Speaker 6: if you could call it that, But what both you
Speaker 6: and I are responsible for now is what happens moving forward.
Speaker 6: I will be upfront. I am disappointed that the two
Speaker 6: reviews twenty fourteen and twenty nineteen did not involve any
Speaker 6: family consultation. I would have thought finding us was not
Speaker 6: real hard as Dad is the only Reagan in young
Speaker 6: and has been for some time.
Speaker 2: Kelly wanted simple answers to simple questions.
Speaker 6: Question one, what was the motives of the killing?
Speaker 4: Two?
Speaker 6: Who was the first responding police? If names can't be
Speaker 6: used in car numbers and stations they were from? How
Speaker 6: long did they take to respond? Who compiled the p
Speaker 6: seventy nine A? Was there an official report of a
Speaker 6: car leaving the scene with four men wearing hats?
Speaker 2: And Some of her queries involve some famous names and
Speaker 2: even more infamous crimes, along with another very big and
Speaker 2: to date unanswered query. If Reagan was the so called
Speaker 2: millionaire gangster of his day, what happened to all his money?
Speaker 2: She reeled off more questions.
Speaker 6: Have you got a copy of the report to the coroner?
Speaker 6: As the coroner's documents have been removed? What does a
Speaker 6: review consist of? Reinterviews, DNA testing if relevant, etc. Why
Speaker 6: has no member of the family ever been contacted or
Speaker 6: Margaret Yates in relation to reviews? Please provide Margaret with
Speaker 6: a copy of her statement. Was John's bank account seized
Speaker 6: and if so, why was his accountant able to draw
Speaker 6: dollars out of his account first thing Monday morning? How
Speaker 6: much was recovered at the time of his death, where
Speaker 6: is the evidence retreat.
Speaker 2: We will come to the matter of Reagan's millions in
Speaker 2: cash and property holdings later in this podcast, as we
Speaker 2: will the question of whether he was a part of
Speaker 2: the Whiskey Go Go nightclub fire bombing in Brisbane in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy three, one of the biggest mass murders in
Speaker 2: Australian history.
Speaker 7: The Whiskey You Go Go was bombed at ten past
Speaker 7: two on the morning of March the eighth, nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 7: It was a mass murder which sent a wave of
Speaker 7: outraids through a country which is often apathetic about crime.
Speaker 7: And the gruesome twist was that two months before the killings,
Speaker 7: Brian Bolton had warned that a Brisbane nightclub would be bombed.
Speaker 7: Bolden got his information from a well known.
Speaker 2: But before we could get anywhere near the truth, Kelly
Speaker 2: and I would become involved in a cat and mouse
Speaker 2: saga in our search for official documents that would go
Speaker 2: on for years. It is still playing out. We will
Speaker 2: take you inside this bureaucratic nightmare. It started with a
Speaker 2: simple request Stuart John Reagan's criminal history.
Speaker 6: So today is the thirtieth of September and it's the
Speaker 6: day after I received notification from the New South Wales
Speaker 6: Police in relation to my GIBRA or freedom of information application,
Speaker 6: where they've told me that I can in fact have
Speaker 6: John's criminal history, but they can't find it.
Speaker 2: So you will see how Kelly told repeatedly that paperwork
Speaker 2: had been lost, would, through sheer doggedness, be informed that
Speaker 2: suddenly some fragments of paperwork had been found. And around
Speaker 2: and around we went. But let's return to a curious
Speaker 2: moment in Reagan's past. Reagan and his mother, Claire the Colonel,
Speaker 2: left ruraled Young in the late nineteen fifties. She set
Speaker 2: up in Sydney's notorious Darling Past, home to prostitution, illegal gambling, drugs,
Speaker 2: and other vices. The Colonel and her only child, Johnny,
Speaker 2: started their new life in Liverpool Street, a gritty, shadowy,
Speaker 2: densely populated enclave in inner Sydney that couldn't have been
Speaker 2: further from the wide streets and rolling hills of rural Young.
Speaker 2: And this is where the story gets a little sketchy
Speaker 2: and mysterious. We discovered that a teenage Johnny was for
Speaker 2: some reason swiftly taken out of his new home and
Speaker 2: incarcerated in a notorious boy's home, a place that equipped
Speaker 2: him perfectly for the gloriously seedy and lawless streets of
Speaker 2: Sydney in the nineteen sixties, and, as fate would have it,
Speaker 2: a place he would step out of as a fully formed,
Speaker 2: baby faced gangster. I'm journalist Matthew Condon and This is
Speaker 2: the Gangster's Ghost, a podcast from The Australian. In this investigation,
Speaker 2: we uncover previously unreported facts about the short lived criminal
Speaker 2: career of Stuart John Reagan, speak to his family, friends
Speaker 2: and business associates who go on the record for the
Speaker 2: first time, link him to one of the most notorious
Speaker 2: mass murders in Australian history, and uncover secret audio recordings
Speaker 2: that will bring the ghost of Johnny Reagan back to life.
Speaker 2: This podcast started out as a clinical look at one
Speaker 2: of Australia's most reviled gangsters, but when the Reagan family
Speaker 2: came on board, the project took on another dimension and
Speaker 2: begged the question how does a family cope with the
Speaker 2: generational stain of a murderer whose death was celebrated by
Speaker 2: criminals and police alike. This is Episode three. Holy Stony
Speaker 2: as Reagan's mum the colonel settled into Sydney's Red Light District.
Speaker 2: Her only child, little Johnny, was serving his apprenticeship as
Speaker 2: an inmate of the Gosford Home for Boys, one hundred
Speaker 2: kilometers north of Sydney on the New South Wales Central Coast.
Speaker 2: That home would later be renamed Mount Penang Training School
Speaker 2: for Boys. This brief period in Reagan's life remains vague
Speaker 2: even to his own family. I talked about this with
Speaker 2: Kelly Fair to say that the whole Gosford Mount Penang
Speaker 2: Home for Boys period has always been a bit of
Speaker 2: a mystery even to the Reagan family. This little window
Speaker 2: in his life.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it wasn't heavily talked about. I do recall once
Speaker 6: that Claire must have come back to young and she
Speaker 6: went to one of his friend's houses and borrowed their
Speaker 6: bag that he'd had in World War Two, like his
Speaker 6: big Duffel bag, and she told them that she needed
Speaker 6: it because John had to go to the Boy's Home
Speaker 6: in Gosford. That's sort of all we know about the
Speaker 6: Boy's Home, and there's that big gap from when he left,
Speaker 6: so obviously when he came out the Boy's Home and
Speaker 6: was a fair bit more notorious.
Speaker 2: The missing piece of the Reagan puzzle is how and
Speaker 2: why he was removed from his controlling mother, the Colonel
Speaker 2: and incarcerated in one of New South Wales's most infamous boys' homes.
