May 22, 2025 • 52 mins
Johnny Regan's early years were completely dominated by his obsessive mother, Clare, nicknamed "The Colonel", who frowned upon his friendships, didn’t allow him to play sports, and publicly horsewhipped her young son.
She was married to Alf Regan, the town drunk, the pair having met at The Australian Hotel where Clare worked as a barmaid. With the marriage over by the mid-1950s, Clare took her son to Sydney, starting a new life in the mean streets of Darlinghurst, where the gangster takes shape.
In this episode, Matthew Condon visits the country NSW town of Young to retrace the childhood of Stewart John Regan and delve into his troubled early years.
Subscribers to The Australian hear new episodes of The Gangster's Ghost first. Plus, you can see photographs, videos, timelines and more at gangstersghost.com.au
Read more: How ruthless mum shaped her deadly gangster son
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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 U. This is episode two of The Gangster's Ghost.
To really get into this story here episode one first
at Gangstersghost dot com dot AU.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
When I went on this venture with Matt, I knew
that I would find a monster, and I wasn't really sure.
I just knew I wanted to find the truth. And
so far in John's childhood, I think I have found
a monster, but that monster was certainly not John. What
I'm finding is a little boy that was brought up
(00:57):
in horrific circumstances, flogged by his grandfather, flogged by his mother,
and then goes on to go to the Gosford's Boys' Home,
where the head of the boy's home says to one
of John's friends later in life, oh, we flogged it
out of him too, Like everywhere this little boy turned,
he got flogged. What does people expect or is that
(01:21):
what was expected of him. You know, he goes down
to his mother.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
This is Kelly Slater Reagan, former New South Wales copper,
sheep farmer, wheat grower, and also the cousin to Johnny Reagan,
one of the toughest, most feared and hated gangsters in
Australian history. For years now, Kelly and I have been
(01:48):
on the trail of the true story behind Reagan. In
myth they called him the Magician, the man who could
make people disappear. They say he murdered between eight and
twelve people, including a child, But who was he really?
Almost fifty years after he was gunned down in a
(02:11):
Sydney suburban street by three assassins, aged just twenty nine,
Kelly and her family want to know the truth about
him and given his murder is one of New South Wales'
most enduring cold cases. Who killed Reagan and why? From
(02:33):
the beginning of our investigation, I asked Kelly to keep
an audio diary to freely express what was going on
in her mind and her heart as we sifted through
the fact and fiction surrounding her notorious relative. So she did.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
He goes down to his mother.
Speaker 4 (02:57):
At school with a bloody nurse she wants.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Don't come home to your bloody No hugs, no cuddles,
no genuine affection or kindness. What sort of damage does
that do to a little boy? Is what I'm thinking today.
And the other thing I'm thinking is where was his
father's family, my family? Where were they?
Speaker 3 (03:16):
You know, I've been fascinated by Stuart John Reagan for decades.
He was the last of the old school gangsters. A
pimp and standover man in his teens, a rapist and
murderer by his mid twenties, A man so unpredictably violent
(03:37):
that just the mention of his name struck fear into
Sydney's criminal miliere, and not just a few police officers.
Reagan wore a bulletproof vest and was always accompanied by
a bodyguard. According to all reports, he was a bona
fide psychopath with all the cliched traits, cruelty to animals,
(04:02):
no empathy, cold and violent and brutal. When Kelly joined
me on this journey into the world of her long
dead cousin, we both knew there had to be more
to him than a couple of brief television documentaries and
the occasional cameo in true crime books, where he was
(04:23):
invariably described as a man so heenous he thought nothing
of killing and disposing of a toddler, the child of
one of his lovers, because the infant annoyed him. Stuart
John Reagan was the worst of the worst. Take this
(04:45):
from Suburban Gangsters, a Channel nine true crime documentary series
hosted by journalist Adam Shand that went to air in
two thousand and nineteen.
Speaker 5 (04:56):
This is the story of the magician Stuart John Reagan.
Reagan was a pimp, rapist, standover man, and child murderer
who enjoyed inflicting pain.
Speaker 6 (05:07):
Stuart John Reagan was a malicious, vicious, violent criminal whom
I would raid among one of, if not the worst
criminal I ever came across during my retire police career.
Speaker 7 (05:24):
Of all the criminals I ever knew were dealt with
as a crime reporter, Reagan would probably have been the
most vicious and deadly of the lot, the most heartless.
Speaker 5 (05:35):
Stuart John Reagan was born in the quiet country town
of Young New South Wales in nineteen forty five. Not
much is known about his early life, apart from his
love of violence.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Well, if you're ever looking for a psychopath.
Speaker 8 (05:50):
Reagan ticks all the boxes.
Speaker 7 (05:52):
No one was surprised to learn that as a child
he killed animals. He harmed animals. There was a story
that he used to pitchfork to kill a possum. He
killed kittens and dogs, and he just had no empathy
for any living being whatsoever.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
These are the types of stories repeated over and over
about Reagan. Kelly has heard them all, but she wanted
to dig deeper, so we started at the beginning. Who
were his parents, Claire Mary Raul and Alfred Frederick Reagan.
(06:37):
Was Reagan like a chemical compound, the amalgam of two
evil forces? Was he a natural born killer? Or did
something happen to him in his formative years? What occurred
in his childhood that might betray a future of violence
(07:00):
and a complete lack of respect for human life? This
was the puzzle Kelly and I were faced with. She'd
also need to take a long, hard look at herself,
So we started our search in the tiny township of Young,
(07:21):
the cherry capital of Australia on the southwestern slopes of
New South Wales, where Reagan was born and where this
whole story began. Young is a small country town the
Reagans were one of the pioneering families in this part
of Australia, and there are still Reagans in the phone book.
(07:45):
We needed to go back to his school, find schoolmates,
if any were still alive, go to his childhood homes
and discover what his life was like as a kid.
We had to piece together the birth of a gangster,
and crucially, we had to uncover that monster that has
(08:08):
haunted this story for decades, Reagan's mother, Claire, the woman
they called the Colonel. I'm journalist Matthew Condon and This
is the Gangster's Ghost, a podcast from The Australian. In
(08:28):
this investigation, we uncover previously unreported facts about the short
lived criminal career of Stuart John Reagan, speak to his family,
friends and business associates 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
(08:52):
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 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
(09:16):
with the generational stain of a murderer whose death was
celebrated by criminals and police alike. This is episode two
(09:39):
the Colonel. In the early days of this investigation, I
took it for granted that Kel, a strong and uncompromising woman,
loyal to family and with an unwavering moral compass, would
(10:02):
take this plunge into her family history in her stride.
