May 22, 2025 • 30 mins
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 himself and criminal associates.
Subscribers to The Australian hear episodes of The Gangster's Ghost first, plus you can see photographs, videos, timelines and more at gangstersghost.com.au.
Read more:
- Was this Roger Rogerson's first victim?
- Mystery of The Magician: 'I never killed him. But I had been set free'
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Before we begin.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
This podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Stuart John Reagan. He was the maniac gangster shotgun Johnny Nano,
the magician gunned down at the age of just twenty
nine after terrorizing the East Coast of Australia throughout the
nineteen sixties and seventies. It was said he killed up
(00:30):
to twelve people, including an innocent toddler, and vanished their bodies.
At the height of his notoriety, his evil, his violence,
his hair triggered temper. His reputation as a vendor of
death was distilled into a single word, Reagan. He terrified
(00:56):
crooks and coppers alike. He was the monster with movie
star good looks. Women fawned over him. Men tried to
imitate the teetotaling tough guy. What set him apart was
his hair triggered temper from zero to lethal boiling point
(01:19):
in the blink of an eye. His few friends said
he had a tiger inside of him. His own murder
at the hands of free gunmen in a grubby Sydney
laneway in broad daylight remains unsolved, and half a century later,
(01:39):
police still don't want to know about it. He was
crazy by any measure, a standout psychopath in a criminal
era that had its fair share of them. Reagan roared
through the underworld like a flame thrower before eight bullets
to the body and the head stopped the chaos. That's
(02:04):
where the story should have ended, but not for the
Reagan family. His name and reputation have soiled a family
tree from rural New South Wales that is filled with
pioneers and war heroes. Was Stuart John Reagan as bad
(02:24):
as history has portrayed him? Did he actually kill little
Carlos in nineteen seventy four, and who in turn murdered
Reagan a few months later. After years of investigation, the
family now has some answers. In this podcast, we will
(02:46):
reveal a new theory about Reagan's assassination as possible retribution
for Carlos's death. How Reagan tried to kill whistleblowing Madame
Shirley Brifman, who died in mysterio circumstances shortly afterwards. How
domestic violence perpetrated by Reagan's terrifying mother Claire, set him
(03:09):
on the path to crime and into history. How Reagan
was brutalized at a boy's home that was little more
than an academy for Australia's leading criminals, including Chow Hayes,
Neddie Smith, Lenny McPherson and George Freeman. We'll expose for
(03:31):
the first time Reagan's role in the whiskeyer Go Go
nightclub massacre in Brisbane in nineteen seventy three, which killed
fifteen innocent people. And incredibly, you will hear the voice
of Johnny Reagan himself from old real to real tapes
(03:52):
hidden away for years in a black suitcase. Welcome to
the nether world of Australia's last old school gangster. I'm
journalist Matthew Condon and this is The Gangsters Ghost episode
(04:14):
one dead Man talking. How on Earth did I end
up here? A couple of days ago, I was at
(04:35):
home in far northern New South Wales, having a surf
with my kids, surrounded by beautiful beaches and lush rainforests.
Now Here, I am on a farm outside the country
town of Young on the southwestern slopes of New South Wales,
more than one thousand, one hundred kilometers away. The lands
(05:00):
cape gently rolling with patchwork wheat and canola fields, surrounded
by hundreds, no thousands, of grubby sheep. I was only
here because of a local farmer, Kelly Slater. I was
here because Kelly contacted me and asked if I was
(05:20):
interested in finding out the truth about a gangster she
had in her family tree. I still vividly remember when
Kelly Slater Reagan, herself a former New South Wales copper,
first contacted me. This is Kelly reading an email she
sent me.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Hi, I'm an ex police officer and cousin of Johnny Reagan.
We're looking at doing a podcast on him, the good,
the bad, the ugly, mostly the two Ladder, but his
childhood as well. We have letters and recordings that have
never been heard. Looking for help to make it work
(05:59):
Kelly Reagan.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
So I phoned Kelly. We talked about how the family
needed the truth after all these years. If the Reagans
were looking for any redemption here, it was going to
be difficult to find. What if the family came on
this journey and found a monster even more vile and
horrific than they could possibly imagine, they had to be
(06:26):
prepared for the worst. The first and most obvious thing
for me to do was to go to Young to
meet Kelly. We needed to talk about her dead gangster cousin.
Here's Kelly. We're sitting at her kitchen table at that
farm in.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Young Honestly, I don't know exactly what we'll find. I
know we'll find that he probably killed people. I've accepted
that fact. Will we find did he kill that little
boy like that? Is? That's something I'd really liked Carlos,
Did he or Didney? And I'm resigned to the fact
(07:04):
that if he did, like but I'm hopeful of it.
Given the whiskey of goe goo? What was his involvement
in that? Was he a psychopath? Like they said? Is
the stories that they tell about in truth?
Speaker 4 (07:18):
Why do you want to know this right now? In history?