Speaker 2: The Colonel had moved into her sister's house in Liverpool
Speaker 2: Street and soon took over. But what happened to Johnny?
Speaker 2: He goes to Sydney and we're assuming Claire maintained some
Speaker 2: form of care. I mean it was her sister's house
Speaker 2: that she moved to in Liverpool Street, so they had
Speaker 2: a roof over their head. Could Reagan have just gone
Speaker 2: wild like a switch had been flicked once he got
Speaker 2: to the city, or is it more like the situation
Speaker 2: whereby somehow the issue of being placed in moral endangerment
Speaker 2: courtesy of his mother could have been the issue.
Speaker 6: We know he went to a school down there, we're
Speaker 6: just not quite so awhere. But has he been kicked
Speaker 6: out of the school or has the school reported in
Speaker 6: his behavior? Like at home, he could just walk across
Speaker 6: the road and he's at home and it doesn't matter
Speaker 6: if she's at home. But in Sydney, when she's running
Speaker 6: the brothels, she's a different kettle of fish. Isn't it?
Speaker 2: And how was the colonel surviving in big, tough Sydney town,
Speaker 2: a far cry from her simple life in rural Young.
Speaker 2: She'd left her former husband alf behind, the extended Reagan family,
Speaker 2: her work at the Australian Hotel. She may have accepted
Speaker 2: the charity of her sister, but how did she really
Speaker 2: get by? What did she do when she got to Sydney?
Speaker 2: Did she resume being a bar maid like she wasn't
Speaker 2: the Australian in Young or.
Speaker 6: We were always told that when she went to Sydney
Speaker 6: she went straight into the brothels was running a brothel?
Speaker 6: Remember Dad said that it was a brothel that he'd
Speaker 6: heard that the Aussie had been as a brothel. Was
Speaker 6: she running trick then, which would explain really why the
Speaker 6: Reagans hated her. You can't just because she's Catholic.
Speaker 2: How had schoolboy Reagan ended up in a home for
Speaker 2: juvenile delinquents, truants and uncontrollable boys. School records in Young
Speaker 2: show that one year Reagan was attending classes and appearing
Speaker 2: in school photographs, and the next year he simply wasn't there.
Speaker 2: His mate said, Reagan just seemed to vanish nobody knew
Speaker 2: why he left or where he'd gone. In young he
Speaker 2: defended smaller boys from bullies. He liked art. He enjoyed
Speaker 2: exploring the creek near his home, although some of his
Speaker 2: mates saw the crouching tiger inside the quiet boy. Once
Speaker 2: outside the young town limits, he found himself inside the
Speaker 2: Nightmare of Gosford. But why the home catered for boys
Speaker 2: aged fourteen to eighteen years Reagan turned fourteen on September thirteenth,
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty nine. To be placed there, you had to
Speaker 2: be committed by a court of law or receive what
Speaker 2: was called a general committal. Had Reagan made it to
Speaker 2: Sydney with his mother and failed to go to school,
Speaker 2: had he stolen something and been caught, had he come
Speaker 2: to police attention in the show streets of Darlinghurst as
Speaker 2: a neglected child, Or had police removed him from the
Speaker 2: Colonel's care after authorities discovered that she was running a
Speaker 2: house of ill repute, as the family believes, putting young
Speaker 2: Reagan in that deliciously ambiguous state of moral danger. Former
Speaker 2: Sydney detective and best selling author Duncan McNabb wrote The
Speaker 2: Definitive Biography of Roger Rogerson and is an expert on
Speaker 2: the era. As chance would have it, he actually lives
Speaker 2: in the heart of Darlinghurst, not far from the Liverpool
Speaker 2: Street Terrace where Claire and Reagan settled when they left young.
Speaker 2: He has his own theory on why Reagan ended up
Speaker 2: in Mount Penang. He says it would have been a
Speaker 2: similar path to that of killer Neddie Smith.
Speaker 4: Experience.
Speaker 2: Why would a boy of say thirteen or fourteen, how
Speaker 2: would he end up in Mount Penang?
Speaker 8: Oh? Easily?
Speaker 9: The Netdie Smith is pretty much the blueprint. Uncontrollable. Back
Speaker 9: in those days there was a you could send kids
Speaker 9: off because they are uncontrollable. Their parents couldn't run them.
Speaker 9: They were getting into all sorts of strife. The coppers
Speaker 9: were also having troubles controlling. Rather than charge them that
Speaker 9: they substantiate offense like breaking, entering, that sort of stuff,
Speaker 9: they just happened declared uncontrollable by the children's could, which
Speaker 9: in those days was done in Albion, straight dreadful fucking place.
Speaker 10: And then they'd head off to a boys home. If
Speaker 10: they were really really problematic, they go to Mount Penang.
Speaker 10: Neddie for example, was doing breaking edits all around the place, stealing,
Speaker 10: anything was not nailed down bashing people that he decided
Speaker 10: was appropriate to stab his brother Henry, I think from them,
Speaker 10: so that's why he went to Mount Penang, and the
Speaker 10: Mount Penang was probably the roughest of the rough.
Speaker 2: In the wake of Reagan's murder in nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 2: the Sydney tabloids, particularly The Sun newspaper, ran a series
Speaker 2: of articles about the life and times of Reagan. One
Speaker 2: carried the single word headline gangster and summarized Reagan he
Speaker 2: was a punk at fifteen, a pimp at seventeen, and
Speaker 2: standover bully boy at nineteen, a suspected killer at twenty one.
Speaker 2: An article by journalist Cyril Greet also provided a possible
Speaker 2: clue into the trigger for Reagan's trip to the Gosford
Speaker 2: Boys Home. He's a voice actor reading a section of
Speaker 2: Greet's story.
Speaker 11: When he was thirteen, he came to live with an
Speaker 11: aunt in East Sydney. Within a couple of years, the
Speaker 11: solidly built youth was well known for painting swastikas on
Speaker 11: cars and hitting the people who objected. It was after
Speaker 11: one of these assaults that he made his first appearance
Speaker 11: in the children's court and thereafter in the Gosford Boys'
Speaker 11: Home and Mount Penang Training Center.
Speaker 2: The earliest entry in his official criminal history was dated
Speaker 2: August thirty one, nineteen sixty two, when Reagan was still seventeen.
Speaker 2: He was charged with assault and robbery. The case was
Speaker 2: later dismissed. Was this assault related to the swastika incident?
Speaker 2: As alleged by reporter Cyril Greet. At the time Reagan
Speaker 2: was held at Gosford, several children's correctional institutions up and
Speaker 2: down the East coast of Australia were already notorious. In Queensland,
Speaker 2: there was Westbrook, the boy's farm outside to Woomba, west
Speaker 2: of Brisbane. It was a crucible of sexual abuse and torture.
