Episode 10: Post-Mortem

 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 murder in Brisbane the previous year, the criminal John “Ratty” Clarke, is shot dead in a pub in Sydney’s inner-west. Regan is immediately blamed for that murder, too.

Then, after a pleasant September afternoon picnic with his young daughter Helen, Regan heads off to a prearranged mystery meeting in Marrickville. He arrives in Chapel Street relaxed and unarmed. Soon after at least three shooters appear out of nowhere and gun down Regan. In just a matter of moments Sydney’s most feared gangster is dead, bleeding out in front of a local primary school. Who killed Regan and why? The answers to those questions have remained unanswered for half a century. Until now.

Read more about this case and see photographs, videos, timelines and more at gangstersghost.com.au

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Before we begin. This podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence.
This is a production by The Australian and our subscribers
Here 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 dot

(00:22):
a US.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
That's it. So my understanding it was a I may
be wrong. Was around here?

Speaker 3 (00:39):
Yes? Okay?

Speaker 4 (00:41):
So if he died right here, where's the ambush points
are clearly these two side streets and possibly coming out
behind him from that lane that's the only lane.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
Then you'd reckon. They'd want to be closer because he
would hear them.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Yeah, yeah, fanguns.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
Yes, thirty eight three, So the three of them, so
the vera close dn't The first two were in the back,
dropped in and then they came and pumped another sixty Louis.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
Park Chapel Street, Marrickville at the T junction with Illawarra Road.
Here in this now desirable inner western Sydney suburb is
the once notorious Henson Park Hotel on one corner and
a former mixed business in an old terrace on the other.

(01:37):
In the spring of nineteen seventy four. The pub was
a favorite watering hole for crooks, and the shop was
a Greek delicatessen run by the Poulos family. I'm here
almost fifty years to the day with my podcast co
pilot Kelly Slater, Reagan, and my dearest friend, the cartoon

(02:00):
and true crime officionado John Shakespeare, who passed away recently
from cancer. Johnny was so passionate about this podcast that
he desperately wanted to join us in Marrickville when we
tried to recreate Reagan's violent and bloody murder on that
distant sunday, right and one was right next to the head,

(02:25):
right three inches from the head.

Speaker 5 (02:30):
Tom a day.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
Was it September, so it would have been dusk, this
would have been here, or this would have been here.
That was a metal shop before it became a cafe.
I'm just wondering if there wasn't a cockatoo or a
lookout at the pub.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
Oh, absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
You can look straight out onto the delicatessen.

Speaker 4 (02:55):
But how did I communicate that then to the shooters mobiles?

Speaker 2 (03:00):
No pages. Someone had to have had an eye on
him absolute on that quiet Sunday evening, September twenty two,
as the sun sat close to six thirty pm, Sydney's
most dangerous gangster, Stuart John Reagan, was supposedly dropped off

(03:21):
nearby by his girlfriend Helen Scott Huey for a casual
meeting with a person or persons unknown. Reagan sauntered down
Chapel Street, with its handful of terrace houses and their
small gardens on one side and light industrial factories on
the other. He may have seen the flickering blue of

(03:44):
televisions in some of the front rooms of those houses.
Any sounds of bonamie from the Henson Park Hotel would
have faded the further he moved down the street towards
the Marrickville Public School on Cholder Lane. Suddenly the darkening
street was lit up with bursts of gunfire.

Speaker 5 (04:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yeah, just a big, horrible set up that appears. No
buller proofessed, no weapons, no bodyguard.

Speaker 3 (04:18):
No hypervigilant person, hypervigilant it so normally it'd be normally
travel with a minimum of two bodyguards, best and.

Speaker 4 (04:27):
Gun And we've been reading anecdotes of people actively hunting
him to kill him, yes, and not being able to
do it.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
It was that on the ball. Within ten to twenty
minutes of arriving in Marrickville, Reagan was faced down on
the road, struck by eight bullets from the guns of
at least three shooters. Once he was down, someone stepped

(04:54):
up to the body, placed the thirty eight caliber handgun
close to Reagan's skull and fired twice just to make sure.
In the end, it came down to three unknown hitmen
to make Nano the magician himself disappear for good.

Speaker 3 (05:16):
They've gone boom boom to drop him on the ground,
so then they've got to come up on him.

Speaker 6 (05:21):
Yeah and do the headshot boom boom boom boom boom boom,
So they're still going to be there.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
I'm journalist Matthew Condon and this is The Gangster's Ghost,
a podcast from The Australian. In this investigation, we uncover
previously unreported facts about the short lived criminal career of
Stuart John Reagan, speak to his family, friends and businesses

(06:01):
who go on the record for the first time, link
him to one of the most notorious mass murders in
Australian history, and uncover secret audio recordings that will bring
the ghost of Johnny Reagan Back to Life. This podcast
started out as a clinical look at one of Australia's

(06:22):
most reviled gangsters, but when the Reagan family came on board,
the project took on another dimension and begged the question
how does a family cope with the generational stain of
a murderer whose death was celebrated by criminals and police alike.

(06:45):
By mid nineteen seventy four, Reagan is already public enemy
number one with both the underworld and police, after the
disappearance and presumed murder of his girlfriend Toddler son Carlos
Scott Huey. Then in August, one of Reagan's close associates

(07:05):
and his alleged partner in organizing the Whiskey Go Go
nightclub mass murder in Brisbane the previous year, the criminal
Ratty Clark is shot dead in a pub in Sydney's
in a West. Just a few weeks later, Reagan, after
a pleasant September afternoon picnic with his young daughter Helen,

(07:28):
heads off to a pre arranged mystery meeting in Marrickville.
He arrives in Chapel Street relaxed and unarmed. This most
alert and paranoid of gangsters didn't see the trap. He
walked straight into why they're in the Bible their rife

(07:50):
throughout the works of Shakespeare. Two universal themes that will
forever run through human history, betrayal and revenge. This is
episode ten post mortem. Let's go back just a few

(08:35):
weeks before that Bloody's slaying in Marrickville. Let's head across
to the neighboring suburb of Petersham, less than two kilometers away,
to a busy little pub late on a Friday night
in August nineteen seventy four, just a month before the
blood bath in Chapel Street. The pub used to be

(08:55):
called the Newington Inn Hotel, and it was the watering
hole one of Reagan's closest associates, John Edward Ratty Clark
Ratty lived within walking or staggering distance in Stanmore Road,
and what happened to him in the Newington Inn would
prove to be a critical piece in the puzzle of

(09:17):
his mate Johnny Reagan's murder. Kelly Slater. Reagan and I
headed for the old pub one recent quiet Sunday. It
used to advertise rashers on posters out the front and
had a Neonlitz sign to its beer garden. Today it
is a family friendly hotel called Public House. Where are

(09:40):
we heading now? It's a Sunday in Sydney.

Speaker 4 (09:42):
We're driving through the backstreets of Petersham. We're going to
the Newington Inn, which used to be the Petersham Inn.
I think where Ratty Clark was assassinated in August nineteen
seventy four was only a month or so before Reagan
was oh gunned down, because it had to be after.

(10:04):
So what do we know about Ratty?

Speaker 2 (10:07):
At around ten thirty five pm on Friday, August twenty three,
nineteen seventy four, Ratty Clark was drinking with friends after
hours in the lounge bar of the Newington Inn. This
was Ratty's local, so he was well acquainted with the licensee,
Philip Bernie. Ratty, you'll remember, was one of Reagan's closest sidekicks.