Speaker 3 (07:21):
I don't know. It's funny, isn't it, Like when you
you know, they talk about war veterans and all that,
and they I think you get to a certain age
where you just think you want to know, Like in
my twenties, you'd think I would have wanted to know.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
I knew from the outset that I had well a
partner in crime here. Only two people were ever truly
on the inside when it came to Reagan, Margaret and
(07:55):
Reagan's mother Claire Claire Mary Rahl Reagan outlived her son
and only child by fourteen years, and she's been resting
in the Catholic lawn section of Sydney's Rookwood Cemetery, Plot
two six five three since September nineteen eighty eight. After
(08:19):
just a couple of days in Young and talking to
the Reagan family, it soon became apparent that this story
had another shadowy figure, and that was Claire Reagan, a
figure so malevolent that to this day she is still
reviled in Young. Back then, everyone called her the Colonel.
(08:46):
By all accounts, she was manipulative, controlling, violent, intimidating and cruel.
She horsewhipped her son and terrified his teachers at the
local Catholic school. I asked Kelly about the family's view
of Reagan's childhood and the Colonel Young look.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
I think it was tough with his mother. She was
a tyrant, She was cruel. She would flog him mercilessly.
The other kids were terrified of that. The brothers at
the school were terrified of Oh, she was cruel, She
was cruel, She was a monster.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
David Pattinson was in the same primary school class as Reagan.
He too heard about the monster that was the Colonel.
Speaker 5 (09:35):
He actually had a fight at school with Paul Gibson,
who Paul gave him a body knows. Then another took
him down to his mother and she's working behind the
bar and she came out with the cloth of the bar,
wiped his face, said you get out of here and
get back there and give him a bleeding nose.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
We would discover many curious and appalling things about Colonel
and her strange magnetic hold on her son Stuart John Reagan,
about his childhood in young his alcoholic father, alf the
marriage breakup that saw Claire and little Johnny move to Sydney,
(10:18):
and a teenage Reagan's dissent into serious crime. Then there's
the enduring family rumor that when Claire Reagan went to
live in Sydney, she actually ran a few prostitutes out
of the house in Liverpool Street, Darlinghurst to survive.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
The family never liked her at all, but there was
always this thing that she got Johnny into crime because
when she went to Sydney that she ran girls herself,
and he stood over those girls that she ran. He'd
worked for her and that's how he got started in it.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Well, Kelly's offer of joining the family in this hunt
for the real Stuart John Reagan was already irresistible. They
had documents letters from Reagan in prison, but they had
something else, something I had to hear quite literally to believe,
(11:18):
and almost as an afterthought, she added, Then there's the tapes.
The tapes. What tapes, I asked, Johnny. She said, We've
got secret tapes of Johnny on the phone back in
the day, hours of them before he was murdered.
Speaker 5 (11:43):
Testing one, two, three for five.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
As a crime writer, you encounter a lot of dark
and surprising things. Sometimes you hear stories you wish you
could unhear. For the first time, I sat down and
listened to the old tapes hidden in a suitcase for decades,
I was speechless.
Speaker 6 (12:08):
You know what he's doing.
Speaker 5 (12:09):
He's that's a black man, and he said, I'll buy
the diamonds back off you for that amount of okay,
when the time period elapsed, I didn't want to sell
him to the Norman Carter and he's how.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
It's difficult to describe the sensation of hearing for the
first time the actual voice of a notorious killer. It
only read about in books and ancient newspaper clippings. It
felt like I was sitting in the same room as
a ghost. Reagan loved technology, and at some stage decided
(12:43):
to tape his home phone calls. He rigged up his
nineteen sixties rotary dial telephone with a microphone and a
real to reel tape deck recorder. He even took a
concealed miniature cassette recorder out into the streets of King's
Cross and Darlinghurst and captured conversations with other criminals and
(13:07):
crooked cops. You know you've got a good defense for this.
Those lost tapes are filled with Reagan's wheeling and dealing,
his superior knowledge of the law, and his relentless quest
to get around it.
Speaker 7 (13:25):
You shouldn't have had that card resisted in your name
in the third.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Place, and the names of many of the coppers he
could either work with or manipulate with cash under the.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
Table, which is him mate what he Schnakeer plaid. He's
probably a mate of Stirdon.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
He even thinks out loud about putting a bullet in
an enemy's head, just as casually as you and I
might wonder out loud what we'll have for breakfast. You
might my word I'm not telling you a lot.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
I'll give you to your ideas, Tom, if you want
to go through with him. If not, well, you know.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Reagan kept his tapes hidden away in a suit case
in his mother's house in Sydney when he died. That
suit case stayed inside a dark cupboard until his own mother,
the Colonel, passed away in nineteen eighty eight. The tapes
magnetic recording reels, each as big as a bread plate,
(14:24):
were lost for years. As recently as a couple of
months ago, these historical artifacts sounded like something out of
an audio museum, muffled, garbled, ancient, then lightning stroke. The
Australian's in house sound maestro Jasper Leak had come across
(14:49):
an artificial intelligence program that he thought might help clean
up Reagan's amateur recordings. Then our other audio guru, Leah Sammaglu,
spent hundreds of hours feeding the Reagan tapes through this
AI software, fine tuning, finessing, and drawing out voices and
(15:12):
sounds from half a century ago. This is Johnny captured
on the raw digital file of the Reagan tapes.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
And the cops and what they're doing and what they're
trying to I will.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
And this is the same audio after Jasper Leah and
our new best friend artificial intelligence performed their wizardry.
Speaker 6 (15:39):
Have you heard HEARDing wistern Red the coppers and what
they're doing and what they're trying to do?
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Look, you know yourself, nobody coppers will?