Speaker 2: I should know. My great uncle was an inmate of
Speaker 2: Westbrook in the late nineteen thirties, and when he left
Speaker 2: at eighteen, he stepped straight into a life of crime
Speaker 2: and sexual deviancy. New Southwell's juvenile institutions had their own
Speaker 2: hierarchy of horrors to the general public. Boys homes or farms,
Speaker 2: as many of them were innocuously described, were places where
Speaker 2: wayward young men were sent to learn the basic requirements
Speaker 2: for model citizenry. They were given the discipline that was
Speaker 2: lacking in their young lives. They were to the outside observer,
Speaker 2: taught manners and responsibility, and work ethics, and even the
Speaker 2: skills for a future trade. Upon graduation, these floored youths
Speaker 2: came out like shiny new pennies, ready for seamless integration
Speaker 2: into the community. Time and again, government ministers of the
Speaker 2: day were photographed visiting the homes alongside smiling, healthy boys
Speaker 2: fallen angels on the path to redemption. The old newsreel's
Speaker 2: advertised picture perfect institutions.
Speaker 12: Mount Fenang Training cor for Boys is situated fifty miles
Speaker 12: north of Sydney, up seven hundred acres of farm and bushland,
Speaker 12: high on the hills above Brisbane Waters and the town
Speaker 12: of Gosford. This is a school without fences, where boys
Speaker 12: are taught that standards of life which are built on
Speaker 12: an understanding of solid responsibility make life richer and more
Speaker 12: meaningful than the irresponsible conduct which brought them here. Most
Speaker 12: of them are restless, insecure lads. The training program has
Speaker 12: therefore been designed to condition them to living in an
Speaker 12: organized community, so that they experienced the personal satisfactions which
Speaker 12: come from acceptance in a communal group and through recognition
Speaker 12: of their achievement.
Speaker 2: This is from a nineteen fifty nine documentary about the
Speaker 2: Mount Penang Boys Home called New Horizons. It was nade
Speaker 2: by the Child Welfare Department of New South Wales just
Speaker 2: before Reagan became an inmate. The twelve minute film praises
Speaker 2: the boys Home to the skies and depicts it as
Speaker 2: a rival to any of the best private boarding schools
Speaker 2: in Sydney.
Speaker 12: The ceremonial march and outings from Mount Penang are part
Speaker 12: of the training plan. Parties of up to fifty boys
Speaker 12: go to theaters and concerts in Sydney who visit Newcastle Steelworks,
Speaker 12: to a motor show to serve beaches. One optor, who
Speaker 12: regularly takes boys to symphony concerts has frequently been asked
Speaker 12: what college do these boys come from?
Speaker 2: The boys dressed immaculately a scene happily working with farm animals,
Speaker 2: fixing machinery, enjoying sport, reading, studying, and warmly welcoming visiting parents.
Speaker 2: Everyone the film shows is living in blissful harmony.
Speaker 12: The standards of living and physical well being are no
Speaker 12: lower and sometimes higher than those in a first class
Speaker 12: boarding school. The assured routine and order of a well
Speaker 12: run school helped to calm and reassure children who have
Speaker 12: usually been insecure for a long while because they've felt
Speaker 12: that nobody cared for them. The new vision of an orderly, cheerful,
Speaker 12: well organized life in beautiful surroundings is the first step
Speaker 12: towards rehabilitation.
Speaker 2: Only decades later would the truth about these boys' homes
Speaker 2: come to light through journalistic investigations and various royal commissions.
Speaker 2: The conclusions were the same across the board. The homes
Speaker 2: were vile centers of abuse and sexual assault, and nurseries
Speaker 2: for future criminals, including some of the most notorious murderers
Speaker 2: in Australian criminal history. In New South Wales, the number
Speaker 2: one house of Horrors was in Tamworth, west of Sydney.
Speaker 12: Dammouth Boys Hoim was known as the toughest institution probably
Speaker 12: in the whole of Australia.
Speaker 8: When you got in the Tamworth you're beaten, he said.
Speaker 13: You got in the door, you were starved, you were tortured,
Speaker 13: and you just degraded.
Speaker 4: Kill will be killed.
Speaker 8: Everyone come out there the same. That's why there's so
Speaker 8: many buddies murders.
Speaker 2: But if Tamworth was the criminal High School. There were
Speaker 2: dangerous primary schools churning out students as well. One was
Speaker 2: the Dearreck Home for Boys in Winter in western Sydney.
Speaker 2: Respected journalist Ross coulthardt reported on Darrek for sixty minutes Australia,
Speaker 2: this institution, similar to Mount Penang, was a hotbed of abuse.
Speaker 2: Its horrors were only exposed thanks to a new South
Speaker 2: Wales police investigation headed up by Detective Sergeant Ben Hallam.
Speaker 2: He is Ross Coulthard reporting on Derek for sixty minutes.
Speaker 2: Heeded by Detective Sergeant Ben Hallam.
Speaker 14: When you sit down with them and listen to them
Speaker 14: tell their story about what happened at Derek and then
Speaker 14: they break down and cry, it's very confronted.
Speaker 4: He told them to strip me down.
Speaker 8: I think they were trying to break me.
Speaker 14: These were vulnerable kids from broken families. The tragedy of
Speaker 14: this is that the people that were entrusted to care
Speaker 14: for them and help them were alleged to have abused them.
Speaker 2: And the other infamous school was, of course Mount Penang
Speaker 2: in Gosford. In nineteen fifty nine, on the eve of
Speaker 2: Reagan's arrival at the home, The Sydney Morning Herald reported
Speaker 2: that child crime in New South Wales was out of control.
Speaker 2: Sexual offenses by youths had increased by three hundred percent
Speaker 2: through the nineteen fifties. Institutions for boys and girls were
Speaker 2: bursting at the seams. The Gosford Home, built to house
Speaker 2: two hundred and eighty children, had four hundred inmates at
Speaker 2: the end of nineteen fifty nine. For decades it was
Speaker 2: run like a military academy, but one where sexual abuse
Speaker 2: and torture were the norm. Fred was a young Indigenous
Speaker 2: man from western New South Wales in the early to
Speaker 2: mid nineteen sixties when he started hanging with the wrong crowd.
Speaker 2: One night, he was caught by police in a car
Speaker 2: stolen by some of his mates. Fred was a passenger,
Speaker 2: but it was enough to get him removed from his
Speaker 2: family and installed in Darreck and then Mount Penang. Fred
Speaker 2: remembers to this day the atrocities of Mount Penang. When
Speaker 2: it rained, the boys were ordered to get on their
Speaker 2: hands and knees with a scrubbing brush and clean the
Speaker 2: floors until they shone on work projects in bushlands surrounding
Speaker 2: the home. Young innocent kids new to Mount Penang were
Speaker 2: sexually assaulted by older boys out of sight of the guards.
