The Gangster's Ghost

The five-decade mystery of who killed psychopathic pimp and murderer Stewart John ‘The Magician’ Regan at the age of 29. One of Australia’s most notorious gangsters, Regan was gunned down by three assassins in a Marrickville laneway in 1974.

Introducing The Gangster’s Ghost podcast investigation, in which Matthew Condon explores just how bad this man was and reveals the secret recordings Regan made of himsel...

Johnny Regan's early years were completely dominated by his obsessive mother, Clare, nicknamed "The Colonel", who frowned upon his friendships, didn’t allow him to play sports, and publicly horsewhipped her young son. 

She was married to Alf Regan, the town drunk, the pair having met at The Australian Hotel where Clare worked as a barmaid. With the marriage over by the mid-1950s, Clare took her son to Sydney, starting a ...

In this episode, Regan and his mother, Clare – The Colonel – suddenly leave rural Young for the big smoke of Sydney. 

Clare turns up in the city’s notorious red-light district of Darlinghurst, while Regan mysteriously disappears into the institutional nightmare of a Gosford boys’ home. There, he will befriend other wayward children who will ultimately emerge as the biggest and most lethal gangsters of t...

In this episode Regan, fresh from a boys’ correctional home, steps out into the wild streets of Sydney noir. He quickly makes his mark in notorious Kings Cross as a teenage brothel lord.

Regan also cements his reputation as a violent enforcer with a hair-trigger temper, willing to eliminate anyone who gets in the way of his ambition to be the most powerful gangster not just in Sydney, but Australia.

Then he meets Margaret, th...

In this episode, Stewart John Regan’s transition from troubled youth, tow truck driver and nightclub bouncer goes to another level.

While courting his girlfriend Marg, he announces himself as a force to be reckoned with in Sydney’s notorious Kings Cross, muscling in on other criminals’ territory and developing a reputation as a man with a lethal temper. As his list of enemies grows, he is caught up in a Wild West-...

In this episode, Regan’s de facto partner Marg reveals the truth behind life with a man who was transforming from scallywag to a full-blown criminal. He introduces her to some of the top gangsters of the day. Meanwhile, Regan becomes a suspect in a gangland killing and comes under almost permanent police scrutiny. Matt and Kelly track down Regan’s longstanding solicitor hoping for a goldmine of information about The Mag...

In this episode Stewart John Regan expands his business empire into Queensland, bringing all his street-smart Sydney savvy to what he thinks are the genteel provinces. But he walks into a landscape with its own well-established underworld supported by some of the most corrupt and dangerous police anywhere in Australia. Regan hooks up with the eccentric former judge’s associate, John Edward Milligan, who will go on to become o...

In this episode Regan is a suspect following the suspicious death of brothel madam and whistleblower Shirley Brifman in Brisbane where the gangster is using his muscle to expand his various business ventures.

Regan hooks up with the shady Clockwork Orange Gang and rocks the Queensland capital with a series of nightclub fires as he tries to set up a lucrative extortion racket which culminates in the Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub firebo...

Matthew Condon and Kelly Slater Regan visit the site of the former Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane, where 15 innocent people lost their lives more than half a century ago. 

Condon uncovers a document that suggests the private detective who investigated the horrific attack feared for his life if his findings – that the men convicted of the crime did not act alone – were ever made public.&nbs...

 In this episode Regan is already public enemy number one with both the underworld and police after the disappearance and presumed murder of his girlfriend’s toddler son, Karlos Scott-Huie. For some, Regan had signed his own death warrant despite his denials that he ever harmed the child.

Then in August 1974, one of Regan’s close associates and his alleged partner in organising the Whiskey Au Go nightclub mass murd...