Speaker 1: I'm Andrew Rule Liza's Life and Crimes. Today we welcome
Speaker 1: my colleague Jen Kelly to the microphone because she has
Speaker 1: been looking into the fascinating story of the last woman
Speaker 1: hanged in Australia. Now, this remarkably is in living memory,
Speaker 1: and I can recall my own mother, who's still with us,
Speaker 1: telling me all about this happening when she was at
Speaker 1: Teacher's College as a young woman. So it's not sort
Speaker 1: of ancient history. There are people out there who recall
Speaker 1: it happening. And now, without further ado, Jen Kelly is
Speaker 1: going to tell us all she knows about the life
Speaker 1: and sad death of jean Lee.
Speaker 2: Great to be here, Andrew, thanks very much. Yes, it
Speaker 2: was only in nineteen fifty one, so not so long ago,
Speaker 2: and Jean Lee was the last woman executed in Australia.
Speaker 2: She was also the only woman executed at Pentridge Prison
Speaker 2: in Melbourne. But it's quite a fascinating case for a
Speaker 2: few other reasons. It raised lots of interesting questions because
Speaker 2: she was hanged for murder even though she definitely didn't
Speaker 2: commit the murder itself and police knew that, and also
Speaker 2: she confessed to the murder. But many people believe that
Speaker 2: she confessed simply to save her lover, because she thought
Speaker 2: that being a woman, there's no way known she would
Speaker 2: have got the death sentence. But obviously it didn't actually
Speaker 2: pan out that way.
Speaker 1: No, it was a terrible thing, and probably that version
Speaker 1: is real because they would imagine that she'd beat it
Speaker 1: and get him off and all backfired. Because of course,
Speaker 1: murders committed in company are still murder, aren't they. That's
Speaker 1: the law. It doesn't matter who pulls the trigger. If
Speaker 1: it's a joint venture. Sadly, you're all in it, which
Speaker 1: is a very good reason to avoid bad company when
Speaker 1: it comes to committing. What's the background on Jean Lee. Now,
Speaker 1: she'd had a pretty patchy life before she, yeah, hit this.
Speaker 1: I think she went from bad to worse.
Speaker 2: She did, she knew all about bad company. She just
Speaker 2: had absolutely terrible taste in men. She actually came from
Speaker 2: quite a respectable family. They weren't particularly well off, but
Speaker 2: you know, she fell on hard times and she just
Speaker 2: kept falling for the wrong men, really dodgy men. But
Speaker 2: by this time in her life she was an attractive
Speaker 2: young woman. She was actually a young mum, but she'd
Speaker 2: had to pass off her young daughter to her own
Speaker 2: mum to look after. She was only thirty one, and
Speaker 2: by this time in her life she was with her lover,
Speaker 2: Robert Clayton, and they were small time crooks in Melbourne
Speaker 2: and they were running what was called the badger scam,
Speaker 2: which was pretty common back then. So she would lure
Speaker 2: some unsuspecting guy, usually in his car, and they would
Speaker 2: start getting it on and she'd get the man into
Speaker 2: a sort of compromising position and then her lover, Robert Clayton,
Speaker 2: would kind of, you know, burst into the scene and
Speaker 2: pretend to be the wronged husband and shake the guy
Speaker 2: down and basically demand compensation and rob the guy blind.
Speaker 2: He would say that, you know, I need money to
Speaker 2: divorce this harlot, or he'd say you have to give
Speaker 2: me money or I'm going to tell your wife. And
Speaker 2: it was actually a pretty lucrative scam. So apparently they
Speaker 2: made something like two hundred and fifty pounds in a month,
Speaker 2: which was quite a lot of money in nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 1: It was a lot of money in nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And they were both big drinkers and you
Speaker 2: won't be surprised to hear that Robert Clayton was quite
Speaker 2: violent towards gen Lee, so you know, as I say, terrible,
Speaker 2: terrible taste in men. But I'll take you forward to
Speaker 2: the knight of the murder. They were out drinking with
Speaker 2: a third crook, so a guy called Norman Andrews, and
Speaker 2: somehow they get drinking with the man who eventually becomes
Speaker 2: the murder victim. So he's a seventy three year old
Speaker 2: guy and sp bookie in Carlton. He's named Pop Kent,
Speaker 2: so seventy three, much older guy. You can imagine they
Speaker 2: probably thought that he was going to be an easy target,
Speaker 2: a pushover. All four of them are drinking at a
Speaker 2: pub called the University Hotel in Carlton, and then Pop
Speaker 2: Kent invites them back to his place, which is a
Speaker 2: room at a rooming house in Carlton, and they're just drinking,
Speaker 2: knocking them back, and at some point in the night,
Speaker 2: the three of them decide that they're going to rob him.
Speaker 2: And they're all drunk, so they obviously think that this
Speaker 2: is going to be pretty easy, but Pop Kent fights back,
Speaker 2: and he really puts up a fight, and it just
Speaker 2: turns into the most horrific scene. The men have tortured him.