Speaker 5 (15:47):
I will.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
This journey has made me rethink all the trepidation and
debate surrounding artificial intelligence, particularly in the field of journalism.
Would AI ultimately replace journalists as we'd been warned? Would
it take over the world. The experience with the Reagan tapes, however,
(16:13):
is an exciting, in this case jaw dropping example of
how AI is far from the bogey man. For the podcast,
it has proved to be a phenomenal tool. You will
soon be hearing a lot of the gangster's ghost, as
clear as if the killer himself had pulled up a
(16:34):
chair at your kitchen table and settled down for a
cup of tea and a chat.
Speaker 7 (16:44):
Absolutely, we'll put him with the others. Reagan, of course, No.
Reagan was shot dead by three shepherd guns. I'm out
at Maryfrell near Henson Park.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
This is the notorious Foreman, New Southwell detective and convicted
murderer Roger Rogerson, who talked to me over the fern
many years ago about Johnny Reagan.
Speaker 7 (17:10):
Lenny Macpherson said to me once mat he said Roger,
he said, you can control a bad man, but you
can't control a madman. I've never ever forgotten.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Roger's dead now, but he knew a bad man when
he met one, and he knew Reagan was out of control.
The seemingly untouchable Stuart John Reagan, who often wore a
bulletproof vest and always had a bodyguard by his side,
(17:43):
was there one minute, larger than life and gone the next,
a corpse bleeding out on a Sydney side street. You've
been a police officer.
Speaker 6 (17:57):
What does it say that suddenly all lines of investigation,
query asking questions all stopped upon his death. Well, it's
still an active cold case his murder.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
Well you think so, wouldn't you, because they never closed
there's no statute of limitations on murder. And here is
one of the biggest gangsters. So who's killed one of
the biggest gangsters. Wouldn't you want to know out of curiosity? See,
the family was always told that he was killed by
police and it was You know, if they were. They
were very brazen because they used thirty eighth's, so it
(18:34):
was always said that he was killed by police.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Kelly Reagan was treated with extreme suspicion when she applied
to join the police. A relative of this violent killer
wanted to sign up to keep the peace in New
South Wales. I was interested in whether having Reagan in
her family tree actually inspired Kelly to combat crime. She
(19:00):
had been fascinated with Johnny Reagan since she was a
little girl.
Speaker 6 (19:05):
I don't know overstretched the metaphor, but in the one
family you've got a notorious gangster and a New Souls
police officer.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
I know, don't worry. When I went for my job interview,
I was expecting three serving senior serving, but there was
five on the panel and that's mostly all they asked
for about. So Kelly Reagan from young yep, what's your
relationship to Stuart John Reagan? Well, I never met him.
(19:35):
Here's my dad's cousin. And then it was just question
after question after question.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Time and again. As Kelly and I borrowed closer to
the truth about this complex man, strange things happened, ridiculous
coincidences and wild strokes of luck.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Because over the years I have spoken to people. So
I was at the station and a guy brought me
in a scrapbook and he said, I just thought you
might be interested, and seeing this, I know he was
your cousin. I went, oh, right, and I had a
look and here's the scrap book of all. So I
was sitting out in the meal room and I was
just having a look at it, and it was just
sitting on the table. Now, what's the chances of assistant commissioner,
(20:12):
former member of the armed hold up squad? So I've
been told pops in and he sees this thing there
and he says, ah, please looking at this, and I said, oh,
that's me. And he said, oh, what's your interest in Reagan?
And I said, well, he's my dad's first cousin. Oh, oh, well,
I can put you in contact with someone who can
tell you. So that's when he gave me old mate's number.
(20:34):
He said, I'll meet you at the golf course in
Nelson's Bay. It was real cloak and dagger, and he
handed me a letter that I had to destroy.
Speaker 4 (20:42):
What was the matter.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
It was just sort of saying that, you know, he
knew John, that he'd arrested him that he was. He
went to the hospital when he'd broken Marg's jaw and
tried to get him, tried to get Mark to give
a statement, which you wouldn't give a statement. It was
sort of just about that. And I'm like, is there
anything else do you know killed?
Speaker 5 (21:00):
No?
Speaker 3 (21:00):
No, no, no, no no no. I'm like, oh right, okay, yeah,
yepdo and then off he went. So every time someone
would find out that my name was Reagan and I
was from the young and it was a police officer
they and they were senior, they'd all way, oh yeah, yeah,
do you know Johnny Reagan? Yeah, yeah, I do. Yeah,
like a guy that was a detective at Newtown at
the same time. I said, if you were there in
(21:21):
seventy four, do you remember Stuart John Rare Oh yeah,
yeah I do. I said, well he was my cousin.
He said, all right. I said, do you ever know
who killed him? He said, well, we were told that
in the area at the time there was a car
with four detectives seen in it. They were wearing these
bowler hats or something, and they had police coats on.
And he said there was always a whisper that it
was Rogerson's first hit.
Speaker 6 (21:42):
Roger Rogerson.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Roger Caleb Rogerson, the notorious former New South Wales police
detective sergeant implicated in killing's assault, verbally, drug dealing and
corruption during a tumultuous career that saw him both admired
and hated. At his peak from the late nineteen sixties
(22:11):
through to the early nineteen eighties, he associated with all
the corrupt cops and Sydney gangsters that formed Johnny Reagan's milliere.