(10:32):
He was even named by private investigator Walter Cromwell as
one of the architects, along with Reagan, of the Whiskey
Ego Go nightclub fire bombing in Brisbane in nineteen seventy
three that killed fifteen people on this Friday night, Ratty
Bernie and five other people were enjoying a drink when

(10:52):
a bullet smashed through one of the pub windows and
struck Ratty cleanly in the back of the head. This
was no random pot shot. The bullet hit its target
even after penetrating glass. Ratty was probably dead before he
hit the carpet. His assassin escaped through the pub's rear

(11:15):
beer garden and car park and into the night. We're
just doing some research into a murder at this pub.
At this nine seventy four, Kelly and I were hardly
surprised when the ghost of Johnny Reagan struck once again

(11:37):
inside the old Newington Inn. His specter had been pursuing
us for years during our research, throwing us ridiculous coincidences
and strokes of luck. We even believed he had a
hand in Kelly's latest success in securing after a couple
of years documents from her second cousins in quest. Most

(12:02):
of the staff here weren't even born when Ratty and
shotgun Johnny Proud Sydney and were murdered within four weeks
of each other. Then the face of one of the
bar attendants, on learning of our historic mission, went from
confusion to shock. Into the beer gardens. Yes, do you

(12:26):
know anything about that?

Speaker 7 (12:27):
Just had two guys come in yesterday telling me about it.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
Really yeah, and I've never.

Speaker 7 (12:33):
Heard anything about it. I know about it. They were
they said, he said it happened at sixty seventy four. Yeah,
said years, Well, that was when I was born, when
you drop in or the Newton I think he said
it was, And he said he knew the guy.

Speaker 2 (12:53):
They really all were they regulars or drop ins. I've
never seen them before. We're really chiny, unbelievable. In the
wake of Ratty's murder, the immediate word on the street
was that he'd been shot dead by his mate Reagan.
That rumor was perpetuated by, among others, killer Neddie Smith,

(13:17):
Reagan's old mate from the Gosford Home for Boys. Johnny
Reagan had for a few months now been the most
hated gangster, not just in Sydney but probably Australia for
supposedly murdering little Carlos Scott Huey back in May. The
whisper in the wake of Ratty's killing was that Ratty

(13:39):
had been the only one game enough to call Reagan
a child killer to his face, and had paid the
ultimate price in the arc of Reagan's criminal career, and
now with historical hindsight, the murders of Carlos and Clark,
within the space of a few months and at the

(14:00):
end of Reagan's life didn't quite fit. Both killings, according
to the Gossip, had as their motive a sudden lethal
irruption of Reagan's fabled temper. The child annoyed him dead,
his mate Ratty sledged him as a child killer. Dead

(14:22):
in the past, one of Reagan's victims may have been
a potential witness who might testify against him in court,
or a heavy who had muscled in on his criminal territory,
or someone who had dared to steal from him. But
Carlos and Ratty didn't fit the Reagan pattern. These so

(14:43):
everybody said or impulsive killings that spoke directly to Reagan
as a psychopath. These spoke to the inner tiger, out
of control and unpredictable. But would he really blow the
brains out of a close mate for care calling him
a name? I discussed this with Kelly.

Speaker 3 (15:04):
Well Mark says ready Jack Clark was good.

Speaker 4 (15:08):
Friends with John yep as in they were business associates,
weren't they correct?

Speaker 3 (15:14):
And no foreseeable reason why he would kill him.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
So this guy was drinking after closing.

Speaker 4 (15:22):
This guy was drinking there after closing in the beer garden. Yes,
And I think it was a headshot, was it not.
So you've got to wonder. I mean, they blamed Reagan
for killing him, yep, even though he was Reagan's business associate.
But you've got to wonder why Clark was murdered when

(15:43):
he was good and for what reason. So, I mean,
we've battered this back and forth forever, but we think
it may stem all the way back to the whiskey
of Go Go fire bombing in nineteen seventy three.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
Police told the press that Clark's murder was a contract killing.

Speaker 8 (16:05):
The killer is believed to have hidden in the garden
bar area of the Newington Inn hotel. He fired one shot,
Clark died before he could say anything. The killer is
believed to have run out through the hotel's back gate
and across a car park. A large team of detectives
from the cib reinforced Petersham detectives investigating the murder.

Speaker 2 (16:25):
In the meantime, Reagan had a premonition that his own
number was almost up half a dozen streets away from
Royal Randwick Racecourse. The Colonel Reagan's mother, Claire, lived with
her sister Thelma in a neat three bedroom Federation red

(16:47):
brick and tile roofed house in Duke Street, Kensington. They'd
moved out of the Liverpool Street Terrace some years earlier.
On a clear day and if the wind was right,
the Colonel, an absolutely mad punter, may have relished the
perfume of fresh horse manure from the nearby racetrack. Reagan

(17:10):
used Duke Street as another one of his bases. He
kept sets of clothes there, he secretly recorded his phone calls.
There he went about his criminal enterprises with the full
knowledge of his mother. He also grew attached to his neighbor,
old Missus Goodwin. There are numerous stories, apocryphal or otherwise,

(17:34):
of his affection for her, of seeing her in the city,
waiting for public transport in the rain, and driving her
back to Duke Street. He was close enough to her
also to share his fears in the final weeks of
his life. Kelly and I had been meaning to visit
Missus Goodwin for years, but by the time we got

(17:56):
around to it, she'd moved out, and the carpenters had
moved in, swarming her property like ants. The gentrification of
Kensington was well and truly underway, so.

Speaker 4 (18:11):
Kel we finally made it to fifty six Duke Street,
standing in front of the house right now. All that
power tool noise you can hear in the background, unfortunately,
is a renovation of the house next door at number
fifty four Duke Street. Now, we came today hoping beyond
hope that the former neighbor of the Reagans, Missus Goodwin,

(18:34):
would still be there. We knew she would be elderly,
but she's critical in that she spoke to Johnny Reagan.
What did she tell him?

Speaker 3 (18:44):
So john was walking down and she said, oh, John,
is everything okay? Don't look very well? And he said,
Missus Goodwin, I'm not long of this earth.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
I'm not long of this earth. So he knew something
was up. He was pre emptying his own death in
a weird way. So we come to the house of
Missus Goodwin, and of course she's not here. That's what
we dreaded.

Speaker 4 (19:06):
She'd either passed away or moved on, and she's moved on,
But there is an indication from the builder she.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
May still be alive. And of this Earth, So yet
another Reagan goat track to go down a rabbit hole,
Away we Go. His de facto partner, marg also sent
something amiss in Reagan's final weeks. She remembered him manically

(19:33):
writing letters on behalf of his Independent Action Group for
a Better Police Force, his anti police corruption and anti
prostitution lobby group that was seen as not just a
joke by detectives and Reagan's fellow criminals, but as an
almost comical effort by Reagan to keep authorities at arm's length.

Speaker 9 (19:57):
I think his love was short lived from the knowledge
that I knew that with the letters, he would be
writing to the police, and he was really stirring up
a lot of people. Whether it was the only police,
whether it was criminals, whether it was I don't know.
He was stirring people up. And it's definitely yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:18):
But you never had a notion that if he keeps
this up, then he's going to die at the end
of a gun.

Speaker 9 (20:23):
No, didn't he mend him my mind. I thought he
would just keep going, you.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
Know, because he was a forceful personality.

Speaker 9 (20:32):
He had a great personality. He was just so likable,
it's unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
Do you think he thought he was indestructible.

Speaker 9 (20:40):
I think that he told his mother's neighbor that he
wouldn't be around for much longer, and that was a
couple of weeks or a few days. He told missus Goodwin.
You know, Missus Goodwin, I don't think I'm going to
be around much longer. He did emphasize that to her.

(21:01):
They'd known each other for ye So that's the only
indication that we know that he made that he may
not be an anthhalone.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
Reagan's last day was a snapshot of how complicated his
life had become. It showed how his family existence on
the surface was messily intersecting with his parallel gangster universe.
The two worlds were colliding. Detective Sergeant Donald Worsley of
the Special Crime Squad later delivered to the coroner the

(21:35):
narrative of Reagan's last day Sunday, September twenty two, nineteen
seventy four. The early hours of Sunday morning remained confusing.
Mark in her statement to police two days after Reagan
was murdered, says Reagan came to her place on the
Saturday night, then in the early hours of Sunday, She said,

(21:58):
he asked her to ring Hell Scott Huey at the
Goldban Club and tell her to meet him at Marg's
place after she finished work. Mark says she never said
the words attributed to her in her statement and wasn't
even sure she had a phone at the time. She
said Reagan never asked her to ring the Golden Club.

(22:21):
Woolseley went on in his narrative to the coroner.