Speaker 2: They've stabbed him repeatedly, they've beaten him and in the
Speaker 2: end he's actually been strangled to death, and the three
Speaker 2: of them have gone on the run. You know, just
Speaker 2: an absolutely horrific murder. Now, they could have probably just
Speaker 2: laid low or kept running and they might have got
Speaker 2: away with it, but they're just blind drunk by now,
Speaker 2: and just not very smart criminals. They've stopped at a
Speaker 2: payphone and they've booked a flight to Adelaide. It's actually
Speaker 2: not that late at night, it's only about nine o'clock.
Speaker 2: They've gone back to their hotel room at the Great
Speaker 2: Southern Hotel in Spencer Street. They've changed out of their clothes,
Speaker 2: which have got blood stains on them, and they've left
Speaker 2: the blood stained clothes in the hotel room.
Speaker 1: So evidence genius.
Speaker 2: And then they've gone out to the Copakabana nightclub and
Speaker 2: continued drinking. So in the meantime, the cops have gone
Speaker 2: to the scene of the crime and they've done some
Speaker 2: pretty fine police work. So by the time these three
Speaker 2: have got back to their hotel room at nearly four am,
Speaker 2: the detectives are waiting, having done some pretty fine police work.
Speaker 2: Over the next few hours, and of course the police
Speaker 2: have found the blood stained clothes and the police have
Speaker 2: hauled the three to the police station and interrogated them
Speaker 2: for hours while they're drunk and sleep deprived, and this
Speaker 2: is when the first of a couple of intriguing confessions
Speaker 2: start to emerge. So I won't tell you anymore, but
Speaker 2: this is where we'll play you. We recorded two parts,
Speaker 2: a two part episode of this story with a wonderful guest,
Speaker 2: Damian Bard, who is a tour guide with Penridge Prison Tours,
Speaker 2: because you can go and do tours down at Penridge
Speaker 2: Prison in Coburg. And we've recorded two episodes, a two
Speaker 2: part episode of this amazing story. We'll play the first
Speaker 2: episode of the In Black and White podcast now and
Speaker 2: you can hear part two of the story wherever you
Speaker 2: get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Excellent.
Speaker 3: And as I did, Clayton started to drink more. Now
Speaker 3: Gene was also had a well and truly established drinking
Speaker 3: problem as well. But as they were doing this more
Speaker 3: people seem to be wising up to the scam as well.
Speaker 3: It was becoming less successful. They were making less money
Speaker 3: and there was definitely several instances where the intended target
Speaker 3: fought Back.
Speaker 2: I'm Jen Kelly from the Herald Son and this is
Speaker 2: in Black and White, a podcast about some of Australia's
Speaker 2: forgotten characters. Today we'll hear the story of Jean Lee,
Speaker 2: the last woman executed in Australia. Jean was a thirty
Speaker 2: one year old mother when she was hanged for murder
Speaker 2: at Penridge Prison in Melbourne in nineteen fifty one. Did
Speaker 2: she do it or did she confess to save her lover?
Speaker 2: Today we're joined by Damian Beard, a tour guide at
Speaker 2: Pencridge Prison Tours part of the National Trust. For part
Speaker 2: one of the story, make sure you return on Thursday
Speaker 2: for part two. Welcome to the podcast, Amien, thank you.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Jean Lee was of course the last woman executed in Australia,
Speaker 2: but there is a lot more to this story. So
Speaker 2: why have you chosen this particular character from the many
Speaker 2: stories from Penridge Prison's history to share with us today.
Speaker 3: Well, there's a few reasons, the first being she was
Speaker 3: the only woman executed at Penridge of the eleven people
Speaker 3: executed there. And the thing with women and Pentridge is
Speaker 3: a lot of people don't actually realize that they are
Speaker 3: a huge part of the story. The Pentridge operated as
Speaker 3: a woman's prison three times during the one hundred and forty
Speaker 3: seven years that it was open. But also her story
Speaker 3: just has some big questions surrounding it, I guess, you know,
Speaker 3: of terms of culpability, and whether she was coerced to confess,
Speaker 3: whether she confessed to potentially save her lover, who actually
Speaker 3: did the murder, and sort of speaks to some larger
Speaker 3: questions about levels of responsibility and things like that. It
Speaker 3: also was the last execution before Ronald Ryan's execution in Victoria's,
Speaker 3: so it was almost the run up to all the
Speaker 3: big debate about the death penalty and things like that.
Speaker 2: So many aspects of the case that are still unresolved
Speaker 2: this day, which is why I find it so fascinating,
Speaker 2: And we'll hear more about that later on. To begin with,
Speaker 2: can you tell us what do we know about jen
Speaker 2: Lee's early life?
Speaker 3: So she was born on the tenth of December nineteen
Speaker 3: nineteen at Dubbo, with her birth name being Marjorie gen
Speaker 3: maud Wright. Her father was a railway worker and she
Speaker 3: family was working class, but they're often described in the
Speaker 3: newspaper counts as respectable. So I don't think that means
Speaker 3: particularly well off. But if you can kind of imagine
Speaker 3: it almost as like the kind of family where their
Speaker 3: clothes are threadbare and their shoes are falling through the souls,
Speaker 3: but they're always immaculately pressed and washed, and you know,
Speaker 3: she's always sent off to school with clean hair tied
Speaker 3: up in ribbons and all that kind of stuff. The
Speaker 3: fact that her dad was a railway worker as well
Speaker 3: probably meant that they were quite insulated from the depression.