Rogerson was one of the lead detectives who investigated the
Whisky Go Go nightclub bombing in Brisbane in nineteen seventy three,
which left fifteen people dead. This incredibly brought him into
(22:37):
the orbit of Reagan, but more of that later. Rogerson
became infamous after shooting dead drug dealer Warren Lanfranchi. It
was suspected too, that he was involved in the attempted
murder of one of his own colleagues, police officer Michael Drew,
(23:00):
who had refused to take a bribe. Rogerson was dismissed
from the New South Wales Police Force in nineteen eighty six,
hit the pub circuit telling tall stories about his infamous
career before being charged in twenty fourteen with the murder
of Sydney drug dealer Jamie Gow. Rogerson was found guilty
(23:25):
of that crime. He died in Sydney's Long Bay jail.
Last year when he was convicted of the Gow murder.
A Sydney newspaper ran a headline, serial killer with a badge.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
And I said, what do you mean, his first hit?
And they said, since the forties and fifties, there's always
been a hit man in the ci burn. I said,
you can't be a generation yes, I said, you can't
be serious. He said, Oh, the rank and file would
never know about it. He said, but when detectives, when
we'd all go out and we'd all be having a
beer and lips would loosen a bit. Said, there was
always talk of that sort of stuff. Who told you
(24:02):
that story.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
The observation that each generation of police might have a
professional killer in its ranks is far from outlandish, given
the history of corruption in the New South Wales Force.
That reputation began with the arrival of the first fleet
in seventeen eighty eight and has never abated. Corruption flourished
(24:26):
in Sydney during the Second World War and became a
fine art in the hands of men like Ray Gunner,
Kelly and Fred Froggy Cray from the nineteen fifties to
the nineteen seventies. Roger Rogerson was part of the new
generation that carried that crooked baton forward. The Wood Role
(24:49):
Commission into the New South Wales Police Service between nineteen
ninety five and nineteen ninety seven examined the extent of
corruption in the force. It exposed countless examples of misconduct
and hundreds of officers were forced to resign. That first
(25:09):
day I met Kelly and we sat at her kitchen table.
We were awaiting some one else. Margaret Reagan, Johnny's long
term some might say long suffering, de facto wife, mother
to his daughters Helen and Claire, and to their son,
John Junior. Could she take us inside the world of
(25:34):
the last of Sydney's old time gangsters during his heyday
in the nineteen sixties. Could she help us understand his
murderous temper, his taste for violence, and why history would
attach anywhere up to twelve murders to his name, including
(25:56):
an innocent three year old boy. And what happened on
that last day when Reagan, unarmed and unprotected, was a
gunned down mercilessly, with one of the killers delivering a
final point blank headshot to make sure the boy from
Cherrytown was well and truly dead. I had a frank
(26:21):
discussion with Kelly about what marg might or might not
decide to tell us. Cooperative? Do you think by her nature,
she might, like most people, hold something back. What do
you reckon.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
During Mark's formative years, she's with John and you know
the skills she's being taught by him. Is you know
to say nothing, to keep your mouth shut? I think
she really wants to open and tell all that she knows.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Do you think she still has a residue of fear.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
No, I think she's as tough as old bootstraps.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Now that afternoon, Mark Reagan arrived with one of her daughters.
She hadn't been too young in many years. Now in
her seventies, you could still see the stunning good looks
that had attracted Johnny Reagan all those years ago in
(27:17):
Sydney's King's Cross, where he worked as a bouncer. On
the door of the Whisky Go Go nightclub in Williams Street,
the Slaters and Reagans fired up the barbie and later
we set up microphones at Kelly's long kitchen table, the
scene of so many family gatherings, to begin our interviews
(27:38):
with Marg. The family started to drift out of the room,
but Marg stopped them. She wanted them around her when
she talked. She didn't want to do this alone. Now.
Speaker 4 (27:55):
I don't want to keep repeating myself for everybody. It's
best to every one here, Okay, Okay, that's I want that.
You're not putting me off. So for me to do this,
you won't have to ask me what happened? Okay, And
(28:17):
this is why I'm doing this, okay, So what do
you want to know now?
Speaker 1 (28:25):
In the next episode of The Gangster's Ghost, we take
you inside Reagan's earliest years in country New South Wales
and the rocky relationship between his mismatched parents.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
That marriage never had a chance, and.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
We find another monster lurking in the shadows of this story,
Reagan's own mother, the formidable and feared Claire, known to
all as the Colonel.
Speaker 5 (28:53):
She built with a stock, she drown me. Mame like
he was a beast. So he had a tough mother,
a tough, tough lady.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
The Gangster's Ghost is a production of The Australian. It's
written and presented by senior writer Matthew Condon and produced
and edited by multimedia editor Leitt samaglu Our executive producer
is Me Editorial director Claire Harvin. Special thanks to Lara Kamenos,
Erica Rutlidge, Kristin Amiot, Jasper Leek, Stephanie Coombs, Sean Callanan,
Lachlan Clear, Ryan Osland, Amanda Winn Williams, Christine Kellet, Tarn Blackhurst,
(29:38):
Magdalena Zajak, Gisel Boetti, Genevieve Brammel, Lauren Bruce, Sus Rolf
and Joachina Carlson. We can only do journalism like this
with the support of US subscribers, who hear episodes first
and get full access to photos, video, news stories and features,
plus all Australia's best journalism twenty four to seven. Join
us at Gangstersghost dot com.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
What I Do
Before we begin.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
This podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Stuart John Reagan. He was the maniac gangster shotgun Johnny Nano,
the magician gunned down at the age of just twenty
nine after terrorizing the East Coast of Australia throughout the
nineteen sixties and seventies. It was said he killed up
(00:30):
to twelve people, including an innocent toddler, and vanished their bodies.