Speaker 2: Some staff sexually abused the boys. And then there was
Speaker 2: the practice of holy stoning, a form of torture unique
Speaker 2: to Mount Penang that went back to the nineteen forties.
Speaker 2: Fred is today a respected Indigenous elder, but holy stoning
Speaker 2: scarred him for life.
Speaker 8: Well, I used to stand as had in front of
Speaker 8: the deck, especially when we did the barking. They think
Speaker 8: you were sucking it was. We had to stand there
Speaker 8: and a lot of the lads were clapsy. And then
Speaker 8: on the on the other side of it, when individuals
Speaker 8: got into trouble, they used to put them on the
Speaker 8: holy stone.
Speaker 2: Tell me about the holy stone. I haven't heard about that.
Speaker 8: The Holy star was up the back in the dairy
Speaker 8: there was were there's a lot of the sandstones and
Speaker 8: they bring about two or three and then down to
Speaker 8: the deck. They put them in front of the deck
Speaker 8: and if.
Speaker 15: You fucked up, they'd take his shoes and socks off
Speaker 15: here to roll your trousers up, say your knees and
Speaker 15: the and your toes supposed to the to the board
Speaker 15: and and then you got to get on your knees
Speaker 15: and pushed this rock back and forward Jesus. And by
Speaker 15: the time you got up from them, your knees were
Speaker 15: all cut and plastiated your toes and then for days
Speaker 15: after your knees or where the skin sprake and could
Speaker 15: even infected.
Speaker 8: Or they put you out in the in the dot
Speaker 8: of the little dormitory where we used to watch the pictures,
Speaker 8: and they'd give you a dry brush. An arling stone
Speaker 8: was well, what's the one that really made the boys
Speaker 8: set up? And they didn't didn't like the holy stone.
Speaker 2: There were three types of holy stoning. The one Fred
Speaker 2: described where you pushed the stone back and forth, another
Speaker 2: where you moved it from side to side. The third
Speaker 2: was called a holly off, where a guard would use
Speaker 2: chalk to mark two places on the deck and you
Speaker 2: carried the rock repeatedly from one mark to the other.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty, doctor Wayne Appleby, now a distinguished academic
Speaker 2: at the University of Canberra, submitted his PhD thesis on
Speaker 2: the impact of social media on Indigenous people. In the manuscript, however,
Speaker 2: he included some autobiographical material, including a harrowing account of
Speaker 2: his time as a young man spent in Mount Penang
Speaker 2: in the nineteen sixties. He recalled getting into a fight
Speaker 2: with seasoned inmates, the storeboys when he first arrived at
Speaker 2: the Gosford home, and the practice of holy stoning. Here
Speaker 2: are some extracts from doctor Appleby's thesis titled from Homo's
Speaker 2: Saca to Subalton Becoming Aboriginal Online. These are his words
Speaker 2: read by A. Nunnawohl Man.
Speaker 16: I had the misfortune of meeting the storeboys on the
Speaker 16: first day at Mount Penang. I had arrived by train
Speaker 16: and was driven to Mount Penang. Then upon arrival, I
Speaker 16: was ushered into the store by the storeboys. I was
Speaker 16: aft to hand over my tobacco, which in the language
Speaker 16: of institutions is called grass, and over your grouse, as
Speaker 16: store boys said. I refused, resulting in an altercation with
Speaker 16: the store boys. I held my own for a time,
Speaker 16: but I was bashed and kicked by the three store
Speaker 16: boys and then paraded for starting to fight. After that,
Speaker 16: I was physically tortured through a process called holy stoning.
Speaker 2: Dr Appleby's recollection was identical to Fred's.
Speaker 16: Holly stoning is where a person squats on their knees
Speaker 16: with a piece of sandstone measuring between four hundred and
Speaker 16: fifty mili by three hundred and two hundred deep, and
Speaker 16: it entails moving the block from side to side across
Speaker 16: the wooden boards for up to three hours. After just
Speaker 16: a few minutes my knees were bleeding. It would be
Speaker 16: weeks before my knees healed. Each night they would weep
Speaker 16: enough to cause the sheets to stick to them.
Speaker 2: Was a young Johnny Reagan there at some point, gen
Speaker 2: reflecting with bloodied knees before the Holy Stone, with each
Speaker 2: painful push and shove, consolidating his hatred for authority. Mount
Speaker 2: Penang had its fair share of illustrious criminal graduates, and
Speaker 2: one of those was the bank robber Bernie Matthews. Here
Speaker 2: is Bernie being interviewed about the art of bank robbing
Speaker 2: on the ABC's Four Corners back in two thousand and four.
Speaker 17: I selected the bank. I parked the car up the
Speaker 17: shide lane and I had a short off twenty two
Speaker 17: twenty two automatic, a gloves balaclava. I was physicianed on
Speaker 17: a main road on Victoria Road. I selected the bank
Speaker 17: simply because it was on a main road and people
Speaker 17: didn't rob banks on the main road, and it had
Speaker 17: the side street so I could get to to getaway car.
Speaker 1: Write it down.
Speaker 17: I went in, I jumped on the counter, forced everybody
Speaker 17: onto the floor, customers and bank and staff. I got
Speaker 17: one teller and I threw the bags and made him
Speaker 17: go along to each individual telescage and fill the bag.
Speaker 17: In all of my robberies, I use the voice, I
Speaker 17: mean mannerism as the threat, and the gun becomes an
Speaker 17: extension on the threat that.
Speaker 2: I interviewed Bernie just a couple of months before he
Speaker 2: died in twenty twenty two. He sounded unwell on the
Speaker 2: end of the phone. Sometimes I felt he was reading
Speaker 2: from prepared notes, perhaps from articles he'd written in the past.
Speaker 2: After his life of crime, Bernie reinvented himself as a
Speaker 2: respected journalist. His work was even nominated for a Distinguished Award.
Speaker 2: But on the day we spoke, and when he went
Speaker 2: off script, his memories were excruciatingly clear. Bernie was born
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty nine, just four years after Reagan, and
Speaker 2: the reason I tracked him down was because in his
Speaker 2: teenage years, he too spent some time at the Mount
Speaker 2: Penang Training School for boys. He doesn't recall being there
Speaker 2: at the same time as Reagan, but of course knew
Speaker 2: of him.
Speaker 18: If he was in Mount penajuvenile offense jish. Mount Penang
Speaker 18: was the boy's arm and like a lot of the
Speaker 18: kids went through Ronnie Ferni just a hell of a lot,
Speaker 18: George Freeman, and they all went through a Mount Pane.