Speaker 3: It was a steady government job, and so in nineteen
Speaker 3: twenty seven they moved to Chatswood, where she intended a
Speaker 3: convent school. She didn't finish year twelve, but she did
Speaker 3: train in what was, you know, the kind of roles
Speaker 3: that were available for women at that time. So as
Speaker 3: a typist stenographer, she learned shorthand, and she spent some
Speaker 3: time leaving school several jobs. She did a office junior
Speaker 3: at a motor company, she was a millner, she was
Speaker 3: a stenographer, and she worked in the can goods factory.
Speaker 2: It's interesting that, as you say, she was from a
Speaker 2: respectable family, so there was no hint of crime in
Speaker 2: her family background. Now, I don't know if it was
Speaker 2: bad luck or bad judgment. But when it came to
Speaker 2: picking men, she seemed to partner up with some real
Speaker 2: shockers from a young age.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I mean I tend to be sympathetic to
Speaker 3: this is you know, what options did she have? She
Speaker 3: got kind of quite a bit of a bad start
Speaker 3: with her romantic life, and I think things went downhill
Speaker 3: from there because as she moved on throughout her life,
Speaker 3: the doors and the options closed to her. The ladders
Speaker 3: were pulled up in those kinds of things. So in
Speaker 3: my nineteen thirty eight, at the age of eighteen years old,
Speaker 3: she married a guy named Raymond Breece. He was a
Speaker 3: house painter who was seven years her senior and apparently
Speaker 3: had known her since childhood. And poor Jean, she had
Speaker 3: to deal with Raymond being frequently unemployed. Again we're still
Speaker 3: in the lingering after effects of the depression and things
Speaker 3: like that. And as he was spending a lot of
Speaker 3: time unemployed, he was spending a lot of time drinking,
Speaker 3: and when he was drunk, he was abusive. A year
Speaker 3: after their marriage, she gave birth to her daughter, who
Speaker 3: is her only child, and in the same year Raymond
Speaker 3: was convicted of auto theft. But World War two broke
Speaker 3: broke out, and so he signs up with the first
Speaker 3: Australian Heavy Anti Aircraft Artillery Training Regiment and does service
Speaker 3: with them. It's not clear from what I could see
Speaker 3: from his records whether he actually did go overseas. But
Speaker 3: like many of the men she became involved with, he
Speaker 3: wasn't a particularly good soldier. He was court martialed several
Speaker 3: times for being absent without leave or failure to appear
Speaker 3: on parade and things like that. And she separated from
Speaker 3: Raymond sometime around nineteen forty three.
Speaker 2: And really it just went downhill from there, didn't.
Speaker 4: It it did.
Speaker 3: I mean, she was a single mother in the nineteen forties,
Speaker 3: in the middle of the war. You know, a lot
Speaker 3: of huge amount of the men were overseas. Being a
Speaker 3: single mother at the time was incredibly taboo. She is
Speaker 3: from a somewhat impoverished background and things like that, so
Speaker 3: she's trying to basically stay alive and support her daughter
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 2: How did she manage to do that?
Speaker 3: So what ends up happening is her daughter ends up
Speaker 3: going to live with Jean's mother, and this is where
Speaker 3: she ends up spending most of her life. In fact,
Speaker 3: Jean doesn't have much contact with her daughter for the
Speaker 3: rest of her life. Jean moves up to Brisbane, where
Speaker 3: there is a lot of work for women, doing sort
Speaker 3: of waitressing work and stuff like that, because Brisbane was
Speaker 3: of course the staging ground for the Pacific War of
Speaker 3: Australian American Dutch soldiers up there, and she gets a
Speaker 3: job working as a waitress at Lenin's Hotel, and sometime
Speaker 3: around then that she starts changing her name to Jane,
Speaker 3: starts calling herself Gene as well, and in nineteen forty
Speaker 3: three she meets a man named Maurice Dias who is
Speaker 3: a petty criminal, and they travel back from Brisbane down
Speaker 3: to Sydney, then Adelaide and finally ending up in Perth,
Speaker 3: sort of from what I've been able to gather, sort
Speaker 3: of staying one step ahead of the cops each time
Speaker 3: they move, as Morris's ending up in trouble for various
Speaker 3: petty offenses like theft, burglary and stuff like that. They
Speaker 3: spend eleven months in Perth and des again. Like many
Speaker 3: men in her life, he is a drinker and he
Speaker 3: is abusive when he's drunk, and to cope with this,
Speaker 3: Gene starts to drink heavily as well. Now she's actually
Speaker 3: asked later on in her life, after everything happens, why
Speaker 3: she didn't leave DS at this time, which I think
Speaker 3: is I mean, when we talk about people leaving domestic
Speaker 3: violence situation today, it's an incredibly insensitive question, you know.
Speaker 3: I think we understand these days how difficult it is
Speaker 3: to leave from those situations. But you also have to
Speaker 3: understand that she's in wartime Perth, So just simply getting
Speaker 3: out of the city, let alone having somewhere to go,
Speaker 3: having the means to get there, all that kind of
Speaker 3: stuff is a lot difficult. In Perth at the time
Speaker 3: is much much a separate part of Australia, separated from Australia,
Speaker 3: I should say, compared to it is these days, and
Speaker 3: there are wartime restrictions on travel and things.