At the height of his notoriety, his evil, his violence,
his hair triggered temper. His reputation as a vendor of
death was distilled into a single word, Reagan. He terrified
(00:56):
crooks and coppers alike. He was the monster with movie
star good looks. Women fawned over him. Men tried to
imitate the teetotaling tough guy. What set him apart was
his hair triggered temper from zero to lethal boiling point
(01:19):
in the blink of an eye. His few friends said
he had a tiger inside of him. His own murder
at the hands of free gunmen in a grubby Sydney
laneway in broad daylight remains unsolved, and half a century later,
(01:39):
police still don't want to know about it. He was
crazy by any measure, a standout psychopath in a criminal
era that had its fair share of them. Reagan roared
through the underworld like a flame thrower before eight bullets
to the body and the head stopped the chaos. That's
(02:04):
where the story should have ended, but not for the
Reagan family. His name and reputation have soiled a family
tree from rural New South Wales that is filled with
pioneers and war heroes. Was Stuart John Reagan as bad
(02:24):
as history has portrayed him? Did he actually kill little
Carlos in nineteen seventy four, and who in turn murdered
Reagan a few months later. After years of investigation, the
family now has some answers. In this podcast, we will
(02:46):
reveal a new theory about Reagan's assassination as possible retribution
for Carlos's death. How Reagan tried to kill whistleblowing Madame
Shirley Brifman, who died in mysterio circumstances shortly afterwards. How
domestic violence perpetrated by Reagan's terrifying mother Claire, set him
(03:09):
on the path to crime and into history. How Reagan
was brutalized at a boy's home that was little more
than an academy for Australia's leading criminals, including Chow Hayes,
Neddie Smith, Lenny McPherson and George Freeman. We'll expose for
(03:31):
the first time Reagan's role in the whiskeyer Go Go
nightclub massacre in Brisbane in nineteen seventy three, which killed
fifteen innocent people. And incredibly, you will hear the voice
of Johnny Reagan himself from old real to real tapes
(03:52):
hidden away for years in a black suitcase. Welcome to
the nether world of Australia's last old school gangster. I'm
journalist Matthew Condon and this is The Gangsters Ghost episode
(04:14):
one dead Man talking. How on Earth did I end
up here? A couple of days ago, I was at
(04:35):
home in far northern New South Wales, having a surf
with my kids, surrounded by beautiful beaches and lush rainforests.
Now Here, I am on a farm outside the country
town of Young on the southwestern slopes of New South Wales,
more than one thousand, one hundred kilometers away. The lands
(05:00):
cape gently rolling with patchwork wheat and canola fields, surrounded
by hundreds, no thousands, of grubby sheep. I was only
here because of a local farmer, Kelly Slater. I was
here because Kelly contacted me and asked if I was
(05:20):
interested in finding out the truth about a gangster she
had in her family tree. I still vividly remember when
Kelly Slater Reagan, herself a former New South Wales copper,
first contacted me. This is Kelly reading an email she
sent me.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Hi, I'm an ex police officer and cousin of Johnny Reagan.
We're looking at doing a podcast on him, the good,
the bad, the ugly, mostly the two Ladder, but his
childhood as well. We have letters and recordings that have
never been heard. Looking for help to make it work
(05:59):
Kelly Reagan.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
So I phoned Kelly. We talked about how the family
needed the truth after all these years. If the Reagans
were looking for any redemption here, it was going to
be difficult to find. What if the family came on
this journey and found a monster even more vile and
horrific than they could possibly imagine, they had to be
(06:26):
prepared for the worst. The first and most obvious thing
for me to do was to go to Young to
meet Kelly. We needed to talk about her dead gangster cousin.
Here's Kelly. We're sitting at her kitchen table at that
farm in.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Young Honestly, I don't know exactly what we'll find. I
know we'll find that he probably killed people. I've accepted
that fact. Will we find did he kill that little
boy like that? Is? That's something I'd really liked Carlos,
Did he or Didney? And I'm resigned to the fact
(07:04):
that if he did, like but I'm hopeful of it.
Given the whiskey of goe goo? What was his involvement
in that? Was he a psychopath? Like they said? Is
the stories that they tell about in truth?
Speaker 4 (07:18):
Why do you want to know this right now? In history?
Speaker 3 (07:21):
I don't know. It's funny, isn't it, Like when you
you know, they talk about war veterans and all that,
and they I think you get to a certain age
where you just think you want to know, Like in
my twenties, you'd think I would have wanted to know.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
I knew from the outset that I had well a
partner in crime here. Only two people were ever truly
on the inside when it came to Reagan, Margaret and
(07:55):
Reagan's mother Claire Claire Mary Rahl Reagan outlived her son
and only child by fourteen years, and she's been resting
in the Catholic lawn section of Sydney's Rookwood Cemetery, Plot
two six five three since September nineteen eighty eight. After
(08:19):
just a couple of days in Young and talking to
the Reagan family, it soon became apparent that this story
had another shadowy figure, and that was Claire Reagan, a
figure so malevolent that to this day she is still
reviled in Young. Back then, everyone called her the Colonel.