Speaker 10 (22:25):
About five am on the twenty second of September nineteen
seventy four, some hours after retiring to bed, Reagan was
joined at these premises by Helen Scott Huey, a close
friend of the deceased. Both remained in bed together at
that address until about eleven am, when they arose and
partook of a cup of coffee. It was about this
time that the deceased and Helen Scott Huey decided they

(22:48):
would take the deceased's daughter, Helen to Watson's Bay Beach.

Speaker 2 (22:53):
On the way to Watson's Bay, Worsley concluded Reagan, his daughter, Helen,
then three, and Scott Huey stopped in at the Colonel's
place in Duke Street, Kensington, where Reagan changed into his
swimming trunks.

Speaker 10 (23:08):
On arrival, at Watson's Bay. The deceased Scott Huey and
the young girl Helen sat on the grass near Dunbar House,
where they had a meal. They remained in the Watson's
Bay area until about three point thirty pm.

Speaker 2 (23:22):
Incredibly, Helen Reagan still remembers that afternoon.

Speaker 11 (23:28):
Going back to that day, I mean, my father had
the from what I was told, he woul always take me,
cut me around a lot, so I was always with him.

Speaker 12 (23:37):
Then, you know, I.

Speaker 11 (23:38):
Always remember being on his lap driving the car suitbelt.
But I remember I had been at Watson's Bay. I
believe it was in a park at Watsons Bay, and
I was on swings and having a picnic.

Speaker 2 (23:54):
Mark Reagan says by mid to late afternoon on that Sunday,
she went to find her daughter to bring her home.
Mark ended up at Scott Huey's flat in Paddington.

Speaker 9 (24:06):
So my arrangements was he had taken her on a picnic.
That was fine, and as an afternoon went on, it
got later. So I'm there trying to find him. Then
I knew that Helen's got you, because I knew that
they were having a relationship. Okay, So I went down
the pathway and I knocked on the door, saying, John,

(24:27):
please give me Helen back. I'm here. Open the door
and I could hear him, and Helen remembers this. He
told me to be quiet. He's gone sh So I'm
giving you ten minutes to bring my daughter back. I'll
go down to the barrack murders. He did come down
within fifteen minutes.

Speaker 2 (24:46):
How did you know that he was in there with Helen,
Scott hue and your daughter in that or did you
just have an educated guest educated guess. Helen remembers the
moment inside Scott Huey's flat.

Speaker 11 (24:59):
And dad and her we're in a bed and I
was in bed next to it, and my mother turned
up really furious, and I remember Mum banging on the windows.

Speaker 9 (25:07):
I know you're in there, and my.

Speaker 11 (25:09):
Father actually telling me to be quiet, like sh be
quiet and go to sleep. But I remember my mother
being furious.

Speaker 2 (25:17):
Marg was concerned about little Helen.

Speaker 9 (25:21):
I was more angry about him if it was obviously
it was having a sexual relationship with her, that he
would do it in front of my child because it
was only a small apartment, disgusting. I was angry about
that that he put her on.

Speaker 2 (25:36):
In that situation, marg shouted at Reagan he had ten
minutes to bring the child out. She then waited at
nearby Barrick Motors, Reagan's business headquarters, in her myro own Valiant.

Speaker 9 (25:49):
He's brought Helen Helen Scott virtually wasn't letting and he's
brought her and put her in the car. But then
he said, I want you to say that I want
you to drive somewhere, and I'm like this, you ain't working,
And then he's gone into the main part what I
call hisself is in Barrack Majors. He took the keys

(26:11):
out of my ignition too.

Speaker 2 (26:13):
Just to make sure you didn't go anywhere.

Speaker 9 (26:16):
But I had a second set of keys, and I
was assuming by that time.

Speaker 2 (26:20):
Tell me it just briefly, had you ever made the
decision to carry a second set of keys with you?
Why did you have it on in the car like
in the glove box.

Speaker 9 (26:31):
Yeah, yeah, it was no particular reason. And in the
actual fact that I'm really surprised I even thought about it.
But anyhow, and I remember him saying the main thing
that I seen him standing there with his mouth open
as I drove off, So that was the last time
you ever, the last time I seen John.

Speaker 2 (26:52):
In the end, it was left to Helen Scott Huey
to drive Reagan to his meeting in Marrickville. She reminded
him of the appointment after the tiff with marg This
is what Helen Scott Huey told police.

Speaker 13 (27:06):
Because he told me earlier that he had a meet
at six o'clock. I said to him, haven't you got
to meet someone at six? John then looked at his
watch and I saw that it was a quarter to six,
and he said, yes, we have to go. We both
got into my car and he drove and he took off.
I didn't take too much notice where we were going,
but I've got a feeling that we drive down Downing Street,
and we passed a swimming pool off Victoria Road at

(27:28):
Marrickville and into the street near the Henson Park Hotel.
We stopped near there he got out of the car.
Before he got out of the car, he said he
was too early, and he now thought it was half
past six. He had to have the meet. He got
out of the car, which was parked on the left
hand side of the roadway, and he walked over to
the other side of the road. I moved into the
driver's seat and I drove off and as I got

(27:49):
to the corner near the hotel, I looked in the
rear vision mirror and I saw him strolling up towards
Illawarra Road. That was the last I saw of him.

Speaker 2 (27:59):
In his statement, Detective Worsley reiterated.

Speaker 10 (28:03):
As Scott Huey drove away, she looked in the rear
vision mirror and saw the deceased walking towards z Illawarra Road.

Speaker 2 (28:11):
This small fact of the mirror stood out in both
Scott Hughey's statement and Worsley's story to the coroner. It
intrigued both myself and former detective Michael Drury. Why did
both police and the witness include this almost innocuous detail.

(28:33):
I'm fascinated how you sort of snagged upon the point
in the statement where Helen Scott Huey as she was
driving away from the scene, when she dropped him off.
It's a very clear point in the statement that she
looked in her rear vision mirror and saw him. I

(28:53):
stopped when I read that because I thought that, a
it's a very unusual observation to make, and secondly, why
would you make that observation, the observation points towards the witness,
as in Helen Scott Huey saying I was driving away.
Let's just reiterate it. I looked in the rear vision
mirror and saw him, so therefore I must have been

(29:16):
driving away from the scene because I saw him in
the mirror.

Speaker 14 (29:20):
It's adding emphasis to the fact that, as she claims,
she was driving away from the location of where the murder.

Speaker 2 (29:28):
Took place exactly. Other unanswered questions emerge from the statements
and coronial documents. How was Reagan going to get back
home after the meeting in Marrickville? Here's Kelly Remember she
was also a former New South Wales police officer and

(29:48):
had that similar sense of logic as Michael Drury.

Speaker 3 (29:54):
My thing is, where did Helen Scott go when she
dropped him off? If he's here, how's he going to
to get back to Sydney without a lift?

Speaker 2 (30:03):
Did he have that arranged that he would be That's
what I want to know. No one's ever talked about that.

Speaker 3 (30:07):
No, did she hang around? Did she park somewhere and
hang around because he never went he was never going
to catch public transport. If there was and there was
Was he going to wring her back? Or was she
simply waiting for him? Therefore? Did she see? Yeah, like,

(30:29):
there's no way he would have come this far from
his nest unarmed.

Speaker 2 (30:33):
I mean no mobile phones. You can't just say I think.

Speaker 3 (30:36):
We'd have to go to a phone booth or the pub.
It makes sense that if Helen drops him off, Helen
puts him up, don't yep.

Speaker 2 (30:44):
And here's Michael Drury independently following the same line of thought.

Speaker 14 (30:50):
Let me ask you this, if I may please, so,
Miss good Huey takes Reagan to this meeting and the
police interview her, and she said she didn't know what
the meeting was about. This is from Worsley's covering statement,
which is like a story narrative. She doesn't know what

(31:11):
the meeting's about, and she doesn't know who he was meeting. Yes, okay,
so she takes him to this meeting, which is some
distance away from where he lives. Okay, Now after the meeting,
what's he going to do? Get an uber home?

Speaker 5 (31:26):
Is he?