But as time went on, I understood how deeply the
whole thing affected her. The more we learned, the more
it went straight to the heart. This is another entry
in Kelly's personal audio diary.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Years later. I'm sitting in a police recruitment interview, being
grilled on a boy that turned into a monster and
a man. And now I'm starting to think, well, the
monster was created, and then the myth was created to
fit the monster, and it's just wrong. It's so wrong.
Speaker 8 (10:47):
You know.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
I'm open and prepared to see that John was a
murderer and that he committed atrocious crimes. I understand that,
But I'm finding a little boy that's stuck up for
the underdog, didn't allow the big kids to bully the
little kids. I'm saying that a murderer was created, but
I'm not saying a child murderer, So I guess we
(11:09):
continue to dig.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
That digging took us to the small town of muham Borough,
only about thirty kilometers south of Young Claire. Mary Raoul
was born there in nineteen thirteen. Her father, John Patrick,
was a farmer. From the outset, it appears Claire wasn't
backwards in coming forward. In her twenties, she was training
(11:41):
and racing greyhounds at the murham Borough Coursing Club and
was regularly in the winner's circle. In nineteen thirty eight
in the Kurrawong Stakes, she came second with her dog
Jim's Lass, and at some point she met sheepsharer Alfred
(12:02):
Frederick Reagan from Young Kelly has vague memories of her
great uncle.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
Alf Uncle alf used to be a shearer and he
used to travel around like all the western areas back
in those days.
Speaker 9 (12:21):
Ready for the first run. Each man bring homes and
cutters for the hand piece. The rest of the machinery
belongs to the owner of the ship. There were flanel shirts.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
Of travel out and you'd cheer four weeks and ended
at shearing sheds all around this place, like Hillstone and
Griffith and everywhere else.
Speaker 9 (12:41):
In this game, more hayes means less speed and damaged
seap as well.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
So I've been told he was a very good sharer.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
But the problem with Uncle Alf was that once he
finished hearing, he'd come home and then he would drink.
But I can remember him being down the main street.
He used to sit outside the old Tafe building which
is just up from the Australian Hotel, which is where
he drank. And he used to sit out there on
a bench and wait for us kids to come and
we run across the road because Dad's shop was over
(13:10):
the other side, and he'd give us too.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Bob to go and get some lollies.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
He used to always tip his hat to ask the
ladies as they walked past. He was a very very
old gentlemanly person like he was always.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
How Alf and Claire actually met is lost to history.
Was he shearing in her neck of the woods? Did
they meet in a pub? The Regans don't know. Perhaps
Alf and Claire took the steam train, a short thirty
kilometer ride between Young and mum Burro when they were courting,
(13:50):
But courting maybe the wrong word to use in this case.
That would imply a conventional romance, the thrill of falling
in love. Nothing was conventional about this relationship. It was
odd from the start and quickly became peculiar. Alf and
(14:16):
Claire were married in nineteen forty four at Hillston, a
small town three hundred kilometers west of both Young and Murramborough.
The family can only speculate why they married so far
from their respective homes. Perhaps Alf was shearing in the
(14:37):
region at the time. There's a theory that Claire was
working as a bar maid at a hotel there. Still,
it was an odd start to a marriage that very
quickly proved to be a mistake. In every family, there
is an outlier, a person whose life becomes a satellite
(14:57):
to the main family game, a curio not worthy of
consideration or even basic respect, just as sick pigeons are
rejected by the flock. Alf's life upon marrying Claire seemed
to have been jettisoned from the normal functioning of the
Greater Reagan family. In fact, Claire's existence was completely ignored.
(15:29):
This is Kelly talking to her dad Lindsey about this
strange affair.
Speaker 8 (15:36):
I never knew that Uncle alf Ever got married. I
didn't know that Uncle alf Ever was involved with the
woman because I'd never ever seen him with the lady.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
Tell me what this seems extraordinary? Given the size of
young in the nineteen forties and the influence of the Reagans,
how could they not know about the Colonel Kelly suspects
the family may have rejected Claire Raoul outright, given the
families deep and some might say pedigreed roots going right
(16:08):
back to the foundations of the town. Claire, as they say,
did not come from the right side of the tracks.
Here's Kelly with her dad again.
Speaker 8 (16:20):
I'm down?
Speaker 4 (16:21):
And what about the comparisons? Like the three Reagan boys
all married Carwell girls. Now back in the thirties, the
call Walls were quite a well to do family, you
could call them land a gentry.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
They were both pioneering families.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
I would imagine that those three weddings would have been
quite celebrated and compared to the Carbel girls, Claire would
have been fair to say if she felt intimidated when
she's coming into a family of that dynamics, do you reckon?
Speaker 8 (16:51):
Certainly would just from my experience, once again, I didn't
know her or in their girls, but I don't think
that she ever was in the family setting.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
So never come for Christmas, never family gathering, never.
Speaker 8 (17:06):
Ever, never ever, I would say she was never asked,
never even spoken of, because I know they well as
I saying it was fifteen or something, and I never
even knew he existed? Was John Reagan?
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Claire and Alf settled in young not long after their marriage,
or did they. Some family members say now that Alf
never stopped living with his mother, even when Claire was
residing in town as his new wife. Still, there were
very early signs that this was a fatally mismatched couple.
(17:46):
Alf disappeared for weeks at a time on the Shearing circuit.
Claire took a job as a barmaid at the Australian
Hotel in the main drag Burrower Street. This pub, formerly
the Shamrock Inn back in the gold rush days, would
(18:06):
inevitably become the sinking ship of the Reagan marriage. When
he was in town, Alf had his favorite stool there
while the Colonel captained the bar. Today, the Australian Hotel
(18:35):
is a vibrant family pub with fantastic food at very
reasonable prices. We paid a visit and had lunch, and
quickly learned from the new owners that it, like almost
everyone and everything in this story, had its ghosts, Claire
and Alf included.
Speaker 10 (18:56):
My grandmother used to work here, and my mom did
so work upstairs, jens and cleaning, and I.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
Used to drink here all the time. But it needs
to be a brothel in the early early days.
Speaker 7 (19:06):
This is what I've.
Speaker 10 (19:07):
Been informed of late eighteen hundred.
Speaker 8 (19:11):
Where did your mum wear?