(08:46):
By all accounts, she was manipulative, controlling, violent, intimidating and cruel.
She horsewhipped her son and terrified his teachers at the
local Catholic school. I asked Kelly about the family's view
of Reagan's childhood and the Colonel Young look.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
I think it was tough with his mother. She was
a tyrant, She was cruel. She would flog him mercilessly.
The other kids were terrified of that. The brothers at
the school were terrified of Oh, she was cruel, She
was cruel, She was a monster.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
David Pattinson was in the same primary school class as Reagan.
He too heard about the monster that was the Colonel.
Speaker 5 (09:35):
He actually had a fight at school with Paul Gibson,
who Paul gave him a body knows. Then another took
him down to his mother and she's working behind the
bar and she came out with the cloth of the bar,
wiped his face, said you get out of here and
get back there and give him a bleeding nose.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
We would discover many curious and appalling things about Colonel
and her strange magnetic hold on her son Stuart John Reagan,
about his childhood in young his alcoholic father, alf the
marriage breakup that saw Claire and little Johnny move to Sydney,
(10:18):
and a teenage Reagan's dissent into serious crime. Then there's
the enduring family rumor that when Claire Reagan went to
live in Sydney, she actually ran a few prostitutes out
of the house in Liverpool Street, Darlinghurst to survive.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
The family never liked her at all, but there was
always this thing that she got Johnny into crime because
when she went to Sydney that she ran girls herself,
and he stood over those girls that she ran. He'd
worked for her and that's how he got started in it.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Well, Kelly's offer of joining the family in this hunt
for the real Stuart John Reagan was already irresistible. They
had documents letters from Reagan in prison, but they had
something else, something I had to hear quite literally to believe,
(11:18):
and almost as an afterthought, she added, Then there's the tapes.
The tapes. What tapes, I asked, Johnny. She said, We've
got secret tapes of Johnny on the phone back in
the day, hours of them before he was murdered.
Speaker 5 (11:43):
Testing one, two, three for five.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
As a crime writer, you encounter a lot of dark
and surprising things. Sometimes you hear stories you wish you
could unhear. For the first time, I sat down and
listened to the old tapes hidden in a suitcase for decades,
I was speechless.
Speaker 6 (12:08):
You know what he's doing.
Speaker 5 (12:09):
He's that's a black man, and he said, I'll buy
the diamonds back off you for that amount of okay,
when the time period elapsed, I didn't want to sell
him to the Norman Carter and he's how.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
It's difficult to describe the sensation of hearing for the
first time the actual voice of a notorious killer. It
only read about in books and ancient newspaper clippings. It
felt like I was sitting in the same room as
a ghost. Reagan loved technology, and at some stage decided
(12:43):
to tape his home phone calls. He rigged up his
nineteen sixties rotary dial telephone with a microphone and a
real to reel tape deck recorder. He even took a
concealed miniature cassette recorder out into the streets of King's
Cross and Darlinghurst and captured conversations with other criminals and
(13:07):
crooked cops. You know you've got a good defense for this.
Those lost tapes are filled with Reagan's wheeling and dealing,
his superior knowledge of the law, and his relentless quest
to get around it.
Speaker 7 (13:25):
You shouldn't have had that card resisted in your name
in the third.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Place, and the names of many of the coppers he
could either work with or manipulate with cash under the.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
Table, which is him mate what he Schnakeer plaid. He's
probably a mate of Stirdon.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
He even thinks out loud about putting a bullet in
an enemy's head, just as casually as you and I
might wonder out loud what we'll have for breakfast. You
might my word I'm not telling you a lot.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
I'll give you to your ideas, Tom, if you want
to go through with him. If not, well, you know.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Reagan kept his tapes hidden away in a suit case
in his mother's house in Sydney when he died. That
suit case stayed inside a dark cupboard until his own mother,
the Colonel, passed away in nineteen eighty eight. The tapes
magnetic recording reels, each as big as a bread plate,
(14:24):
were lost for years. As recently as a couple of
months ago, these historical artifacts sounded like something out of
an audio museum, muffled, garbled, ancient, then lightning stroke. The
Australian's in house sound maestro Jasper Leak had come across
(14:49):
an artificial intelligence program that he thought might help clean
up Reagan's amateur recordings. Then our other audio guru, Leah Sammaglu,
spent hundreds of hours feeding the Reagan tapes through this
AI software, fine tuning, finessing, and drawing out voices and
(15:12):
sounds from half a century ago. This is Johnny captured
on the raw digital file of the Reagan tapes.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
And the cops and what they're doing and what they're
trying to I will.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
And this is the same audio after Jasper Leah and
our new best friend artificial intelligence performed their wizardry.
Speaker 6 (15:39):
Have you heard HEARDing wistern Red the coppers and what
they're doing and what they're trying to do?
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Look, you know yourself, nobody coppers will?
Speaker 5 (15:47):
I will.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
This journey has made me rethink all the trepidation and
debate surrounding artificial intelligence, particularly in the field of journalism.