Speaker 14 (31:27):
It would be logical for her to wait there for him.

Speaker 2 (31:30):
How would he get home?

Speaker 5 (31:32):
Exactly?

Speaker 14 (31:33):
What was he there for? He didn't have a bag
with him full of money, or a bag full of drugs,
or a bag full of guns, etc. She drove him
to meet someone, and I would suggest it's highly probable
that she was in the area parked in the car
waiting for him to take him home after the meeting,

(31:53):
which is only logical.

Speaker 2 (31:56):
Scott Huey told the police that after she dropped Reagan off,
she went to her mother's house in Bellfield, west of Merrickville.
Reagan then decided to buy a snack from the Greek
delicatessen opposite the Henson Park Hotel. Here's Worsley again.

Speaker 10 (32:15):
I have established that shortly after six pm, the deceased
went to a small mixed business shop. Whilst at the shop,
the deceased purchased some cabanossi and then left and walked
into Chapel Street.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
Kelly and I, tracing Reagan's final steps, stood at the
doorway to the old delicatessen. It's no longer a shop
but a converted residence.

Speaker 4 (32:42):
So this is the delicatessen, the Pulos family delicatessen. Hell,
some old grapevines are still growing out the side.

Speaker 2 (32:54):
Yeah, gorgeous, so that would have been maybe the family
saloons on the door and were greeted by an elderly
Greek lady. Could this possibly be an A Poulos, the
young woman who served Reagan in those final minutes before
he was murdered. Could we be that lucky? Hello, Hey,

(33:22):
I know how are you. We're hoping you could help us.

Speaker 4 (33:25):
We're doing some research on the Poulos family who had
this delicatessen in nineteen in the nineteen seventies.

Speaker 2 (33:35):
Sure, yes, this building before before before it wasn't Anna.
The Poolosses had moved out decades earlier. But we stood
on the steps into the old shop and tried to
take ourselves back to that Sunday evening in September nineteen

(33:55):
seventy four, and a Pooloss was in her delicatessen when
Reagan stepped through the door. She said in her statement,
it was.

Speaker 15 (34:07):
Some time after six pm the same day when I
noticed a man in the shop. My husband served him,
and I heard this man ask my husband for cabanassi,
but he called it cabana, and I heard him say
to my husband, not too big. I was serving other
persons at the time, but I remember this man leaving
the shop, This man who purchased the Kabanassi was about

(34:29):
thirty years old, bare hair and complexion. He may not
have had a lot of hair on top, but his
hair was not long. He was wearing I think sports clothes.
I think the top was something like a jumper with
the zipper. I cannot remember the color, but it was dark.
When he spoke to my husband, his voice sounded rough
and I would say demanding.

Speaker 2 (34:50):
Shortly after, Reagan walked out with his snack and a
Pouloss went to the back of the shop and into
the kitchen where she was cooking.

Speaker 15 (34:59):
I heard what sounded to me like the exhaust of
a car. There were three or four explosions. They came
from the direction of Chapel Street, and they sounded very loud.
With these explosions or shots, I heard a number of
dogs in the vicinity start to bark. I then went
into Chapel Street, walked to the lane that runs behind
our shop, and I was looking generally to see where

(35:21):
the noises came from when I heard someone running and
I looked in the lane to my left and I
saw two men running from around the bend in the
lane towards.

Speaker 2 (35:31):
Me, and Apulos said the men hopped into a car
parked in the lane behind her delicatessen and took off.
She described them as both of medium build, one was
taller than the other. The driver had shielded his face
from her with his hand. We continued walking down Chapel

(35:55):
Street in Reagan's final footsteps. As best as we could
gather from various witness statements, especially an a pool looss,
we needed to stand on the precise spot where Reagan's
body came to rest.

Speaker 3 (36:12):
And A Poulos who worked in a Merrickville shop said
in evidence that she served Reagan minutes before he was
shot dead. After serving some cabanossi to Reagan, she heard
several loud explosions near her shop, ran out and saw
Reagan lying face down on the road in a pool
of blood. Reagan had been working west in Chapel Street
when he was shot in the back.

Speaker 2 (36:33):
Okay, so let's have a look.

Speaker 4 (36:35):
We think it's roughly where that zebra crossing is, right,
So this young woman comes out here. Here's the noises
rushes out here, and can see a body down there.

Speaker 2 (36:48):
Right, Let's go and walk down. This is all the
pool losses right down to the corner. Apparently it's a
massive block. Many months after we'd visited the murder scene,
Kelly called me she'd found something curious in Anapoulos's statement

(37:09):
to police that I'll admit I'd completely overlooked. It was
just a couple of sentences, but those words tore a
massive hole in the fabric of the official police narrative
of Reagan's murder after half a century. What Annapoulos said
in her statement recorded by police in the nearby Newtown

(37:32):
police station two days after the murder has never been
satisfactorily explained. It's the flow in the rug. After seeing
the car with the two potential suspects take off, Anapulos
says this.

Speaker 15 (37:50):
I then went across the road to where another Greek
lady was standing. I spoke to her. Then together we
started to walk down Chapel Street towards the school, and
at the beginning of the building of the school, there
was a car driving down Chapel Street, and in the
headlights I saw that there was the body of a
man laying on the roadway, and the husband of the

(38:11):
Greek lady I was with, who was where this body
was on the road, called to us to stay where
we were.

Speaker 2 (38:20):
Who was this Greek lady and her husband both must
have witnessed the shooting, given they were already there in
Chapel Street when Annapoulos ran out on hearing the gunfire
from the kitchen in the back of her shop. Who
were these two people? By the time Annapoulos entered Chapel

(38:41):
Street just seconds after hearing the gunshots, the mysterious Greek
lady and her husband were already there. Given the time frame,
you could safely assume then that the Greek lady and
her husband had witnessed the Assassins shooting rega. Didn't this

(39:02):
make them the number one witnesses in Reagan's murder? And
what was the Greek lady's husband doing leaning over Reagan's body?
How did he get there so quickly after the shooting,
which included two close range headshots. This may have been speculation,

(39:22):
but it was tethered in logic. Was the so called
husband leaning over Reagan's body actually the man he'd arranged
to meet that evening? And was the Greek lady on
the footpath nearby actually Helen Scott Hughey. I needed to
talk to Detective Michael Drury about this extraordinary scenario. I

(39:47):
needed him to hover over the scene and explain what
was credible and what was not.

Speaker 14 (39:54):
There could have been several reasons for the motive of
the meeting, and it could have all been re laid
to Reagan by Helen Scott Huey, because we know he's
as paranoid as anything, and he goes wandering off with
her on a Sunday evening at that time, it would
have been dark. She had to know who he was meeting,

(40:14):
and it's highly probable, I would suggest to you that
she was going to take him home after this meeting
because he had no bags, no money, no guns, no drugs,
et cetera, et cetera on him. So it really wasn't
intended to be a long meeting anyway, and it was
going to be on the footpath, et cetera. And what's

(40:35):
happened is, there's no doubt in my mind, roughly around
that location, probably in the school, there's those two co
offenders have been hiding in waiting. Reagan's there with the fellow.
They've come out and gone bang bang bang bang bang.
There's no adverse body language from the fellow that's talking

(40:58):
to Reagan. Higgans in a relaxed state, if you know
what I mean, I fish. You can see from the
description of the eight worns a couple of them are
flesh worms where he's grazed. But it sounds to me
like the final shots, the one through the head and
one through the back of the head, are to absolutely

(41:20):
guarantee that he's dead, and they didn't take place when
he was standing up. They took place when he was
laying down, and that would have absolutely guaranteed, because if
you're involved in this type of behavior, you don't wanting
to recover six months later and come looking for you.

Speaker 2 (41:39):
Say, even though a couple might have been grazers, and
the couple might have been close range headshots, the other shots,
how difficult is it at dusk or in the dark
to hit a target with a thirty eight with that
sort of accuracy.

Speaker 14 (41:57):
They must have been very close, you know, within twenty
meters or less. Because you've got to remember also that
he was talking to this other mile and so you
didn't want the other male shot.