Speaker 2: Like that, and it's hard to imagine Damien as well,
Speaker 2: the sadness that she must have carried about being separated
Speaker 2: from her child, to not be able to look after
Speaker 2: her child, so having to leave that child behind.
Speaker 3: Absolutely Now, Jean's child does not pay a play a
Speaker 3: huge part in her story. I have to say, there's
Speaker 3: not a lot on her and I do wonder if
Speaker 3: a lot of it has actually been sort of scrub
Speaker 3: from the records or kept from the records to protect her.
Speaker 3: Like I wasn't even able to find her name looking
Speaker 3: through the newspaper articles. Now, of course, as soon as
Speaker 3: I say that, someone's going to be able to answer
Speaker 3: in the comments right away what her name was and
Speaker 3: things like that, but which please do, I'd love to know.
Speaker 3: But so you would think that she would be feeling
Speaker 3: that pain, you know, that failure is a mother and
Speaker 3: things like that. She would definitely be being viewed in
Speaker 3: that context at the time. Single mothers are absolutely taboo
Speaker 3: second class citizens, but ones who can't even afford to
Speaker 3: look after their kids, they've you know, failed the requirements
Speaker 3: of their gender and their sex somehow. But I also
Speaker 3: do wonder, you know, maybe she was happier apart from
Speaker 3: the kid. Maybe she was content with the fact that
Speaker 3: the kid was actually being looked after.
Speaker 4: Unfortunately we just don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true, that's a good point. And what did
Speaker 2: you do after the war?
Speaker 3: So in nineteen forty five she returned to Sydney and
Speaker 3: DS was arrested on outstanding warrants and so she's now
Speaker 3: on her own with no sort of methods of support,
Speaker 3: so she turns to sex work to raise money for
Speaker 3: his bail. He gets bailed out and in nineteen forty
Speaker 3: six they moved to Tasmania again because he now has
Speaker 3: further outstanding warrants on him, and this is where she
Speaker 3: finally actually managed to escape the relationship with Maurice dis
Speaker 3: and she.
Speaker 4: Moves back to Sydney.
Speaker 3: She takes up a job at the Liverpool Arms Hotel
Speaker 3: which is on Pitt Street, and supplants her income there
Speaker 3: as well with sex work in a brothel. And it's
Speaker 3: sometime around this that she meets the third man who
Speaker 3: is going to be a huge figure in her life
Speaker 3: and in many ways was the love of her life,
Speaker 3: which was Robert Clayton. It's also this time when she
Speaker 3: becomes gen Lee. This is one of the aliases she
Speaker 3: uses when she's picked up the prostitution.
Speaker 2: Do we know anything about that name? Why she's chosen
Speaker 2: the name Jean Lee? Is there any background behind that?
Speaker 3: I have no idea, to be honest, the gene is
Speaker 3: obviously her second name, you know, Marjorie Jane. Where the
Speaker 3: Lee comes from? I have no idea.
Speaker 2: M So tell us about Robert Clayton. What do we
Speaker 2: know about him?
Speaker 3: He was born on the twenty second of January nineteenth
Speaker 3: seventeen in Sydney. He worked for schweps for a little
Speaker 3: bit after high school, but enlisted in theaf at the
Speaker 3: outbreak of war and was kicked out in nineteen forty
Speaker 3: one following discipline breaches. Sometime around this time he married
Speaker 3: a woman named Nancy Lewis. He enlisted in the army
Speaker 3: and he was sent to Palestine but didn't see combat,
Speaker 3: and he returned to Australia in nineteen forty two or
Speaker 3: three as there was this big thing going on without
Speaker 3: bringing back the Australian Imperial Force that had been sent
Speaker 3: over there to fight with the British in the Desert campaigns.
Speaker 3: But there was now a lot of worry about a
Speaker 3: potential for a Japanese invasion, and so the decision was
Speaker 3: made to the big objection of Churchill, to bring Australian
Speaker 3: forces back. So when Robert returned to Australia, he found
Speaker 3: that Nancy had taken up with an American serviceman and
Speaker 3: he initiated a divorce with it. In nineteen forty three,
Speaker 3: he was discharged as unfit for service because he has
Speaker 3: also been having a lot of situations of without leave,
Speaker 3: drunkenness on duty and stuff like that, and in fact
Speaker 3: he's eventually court marshal for this. He was a frequent
Speaker 3: heavy gambler and was running sort of small time scams
Speaker 3: and petty theft things and stuff like that in Sydney.
Speaker 3: And that's at this point that he meets Lee.