Would AI ultimately replace journalists as we'd been warned? Would
it take over the world. The experience with the Reagan tapes, however,
(16:13):
is an exciting, in this case jaw dropping example of
how AI is far from the bogey man. For the podcast,
it has proved to be a phenomenal tool. You will
soon be hearing a lot of the gangster's ghost, as
clear as if the killer himself had pulled up a
(16:34):
chair at your kitchen table and settled down for a
cup of tea and a chat.
Speaker 7 (16:44):
Absolutely, we'll put him with the others. Reagan, of course, No.
Reagan was shot dead by three shepherd guns. I'm out
at Maryfrell near Henson Park.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
This is the notorious Foreman, New Southwell detective and convicted
murderer Roger Rogerson, who talked to me over the fern
many years ago about Johnny Reagan.
Speaker 7 (17:10):
Lenny Macpherson said to me once mat he said Roger,
he said, you can control a bad man, but you
can't control a madman. I've never ever forgotten.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Roger's dead now, but he knew a bad man when
he met one, and he knew Reagan was out of control.
The seemingly untouchable Stuart John Reagan, who often wore a
bulletproof vest and always had a bodyguard by his side,
(17:43):
was there one minute, larger than life and gone the next,
a corpse bleeding out on a Sydney side street. You've
been a police officer.
Speaker 6 (17:57):
What does it say that suddenly all lines of investigation,
query asking questions all stopped upon his death. Well, it's
still an active cold case his murder.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
Well you think so, wouldn't you, because they never closed
there's no statute of limitations on murder. And here is
one of the biggest gangsters. So who's killed one of
the biggest gangsters. Wouldn't you want to know out of curiosity? See,
the family was always told that he was killed by
police and it was You know, if they were. They
were very brazen because they used thirty eighth's, so it
(18:34):
was always said that he was killed by police.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Kelly Reagan was treated with extreme suspicion when she applied
to join the police. A relative of this violent killer
wanted to sign up to keep the peace in New
South Wales. I was interested in whether having Reagan in
her family tree actually inspired Kelly to combat crime. She
(19:00):
had been fascinated with Johnny Reagan since she was a
little girl.
Speaker 6 (19:05):
I don't know overstretched the metaphor, but in the one
family you've got a notorious gangster and a New Souls
police officer.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
I know, don't worry. When I went for my job interview,
I was expecting three serving senior serving, but there was
five on the panel and that's mostly all they asked
for about. So Kelly Reagan from young yep, what's your
relationship to Stuart John Reagan? Well, I never met him.
(19:35):
Here's my dad's cousin. And then it was just question
after question after question.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Time and again. As Kelly and I borrowed closer to
the truth about this complex man, strange things happened, ridiculous
coincidences and wild strokes of luck.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Because over the years I have spoken to people. So
I was at the station and a guy brought me
in a scrapbook and he said, I just thought you
might be interested, and seeing this, I know he was
your cousin. I went, oh, right, and I had a
look and here's the scrap book of all. So I
was sitting out in the meal room and I was
just having a look at it, and it was just
sitting on the table. Now, what's the chances of assistant commissioner,
(20:12):
former member of the armed hold up squad? So I've
been told pops in and he sees this thing there
and he says, ah, please looking at this, and I said, oh,
that's me. And he said, oh, what's your interest in Reagan?
And I said, well, he's my dad's first cousin. Oh, oh, well,
I can put you in contact with someone who can
tell you. So that's when he gave me old mate's number.
(20:34):
He said, I'll meet you at the golf course in
Nelson's Bay. It was real cloak and dagger, and he
handed me a letter that I had to destroy.
Speaker 4 (20:42):
What was the matter.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
It was just sort of saying that, you know, he
knew John, that he'd arrested him that he was. He
went to the hospital when he'd broken Marg's jaw and
tried to get him, tried to get Mark to give
a statement, which you wouldn't give a statement. It was
sort of just about that. And I'm like, is there
anything else do you know killed?
Speaker 5 (21:00):
No?
Speaker 3 (21:00):
No, no, no, no no no. I'm like, oh right, okay, yeah,
yepdo and then off he went. So every time someone
would find out that my name was Reagan and I
was from the young and it was a police officer
they and they were senior, they'd all way, oh yeah, yeah,
do you know Johnny Reagan? Yeah, yeah, I do. Yeah,
like a guy that was a detective at Newtown at
the same time. I said, if you were there in
(21:21):
seventy four, do you remember Stuart John Rare Oh yeah,
yeah I do. I said, well he was my cousin.
He said, all right. I said, do you ever know
who killed him? He said, well, we were told that
in the area at the time there was a car
with four detectives seen in it. They were wearing these
bowler hats or something, and they had police coats on.
And he said there was always a whisper that it
was Rogerson's first hit.
Speaker 6 (21:42):
Roger Rogerson.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Roger Caleb Rogerson, the notorious former New South Wales police
detective sergeant implicated in killing's assault, verbally, drug dealing and
corruption during a tumultuous career that saw him both admired
and hated. At his peak from the late nineteen sixties
(22:11):
through to the early nineteen eighties, he associated with all
the corrupt cops and Sydney gangsters that formed Johnny Reagan's milliere.