Speaker 2 (42:10):
We don't know whether he was talking to that male.
We know that there was an a male leaning over
the body, which the Greek lady on the footpath said,
that's my husband. Yeah, but I mean, given the timeframe
of the sound of the explosions and Apoulos running into
the chapel street, bumping into the lady and seeing a
man over a body, is it wrong just to hypothesize

(42:33):
that the man leaning over the body might have been
one of the shooters?

Speaker 3 (42:36):
Correct?

Speaker 2 (42:37):
Because the timeframe is so tight. Correct, Drury made a
cold assessment of the scene as if it was frozen
in time.

Speaker 14 (42:47):
Look all this happened in the blink of an eye,
and whether it's a second or two here or a
second or two there, that's okay in the circumstances. What
you've got to look at is, let me is a
word that everyone will understand the sinister movement or behavior
of individuals over this couple of minutes around the killing

(43:12):
of Reagan. Okay, I would suggest to you that there
is nothing sinister about the behavior of Anapoulos. The two
males that she sees run down to a vehicle, jump
in the vehicle and drive off at high speed. That
is sinister. There is no doubt about that behavior of

(43:35):
the male standing over the body, who I take it
police have not identified.

Speaker 2 (43:42):
Well, this is the big question. I mean, this is
what I wanted to ask you, I would have would
have assumed, even at a distance of fifty years, that
the so called Greek woman on the footpath and the
man leaning over the body her so called husband. I
would have imagined to any investigating police officer arriving on
the scene, that they'd be the first people I'd want

(44:02):
to talk to.

Speaker 14 (44:03):
Correct, they're primary witnesses. Yeah, they're at the scene of
the crime. They're either eyewitnesses to the crime or they're
involved in the crime.

Speaker 9 (44:15):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (44:17):
Another question begs to be answered. Had Reagan been relaxed
and comfortable going to his meeting unarmed without his usual
bulletproof vest or bodyguard because he was accompanying his girlfriend,
Helen Scott Huey, had she gone and parked the car
while he bought his cabanossi in the pool Loss delicatessen

(44:42):
Kelly Slater. Reagan would put questions about the unidentified Greek
woman and her husband to the New South Wales Unsolved
Homicide Team. She was told that, according to the Reagan murderphiles,
both of these mysterious strangers apparently gave statements to police
after Reagan was killed. The records said the couple had

(45:04):
been interviewed in their home. Why were they interviewed at
home and not in various police stations like other witnesses.
Why weren't they brought in immediately and questioned by police?
What were their names? Did they even exist? And why

(45:25):
were their statements never presented to the coroner during the
inquest into Reagan's death in nineteen seventy seven. Why weren't
they called as witnesses before the coroner given their importance
to the murder investigation. Michael Drury offered an hypothesis.

Speaker 14 (45:45):
Well, let me put this to you. We know that
Scott Hughey takes Reagan to this alleged meeting, okay, and
from there, at this alleged meeting, when she drops him off,
we then know that Scott Hugh he does a statement
for the police shortly thereafter, days or whatever, and she

(46:05):
says she sees him walking off down the footpath in
her rear vision mirror.

Speaker 2 (46:10):
Correct.

Speaker 14 (46:12):
I find that interesting because I also understand that shortly
after he gets out of the vehicle, he goes into
the shop and gets a cabanossi, and so he would
have been out of eyesight and he comes out of
the shop. To me, it's logical that she'd wait on
the footpath for him taking down to meet her husband
to talk about something. She's moved away. It's an ambush

(46:35):
and from there she's been caught at the scene by
Anna Poulos. I'm surprised that she said that the man
leaning over the body was her husband to Anapoulos, I
imagine that the police would have got a statement from
him to miss Scott hue to say that is my husband.

(46:58):
I think that's there very very sinister evidence from an
independent witness, I think, and at Pool Loss this is
fantastic because this fits perfectly to This is a setup
and a sting by the family and friends.

Speaker 2 (47:15):
The family of Helen Scott Hughey in retaliation for the
murder of Carlos. Correct I had a long discussion about
this with Kelly. Helen Scott Huey formed a peculiar relationship,
you'd have to say, with Reagan's de facto wife, Margaret,
They in fact had a friendship. Correct and Helen Scott

(47:36):
Huey expressed to Margaret she didn't believe Reagan had murdered
her son. So you have the initial reaction that from
witnesses we've spoken to that she was convinced Reagan murdered
the boy. Then you have Helen Scott poling up with
Margaret Reagan and saying John didn't do it. These two
facts are not reconciling with each other, right.

Speaker 3 (47:58):
Help or have you got Lee threatening her like you
know what they were like back then?

Speaker 2 (48:04):
Yeah, So then we come to this, if we continue
this theory, Reagan spent his last day with Helen Scott
Huey and his daughter to Margaret Helen yep, as we've
looked at that, it was a dispute outside Barrack Motors.
When Mark came to pick up Helen, she took off
with the child, exasperating Reagan. She'd never stood up to
him like that before. And then he was subsequently driven

(48:26):
to this so called meeting in Marrickville by Helen Scott Huey, and.

Speaker 3 (48:29):
Helen Scott Huey reminded him of Oliver Meeting.

Speaker 2 (48:33):
This is something we've discussed at nauseam for years. But
if we'd run with this theory, and it's only a theory,
Stuart John Reagan was a very very cautious criminal. Extremely
he was permanently alert and in the latter years constantly armed.
I mean, I've spoken to one of his girlfriends for
one of a better word in the sixties, and he

(48:54):
carried a small foom in an ankle holster, so he
was prepared at all time, wore a body armor, had
body armor and bodyguard. But on this Sunday when he's
dropped off at Merrickville, he has no weapons, no body armor,
no bodyguard. Wanders into a shop by himself and buys

(49:14):
his favorite sausage, comes out and just sallies down the
road on a Sunday afternoon. Walk into this trap.

Speaker 3 (49:23):
And he's walked past a motor vehicle in an alley.
He hasn't we raised any eyebrows. He's kept going down
the dark alley.

Speaker 2 (49:31):
So why on this Sunday, in that moment is this
man who is perpetually on guard for his own life,
given what he's involved in. Why in this one moment
is he totally defenseless like.

Speaker 3 (49:46):
He's someone with him. When you've got other people with
your guard comes down a bit, don't.

Speaker 2 (49:50):
It, Okay? So this leads to logically exactly that was
he with somebody whom he felt completely relaxed with. Was
he going to meeting that? It indeed may have been
appropriate for this mythical companion that had relaxed him to
the point of where which is just like he was
going for an afternoon.

Speaker 3 (50:10):
Walk, like a dinner, a dinner or something like that.

Speaker 2 (50:13):
Ye're not a high ocdane business meeting, because he kept
his biness and pleasures very very separate.

Speaker 3 (50:19):
Very separate, very separate.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
So was he walking down Chapel Street with a girlfriend
going to a social event, which would explain the lack
of weaponry, the casualness of the moment, and also the
vulnerability of a very very cautious man who ordinarily would
never a million years have walked into such a trap.
Detective Eric Gollan was working that Sunday when news filtered

(50:45):
through to police that the notorious Johnny Reagan had been
gunned down in Merrickville.

Speaker 16 (50:51):
We were working on the afternoon chist on twenty one
der Vision. We all got a call to go to
the SiO Boo and report to Rocky Morson.

Speaker 3 (50:59):
Right.

Speaker 2 (50:59):
Was that every one in the division.

Speaker 16 (51:01):
Or everyone available, everyone.

Speaker 2 (51:03):
Available, Wow, and he held a meeting there.

Speaker 16 (51:07):
He breathed us, all, yeah, he got all specific tasks.
He is really and had so many different properties and
so many different motives. People would want to get rid
of him. I never ever actually met him. Everyone was
aware of him. He was notorious for his activities and
of course he was the number one suspect for the murderers.

(51:27):
Carlos got Hughey, the little boy from Taylor Square.

Speaker 2 (51:32):
Despite a myriad of possible motives, Eric said, everything quickly
came back to Carlos and his mother, Helen.