Speaker 2: And did they immediately strike up a relationship.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, It almost appears like it was love at first sight,
Speaker 3: and everything that they go through in the next six
Speaker 3: years or more, it very much whatever he does to Lee,
Speaker 3: she seems absolutely devoted to him. So they move in
Speaker 3: for a while with Jean's mother, but Clayton absolutely hates
Speaker 3: the domesticity of it and particularly being around Jean's child,
Speaker 3: and so he's often out running around on Jean and
Speaker 3: stuff like that. And in nineteen forty seven he's arrested
Speaker 3: with a friend of his name, Norman Bolger. They are
Speaker 3: charged with the attempted rape of two teenage girls. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he's sentenced to twenty more months in Long Bay. Now
Speaker 3: Lee Jeane is now again without means of support, so
Speaker 3: she returns to sex work at this time, but she
Speaker 3: also worked in the cafe and worked doing sort of
Speaker 3: housework and support for a disabled American soldier who was
Speaker 3: stuck in Sydney. And this guy obviously had some kind
Speaker 3: of positive effect on her life because he was eventually
Speaker 3: moved back his family took charge of him and moved
Speaker 3: back to America. But he wrote her all the way
Speaker 3: up until the end of her life, including when she
Speaker 3: was actually in pentridg prison. Oh really, yeah, not a
Speaker 3: whole lot we've been able to find out about here,
Speaker 3: But it's just it's an interesting fact, you know, possible
Speaker 3: what could have been?
Speaker 4: I guess.
Speaker 2: So where are the letters now? Are those letters still
Speaker 2: at the prison?
Speaker 4: No, they are not.
Speaker 3: They will be probably in the custody of her surviving
Speaker 3: family or something like that. This is just something I
Speaker 3: came across as just a random end note in a
Speaker 3: book about her.
Speaker 4: There's nothing else more about it now, Jean.
Speaker 3: She frequently visited Clayton in Longbay, and you know, he's
Speaker 3: not a great guy. He's abusive, he's unfaithful, and in
Speaker 3: Long Bay he's very very self pitying, you know, whoe
Speaker 3: is me? And she tries to talk to him about
Speaker 3: her life outside and what she's doing, and he doesn't
Speaker 3: want to.
Speaker 4: Hear about it. He is very critical of.
Speaker 3: Anything she's doing, but her devotion to him is still
Speaker 3: absolutely genuine. So in nineteen forty nine, he is released
Speaker 3: in September and they begin a particular scam called the
Speaker 3: Badger scam.
Speaker 2: And this is not just a scam that these two
Speaker 2: pull off. This is actually a common scam at the time, isn't.
Speaker 4: It It is. It's very well known.
Speaker 3: I mean I first encountered this in the novels of
Speaker 3: James Elroy, so it was obviously something that was very
Speaker 3: much being done at the time. But the plan was
Speaker 3: this that Clayton would steal a car and he would
Speaker 3: park it somewhere dark and Jane, who was quite an
Speaker 3: attractive young woman, she would lure a man, hopefully married,
Speaker 3: into the car so they could get up to you know,
Speaker 3: and then Clayton would come out of the darkness knocking
Speaker 3: on the window and be like, you know, I'm the
Speaker 3: wronged husband, what are you doing if with my wife
Speaker 3: in here, and start a fake argument and things like that.
Speaker 3: Now he would then buttonhole the man and demand compensation.
Speaker 4: What form this would take? Would you know?
Speaker 3: Usually be like I need money to divorce. This Harlot
Speaker 3: sort of thing or something like that, or maybe just
Speaker 3: I'd need money otherwise I'm going to tell your wife.
Speaker 3: But it was quite a popular scam, and they it
Speaker 3: was quite profitable for them as well, because by October
Speaker 3: they had raised two hundred and fifty pounds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing that word didn't get around, you know,
Speaker 2: that people didn't sort of catch on that this was
Speaker 2: a thing that it still worked.
Speaker 3: I'm just trying to think of a polite way to
Speaker 3: put this. Of men being enticed by young attractive women,
Speaker 3: sometimes all sense goes out the window and they're not
Speaker 3: necessarily thinking with the right part of their brain. I
Speaker 3: imagine it's something that still happens today. I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: people still get catfished online today and things like that.
Speaker 2: So that is true. So they raised a lot of
Speaker 2: money with this scam, didn't they.
Speaker 3: Yeah, two hundred and fifty pounds in the space.
Speaker 4: Of a month.
Speaker 2: Astonishing.
Speaker 3: So they decided to head down to Melbourne, where the
Speaker 3: Spring Racing Carnival was beginning, and try and enact the
Speaker 3: same scam down in Melbourne.
Speaker 2: So they actually did it at the races.
Speaker 3: Around the races, you know, I mean even today you
Speaker 3: can see there's a lot of people stumbling home from
Speaker 3: Flemington in sort of the worse state to wear and
Speaker 3: stuff like that, so there are quite a few targets
Speaker 3: from there.
Speaker 2: We'll be back shortly to find out what happened next,
Speaker 2: so stay with us. So tell us more about their
Speaker 2: life at crime in Melbourne.
Speaker 3: So the money started to dwindle pretty quickly. They stayed
Speaker 3: in quite a nice hotel to start with that then
Speaker 3: moved into less salubrious accommodations and the circumstances started to
Speaker 3: get quite precarious. As this did, and as this did,
Speaker 3: Clayton started to drink more. Now Gene was also had
Speaker 3: a well and truly established drinking problem as well. But
Speaker 3: as they would doing this more people seemed to be
Speaker 3: wising up to the scam as well. It was becoming
Speaker 3: less successful. They were making less money and there was
Speaker 3: definitely several instances where the intended target fought back and
Speaker 3: when this happened, Clayton would be humiliated, drunk and angry,
Speaker 3: and he would take this out on Gene. There is
Speaker 3: definitely at least one instance where he attacked her and
Speaker 3: left her with a bruised face and cuts across her
Speaker 3: nose after a failed scam, but they persisted and October
Speaker 3: twenty sixth they went out to Werriby to a race
Speaker 3: meet there and that is where they met a man
Speaker 3: named Norman Anthees, otherwise known as Norman Andrews.