Speaker 4 (19:13):
Oh my god, your grandmother would have worked here, Claire raw, Claire.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
And you're over lunch In the noisy pub, we discussed
Claire and ELF's doomed marriage. So why does a couple
not get married in the town as they have to
go somewhere else to actually get married? In the pub,
like everywhere else in Young it felt as if you
(19:45):
could almost reach out and touch the past. It didn't
require a great stretch of an intimation to see Claire
here behind the bar pulling beers, and her still the husband, Alf,
drinking away his wages across the counter. They must have
(20:06):
glanced at each other over the damp via mets and
wondered about their future together. Perhaps they sensed it was
finished before it had even started. Then Claire fell pregnant.
Speaker 9 (20:34):
A short time ago, an American aeroplane dropped one bomb
on Hiroshima. It is an atomic bomb.
Speaker 11 (20:44):
The Japanese have accepted our terms fully. This, ladies and gentlemen,
is the end of the Second Worldwide.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
It's August nineteen forty five, and the world rejoiced when
Japan formally surrendered on September two. Even in rural Young
in western New South Wales, with its statues in the
main street commemorating the sacrifice of local men in the
(21:22):
First World War, they would have been celebrated too, blowing
the froth off a cold one at the Australian Hotel.
Less than two weeks later, on September thirteenth, nineteen forty five,
Stuart John Reagan, the only child of Claien Alf, was
(21:44):
born in Young. It should have been a happy moment
for the extended Reagan family in the immediate wake of
peace across the world, but it appears nobody in the
wider Reagan clan even you of the birth, just as
very few were aware that Alf was even married. Alf
(22:07):
built a ramshackle house for his new family by the
Creek in smythe Lane a couple of minutes walked from
his mother's house near the corner of Thornhill and Spring Streets.
But there's a curious dispute in the family as to
whether alf Ever domiciled with his wife and son. I
(22:30):
talked to Kelly about it and asked the question where
was alf living when baby Johnny came home from the hospital.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Alf would have been with his mother. I don't think
he ever moved out, to be honest.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
So he might have still been living with his mother
while five hundred meters away his wife and son are
living by the creek.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Correct.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
She does mention in and there's documents that he dropped
in and out when he felt like it.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
Maybe at the very beginning he might have lived with
them when he built that, But I think he built
the house for Aaron john Yeah. Dad certainly doesn't remember
Uncle ELpH being anywhere but with his mother or away hearing.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
So this was little Johnny Reagan's strangulated world in a
small country town, his father coming and going, and his
mother the colonel ruling the roost. Reagan attended the local
Catholic school, Saint Joseph's, not far from his home, by
the Creek from kindergarten to grade three. He then went
(23:43):
on to the Christian Brothers College. We went and saw
Father Alan Crowe at Reagan's old college. You could almost
see the site of the former Reagan home from a
corner of the school playground. Father Crow had gone to
the school himself. He explained how Reagan would have started
(24:05):
kindergarten in nineteen fifty at Saint Joseph's and by year
three transitioned to the nearby Christian Brothers College. In preparation
for our visit, Father Crow had retrieved some old yearbooks
from the library we set up in his office.
Speaker 4 (24:27):
So he would have started king year nine fifty, wouldn't it.
Speaker 7 (24:30):
Yes, you were behind John.
Speaker 12 (24:32):
Worne fifty four, more than the year he started at
Christian Brothers.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
Reagan appeared sporadically in the yearbooks, a serious young boy.
In his black and white class photographs, he did not
smile in a single picture. Kelly tracked down several of
Reagan's old schoolmates. Some remembered him fondly, others had a
(25:05):
harsher assessment. However, all of them, bar none, recalled with horror,
even after seventy years.
Speaker 8 (25:15):
The Colonel.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
One of those schoolmates was Brian English.
Speaker 10 (25:26):
John was a slightly lonely, sort of angry kid, not
many friends, and kids were a bit frightened of it.
I'm not saying he was a bully, but you wouldn't
cross it, and the teachers in the school were afraid
of Claire. I remember on one occasion we used to
play cricket in the schoolyard and kids would take its
(25:48):
turn to be in the bat and John was not playing.
He was just standing in the yard and Suddody belted
a cricket ball right up in the air, came down
and hit John right on the top of his head,
knocked him out there. He went down like a kind
of bricks. I was standing about two meters away from
when that happened, and one of the Christian brothers came
(26:09):
over and another kid and I sat John up and
we said, you know, his mother lives over there, and
the teacher said, I'm not going there. Other kid and
I took John hame to Claire and explained what had happened.
And John was a bit adult, but we took him home.
So the teachers didn't want to get involved with Claire.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
The colonel still haunts Brian.
Speaker 10 (26:31):
On another occasion, there's a bit of a gully that
runs down behind the old house into the tree, and
my brother, sister and I were there with him, playing
around there, and Claire apparently had been calling for John
to come out, and I can honestly say not one
of us heard it, but we literally did not hear Claire.
(26:52):
But the next thing, she came down the lane with
a stockwhip and she felted him home. She drove him
home like he was being so he had a tough mother,
a tough tough lady.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
David Pattinson, who sadly passed away shortly after speaking to
us during the making of this podcast, was in the
same primary school class as Reagan. He too heard about
the monster that was the Colonel.
Speaker 10 (27:22):
I remember.
Speaker 8 (27:23):
He god.
Speaker 12 (27:24):
He actually had a fight at school with Paul Gibson,
who all gave him my bloody nose. Then another took
him down to his mother and she's worked with the
behind the bar and she came out with it with
the cloth of the bar wiped his face, said you
(27:44):
get out of him and get back there and give
him a bleating nose.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
Another of Reagan's school friends, Michael Rule used to have
a sleepover at Reagan's place. When Johnny and the Colonel
stated her parents farm just outside town. During Alf's drinking belts,
Michael said if he and Johnny did anything wrong, Claire's father,
(28:12):
Johnny's grandfather would chase them with a stock whip. Real
confirmed that the Colonel also whipped Johnny. That violence, it seemed,
had rubbed off on Stuart John Reagan, who told his
friend about his inner tiger. Michael explained it to Kelly.
Speaker 10 (28:39):
Jarley, I don't think you played.
Speaker 13 (28:42):
He used to take people because he.
Speaker 8 (28:43):
Is to fly.
Speaker 14 (28:46):
He liked people, and then again you don't know what
city want and they have become a bisiness.
Speaker 8 (28:52):
He wasn't that good dad either.
Speaker 14 (28:55):
Short pees I said to me one day, I said,
you had the shortest fo years to go a buy her,
he said, he said, I've learned to control. When you control,
Beena Tiger, you have got a lot of control.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Brian had pitiful memories of Reagan's father Alf.