Speaker 16 (51:39):
The theory was that the mother of the child set
him up because he was very guarded. Body guards with
him at different time, but he turned up for this
meeting with no one name.

Speaker 2 (51:50):
Well, that's the great mystery, isn't it. Yeah, that's so
out of character for him.

Speaker 16 (51:56):
We were told given all specific jobs to do by Rocky.
He knew all the addresses of the houses for the
owned and the place. He's like a frequent No one
had a motive at that stage for the murder, but
it was a very vicious murder in the middle of
the street in marytll So we went out and we
had to just sit off in surveillance mode on different

(52:19):
houses because it wasn't known whether or not it was
someone who he'd upset with the girls, or whether he'd
upset someone who was in the houses, or so will
poor old Rocky. He's gone now, unfortunately, but just as
a comed you saw it, he said. Now when you
go out there, he said, make sure if you find

(52:42):
out who did it, he said, being straight back into me.
So I can pin a police friends, bad John, he says,
then we'll deal with it.

Speaker 2 (52:51):
Oh my god. So that was that was the level
of loathing that Ricka was held in.

Speaker 16 (52:57):
Yeah, yeah, and of course the all stories about Reagan,
and then the Rocky said, well get out of here,
do your job. Record back to his anything he said,
and Gilligan, iye, gone down to the Maork So we're
going to put a mirror under his nose, put some
pins in his foot to see the bus just dead.

Speaker 2 (53:18):
When nothing turned up. After watching Reagan's properties, Golan and
other officers decided to head over to Chapel Street, Merrickville
and take a look for themselves. And was the street
was sealed off when you arrived?

Speaker 17 (53:32):
Oh?

Speaker 16 (53:32):
I think they'd finished with the in those days, they'd
finished with the crime scene right age.

Speaker 2 (53:39):
But definitely Reagan's blood on the road.

Speaker 5 (53:42):
I believe it to be.

Speaker 16 (53:43):
Anyway, you know quite a number rounds.

Speaker 2 (53:45):
I asked, Was there a measure of relief amongst police that,
however he'd been dispatched, he was gone.

Speaker 16 (53:53):
Well, you got to look at it two ways. I
don't think there was any release. I think there would
have been a lot of release if we had found
out who actual we did it, that would have been
a big release because she would have got ridy to
tell them then, wouldn't he or more? But it was
a bad crook, and I don't think he got convicted
of much at all because he was just too smart

(54:13):
for everyone.

Speaker 2 (54:17):
Margare recalls when she was informed that Johnny Reagan was dead.
When did you first hear about him being shot to death?

Speaker 9 (54:28):
The same night? I can't remember where I was when
they were in me.

Speaker 2 (54:33):
They didn't come to the door or no.

Speaker 9 (54:35):
I don't know how I knew. I think I was
at my father's house. I can't remember, but it.

Speaker 2 (54:43):
Was that Sunday evening.

Speaker 9 (54:44):
It was definitely that night.

Speaker 4 (54:46):
And they said Johnny's been shot dead. Yeah, do you
vaguely even remember what your reaction was?

Speaker 5 (54:57):
Shock?

Speaker 9 (54:58):
Of course it was shot, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
Of course, fears for your children without a fire.

Speaker 9 (55:04):
I didn't even think of that. I just thought, well,
why shocked?

Speaker 5 (55:08):
Shocked?

Speaker 9 (55:08):
I put myself in that situation that I was there,
I called a beatane.

Speaker 2 (55:13):
Were you called upon to identify the body?

Speaker 17 (55:17):
No?

Speaker 2 (55:17):
You know who was?

Speaker 9 (55:19):
No?

Speaker 3 (55:20):
Do you know?

Speaker 9 (55:22):
No?

Speaker 2 (55:22):
I mean usually it is the prerogative of the father
of the family. Do you think the colonel.

Speaker 9 (55:29):
Definitely, I'd say it was her.

Speaker 2 (55:32):
Do you know how she reacted initially to her son's death?

Speaker 9 (55:37):
She blamed the police? She did, Yes, she did. Police
to kill my son, the police to kill my son.

Speaker 2 (55:43):
You don't know what basis she might have had for
that theory.

Speaker 9 (55:48):
See, his mother knew more than what everybody thought. She
knew he would confine in his mother fears, since he's
always confided in his mother.

Speaker 2 (55:58):
Do you think she knew more about his gangster activities.

Speaker 5 (56:01):
Than you did?

Speaker 9 (56:02):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (56:03):
Yes, what sort of mother would know that and not
try and make a an intervention?

Speaker 9 (56:10):
Or she loved the limelight of it. My sons were
out there, and my son's you know, dear my son
to bring money home, bring jewelry home, bring them whatever.
And he's tough, and he's tough. Some people love that
kind of thing. Look at my son, look at me,
and look at me. So I think that was don't
muck around or my son will get you, you know
that kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (56:31):
So she think you think she sort of fed off
it or lived lived off his repretation.

Speaker 9 (56:36):
Definitely for many years. It's a really sad story. It's
a sad story. He confided in his mother and listened
to his mother more than anybody, even us. I personally,
myself will never forgive her. Never. First of all, she
created a monster with John. She created from his childhood

(56:59):
who as a normal kid from a country town and
comes into the big city and changes completely. Was she
loved it. She loved every minute of it.

Speaker 2 (57:10):
That's not normal.

Speaker 9 (57:11):
No, it's not normal.

Speaker 2 (57:14):
One of the first things police asked marg was did
you arrange to have Reagan killed? It's a question the
police had to ask. And why not? He was fueling
around with plenty of other women. Had she had enough
of his violent, philandering ways. Naturally, she denied the allegation.

(57:38):
She can't remember the details, but she said she was
further brought in for questioning at the Darlinghurst police station.
I don't know what I knew. He was killed and
they brought me in. I can't remember that right, And
the purpose of bringing you in if you knew was
to tell you again, or to tell you from the
horse's mouth, or well, I assume so.

Speaker 18 (58:00):
But because at one stage in the conversation he did
ask me whether I had killed Johnny, meaning jealousy and
things like that, because we knew that he was involved
with other women. And did you have any input inship
together with john That's really the thing that's stuck in

(58:22):
my head, and of.

Speaker 2 (58:22):
Course I've gone no, of course not really.

Speaker 18 (58:26):
A lot of that conversation is blocking my head somewhere.

Speaker 2 (58:30):
What shocked Mark given at the time was why Johnny
would enter Chapel Street unarmed and alone.

Speaker 18 (58:39):
Actually worked out as walking through Chapel Street or to Marple.
He was confident that whoever he was meeting was his
friend or or Isnes his partner or somebody. He went
whoever they had been, with great confidence. That's what I think,
because I knew how the man work. She would never

(59:01):
go anywhere. He would have someone beside him. We think
he would do things together with people, you know what
I mean. Yes, So for him to go to that
linking at Marathon, it was just like a Sunday walk
to him, oh onto the Spawner shop had happen. Not
seeing the corner and walk down the road. Whatever it did,

(59:21):
he had no fear wherever he was going. To remember
that I seen him what an hour and a half
before he was killed, and he wanted me to drive Hidney,
to drive him somewhere. He didn't say Martha, he didn't
say link. If did, don't want you to drive me.
And as you know the rest of the story, and
I have his daughter in the car. So when you

(59:43):
think about that that way, do you think that he
would have been capable of taking me and his daughter
if he thought there was fear, I would have probably
never met who he was needy if I would have went,
If he would have thought it was a setup, we
have asked me to go, and I had towering the car,
and that's his own child. So he's Gonel with the

(01:00:06):
uppermis whoever is leading not a problem.

Speaker 2 (01:00:11):
Everybody knew that Reagan only trusted a small handful of
people in his world. One at the top of the
list was mob boss Frederick Paddles Anderson, the father figure
sitting at the table at Checkers Nightclub celebrating Reagan's twenty
first birthday in nineteen sixty six. The master to Reagan's

(01:00:34):
criminal apprentice. Reagan's longtime solicitor Michael Seymour thought of Paddles
down the years in relation to Reagan's murder.