Speaker 4: At some stage. So what was like, where do we start?
Speaker 18: They called it the Mount Penang Training School for boys
Speaker 18: at goslein or utilized to accommodate aspiring juvenile incarceration rate.
Speaker 4: Now, in those days.
Speaker 18: Magistrates were institutionalized juvenile offenders for truancy, running away from home,
Speaker 18: bringing an executed child of Berne and Charlie's, both from
Speaker 18: mal dangers.
Speaker 2: It was for this reason, being a child exposed to
Speaker 2: moral dangers that Kelly and I presumed Reagan had been
Speaker 2: ordered to Mount Panang. Bernie went on, when did you
Speaker 2: first go into Mount Penang.
Speaker 4: Last Stary sixty five?
Speaker 2: What was that for?
Speaker 4: I was for arsenal and breaking head her?
Speaker 2: How old were you?
Speaker 4: I was sixteen when I got arrested.
Speaker 18: I was sixteen when I went to Gospin in nineteen
Speaker 18: sixty five. The new superintendent with a boat called Fowler,
Speaker 18: and they used to call him Chicken, and he was
Speaker 18: an autocratic disciplinarian, so inexplicable reason.
Speaker 4: You just love to see the kids suffer. At the
Speaker 4: drop of a hat. That was his bag.
Speaker 18: He was a public service. The progress through the show
Speaker 18: offered apartment.
Speaker 2: What sort of physical work were you required to do
Speaker 2: when you were there?
Speaker 4: I had what I call work gangs. You had two
Speaker 4: different types. You had school groups.
Speaker 18: There were kids that could go to school and learned
Speaker 18: to read and write and all the rest of it.
Speaker 18: And you had work gangs where you worked out in
Speaker 18: the field and you dug up and.
Speaker 4: Acres and acres of the property. All you went.
Speaker 18: You went down to the oval and you cut rock
Speaker 18: like fish and rocks. The benefit there was this, if
Speaker 18: you're on work gangs, you've got a better relotment of points,
Speaker 18: so therefore you moved up the sections quicker.
Speaker 4: If you're in school groups.
Speaker 18: And your point a lotment wasn't as high, and you
Speaker 18: just travel through the system at a slow place. That
Speaker 18: allads the philosophy areas. We don't want you to study
Speaker 18: and learn school work. We're wanting to get out there
Speaker 18: and dig paddic. The one strange thing at Mount Nanga
Speaker 18: I found when you go in the front gate, they've
Speaker 18: got a front gate there that comes off the highway
Speaker 18: and it leads up a driveway, flooding the main quarter deck.
Speaker 18: And the strangest thing I ever saw was the entrance
Speaker 18: is a boomerang. I couldn't work out why they had
Speaker 18: this boomerang over the entrance. It was really quite simple,
Speaker 18: You're going to come back. That was that. That was
Speaker 18: the message you carry now you come here, You're going
Speaker 18: to come back. Obviously someone in a higher bureaucratic thought
Speaker 18: of a numerous touch to the boys Zone.
Speaker 2: And if it was anything like Westbrook too, I mean
Speaker 2: these places were sort of nurseries for future criminals.
Speaker 18: Actually exactly what they were high school of all criminality
Speaker 18: who taught the art of resourcefulness, how to lie, how
Speaker 18: to treat, how to get what you want by manipulation.
Speaker 4: And of course that carried into the world outside.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I guess friendships made inside too, I certainly did.
Speaker 18: I did an article at a paramount at Jaile.
Speaker 4: It was ninety seventy nine.
Speaker 18: I went through the whole jail to find out how
Speaker 18: many men had come up through the Boys' Aims and
Speaker 18: ended up in jail.
Speaker 4: I worked out about eighty eighty five percent.
Speaker 8: Wow, it's incredible.
Speaker 4: I was mind by room, but it didn't surprise me.
Speaker 18: That's the whole philosophy behind the juvenile justice system, Matthew.
Speaker 18: The whole philosophy is the treatment come went back, treat
Speaker 18: the jile cells full.
Speaker 2: I ran Kelly and talked to her about the practice
Speaker 2: of holy stoning. She was horrified to think that Johnny
Speaker 2: Reagan most likely went through that ordeal.
Speaker 6: Poor bloody git. He couldn't pull a brake. Could if
Speaker 6: there's evidence that he was really good with his friends
Speaker 6: and everything, and then his mother, he goes home and
Speaker 6: his mother whips him at the clothesline, and then he
Speaker 6: sent away to Mount Penang and then that's virtually paw
Speaker 6: torture stuff. And you wonder, you wonder if people say, oh,
Speaker 6: he was a psychopath, what did you think was going
Speaker 6: to happen when you treat people like that, when you
Speaker 6: treat people and their little boys like at this stage,
Speaker 6: what we don't even know what he was in there for.
Speaker 6: But let's just say he's in there for a style
Speaker 6: of motor vehicle or an assault, which a lot of
Speaker 6: them were just in there for first offenses. Imagine if
Speaker 6: that's what he's done and then you do this to
Speaker 6: him in his formative years. What did you think was
Speaker 6: going to happen?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 6: And I just think it's I just look at my
Speaker 6: family sometimes and I just think, why didn't anyone step in?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, as Bernie Matthews said, in the boys' homes,
Speaker 2: there was a hierarchy. So Mount Penang was like a
Speaker 2: primary school for criminals, and then you graduated to Tamworth,
Speaker 2: which was the high school, and then they were unleashed
Speaker 2: into the world.
Speaker 6: Absolutely absolutely no respect for authority, high paying thresholds. Violence
Speaker 6: is the way to get people to do what you
Speaker 6: want them to do. They're the lessons, that's what you're learning.
Speaker 6: Violence one A one.
Speaker 2: One of Reagan's childhood friends from Young Brian English, who
Speaker 2: we heard from in the last episode, was working in
Speaker 2: Sydney in the late nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies
Speaker 2: when the matter of Reagan's incarceration in Gosford came up
Speaker 2: over drinks in a pub with police and government officials. Brian,
Speaker 2: who had witnessed first hand the brutality Reagan suffered at
Speaker 2: the hands of his own mother when they were living
Speaker 2: in Young Now, by chance, became Privy to another brutal
Speaker 2: phase in Reagan's life, his time at Mount Penang. Brian
Speaker 2: told Kelly about the moment in the Sydney pub when
Speaker 2: Reagan was brought up in conversation.