Speaker 2: And Andrews had a pretty colorful criminal background himself, didn't he.
Speaker 3: He did so Andrews. He was born in nineteen ten
Speaker 3: in Orange and New South Wales. He worked as an
Speaker 3: electrician and a projectionist. Married in nineteen thirty one and
Speaker 3: had a daughter, but by nineteen forty he was divorced
Speaker 3: and living a pretty itinerant lifestyle. Were just turning to
Speaker 3: petty crime to survive, like many people were the time.
Speaker 3: I think something that's maybe not clear to a lot
Speaker 3: of people is how common that was in the wartime era.
Speaker 3: Now the wartime era, it kind of reminds me of
Speaker 3: almost like the sort of the first decades of colonization,
Speaker 3: where you know, if you're a free settler, you know,
Speaker 3: you run into trouble in one town or one city,
Speaker 3: you just move to another one, change your name and
Speaker 3: you know, I'm a completely new guy. And also, by
Speaker 3: the way, I'm a doctor or something like that, and
Speaker 3: start set up shop again. And this is kind of
Speaker 3: a similar thing. In the wartime era, there's lots of
Speaker 3: movement of men from place to place, and lots of
Speaker 3: people jumping ship or jumping train and disappearing into the
Speaker 3: chaos and confusion, you know, less police officers to run
Speaker 3: things up. We have, particularly in many of the cities,
Speaker 3: we have brownouts or blackouts, which are better opportunities for crime,
Speaker 3: you know. We obviously have in Melbourne the famous case
Speaker 3: of the brown out strangler, Eddie Leonski, who was possibly
Speaker 3: an American soldier, possibly the criminal of that, although that's
Speaker 3: a whole other podcast.
Speaker 4: And so just this.
Speaker 3: Itinerant lifestyle and this lifestyle of petty crime, it was
Speaker 3: quite possible at the time. But in nineteen forty he
Speaker 3: did enlist in the army and he became a signalmant
Speaker 3: and he was actually injured by a shrapnelt to Brook,
Speaker 3: but he wasn't also again not a great soldier. On
Speaker 3: four separate occasions he was court martialed, the last being
Speaker 3: in nineteen forty four for robbing and assaulting a civilian
Speaker 3: and that's when he got three years in Long Day,
Speaker 3: which is where he met Clayton and how did they meet.
Speaker 3: They met at a race meet at Werribe, so just
Speaker 3: obviously ran into each other in the crowd somewhere.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then did Clayton and Andrews instantly form a criminal association?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Absolutely they did.
Speaker 3: Now there's no convictions that I've been able to trace
Speaker 3: or anything like that, but they did absolutely pale around
Speaker 3: committing petty crimes, attempting these scams still and doing a
Speaker 3: hell of a lot of drinking, all three of them,
Speaker 3: and their funds started to run out, which leads us
Speaker 3: up to the fateful day that would end up with
Speaker 3: all three of them seeing Scaffold.
Speaker 2: Now, I love the way that you've been introducing the
Speaker 2: key characters in his tale, like a who done it?
Speaker 2: So we get to know them one by one. I'd
Speaker 2: love you to do the same with Pop Kent. He's
Speaker 2: obviously the next most important character in this story. So
Speaker 2: what do we know about him?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: So William George Kent. He was born the twenty third
Speaker 3: of October eighteen seventy four in the Western Districts and
Speaker 3: his life absolutely revolved around horse racing. So as a
Speaker 3: young man he was a jockey and then he owned
Speaker 3: race horses while he worked doing things like farming and
Speaker 3: stuff like that in the wim Era. He married in
Speaker 3: nineteen oh three and fathered nine children. But life didn't
Speaker 3: go well for him either, because by the mid nineteen
Speaker 3: forties he was living apart from his wife and running
Speaker 3: a boarding house in Dorritt Street in Carlton. While he
Speaker 3: was doing this, he also worked as a bookie, taking
Speaker 3: illegal bets and he frequently drank in the University Hotel,
Speaker 3: which is just a few blocks over from Dorritt Street
Speaker 3: on Lygon Street. And he was known in the area
Speaker 3: that on Monday he would collect all the takings from
Speaker 3: these illegal gambling rings that he was running.
Speaker 2: So he's an older guy, seventy three, is that right?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Much older, much much older. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, so now we know all the main characters, can
Speaker 2: you set the scene for us and tell us about
Speaker 2: the events leading up to the murder?
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 3: So, on the eighth of November, the money is so
Speaker 3: tight that they pawned Andrew's coat and traveling bag and
Speaker 3: then they went to the University Hotel on Lygon Street.
Speaker 3: Now I don't know if they had actually heard of
Speaker 3: this guy beforehand or this was just chance, but they
Speaker 3: did run across him. How much is this they targeted him,
Speaker 3: how much it was just circumstance, We're really just not known.
Speaker 4: But they began.