Speaker 10 (29:23):
The other thing you had with John was that Alf
was apparently a good worker when he wasn't drinking. But
Alf was a fiendish drinker. Other kids than I used
to see Alf in the city in the gutter outside
the Australia drinking lass flagans stuff. It wasn't there, it
(29:44):
was there was a fortified wine and I saw in
the one city in his own Europe in the gutter.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
Another schoolmate, John Woods, or Woodsy as he was known
as a kid, had fond memories of Reagan.
Speaker 13 (30:00):
Were any Mass once and there were some kids talking
in Mass and I sort of just turned around and said, hey, hey,
stop it, we're in Mass and they jumped on my
black told me I'm not the bloody bullied them or
something like that.
Speaker 8 (30:20):
Norlady was just so quiet.
Speaker 14 (30:22):
Anyway.
Speaker 13 (30:23):
Johnny came across and grab the bloke and I said,
you're him alone. He's you know, he's not caught in
any trouble, and he's just at different times.
Speaker 14 (30:33):
He was always not protective of me, but courteous, plot
whatever whatever.
Speaker 13 (30:39):
Word you want to use.
Speaker 6 (30:41):
He was just always just a nice bloke.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
Kelly asked Woodsy about the allegations of animal cruelty against Reagan,
pitchforking possums to death, killing kittens and dogs.
Speaker 4 (30:59):
Now, when you were growing up with John, like at
the school, did you ever see him hurt any animals?
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Animals that's one.
Speaker 4 (31:07):
Of the things they've portrayed him as that he as
a child he was a psychopath and he used to
kill animals, which I can find no proof of. He
put a stake through a possum, is the allegation. It's
not out of up and I would have murdered.
Speaker 8 (31:21):
Look awesome.
Speaker 12 (31:23):
I think it'd be more quite the opposite.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
Of local Kevy. Powdery also had no recollection of Reagan
and his so called psychopathic streak. He debunked the often
repeated myth that Reagan, as a boy, had run a
pitchfork through a possum. Kevy it was a class below
Reagan at school and set up an ingenious lunchtime scam.
(31:50):
When the marble craze hit Saint Joseph's in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 15 (31:56):
We were getting all the marbles in the school by
having a game with all the holes in the board,
and people used to fire their hole their marbles at it,
and if they got it through the hole, you got
paid the amount of marbles and whatever the number was
on them and at the mess and it didn't go through,
I got the marble, and after about two days I'd
taken every marble out of the school and in the
(32:19):
finish when I was taking the last of them and
no one had any marbles, And then the bigger kids
in the classes above came in and was going to
take the board and the marbles off me. Then Johnny
came along and told them to piss off, that there
was nothing wrong with what I was doing. You know,
if you don't want to play, don't play. They all left.
(32:39):
No one was going to come and stand it to
me because Johnny said piss off. He was bigger than
all the other kids. He just stood up for the
littler kids.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
So what does all this say about Reagan as a child,
That he disliked bullies and defended smaller children, that nobody
could recall his cruelty towards animals. As per the myth
about him that has continued to this day, the Colonel
we heard struck fear into adults and children alike, and
(33:16):
alf was a booze sodden ghost. As for Johnny Reagan,
his upbringing had been unstable from the outset. He was
subjected to cruelty at the hand of his own mother.
She was physically aggressive towards him and encouraged him to
(33:37):
be aggressive towards others. Her answer to a problem, it appeared,
was violence. One serious byproduct of all this, as Michael
Rule witnessed and others would experience firsthand through Reagan's brief
but explosive career as an underworld figure, was his notorious
(34:01):
short fuse, deadly force could seemingly come out of nowhere.
What's heartbreaking about this story is that on many occasions
a young Reagan actually snuck out of the family home
and young and went around to his paternal grandmother's house,
(34:23):
that's Alf's mum. He would see his father there and
be a part of a family, his family when his
mother was working behind the bar at the Australian Hotel.
Kelly and I discussed this. So the picture we're getting here,
from when he was a little boy to even leading
(34:45):
up to his death in his late twenties is that
you have a child sneaking around trying to connect with
an actual family, but doing so and trying to conceal
that connection from his own mother. What is that saying
about the Colonel.
Speaker 4 (35:02):
Well, it's not saying much about her, but it's also
not saying much about some of the Reagans either, that
they let that little boy stay with her when they
knew what she was like?
Speaker 3 (35:10):
Do you think they would have known or are we
giving them the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 4 (35:14):
I think giving them the benefit of the doubt would
be a bit rich because they would have had to
have known. Pop and Uncle Jack were certainly pillars. They
were well known in the community. They would have been
around the pubs. They would have known what Claire was like.
Talk would have come back to them for sure. Like
It's only a small town. Population would have been around
(35:34):
two or three thousand, I'd imagine.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
So how do you hide a sister in law and
a nephew in a town of that size.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
I don't think you would have hidden. It was kind
of they knew, but they didn't know, do you know
what I mean?
Speaker 4 (35:47):
Like wasn't talked about, or they probably didn't even know
that it was a secret and Dad was at a
different school.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Yeah, it's very weird.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
But it's safe to say from the stories with her
thus far, that the common element at the heart of
this fractured family is Claire Reagan. Everyone's tiptoeing around the.
Speaker 4 (36:08):
Colonel, absolutely tiptoeing or completely shutting her out. That marriage
never had a chance.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
The true depth of misery that was going on behind
closed doors in Reagan's various childhood homes, and what we
would say now were factors that contributed to a future
life of violence would soon be made public. By the
time Reagan was in his teens, the profession awaiting him
(36:41):
was almost inevitable gangster. In April nineteen forty six, less
than two years after they were married, Claire Reagan took
out what was called a prohibition order against her husband
(37:04):
Alf in the New South Wales Supreme Court. We don't
know the precise contents of the order, but given his
problem with alcohol, it may have contained directions that he
not be permitted inside a licensed premises purchase alcohol, or
even that he stay away from his wife and nineteen
(37:26):
month old son. Alf's drinking by this time was out
of control. According to court documents, Claire said that whenever
he was in town, he would head to the pub
on Saturday morning and returned home at night already drunk
and with more alcohol supplies, including a bottle of rum
(37:48):
and four bottles of wine, which he would drink throughout
the night. If he ran out of supplies, he would
head into town for more. We have used a voice
actor to read some excerpts from actual documents in Claire
Reagan's divorce court case. She said of the prohibition order,
(38:14):
according to those court documents.