Speaker 19: While I was working at Newt Wow Jenny. I was
Speaker 19: also lecturing police officers in Newtown Police Station on sociology
Speaker 19: and these to do with crime. And we used to
Speaker 19: have drinks. We do the electors I have have elected
Speaker 19: our brid we'd all go out for a drink at
Speaker 19: a hotel in Yuta. And one of the people at
Speaker 19: the hotel they would come for drinks was the head
Speaker 19: of the child welfare office in that area. This is
Speaker 19: before John died. And something came up in that in
Speaker 19: one of those conversations about John Reagan for some reason,
Speaker 19: and he said, I was in charge of the boys home,
Speaker 19: the Gospet boys when Reagan was there, and John had
Speaker 19: told me that he was quite running the boy's home.
Speaker 19: John laws, that's how prisons and things work. But this
Speaker 19: guy said, ah, he used to run you. And I said,
Speaker 19: they did him up.
Speaker 4: We got him.
Speaker 19: We made sure we dressed the little bastard. I mean,
Speaker 19: that was the nature of the times that at that date.
Speaker 19: The Premier View. Deel Wales was corrupt, the end of
Speaker 19: the President's department. The Police commissioner was corrupt, well, the
Speaker 19: chiefs of famiary magistrate and we used to visit the
Speaker 19: Prisidon's was corrupt. Minister for Police was corrupt. And it's
Speaker 19: all come out and I'm not making us out.
Speaker 2: A handful of television crime documentaries have tried to understand
Speaker 2: Reagan's psychosis and in particular, to get to the heart
Speaker 2: of his rage. Exactly what was it to turn this
Speaker 2: once innocent boy into Australia's most beard killer. Historians, journalists
Speaker 2: and psychologists have grappled with Reagan's reign of terror and
Speaker 2: his flame out. How to explain the enigma that was Reagan.
Speaker 2: The passage of fifty years has reduced that understanding to
Speaker 2: a couple of factors. The damage inflicted at the Gosford
Speaker 2: Boy's home and the certainty of his psychopathy when he
Speaker 2: allegedly murdered a toddler for no explicable reason a few
Speaker 2: months before he was assassinated in nineteen seventy four. Reagan
Speaker 2: has been distilled into this a child killer and a psychopath.
Speaker 2: One of the few full length television documentaries focusing on
Speaker 2: Reagan was Tough Nuts Australia's Toughest Criminals, hosted by respected
Speaker 2: writer Tara Moss and first air on the Nine Network
Speaker 2: in twoenty ten. This is Tara summarizing Reagan's childhood and
Speaker 2: hinting at the reasons behind his clearly damaged mind.
Speaker 20: Reagan's parents divorced when he was young, and he moved
Speaker 20: to Sydney with his mother. Here he progressed from hurting
Speaker 20: animals to inflicting pain on people. By his early teens,
Speaker 20: he was attacking strangers in the street, and aged just fourteen,
Speaker 20: he was sent to the brutal Gosford Reformatory. There he
Speaker 20: met other up and coming criminals, including future murderer Arthur
Speaker 20: Nettie Smith, who described Reagan as having the coldest eyes
Speaker 20: he'd ever seen. Psychologists agree that children incarcerated so young
Speaker 20: inevitably have their development affected by the experience.
Speaker 2: And here are the psychologists trying to work out Reagan.
Speaker 21: So in psychology we talk about how people learn to
Speaker 21: be the people they are, and so we learned through
Speaker 21: modeling is copying others. The other way we learn is
Speaker 21: in response to our environment or what happens to us.
Speaker 2: So if somebody's been.
Speaker 21: Abused and violated punished, they learned that perhaps that's something
Speaker 21: that makes you feel bad, but it gives you a
Speaker 21: sense of power to inflict it on somebody else.
Speaker 22: Especially in places like Gosford Boys Home, not only were
Speaker 22: they not being given the pro social kinds of skills
Speaker 22: that they needed, but they're also being exposed to really
Speaker 22: anti social influences, not just from their peers, but also
Speaker 22: from the people who are in authority, the people who
Speaker 22: should have been providing the deterrence or the correction that
Speaker 22: was hopefully gained by placing them there in the first place.
Speaker 2: And this is former Sydney Morning Herald editor and true
Speaker 2: crime author David Hickey.
Speaker 13: Amazingly, at seventeen, Reagan hurts up his first conviction for
Speaker 13: living off the earnings of prostitution. He's a person who,
Speaker 13: because he's not very smart but he is so violent
Speaker 13: and unpredictable, is immediately feared by madams who run suburban
Speaker 13: brothels in Sydney. He literally arrived at the door of
Speaker 13: some of these places and demands standover money, and the madams,
Speaker 13: who are already paying standover money elsewhere, quickly find that
Speaker 13: the protection they thought they had doesn't exist because a
Speaker 13: lot of the criminals who are in the world supposedly
Speaker 13: providing standover do not want to deal with Reagan.
Speaker 2: Tara again returns to Reagan's past to try and explain
Speaker 2: his state of mind.
Speaker 20: Reagan was a man who inspired fear wherever he went,
Speaker 20: as Nettie Smith, who was incarcerated with Reagan at Gosford,
Speaker 20: would later rate, Reagan had always wanted to join the
Speaker 20: army so we could kill people with no questions asked,
Speaker 20: but he had been rejected. Unable to satisfy his bloodlust
Speaker 20: through legal means, Reagan unleashed his own personal war on
Speaker 20: the streets of Sydney and on the prostitutes to seventeen
Speaker 20: year old Pemp Controlled.
Speaker 2: The Psychologists and commentators would go on to describe the
Speaker 2: characteristics of a psychopath like Reagan, that he was a
Speaker 2: pimp because disempowering women empowered him, that he got what
Speaker 2: he wanted through violence and fear, and the final assessment.
Speaker 3: Reagan was dangerous man. Reagan had always been a dangerous man.
Speaker 3: He ended associations asuit himself. He killed his peers, he
Speaker 3: killed his rivals, he killed anyone and heard anyone who
Speaker 3: got in his way. Reagan was a significantly unattractive man
Speaker 3: in gangster terms.
Speaker 2: Let's think about Mount Penang, Gosford had many illustrious graduates. Lenny,
Speaker 2: mister big, McPherson.
Speaker 11: Let's say that mister big, mister big, now Dancy, now
Speaker 11: mister big enough.
Speaker 2: All these things, George Freeman.
Speaker 8: All my crimes are association.
Speaker 19: People know me, knowing me, And if you want me
Speaker 19: to stop taking the people, I'm not going to do that.
Speaker 2: A man called Anthony Zizza, who would go on to
Speaker 2: be one of Reagan's closest friends and personal bodyguard right
Speaker 2: up until the day the magician was murdered. You'll be
Speaker 2: hearing more about Tony Zizza later in this podcast. And
Speaker 2: one of the underworld's most beard psychopaths, Arthur Lennie Smith,
Speaker 2: who was also a Mount Penang graduate. I wasn't surprised
Speaker 2: to learn that long before Kelly Slater, Reagan contacted me
Speaker 2: to help her investigate her cousin. She had tried to
Speaker 2: get in touch with me Neddie Smith in Long Bay
Speaker 2: Jail in Sydney before he passed away in September twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one. This was the funny thing about Reagan for
Speaker 2: his outsized reputation. Close to nothing had been written about
Speaker 2: his complicated life. He had become the cliche of a gangster.