Speaker 3: Drinking together and eventually they went back to his house.
Speaker 3: Now this is where things get murky, because we're basing
Speaker 3: everything on confessions from this point on, and these confessions
Speaker 3: were later disputed several.
Speaker 4: Times in court.
Speaker 3: So when I say what happens next, please take it
Speaker 3: with a grain of salt. But according to Clayton, they
Speaker 3: went back to his house to buy cigarettes and grog,
Speaker 3: and Geane noticed a roll of cash in his pocket,
Speaker 3: and she and Clayton went outside. I believe there was
Speaker 3: a backyard toilet or something like that, and she proposed
Speaker 3: robbing him. Now the place they're at is Mallow House
Speaker 3: on fifty Dorit Street, and it started life as a
Speaker 3: really nice two story place for an immigrant family, but
Speaker 3: by this point it was absolutely run down and filthy
Speaker 3: and operated as a rooming house. Pop he had one
Speaker 3: room in the front of the house.
Speaker 4: And his furniture in.
Speaker 3: There was all dilapidated and broken as well. So when
Speaker 3: Andrews sat on a chair and immediately broke, he fell
Speaker 3: to the ground, And there is a broken chair in
Speaker 3: there that's going to come up very importantly soon. Might
Speaker 3: even call it Chekhov's chair leg. Now, Lee turned the
Speaker 3: conversation flirtatious, sitting in Kent's lap as all four of
Speaker 3: them keep drinking. They're absolutely howsy cheap wine at this point,
Speaker 3: so you know, all of them are quite drunk. Now,
Speaker 3: Andrews and Clayton eventually find an excuse to leave and
Speaker 3: head out and for a walk around the block while
Speaker 3: Lee attempts to become intimate with Kent, and she's hoping
Speaker 3: to pick his pockets while he's you know, otherwise occupied,
Speaker 3: but she can't get access to them. Andrews and Clayton
Speaker 3: come in, see them in flagrante and leave again. Jean
Speaker 3: tries again, but by this time Kent is suspicious. So
Speaker 3: according to her again disputed confession, Lee said that she
Speaker 3: did her nut, and she hits him with a wine bottle,
Speaker 3: breaking it over his head and slashing open her hand,
Speaker 3: and then picking up the chair leg and beat him
Speaker 3: about the head. Andrews and Clayton are standing out in
Speaker 3: the backyard at this time. They hear this altercation and
Speaker 3: they run in. They overpower Kent. They tear up his sheets,
Speaker 3: tie him together, bind him with these sheets, use his
Speaker 3: bootlaces to bind his thumbs together. And then once they've
Speaker 3: got the role of money in his pocket, they think, well,
Speaker 3: this guy's bookie, so he probably has other cash hidden
Speaker 3: around the place, and so they start beating him and
Speaker 3: torturing him, trying to get him to tell them where
Speaker 3: the money is, and inflicting quite horrific injuries on him,
Speaker 3: you know, bashing him, putting out lit cigarettes on him,
Speaker 3: all kinds of stuff like that. So the thing is, though,
Speaker 3: Pop probably actually didn't have any end of money in
Speaker 3: the house. So it's this, you know, the old story
Speaker 3: with torture. You can torture someone, but they're just going
Speaker 3: to tell you what they want to hear. And unfortunately
Speaker 3: Pop can't tell them what they want to hear. There
Speaker 3: is no other money in the house. They're nearly interrupted
Speaker 3: a couple of times. A neighbour from across the street,
Speaker 3: Mary McWilliam, She was in the habit of coming over
Speaker 3: for a nightcap with Pop every night, and so she
Speaker 3: comes and knocks on the door and as she does,
Speaker 3: Andrews opens the door and says, you know, go away,
Speaker 3: we're having a private party at the same time, Clayton
Speaker 3: has his hands around Pop's neck, strangling him to keep
Speaker 3: him quiet, and it's probable that it's at this point
Speaker 3: when he is actually murdered. Now, whether this was intentional
Speaker 3: or just the eye product of him, you know, strangling
Speaker 3: him to keep him quiet, is again no one will
Speaker 3: ever know. But they obviously they now have a dead
Speaker 3: man in a trash rooming house room, and they decide
Speaker 3: they need to get out of there very very quickly.
Speaker 3: At the same time, it's a rooming house, so the
Speaker 3: noise of the party is being heard by other people,
Speaker 3: and across the hallway there is another lady living named
Speaker 3: May Howard. Now she hears all this noise and then
Speaker 3: she hears it all stop, and she becomes quite concerned.
Speaker 3: She then hears Clayton, Andrews and Lee leaving, and Clayton
Speaker 3: calls out in the hallway, goodbye, Pop, We'll see you tomorrow,
Speaker 3: you know, establishing some kind of alibi obviously, But there's
Speaker 3: no response, and so she goes and gets a fellow
Speaker 3: neighbor in the rooming house, Bill Sommons, and they try to.
Speaker 4: Enter the room.
Speaker 3: They can't get entry to the room, and Pop is
Speaker 3: not responding. So they are worried, so they end up
Speaker 3: now having to call the police. Now, interestingly, Bill Simmons,
Speaker 3: he was a disabled war veteran. He only had one leg,
Speaker 3: so he was unable to go to the police. So
Speaker 3: it ended up being May Howard that ran to the
Speaker 3: nearest phone box and she called the police. The police
Speaker 3: forced entry to the room and they found an absolutely
Speaker 3: trashed rooming house room and the body of poor popkin.