Speaker 16 (38:19):
One of his brothers approached me and informed me that
he and the other brother had lodged an appeal and
pleaded to me to stand down from the appeal, which
I did. They said if he continued with the drinking bouts,
they would take out a prohibition order themselves against him,
to give him a chance. I did not turn up
to the appeal.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
Nothing changed, so on February five, nineteen forty nine, she
petitioned for a divorce. They had been married for just
over four and a half years and little Johnny was
three and a half years old. The petition also asked
that she be given custody of the child and weekly
(38:59):
maintenance payments. During the hearing before Judge Byrne, the Colonel
painted a scathing picture of husband alf as a habitual
drunk who had been hospitalized several times for alcohol abuse.
She said he had lost jobs because of his drinking
(39:20):
and that he regularly suffered the horrors.
Speaker 16 (39:26):
I was going to work one morning and he came
out and he asked me if he could see the
child he was standing out in the rain, and I
said yes, And he came in and he was scared
out of his wits. He said there were men chasing him.
I was a bit doubtful myself, and I did not
know what he was talking about. He said, chaps with
tortoise were chasing him. My father informed me he was
(39:46):
in the horrors.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
Her legal counsel, Mister Clements, then asked about Alf's temperament
when he was drunk, when he was in these bouts.
Speaker 8 (39:57):
What was his attitude towards you? Was he treatment kind? No?
Speaker 16 (40:02):
It was not. If I said the wrong thing, I
was likely to have a blow come at me. Would
it be with a closed fist, yes, closed fist.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
Did you receive them regularly.
Speaker 16 (40:15):
Oh, yes, quite frequently.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
Claire was also asked about a specific visit by Alf
in October nineteen forty six.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
What was his condition when he came to see you?
Speaker 16 (40:29):
He was practically drunk the whole time I was there.
He came home and he was very drunk and he
hit me and as a result I had to bring
Constable Bagnol to my assistance. He hit me with his
fist on the face.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
Did he do anything to the baby On that occasion.
Speaker 16 (40:45):
He pulled the baby and me both out of bed.
He pulled the tick right off the bed.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
Claire told the court that Alf had struck her or
attempted to pull out her hair more than twenty times
during their short marriage. For the bulk of it, Claire
and the baby lived with her parents on their farm
on the edge of young On Boxing Day nineteen forty eight,
(41:12):
there was another major drama. Claire told the court.
Speaker 16 (41:18):
He came out on Sunday and had a bottle of
beer and insisted on me having a drink. But I
had never drink at all. I'm a non drinker. I
did not mind him having a bottle, seeing it was
Christmas time. With a result, I only thought he had
a beer, and then I went to a neighbor's place.
I was away about three quarters of an hour when
it came back. A bottle of OPI rum was nearly
empty on the table.
Speaker 8 (41:40):
She said.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
Alf was splayed across her bed, unable to speak. She
got him off the bed and out of the house.
Alf then roused, went to the back door and kicked
it in. Claire went on.
Speaker 16 (41:58):
My father interfered then and said you'll have to pay
for that door.
Speaker 8 (42:01):
Alf.
Speaker 16 (42:02):
With a result, he pulled my father out of the
door and put the boot in his head. I stood
between them and he hit me again. My father had
to go to the hospital. Needless to say, I hit
my husband two on that particular occasion.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
What did you hit him with with a bottle?
Speaker 3 (42:18):
In the end, Judge Byrne decided unanimously in Claire Reagan's favor.
Speaker 17 (42:25):
I accept the petitioner's evidence and all the other evidence
in this case. She appears to me to be a
particularly good type of woman, and I have no hesitation
at all in accepting her evidence. I find the three
issues in the affirmative.
Speaker 3 (42:48):
The colonel's recollection of Alf in her evidence as some
wife bashing, hair pulling, door destroying maniac while under the influence,
didn't match the Reagan family's memory of him. He is
Kelly talking to her father, Lindsey, who was Alf's nephew.
Speaker 4 (43:09):
Now, Dad, can you tell me what you remember about
Uncle Alf.
Speaker 8 (43:14):
To anybody to say that Uncle Alf was violent, he
is absolutely a joke. I knew him very well. I
never ever saw him get upset, cranky, or even nasty
because Uncle Alf never had a violent bone in his body.
I used to see him on a very regular basis,
because he would come in the office when he was
in young and when he was saber, he would come
(43:35):
in and say. One day he came in, he said
to me something about I hadn't done the right thing,
or I'd done something wrong. He wasn't cranky, he wasn't nasty,
and he walked out, and quarter of an hour later
he came back in tears, apologizing to me that he
went cook on me. Now, that was the sort of
person he was. I don't think he ever swore at
(43:56):
anybody in his life. I don't think he ever raised
his voice to anybody. I certainly never heard him do
it anyhow.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
So what was true? There is ample evidence that Alf
was a hopeless alcoholic, also that he had an endearing
side to him, and this is the phrase often used
by family and friends when he was sober. But Claire
Reagan's court testimony about his alleged violence is excruciatingly emotive, detailed,
(44:31):
and on the written page, even after seventy five years,
difficult to dismiss. This was not the end of the affair.
Speaker 8 (44:47):
For years in the.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Town of Young As Johnny Reagan got hit on the
head by cricket balls at school and defended small children
from bullies and got horsewhipped in public by his mother.
His father Alf passed out in the town gutters, and
the Colonel pulled biers at the Australian. As Alf lived
with his parents and Claire lived with hers, their matrimonial
(45:12):
war continued to play out. When Johnny was six years
old in nineteen fifty one, his father was sent to
a mental institution in Morrissett, south of Newcastle for twelve months.
The Colonel relentlessly pursued Alf for alimony payments. This went
(45:35):
on for several years. Very few people in town by
this stage would not have heard of the ongoing saga
that was Reagan versus Reagan. Then came a major turning
point in the late nineteen fifties. Alf, hopelessly behind on
(45:56):
his alimony payments, was sentenced to a short stint in
Long Bay Jail in Sydney, and Claire and Johnny would
disappear from Young. The Colonel went from her parents strawberry
farm outside a country town to a narrow townhouse in
(46:17):
Liverpool Street, Darlinghurst, in the heart of Sydney's Red Light district,
and Johnny would serve time in one of New South
Wales's most fertile schools for future criminals, the Mount Penang
Home for Boys in Gosford on the New South Wales
(46:38):
Central Coast. There he would meet boys who would become
in just a few short years the toughest gangsters and
most ruthless killers in the Sydney Underworld, men Reagan would
mix with and do business with on the outside, and
(47:00):
ad men who may have played a role in Reagan's
actual murder in distant nineteen seventy four. Families have their
fair share of secrets, But when your clan has featured
not just one of Australia's most notorious crook's killers in
(47:23):
Stuart John Reagan, but a man whose murder has remained
unsolved for fifty years, unexpected facts, hidden or forgotten can
rise to the surface over time. For the Reagans, one
story has never gone away. After Reagan's stretch at Mount Penang,
(47:49):
he would return to the Colonel in Liverpool Street, primed
and ready for a criminal career. History shows he quickly
went to work as a standover man in Darlinghurst and
King's Cross, a teenage pimp and protector known for his
explosive temper and extreme violence. He would soon come to
(48:14):
the attention of Sydney's underworld boss Frederick Paddles Anderson meet
his future de facto wife marg In a go go bar,
and bash and bludgeon his way up the criminal ladder.