Speaker 2: Kelly wanted more, so she wrote to Neddie and she
Speaker 2: asked him what parts of the story that we know
Speaker 2: about him are true? How big a monster was he?
Speaker 2: Neddie Smith never wrote back for years. He'd been suffering
Speaker 2: from advanced dementia. It's not known if he ever got
Speaker 2: Kelly's letter in the first place. I talked to Kell
Speaker 2: about why she reached out to this killer. So, Kell,
Speaker 2: you learned that one of Johnnie Reagan's little cohorts in
Speaker 2: the Gosford Boys' Home was a young boy called Arthur
Speaker 2: Smith who would go on to evolve as the notorious
Speaker 2: killer Neddie Smith. And you read well Neddie's autobiography. Do
Speaker 2: you remember what he had to say about Reagan and
Speaker 2: Mount Penang in that book?
Speaker 6: I think with Mount Panang he just said that he
Speaker 6: met him there, but he really bagged him out along
Speaker 6: the same lines of psychopath blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 6: But then he goes on. Then he flips and he
Speaker 6: says when he was in solitary confinement in Long Bay, jail.
Speaker 6: John was the only one that brought in books and
Speaker 6: helped him out and did stuff for him. And one
Speaker 6: of the kids, I think it was Helen, actually was
Speaker 6: asked to visit Nettie Smith in jail when he still
Speaker 6: had his marbles, and he said, I always promised your
Speaker 6: father I'd look after you. Is there anything you need
Speaker 6: me to do before I can't function anymore? And gave
Speaker 6: her a little house or something made out of well,
Speaker 6: what do you call it? Bollipop? Yes, bizarre. I think
Speaker 6: his book was pretty rubbish. I write him a letter
Speaker 6: to get some clarification, but Neddie never wrote back.
Speaker 2: And what did you want to know from Neddie?
Speaker 6: I just I asked him what his relationship with was John.
Speaker 6: I said, I've read your book and what you said
Speaker 6: in there, and I find it contradicts itself. So when
Speaker 6: did you first meet him? You said he was good
Speaker 6: to you in jail. Can we talk? Can you tell
Speaker 6: me what your recollection of it is it? And do
Speaker 6: you know who killed him?
Speaker 2: Earlier in this episode, you heard about Kelly's attempts to
Speaker 2: try and get some answers from the New South Wales
Speaker 2: Police Unsolved Homicide Team about the murder of her gangster cousin.
Speaker 2: She eventually heard back from Detective Inspector Nigel Warren on
Speaker 2: March twenty nine, twenty twenty two. These are his written words,
Speaker 2: but not his voice.
Speaker 5: Dear Kelly, thank you for your email. Your request is
Speaker 5: comprehensive and has raised several issues. The Unsolved Homicide Team
Speaker 5: does not, as a matter of course, discuss with members
Speaker 5: of the family or senior next of kin detailed information
Speaker 5: about unsolved homicide investigations, investigative processes, or the unsolved homicide
Speaker 5: review process. We have an ongoing unsolved homicide review process
Speaker 5: that continually assesses information that comes to light. If the
Speaker 5: information leads to something substantial which significantly progresses the matter,
Speaker 5: then we would look to contact and consult with the
Speaker 5: senior next of kin at an appropriate time.
Speaker 2: Detective Inspector Warren wanted to set the record straight with
Speaker 2: Kelly about cold case murders and the police responsibilities in
Speaker 2: speaking with the relatives of the dead over the years.
Speaker 5: At this stage, whilst if I am happy to meet,
Speaker 5: I will be unable to answer your detailed questions during
Speaker 5: any meeting. If you are unsatisfied with this response, you
Speaker 5: may seek a response through the appropriate channels, such as
Speaker 5: the Government Information Privacy Act GIPA.
Speaker 2: Kelly saw this as a hiccup, not an obstacle, so
Speaker 2: she pushed for an actual in person meeting with the
Speaker 2: cold case unit, and she got it. The Unsolved Homicide
Speaker 2: team agreed to meet Kelly and Reagan's de facto wife, Margaret,
Speaker 2: in their offices in Parramatta in Western Sydney, almost fifty
Speaker 2: years after Reagan was gunned down in the streets of Marrickville. Kel,
Speaker 2: as far as I could tell, was happy with this development,
Speaker 2: but also frustrated. For Kell, out on the farm in
Speaker 2: young problem's surface and obstacles present themselves on the land,
Speaker 2: you solve the issue and move on. Farmers like Kel,
Speaker 2: even as a former cop, are not used to modern
Speaker 2: double talk or the hidden complications of bureaucracy. But she
Speaker 2: wouldn't miss the appointment for quins. Here was a chance,
Speaker 2: finally to talk to law enforcement about Reagan. Marg had
Speaker 2: never spoken with police since Reagan's murder. Her partner was
Speaker 2: killed with eight bullets. He went to the morgue, he
Speaker 2: was cremated. There was a brief inquest, killer or killers unknown.
Speaker 2: Marg was never even called to give evidence. Then life
Speaker 2: went on. The meeting with the Cold Case team was
Speaker 2: a big moment for Marg. She risked having to relieve
Speaker 2: a time she wanted to forget, or learning something she'd
Speaker 2: rather not know. This was another lifetime ago. She was
Speaker 2: now a grandmother, in her seventies and living quietly on
Speaker 2: the New South Wales central Coast. Why risk derailing everything now?
Speaker 2: Even Kel was unsure what Marg wanted out of the
Speaker 2: meeting with the Cold Case team, out of this podcast
Speaker 2: investigation itself. What if the whole situation was the reverse
Speaker 2: that it was Marg who was holding onto information that
Speaker 2: might have helped police solve Reagan's murder decades ago. What
Speaker 2: if she possessed the key the identity of her husband's killers.
Speaker 2: What if the loyal gangster's wife actually knew all that
Speaker 2: and was never going to tell Ever, she'll be fully cooperative.
Speaker 2: Do you think by her nature she might, like most people,
Speaker 2: hold something back.
Speaker 6: What do you reckon the skills she's been taught by
Speaker 6: him is to say nothing, to keep your mouth shut,
Speaker 6: Just keep your mouth shut. So I think she really
Speaker 6: wants to open and tell all that she knows. Imagine
Speaker 6: if Ani Mah did know something and then she tells
Speaker 6: the family like that's the backlash to that that she
Speaker 6: would perceive would be huge. I think she wants to
Speaker 6: tell us, but I don't know if she'll get over
Speaker 6: the line.