Speaker 19 (01:00:47):
When when he was shot and it appeared to he
was lured too, Mark Gil I someone's early fast. I
thought about it.

Speaker 3 (01:01:03):
Now, the would it be Fred?

Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
Don't know really well?

Speaker 7 (01:01:08):
Was that your first thought?

Speaker 2 (01:01:10):
Why did you think that.

Speaker 19 (01:01:12):
Reagan trusted him? Would have been had to someone that
Reagan trusted implicitly because I heard that he was to
meet someone and there was a bit of money involved.

Speaker 2 (01:01:27):
Then there's this recollection from a criminal source of mine
in Queensland. I trust this source implicitly. In over fifteen years.
He has never, in a single instance provided me with
even slightly inaccurate information. He's what the criminal milieu call
a scaly wag or a scaly but he's as honest

(01:01:48):
as the day is long. This scalley of mine was
and remains friends with many leading criminals in the late
sixties and early nineteen seventies. One of those friends will
call Max. Max worked for Reagan in the early nineteen
seventies in Reagan's lucrative land scams. Max was one of

(01:02:10):
the scams salesmen who gilded the lily, sold the land
and did a runner with the cash. Through Reagan, Max
struck up a close relationship with the boss of bosses,
Paddles Anderson in Sydney. Max and Paddles loved a punt
and countless times the two of them had dinner and drinks.

(01:02:32):
Not long after Reagan's murder, Max and Paddles were socializing.
That's when Paddles told Max something extraordinary about the day
Reagan was killed in Chapel Street, Marrickville. Why did the
usually ultra cautious Reagan turn up to that ill fated
meeting unarmed because of Paddles. Paddles, as close to Reagan

(01:02:59):
as a voting uncle, told Reagan to attend his meeting
without a gun. In short, Reagan was set up by
one of the only men in the world that he trusted.
Here's my source relaying Max's story about what Paddles told
him all those years ago. So what did he say?

(01:03:22):
From your memory?

Speaker 5 (01:03:23):
Agan, paddle said, you've got a meet up with someone
that he didn't say who they were, but he said,
make sure you're not carrying a piece in a handcom.

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
So Paddles said that to Reagan.

Speaker 5 (01:03:34):
To Reagan, yes, made sure you're not carrying a piece,
was his words, told him directly. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But
Paddles told he said, I call Reagan to make sure
when he gets to meet you don't have a peace on.

Speaker 2 (01:03:49):
So Paddles was basically saying to him that he set
him up for death.

Speaker 5 (01:03:53):
Well I did think so, Yeah, for sure, Yeah, obviously
he set him up. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03:58):
Reagan's post mortem was conducted on Monday, September twenty three,
nineteen seventy four, at the City Morguan Glebe. The cause
of death was due to bullet wounds to the head, chest,
and liver. The autopsy recorded penetrating wound six millimeters in

(01:04:18):
diameter to the left lumbar region, penetrating entry wound ten
centimeters to the right of mid line of back. The
surrounding area of this wound was tattooed and it was
estimated that the shot was fired from approximately six inches
from the wound. Grazing wound consistent with a bullet graze,

(01:04:44):
penetrating wound in the right lumbar region, penetrating wound close
to this wound, penetrating wound at the front of chest
ten centimeters below right sternum, clavicular joint penetrating wound to
the right occipital region of the skull, penetrating wound to

(01:05:07):
the left mastoid process of the back of the skull.
There was damage to Reagan's right lung, liver, spleen, stomach, pancreas,
and brain due to tracking bullets. The base of his
skull and left jawbone were fractured. Four bullets and shrapnel

(01:05:27):
were removed from his body. Written in biro on the
palm of Reagan's left hand was batteries six point zero.
There it is there. It's a pretty church.

Speaker 4 (01:05:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:45):
Reagan's funeral was held on Monday, September thirty at Saint
Brigard's Catholic Church in Kudji. Only about sixty people attended.
There were probably more undercover police observing from the streets
around the church.

Speaker 4 (01:06:01):
So this was the only church that would marry that
would have a service in.

Speaker 2 (01:06:07):
Father John Eldridge held a requiem mass. Saint Brigard's was
the only church that agreed to stage a service for Reagan.
As Claire Reagan was being helped into the church, she
shouted at reporters, you bloody crucified him, you bloody robbers.

(01:06:29):
As for Reagan's supposed millions in property in cash, his
solicitor Michael Seymour told reporters at the funeral that Reagan's
will would probably be made public in a few weeks
after it had gone through probate. Fifty years later, no
will has materialized. Wasn't Johnny Reagan the millionaire gangster? Where's

(01:06:53):
the money? In his interview with federal narcotics agents, Reagan's
former drug associate, John Edward Milligan made a curious statement
in nineteen seventy nine.

Speaker 12 (01:07:06):
I had a partnership with Reagan at one stage until
we fell out over that Queensland affair, and he never
forgave me after that. He used to go around threatening
to murder me and arrange statements against me in all
sorts of weird things, writing newspapers about me.

Speaker 2 (01:07:19):
And I got a guy called the job of.

Speaker 12 (01:07:21):
Being Reagan's accountant and wound up very wealthy out of
his association. He made all what the money that was
left in the bank. When Reagan was murdered assassinated.

Speaker 2 (01:07:31):
Stuart John Reagan was cremated. The urn containing his ashes
was then taken by his loving mother the Colonel and
brought home to Duke Street, Kensington. She in turn displayed
the urn in the bedroom of Reagan's son, JP, the
boy she had also taken possession of from his mother

(01:07:52):
marg and there the urn stayed until the Colonel died
in nineteen eighty eight, and still she held onto her
beloved Johnny. His ashes went in with her, into his
mother's arms, into her coffin and plot in Sydney's Rookwood Cemetery.

(01:08:15):
One cold windy day, Kelly and I went out to
see the grave. This is it.

Speaker 3 (01:08:23):
That's it. Yeah, Claire Mary Reagan always loved and remembered. Wow,
that's her.

Speaker 2 (01:08:39):
Underneath your knees kel It's Stuart John Reagan. Yes, the
gangster is here. Yes, nobody knows that outside the family.

Speaker 4 (01:08:49):
In turn with his mother, she had the last laugh right.

Speaker 2 (01:08:57):
Recently, after years of agitation by Kelly's later Reagan, second
cousin to murdered gangster Stuart John Reagan, members of Sydney's
Cold Case homicide Squad drove out to Young to explain
the status of Reagan's unsolved murder. It was a personal
and respectful gesture to a family that had waited so

(01:09:19):
long for some answers. So, Kelly, the police came and
visited you in Young Yep.

Speaker 3 (01:09:27):
So they showed up and we had a fair few
of the family were there, and we had Inspector Nigel Warren.

Speaker 2 (01:09:35):
We had The news was as expected. With a fifty
year cold case murder, police have decided for the moment
not to actively reopen the investigation. How was everybody feeling
about the police arriving?

Speaker 3 (01:09:50):
God, look, Lorraine got the best china out, even got
out the milk jug and all the good cups and sources.
Mind you, they didn't have a cup of tea.

Speaker 2 (01:10:00):
Too much time had passed, too many potential witnesses had
passed away. The chances of any sort of charges being laid,
let alone a prosecution, were close to zero. Who were
the killers? As marg told us so aptly, you may
as well be playing a game of pick a box? Well,

(01:10:21):
what did we learn after years of probing Reagan's life
and death. We had a lot of rumors that had
persisted for decades. We had some criminals who believed the
police finally decided to rid the world of the deadly
pest that was Johnny Reagan after he crossed the line
and became a child killer. We had police who blamed

(01:10:45):
criminals like Paddles Anderson, Lenny McPherson and George Freeman for
the assassination after he crossed the line and became a
child killer. We had observers who believed corrupt police and
gangsters a life came together to acquit the execution, and
we had a theory that the murder was closer to home,

(01:11:10):
organized as family revenge for the killing of Carlos Scott Huey,
as Mark z pick a box. To be honest, we
never expected to drag the real killers out from beneath
a fifty year mountain of life, death, lies, red herrings,

(01:11:30):
lost documents, scattered paperwork, faulty memories, and innumerable conspiracy theories.
What we wanted to achieve was a fuller picture of
this man's life and death, especially for the Reagan family.
Kelly reflected on our epic adventure into the underworld. What

(01:11:55):
do you think this is all meant to Margaret and
the and the larger Reagan family the journey of the podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:12:05):
I don't think Mark fully comprehended how much we had
until we went to Chapel Street. She probably just thought, oh,
you know, we're going to go out and collect a
few things. Now it's really got her cogs turning me. Certainly,
I am seeing things in a different light because Dad
was kept so insulated from this. Dad's now saying my

(01:12:27):
family knew more. What I think is imagine what he
could have been if it had a great upbringing and
run his own businesses like multi multi millionaire. But that
one thing I found absolutely astounding from the very first
time I ever spoke to you, was that our family
always knew that John was involved in the Whiskey Go Go,

(01:12:47):
and I thought everybody else did, but clearly nobody else
did other than a few.