But exactly how did this boy straight out of a
(48:36):
reformatory school almost instantly find himself a fixture in Sydney's
shadowy criminal world. Kelly remembers a shocking family anecdote about
the Colonel, a story that may explain, after half a century,
(48:58):
how this country kid Cherrytown transformed overnight into a budding gangster.
Speaker 18 (49:08):
So we've worked out with John it looks like he
left young after year five because we can't find a
year six photo of him, so he's obviously gone to Sydney. Then,
it's just feels strange that if she's petitioning for prohibition
and divorce in nineteen forty six, it's just two years
after they've been married. Obviously they have stayed in town
for reasons unknown, and then they've gone to Sydney. It
(49:31):
just seems a bit strange like we know that during
her time in young she worked at the Australian Hotel,
which to my mind was always just a local pub
in town. But we've been told by the current owners
of the Aussie Hotel now that grandmother worked back in
the day and that it was actually a brothel, which
I had not known, but had tied in with the
(49:53):
things that the family had always talked about that when
she'd gone to Sydney, she'd set up a brothel. When
John comes out of Nang the Boys Home, he's got
a ready made job there.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
His mother's got a brock a running.
Speaker 4 (50:07):
She's already got girls working and that's where he got
his start.
Speaker 3 (50:14):
In the next episode of The Gangster's Ghost, the.
Speaker 19 (50:18):
One strange thing at Mount Ernanga like thel, when you
go in the front gate is a boomerang. I couldn't
work out why they had this boomerang over the entrance.
It was really quite simple and you come here, you're
going to come back.
Speaker 1 (50:45):
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 Leat samagru our executive producer
is Me, Editorial director Claire Harvey. Special thanks to Laura i'mos,
Erica Rutledge, Kristin Amiot, Jasper Leek, Stephanie Coombs, Sean Callanan,
Lachlan Clear, Ryan Osland, Amanda will Williams, Christine Kelleg, Taron Blackhurst,
(51:10):
Magdalena Zajack, Giselle Boetti, Genevieve Brammel, Lauren Bruce, Sus Rolf
and Yachini 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 dot au
Speaker 12 (52:01):
Ca.
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 U. This is episode two of The Gangster's Ghost.
To really get into this story here episode one first
at Gangstersghost dot com dot AU.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
When I went on this venture with Matt, I knew
that I would find a monster, and I wasn't really sure.
I just knew I wanted to find the truth. And
so far in John's childhood, I think I have found
a monster, but that monster was certainly not John. What
I'm finding is a little boy that was brought up
(00:57):
in horrific circumstances, flogged by his grandfather, flogged by his mother,
and then goes on to go to the Gosford's Boys' Home,
where the head of the boy's home says to one
of John's friends later in life, oh, we flogged it
out of him too, Like everywhere this little boy turned,
he got flogged. What does people expect or is that
(01:21):
what was expected of him. You know, he goes down
to his mother.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
This is Kelly Slater Reagan, former New South Wales copper,
sheep farmer, wheat grower, and also the cousin to Johnny Reagan,
one of the toughest, most feared and hated gangsters in
Australian history. For years now, Kelly and I have been
(01:48):
on the trail of the true story behind Reagan. In
myth they called him the Magician, the man who could
make people disappear. They say he murdered between eight and
twelve people, including a child, But who was he really?
Almost fifty years after he was gunned down in a
(02:11):
Sydney suburban street by three assassins, aged just twenty nine,
Kelly and her family want to know the truth about
him and given his murder is one of New South Wales'
most enduring cold cases. Who killed Reagan and why? From
(02:33):
the beginning of our investigation, I asked Kelly to keep
an audio diary to freely express what was going on
in her mind and her heart as we sifted through
the fact and fiction surrounding her notorious relative. So she did.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
He goes down to his mother.
Speaker 4 (02:57):
At school with a bloody nurse she wants.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Don't come home to your bloody No hugs, no cuddles,
no genuine affection or kindness. What sort of damage does
that do to a little boy? Is what I'm thinking today.
And the other thing I'm thinking is where was his
father's family, my family? Where were they?
Speaker 3 (03:16):
You know, I've been fascinated by Stuart John Reagan for decades.
He was the last of the old school gangsters. A
pimp and standover man in his teens, a rapist and
murderer by his mid twenties, A man so unpredictably violent
(03:37):
that just the mention of his name struck fear into
Sydney's criminal miliere, and not just a few police officers.
Reagan wore a bulletproof vest and was always accompanied by
a bodyguard. According to all reports, he was a bona
fide psychopath with all the cliched traits, cruelty to animals,
(04:02):
no empathy, cold and violent and brutal. When Kelly joined
me on this journey into the world of her long
dead cousin, we both knew there had to be more
to him than a couple of brief television documentaries and
the occasional cameo in true crime books, where he was
(04:23):
invariably described as a man so heenous he thought nothing
of killing and disposing of a toddler, the child of
one of his lovers, because the infant annoyed him. Stuart
John Reagan was the worst of the worst. Take this
(04:45):
from Suburban Gangsters, a Channel nine true crime documentary series
hosted by journalist Adam Shand that went to air in
two thousand and nineteen.
Speaker 5 (04:56):
This is the story of the magician Stuart John Reagan.
Reagan was a pimp, rapist, standover man, and child murderer
who enjoyed inflicting pain.
Speaker 6 (05:07):
Stuart John Reagan was a malicious, vicious, violent criminal whom
I would raid among one of, if not the worst
criminal I ever came across during my retire police career.
Speaker 7 (05:24):
Of all the criminals I ever knew were dealt with
as a crime reporter, Reagan would probably have been the
most vicious and deadly of the lot, the most heartless.
Speaker 5 (05:35):
Stuart John Reagan was born in the quiet country town
of Young New South Wales in nineteen forty five. Not
much is known about his early life, apart from his
love of violence.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Well, if you're ever looking for a psychopath.
Speaker 8 (05:50):
Reagan ticks all the boxes.