Rogerson was one of the lead detectives who investigated the
Whisky Go Go nightclub bombing in Brisbane in nineteen seventy three,
which left fifteen people dead. This incredibly brought him into
(22:37):
the orbit of Reagan, but more of that later. Rogerson
became infamous after shooting dead drug dealer Warren Lanfranchi. It
was suspected too, that he was involved in the attempted
murder of one of his own colleagues, police officer Michael Drew,
(23:00):
who had refused to take a bribe. Rogerson was dismissed
from the New South Wales Police Force in nineteen eighty six,
hit the pub circuit telling tall stories about his infamous
career before being charged in twenty fourteen with the murder
of Sydney drug dealer Jamie Gow. Rogerson was found guilty
(23:25):
of that crime. He died in Sydney's Long Bay jail.
Last year when he was convicted of the Gow murder.
A Sydney newspaper ran a headline, serial killer with a badge.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
And I said, what do you mean, his first hit?
And they said, since the forties and fifties, there's always
been a hit man in the ci burn. I said,
you can't be a generation yes, I said, you can't
be serious. He said, Oh, the rank and file would
never know about it. He said, but when detectives, when
we'd all go out and we'd all be having a
beer and lips would loosen a bit. Said, there was
always talk of that sort of stuff. Who told you
(24:02):
that story.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
The observation that each generation of police might have a
professional killer in its ranks is far from outlandish, given
the history of corruption in the New South Wales Force.
That reputation began with the arrival of the first fleet
in seventeen eighty eight and has never abated. Corruption flourished
(24:26):
in Sydney during the Second World War and became a
fine art in the hands of men like Ray Gunner,
Kelly and Fred Froggy Cray from the nineteen fifties to
the nineteen seventies. Roger Rogerson was part of the new
generation that carried that crooked baton forward. The Wood Role
(24:49):
Commission into the New South Wales Police Service between nineteen
ninety five and nineteen ninety seven examined the extent of
corruption in the force. It exposed countless examples of misconduct
and hundreds of officers were forced to resign. That first
(25:09):
day I met Kelly and we sat at her kitchen table.
We were awaiting some one else. Margaret Reagan, Johnny's long
term some might say long suffering, de facto wife, mother
to his daughters Helen and Claire, and to their son,
John Junior. Could she take us inside the world of
(25:34):
the last of Sydney's old time gangsters during his heyday
in the nineteen sixties. Could she help us understand his
murderous temper, his taste for violence, and why history would
attach anywhere up to twelve murders to his name, including
(25:56):
an innocent three year old boy. And what happened on
that last day when Reagan, unarmed and unprotected, was a
gunned down mercilessly, with one of the killers delivering a
final point blank headshot to make sure the boy from
Cherrytown was well and truly dead. I had a frank
(26:21):
discussion with Kelly about what marg might or might not
decide to tell us. Cooperative? Do you think by her nature,
she might, like most people, hold something back. What do
you reckon.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
During Mark's formative years, she's with John and you know
the skills she's being taught by him. Is you know
to say nothing, to keep your mouth shut? I think
she really wants to open and tell all that she knows.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Do you think she still has a residue of fear.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
No, I think she's as tough as old bootstraps.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Now that afternoon, Mark Reagan arrived with one of her daughters.
She hadn't been too young in many years. Now in
her seventies, you could still see the stunning good looks
that had attracted Johnny Reagan all those years ago in
(27:17):
Sydney's King's Cross, where he worked as a bouncer. On
the door of the Whisky Go Go nightclub in Williams Street,
the Slaters and Reagans fired up the barbie and later
we set up microphones at Kelly's long kitchen table, the
scene of so many family gatherings, to begin our interviews
(27:38):
with Marg. The family started to drift out of the room,
but Marg stopped them. She wanted them around her when
she talked. She didn't want to do this alone. Now.
Speaker 4 (27:55):
I don't want to keep repeating myself for everybody. It's
best to every one here, Okay, Okay, that's I want that.
You're not putting me off. So for me to do this,
you won't have to ask me what happened? Okay, And
(28:17):
this is why I'm doing this, okay, So what do
you want to know now?
Speaker 1 (28:25):
In the next episode of The Gangster's Ghost, we take
you inside Reagan's earliest years in country New South Wales
and the rocky relationship between his mismatched parents.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
That marriage never had a chance, and.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
We find another monster lurking in the shadows of this story,
Reagan's own mother, the formidable and feared Claire, known to
all as the Colonel.
Speaker 5 (28:53):
She built with a stock, she drown me. Mame like
he was a beast. So he had a tough mother,
a tough, tough lady.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
The Gangster's Ghost is a production of The Australian. It's
written and presented by senior writer Matthew Condon and produced
and edited by multimedia editor Leitt samaglu Our executive producer
is Me Editorial director Claire Harvin. Special thanks to Lara Kamenos,
Erica Rutlidge, Kristin Amiot, Jasper Leek, Stephanie Coombs, Sean Callanan,
Lachlan Clear, Ryan Osland, Amanda Winn Williams, Christine Kellet, Tarn Blackhurst,
(29:38):
Magdalena Zajak, Gisel Boetti, Genevieve Brammel, Lauren Bruce, Sus Rolf
and Joachina Carlson. We can only do journalism like this
with the support of US subscribers, who hear episodes first
and get full access to photos, video, news stories and features,
plus all Australia's best journalism twenty four to seven. Join
us at Gangstersghost dot com.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
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