Speaker 2: Why do you think, after all these decade she has
Speaker 2: agreed to talk to us now?
Speaker 6: I think partly because she loves us. She loves us
Speaker 6: the reaganside. I know she does. She's the one when
Speaker 6: we had all the fallout. She was the one who
Speaker 6: said to me, I want you to do this. I
Speaker 6: want you to do this.
Speaker 2: Marg is a huge part of this story. She lived
Speaker 2: with the man, was inside the gangster's life, yet she
Speaker 2: has never spoken publicly about him or their relationship. Ever,
Speaker 2: in over fifty years, she knows a lot. Not even
Speaker 2: Call and I were confident we'd ever get to the
Speaker 2: bottom of what Marg actually knew. But the meeting with
Speaker 2: police was set. Was it a genuine sit down? Did
Speaker 2: the cold case team really want to progress Reagan's case
Speaker 2: after it had gathered dust for decades? Would they listen
Speaker 2: to Kelly and Marg or would this be an exercise
Speaker 2: in satisfying Kelly with a face to face than expecting
Speaker 2: her to go away? Were police hoping to get the
Speaker 2: Reagans off their backs once and for all. Kell and
Speaker 2: I molded over the idea of what will happen, what's
Speaker 2: the setup.
Speaker 6: I had to submit a list of questions, but he
Speaker 6: wanted to know what I wanted to know about. I'll
Speaker 6: send him those And so now he's come back and
Speaker 6: said that he can't answer those, but he's willing to
Speaker 6: meet both Margaret and I, which that's very kind of him.
Speaker 6: It's what forty eight years later and you're going to, well,
Speaker 6: what do you do next? Of kin chat?
Speaker 2: What does the family think of the meeting arranged after
Speaker 2: as you said, forty eight long years, There's never been
Speaker 2: anything remotely like this as there in the Fast and
Speaker 2: its relationship with the police in terms of Reagan's murder.
Speaker 6: And what they say is they probably didn't know Dad
Speaker 6: was the next of King John comes from young back
Speaker 6: then you could look it up in a phone book.
Speaker 6: There was only two Reagans, Uncle, Ron and Dad. You're
Speaker 6: going to get a hit either way, So why wouldn't
Speaker 6: anybody just contact us and ask They don't even know
Speaker 6: what the family knows. And then Arnie Mark they knew
Speaker 6: because they interviewed her. They took a statement of her,
Speaker 6: so they knew she was his partner. She didn't even
Speaker 6: get called to the coronial inquiry. Nobody. Forty eight years
Speaker 6: later and you've virtually got a beg for a chat.
Speaker 2: I'm going to I'm going to be the devil's advocate
Speaker 2: here and say, okay, say there's hundreds of cold case
Speaker 2: murders on their books, A family member of those hundreds
Speaker 2: and hundreds of cold cases to be contacted on rotation.
Speaker 2: I guess it would take thousands of manails to do that.
Speaker 2: But having said that, all murders are shocking. But this,
Speaker 2: this is a murder that is still captivating the public
Speaker 2: after forty eight plus years.
Speaker 6: And I get this how people say, oh, he was
Speaker 6: a shit bag, you know, is a crook, He was this,
Speaker 6: he was that. Okay, well, let's still find out why
Speaker 6: he was killed because the reasons we're being told is wrong.
Speaker 6: There's still a little boy that was murdered in relation
Speaker 6: to him. Nothing's been done there. And there's more things
Speaker 6: that contribute around this. And I agree with you because
Speaker 6: being an ex police officer, you can't keep up with everything.
Speaker 6: But when you do a review, it's one courtesy call.
Speaker 6: You know, you could say that we didn't know who
Speaker 6: his relations were. Well, I'm pretty sure people did know
Speaker 6: who his relations were. They certainly knew at my interview
Speaker 6: who I was and who he was. You know, it
Speaker 6: wouldn't be hard to go up during a review. We're
Speaker 6: going to look for his background. Let's look up and
Speaker 6: see if there's any reagans in young.
Speaker 2: Let me ask you this, and it's no criticism of Marg,
Speaker 2: but do you have any sense that marg actually wants
Speaker 2: to see this resolve? You could argue from the other
Speaker 2: side of the coin that if she was that interested
Speaker 2: in resolving the murder of her partner, she might have
Speaker 2: contacted them, the police.
Speaker 6: I think Mark is doing it more for me and
Speaker 6: for her children. I don't We don't know what Mark knows.
Speaker 6: And I think when John died, and I would not
Speaker 6: blame Annie Mark if she just felt released. The night
Speaker 6: he was killed, he brings his lover into her house
Speaker 6: and shares his like and she lived in fear, and
Speaker 6: she left and names were changed and things like that happened.
Speaker 6: So I think she she'd have to be curious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean his death released her, absolutely, let her free,
Speaker 2: really so absolutely?
Speaker 6: Could you know she could cut her hair? She could
Speaker 6: wear makeup, she could go out when she wanted to
Speaker 6: go out. We till take that for granted. You sit
Speaker 6: in judgment of you. You've got to wear shoes, haven't you.
Speaker 2: In the next episode of The Gangster's Ghost, we'll take
Speaker 2: you inside the smoky nightclubs, go go bars and shadowy
Speaker 2: saloons of Sydney's King's Cross in the swinging sixties, and
Speaker 2: you'll meet the woman who captured Johnny Reagan's heart the
Speaker 2: moment he saw her and would become the Gangster's wife.
Speaker 19: He comes up to me again and he leans over
Speaker 19: and he says to me, I'm going to marry you.
Speaker 1: The Gangster's Ghost is a production of The Australian. It's
Speaker 1: written and presented by senior writer Matthew Condon and produced
Speaker 1: and edited by Multimedia editor Leat samaglu Our. Executive producer
Speaker 1: is Me editor Oryeals director Claire Harvey. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Lara Kamenos, Erica Rutlidge, Kristin Amiot, Jasper Leek, Stephanie Coombs,
Speaker 1: Sean Callanan Lachland, Clear Ryan Osland, Amanda Winn Williams, Christine Keller,
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Speaker 1: Sus Rolf and Yaquina Carlson. We can only do journalism
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Speaker 4: Or reading.
Speaker 12: Mount Penang is a school in which the emphasis is
Speaker 12: not on formal school education, but on the art of
Speaker 12: living with others and being an acceptable member of our society.
Speaker 12: It is a place in which a new spirit is
Speaker 12: engendered in wayward boys, so that they leave Mount Penang
Speaker 12: with a new horizon to steer by.
Speaker 4: U