Speaker 2: Ah, and then the three of them are on the run.
Speaker 4: The three of them are on the run.
Speaker 3: Okay, they as they're making their way back into the city,
Speaker 3: they go to a payphone and they booked flights for
Speaker 3: the seven am TAA flight to Adelaide and then back
Speaker 3: to their rooms at the Great Southern Hotel near Spencer Street.
Speaker 3: They changed out of their bloody clothes and went to
Speaker 3: the Copa Kabana nightclub where they resumed their drinking and
Speaker 3: they were eventually asked to leave in the early hours
Speaker 3: of the morning because Gene had become worse for drink. Apparently,
Speaker 3: in the meantime, the police are undertaking a man hunt
Speaker 3: because they've headed up to the University Hotel where they
Speaker 3: know Pop Drinks got a quick description of these three
Speaker 3: people who have been seen drinking with him all afternoon
Speaker 3: and evening pretty quickly, and they're now just canvassing everywhere
Speaker 3: in the local area to see if anyone has met
Speaker 3: these descriptions. At about twenty to four in the morning,
Speaker 3: a clerk at the Great Southern Hotel recognized the description says, yep,
Speaker 3: these three people are staying here in two rooms, and
Speaker 3: the police gained entry to those rooms and they found
Speaker 3: bloodstained clothing. They waited at the hotel and about four
Speaker 3: twenty am Clayton, Andrews and Lee returned and they are
Speaker 3: arrested by squad of detectives led by senior detectives Cyrial Kura.
Speaker 2: They weren't very hard to catch, were they. I mean,
Speaker 2: they made a lot of mistakes, I guess because they
Speaker 2: were all so drunk and not thinking.
Speaker 4: Made a lot of noise.
Speaker 3: And I mean, this is also what my personal opinion is,
Speaker 3: this wasn't so much premeditated as circumstance. They were drunk,
Speaker 3: they were desperate, they saw the opportunity, they took it.
Speaker 3: They didn't really think through the consequences, and you know, look,
Speaker 3: they were trying to get out of Melbourne with that
Speaker 3: seven am flight. But they didn't just go back to
Speaker 3: their rooms quietly and wait until seven am.
Speaker 4: Did they?
Speaker 2: Now you mentioned the confessions, Did they all confess straight away?
Speaker 3: Absolutely not. They're all separated, put in sweatboxes and subjected
Speaker 3: to hours of interrogation and Gene absolutely held fast for
Speaker 3: nearly six hours or more I believe it was. But
Speaker 3: they're all drunk, they're all denied sleep, and you know,
Speaker 3: possibly subjected to other forms of interrogation and persuasion.
Speaker 4: You know, whether the phone books were brought out or not.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting, Okay, is this speculation or.
Speaker 3: Is this absolutely speculation and cynicism and preconceived bias on
Speaker 3: my part. But it is late nineteen forties and you
Speaker 3: can imagine, you know, the police back then were a
Speaker 3: different breed and how they extracted their confessions. Look, maybe
Speaker 3: I've read too many James our Roy novels, but I
Speaker 3: am cynical. But she doesn't budge. However, Clayton does.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: He says later on that you know, he turned yellow
Speaker 3: like a dog, and that he was just so completely
Speaker 3: out of it from his being worse for the state
Speaker 3: of where it's sleep deprivation and drunk. But he is
Speaker 3: presented with a signed confession, and he signs it, and
Speaker 3: he is then dragged tearfully into Gene's cell And the
Speaker 3: thing about this confession is the implicates Gene. It's She's
Speaker 3: the one that started it all. She's the one that
Speaker 3: attacked him, She's the.
Speaker 4: One that murdered Kent.
Speaker 3: So he's brought into the integration room in front of
Speaker 3: Jane and he him it's yep, I signed that confession.
Speaker 3: And Gene apparently she scoffed so much for the weaker
Speaker 3: sex when seeing Clayton in this condition, and then apparently
Speaker 3: she said, Bobby, I still love you, but if that's
Speaker 3: the way you want it, you can have it. As
Speaker 3: he was dragged for the room, and then she turned
Speaker 3: to the police and she said, I did it.
Speaker 4: I did it all.
Speaker 3: Everything that he said is true. It's all on me.
Speaker 3: Pretty clear cut confession. She was delayed to say, however,
Speaker 3: that she simply admitted it just to get some peace
Speaker 3: and quiet.
Speaker 2: We'll leave this story here for now, but tune back
Speaker 2: in on Thursday for part two of the story of
Speaker 2: Gene Lee to hear what happened after she confessed to
Speaker 2: the murder. Thanks for listening. This has Been In Black
Speaker 2: and White a podcast about some of Australia's forgotten characters,
Speaker 2: written and hosted by me Jen Kelly, edited by Nina Young,
Speaker 2: and produced by John ty Burton. You can find all
Speaker 2: the stories and photos associated with our episodes at haroldsun
Speaker 2: dot com dot au slash ibaw. If you've enjoyed this podcast,
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