Speaker 7 (05:52):
No one was surprised to learn that as a child
he killed animals. He harmed animals. There was a story
that he used to pitchfork to kill a possum. He
killed kittens and dogs, and he just had no empathy
for any living being whatsoever.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
These are the types of stories repeated over and over
about Reagan. Kelly has heard them all, but she wanted
to dig deeper, so we started at the beginning. Who
were his parents, Claire Mary Raul and Alfred Frederick Reagan.
(06:37):
Was Reagan like a chemical compound, the amalgam of two
evil forces? Was he a natural born killer? Or did
something happen to him in his formative years? What occurred
in his childhood that might betray a future of violence
(07:00):
and a complete lack of respect for human life? This
was the puzzle Kelly and I were faced with. She'd
also need to take a long, hard look at herself,
So we started our search in the tiny township of Young,
(07:21):
the cherry capital of Australia on the southwestern slopes of
New South Wales, where Reagan was born and where this
whole story began. Young is a small country town the
Reagans were one of the pioneering families in this part
of Australia, and there are still Reagans in the phone book.
(07:45):
We needed to go back to his school, find schoolmates,
if any were still alive, go to his childhood homes
and discover what his life was like as a kid.
We had to piece together the birth of a gangster,
and crucially, we had to uncover that monster that has
(08:08):
haunted this story for decades, Reagan's mother, Claire, the woman
they called the Colonel. I'm journalist Matthew Condon and This
is the Gangster's Ghost, a podcast from The Australian. In
(08:28):
this investigation, we uncover previously unreported facts about the short
lived criminal career of Stuart John Reagan, speak to his family,
friends and business associates 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
(08:52):
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 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
(09:16):
with the generational stain of a murderer whose death was
celebrated by criminals and police alike. This is episode two
(09:39):
the Colonel. In the early days of this investigation, I
took it for granted that Kel, a strong and uncompromising woman,
loyal to family and with an unwavering moral compass, would
(10:02):
take this plunge into her family history in her stride.
But as time went on, I understood how deeply the
whole thing affected her. The more we learned, the more
it went straight to the heart. This is another entry
in Kelly's personal audio diary.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Years later. I'm sitting in a police recruitment interview, being
grilled on a boy that turned into a monster and
a man. And now I'm starting to think, well, the
monster was created, and then the myth was created to
fit the monster, and it's just wrong. It's so wrong.
Speaker 8 (10:47):
You know.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
I'm open and prepared to see that John was a
murderer and that he committed atrocious crimes. I understand that,
But I'm finding a little boy that's stuck up for
the underdog, didn't allow the big kids to bully the
little kids. I'm saying that a murderer was created, but
I'm not saying a child murderer, So I guess we
(11:09):
continue to dig.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
That digging took us to the small town of muham Borough,
only about thirty kilometers south of Young Claire. Mary Raoul
was born there in nineteen thirteen. Her father, John Patrick,
was a farmer. From the outset, it appears Claire wasn't
backwards in coming forward. In her twenties, she was training
(11:41):
and racing greyhounds at the murham Borough Coursing Club and
was regularly in the winner's circle. In nineteen thirty eight
in the Kurrawong Stakes, she came second with her dog
Jim's Lass, and at some point she met sheepsharer Alfred
(12:02):
Frederick Reagan from Young Kelly has vague memories of her
great uncle.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
Alf Uncle alf used to be a shearer and he
used to travel around like all the western areas back
in those days.
Speaker 9 (12:21):
Ready for the first run. Each man bring homes and
cutters for the hand piece. The rest of the machinery
belongs to the owner of the ship. There were flanel shirts.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
Of travel out and you'd cheer four weeks and ended
at shearing sheds all around this place, like Hillstone and
Griffith and everywhere else.
Speaker 9 (12:41):
In this game, more hayes means less speed and damaged
seap as well.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
So I've been told he was a very good sharer.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
But the problem with Uncle Alf was that once he
finished hearing, he'd come home and then he would drink.
But I can remember him being down the main street.
He used to sit outside the old Tafe building which
is just up from the Australian Hotel, which is where
he drank. And he used to sit out there on
a bench and wait for us kids to come and
we run across the road because Dad's shop was over
(13:10):
the other side, and he'd give us too.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Bob to go and get some lollies.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
He used to always tip his hat to ask the
ladies as they walked past. He was a very very
old gentlemanly person like he was always.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
How Alf and Claire actually met is lost to history.
Was he shearing in her neck of the woods? Did
they meet in a pub? The Regans don't know. Perhaps
Alf and Claire took the steam train, a short thirty
kilometer ride between Young and mum Burro when they were courting,
(13:50):
But courting maybe the wrong word to use in this case.
That would imply a conventional romance, the thrill of falling
in love. Nothing was conventional about this relationship. It was
odd from the start and quickly became peculiar. Alf and
(14:16):
Claire were married in nineteen forty four at Hillston, a
small town three hundred kilometers west of both Young and Murramborough.
The family can only speculate why they married so far
from their respective homes. Perhaps Alf was shearing in the
(14:37):
region at the time. There's a theory that Claire was
working as a bar maid at a hotel there. Still,
it was an odd start to a marriage that very
quickly proved to be a mistake. In every family, there
is an outlier, a person whose life becomes a satellite
(14:57):
to the main family game, a curio not worthy of
consideration or even basic respect, just as sick pigeons are
rejected by the flock. Alf's life upon marrying Claire seemed
to have been jettisoned from the normal functioning of the
Greater Reagan family. In fact, Claire's existence was completely ignored.
(15:29):
This is Kelly talking to her dad Lindsey about this
strange affair.
Speaker 8 (15:36):
I never knew that Uncle alf Ever got married. I
didn't know that Uncle alf Ever was involved with the
woman because I'd never ever seen him with the lady.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
Tell me what this seems extraordinary? Given the size of
young in the nineteen forties and the influence of the Reagans,
how could they not know about the Colonel Kelly suspects
the family may have rejected Claire Raoul outright, given the
families deep and some might say pedigreed roots going right
(16:08):
back to the foundations of the town. Claire, as they say,
did not come from the right side of the tracks.
Here's Kelly with her dad again.
Speaker 8 (16:20):
I'm down?
Speaker 4 (16:21):
And what about the comparisons? Like the three Reagan boys
all married Carwell girls. Now back in the thirties, the
call Walls were quite a well to do family, you
could call them land a gentry.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
They were both pioneering families.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
I would imagine that those three weddings would have been
quite celebrated and compared to the Carbel girls, Claire would
have been fair to say if she felt intimidated when
she's coming into a family of that dynamics, do you reckon?