Speaker 2 (01:12:52):
Kelly still wasn't convinced that Reagan had killed Carlos Scott Huey.
Was this, no matter how long ago, a bridge too
far for any family. For marg the pain, the surprises,
the repercussions of having been partner to one of Australia's

(01:13:13):
most notorious gangsters are still being felt. Some of his
children are still popping out of the woodwork, correct, which
is incredible to think about. Yep, how does that affect you?

Speaker 9 (01:13:29):
I don't blame the children, but I won't be involved
in that I want to be involved. Oh, this is
Johnny Reagan's child, and you've got to meet them.

Speaker 2 (01:13:40):
The answer is no, you removed yourself from that. I
remember myself from that and never go back.

Speaker 9 (01:13:46):
No.

Speaker 5 (01:13:47):
No.

Speaker 4 (01:13:48):
In a way, it's well, it's unusual and it's extraordinary
in the respect that he Stuart John Reagan, is still
impacting your family.

Speaker 9 (01:13:59):
When you talk about my family, think about the other
women that they've got children. True, still affecting their family.

Speaker 2 (01:14:07):
I think you said to me this it just never
seems to end.

Speaker 9 (01:14:10):
It doesn't seem to end. So this is what we're
doing now, is the final thing that I can do.
Whatever comes of it, what.

Speaker 2 (01:14:21):
Comes of it the podcast.

Speaker 9 (01:14:23):
Yeah, yeah, I'm here to try and finalize this so
we can all get on with our lives. As I
said before, I didn't meet a beast. I didn't meet
an ugly man. I didn't meet it. I didn't meet
that person. That person became alive in my eyes later on.

Speaker 2 (01:14:46):
Marg might just have to wait a little bit longer
for this story to end. We said right at the
start of The Gangster's Ghost that this wasn't just an
investigation into the life and death of an toorious Lobster.
It was also the story of a family and how
it carries the generational stain of a black Sheep, a

(01:15:09):
man whose shocking deeds have entered the history books. Along
with the magician's many victims. The Reagans have to heal too,
and Shotgun Johnny's oldest daughter, Helen, has come up with
a way she hopes will make that happen.

Speaker 20 (01:15:28):
Earn that held my father's ashes, sat in the living
room for years and years. I'd like to bury it
for once and for all, but in a peaceful where
his roots and where he had a good life.

Speaker 2 (01:15:40):
So you'd like to retrieve he's earned from Rookwood.

Speaker 20 (01:15:46):
Yes, from my grandmother's gravesite, take him back to his
hometown and be close to his father and the rest
of the Reagan clan, because at the end of the day,
he's a Reagan, you know, and that's where he grew up.
That was probably some of his days too, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:16:02):
Is it a case where you'd like to well, can
I say, rest him away from his mother? And would
you bury him in alf his father's grave. I mean,
I've stood at the foot of your grandfather's grave, alf
In young.

Speaker 9 (01:16:17):
Would yeah, it'd be lovely.

Speaker 2 (01:16:18):
It's a lumary spot.

Speaker 9 (01:16:19):
I mean, I visited it many years ago.

Speaker 20 (01:16:22):
When I first went there, it was one of the
first things I asked to do is to see my
grandfather's grave, and my uncle Lindsey and of the family
took me there, and it's a beautiful spot, sort of
on a hill.

Speaker 9 (01:16:35):
I think it would be just idellic for Dad to
be there, you know.

Speaker 20 (01:16:40):
I know for a fact that he would always escape
down there but never tell the colonel. I think that
would be nice to them to be together again. It
would be a homage to my father because I never
really got the opportunity to say goodbye.

Speaker 2 (01:16:55):
Did I never got there.

Speaker 20 (01:16:57):
You know, when I look back at this map, I
never cried from my father. I never I was too
young to understand it if he was there one day
and gone. So this would be my time to actually
grieve top place and say goodbye, not only for me,
but you know the readers. You know, we all have
the same blood in our veins, and you know, I

(01:17:19):
think it would be a fitting way to say goodbye.
And yeah, I think it would be a lot of
closure for my family.

Speaker 2 (01:17:25):
Definitely, now seems the right time to go all the
way back to the country town of Young to that
kitchen table on the Slater Reagan farm where the whole
family first came together at the start of this odyssey.
After a great meal and a few drinks, Kelly went

(01:17:48):
over to the stereo and pulled out a CD by
local artist Dave Debs. Years ago, Dave wrote a song
about alf Reagan, Johnny's father. He had gotten to know
the old man when he was a teenager and never
forgot him. Penniless and living in a tin shed on
the outskirts of town. An emotional Kelly went to press

(01:18:13):
play who is this?

Speaker 3 (01:18:15):
So this is David Debs's song Still a Pioneer off
his album Lover's Highway. So this is about Uncle Al.

Speaker 8 (01:18:24):
And I'm not going to bubble.

Speaker 2 (01:18:27):
Guarantee that I know.

Speaker 3 (01:18:30):
How embarrassing. Yeah, I know, but I don't do public
displays of affection.

Speaker 7 (01:18:39):
And it's very jail, it's very ban jail on the flatball.

Speaker 17 (01:18:47):
When I was at school on town and you're an
old man weather Brown outside his car gates.

Speaker 2 (01:19:00):
He's still a pining.

Speaker 21 (01:19:06):
I listened to his starvings before I was on and
a small champion movie like his only friend I covered
the way.

Speaker 17 (01:19:16):
He still a piny.

Speaker 2 (01:19:20):
The Gangster's Ghost is dedicated to the memory of my
old mate John Shakespeare, friend confidante, brother, a million mind.

Speaker 21 (01:19:34):
I'm half close stories sharp Goldy's gone by, Still a pony.

Speaker 8 (01:19:52):
Then I moved to the city and the.

Speaker 22 (01:19:55):
Word came down and all Elf Reagan was no longer
I look less good, Telly ho Chang, look see.

Speaker 2 (01:20:09):
You finger the spine.

Speaker 20 (01:20:13):
What's a man?

Speaker 22 (01:20:14):
He walked about a million b.

Speaker 2 (01:20:19):
Clos dies shall.

Speaker 20 (01:20:22):
Please gone on bye.

Speaker 17 (01:20:26):
Still he's still a pie. It's still APIs still.

Speaker 1 (01:20:55):
The Gangsters Ghost is a production of The Australian. It's
written and presented by Senior Writing Mathew Condon and edited
by Multimedia editor Leat sammagloom Our Executive producer is Me,
Editorial Director Claire Harvey. Special thanks to Lara Kamenos, Rika Rutliche,
Kristin Amiot, Jasper Leik, Stephanie Coombs, Sean Callanan Laughlin, Clear,

(01:21:15):
Ryan Osland, Amanda Wynn Williams, Christine Kelle, Tarren Blackhurst, Magdalena Zadak,
Jisell Boetti, Genevieve Brammel, Lauren Bruce, Sus Rolf and Dick,
Kenny Carlson. We can only do journalism like this with
the support of our 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

(01:21:39):
us at Gangstersghost dot com dot au.

Speaker 9 (01:22:01):
Son so

Speaker 3 (01:22:08):
S