Speaker 8 (16:51):
Certainly would just from my experience, once again, I didn't
know her or in their girls, but I don't think
that she ever was in the family setting.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
So never come for Christmas, never family gathering, never.
Speaker 8 (17:06):
Ever, never ever, I would say she was never asked,
never even spoken of, because I know they well as
I saying it was fifteen or something, and I never
even knew he existed? Was John Reagan?
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Claire and Alf settled in young not long after their marriage,
or did they. Some family members say now that Alf
never stopped living with his mother, even when Claire was
residing in town as his new wife. Still, there were
very early signs that this was a fatally mismatched couple.
(17:46):
Alf disappeared for weeks at a time on the Shearing circuit.
Claire took a job as a barmaid at the Australian
Hotel in the main drag Burrower Street. This pub, formerly
the Shamrock Inn back in the gold rush days, would
(18:06):
inevitably become the sinking ship of the Reagan marriage. When
he was in town, Alf had his favorite stool there
while the Colonel captained the bar. Today, the Australian Hotel
(18:35):
is a vibrant family pub with fantastic food at very
reasonable prices. We paid a visit and had lunch, and
quickly learned from the new owners that it, like almost
everyone and everything in this story, had its ghosts, Claire
and Alf included.
Speaker 10 (18:56):
My grandmother used to work here, and my mom did
so work upstairs, jens and cleaning, and I.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
Used to drink here all the time. But it needs
to be a brothel in the early early days.
Speaker 7 (19:06):
This is what I've.
Speaker 10 (19:07):
Been informed of late eighteen hundred.
Speaker 8 (19:11):
Where did your mum wear?
Speaker 4 (19:13):
Oh my god, your grandmother would have worked here, Claire raw, Claire.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
And you're over lunch In the noisy pub, we discussed
Claire and ELF's doomed marriage. So why does a couple
not get married in the town as they have to
go somewhere else to actually get married? In the pub,
like everywhere else in Young it felt as if you
(19:45):
could almost reach out and touch the past. It didn't
require a great stretch of an intimation to see Claire
here behind the bar pulling beers, and her still the husband, Alf,
drinking away his wages across the counter. They must have
(20:06):
glanced at each other over the damp via mets and
wondered about their future together. Perhaps they sensed it was
finished before it had even started. Then Claire fell pregnant.
Speaker 9 (20:34):
A short time ago, an American aeroplane dropped one bomb
on Hiroshima. It is an atomic bomb.
Speaker 11 (20:44):
The Japanese have accepted our terms fully. This, ladies and gentlemen,
is the end of the Second Worldwide.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
It's August nineteen forty five, and the world rejoiced when
Japan formally surrendered on September two. Even in rural Young
in western New South Wales, with its statues in the
main street commemorating the sacrifice of local men in the
(21:22):
First World War, they would have been celebrated too, blowing
the froth off a cold one at the Australian Hotel.
Less than two weeks later, on September thirteenth, nineteen forty five,
Stuart John Reagan, the only child of Claien Alf, was
(21:44):
born in Young. It should have been a happy moment
for the extended Reagan family in the immediate wake of
peace across the world, but it appears nobody in the
wider Reagan clan even you of the birth, just as
very few were aware that Alf was even married. Alf
(22:07):
built a ramshackle house for his new family by the
Creek in smythe Lane a couple of minutes walked from
his mother's house near the corner of Thornhill and Spring Streets.
But there's a curious dispute in the family as to
whether alf Ever domiciled with his wife and son. I
(22:30):
talked to Kelly about it and asked the question where
was alf living when baby Johnny came home from the hospital.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Alf would have been with his mother. I don't think
he ever moved out, to be honest.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
So he might have still been living with his mother
while five hundred meters away his wife and son are
living by the creek.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Correct.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
She does mention in and there's documents that he dropped
in and out when he felt like it.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
Maybe at the very beginning he might have lived with
them when he built that, But I think he built
the house for Aaron john Yeah. Dad certainly doesn't remember
Uncle ELpH being anywhere but with his mother or away hearing.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
So this was little Johnny Reagan's strangulated world in a
small country town, his father coming and going, and his
mother the colonel ruling the roost. Reagan attended the local
Catholic school, Saint Joseph's, not far from his home, by
the Creek from kindergarten to grade three. He then went
(23:43):
on to the Christian Brothers College. We went and saw
Father Alan Crowe at Reagan's old college. You could almost
see the site of the former Reagan home from a
corner of the school playground. Father Crow had gone to
the school himself. He explained how Reagan would have started
(24:05):
kindergarten in nineteen fifty at Saint Joseph's and by year
three transitioned to the nearby Christian Brothers College. In preparation
for our visit, Father Crow had retrieved some old yearbooks
from the library we set up in his office.
Speaker 4 (24:27):
So he would have started king year nine fifty, wouldn't it.
Speaker 7 (24:30):
Yes, you were behind John.
Speaker 12 (24:32):
Worne fifty four, more than the year he started at
Christian Brothers.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
Reagan appeared sporadically in the yearbooks, a serious young boy.
In his black and white class photographs, he did not
smile in a single picture. Kelly tracked down several of
Reagan's old schoolmates. Some remembered him fondly, others had a
(25:05):
harsher assessment. However, all of them, bar none, recalled with horror,
even after seventy years.
Speaker 8 (25:15):
The Colonel.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
One of those schoolmates was Brian English.
Speaker 10 (25:26):
John was a slightly lonely, sort of angry kid, not
many friends, and kids were a bit frightened of it.
I'm not saying he was a bully, but you wouldn't
cross it, and the teachers in the school were afraid
of Claire. I remember on one occasion we used to
play cricket in the schoolyard and kids would take its
(25:48):
turn to be in the bat and John was not playing.
He was just standing in the yard and Suddody belted
a cricket ball right up in the air, came down
and hit John right on the top of his head,
knocked him out there. He went down like a kind
of bricks. I was standing about two meters away from
when that happened, and one of the Christian brothers came
(26:09):
over and another kid and I sat John up and
we said, you know, his mother lives over there, and
the teacher said, I'm not going there. Other kid and
I took John hame to Claire and explained what had happened.
And John was a bit adult, but we took him home.
So the teachers didn't want to get involved with Claire.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
The colonel still haunts Brian.
Speaker 10 (26:31):
On another occasion, there's a bit of a gully that
runs down behind the old house into the tree, and
my brother, sister and I were there with him, playing
around there, and Claire apparently had been calling for John
to come out, and I can honestly say not one
of us heard it, but we literally did not hear Claire.
(26:52):
But the next thing, she came down the lane with
a stockwhip and she felted him home. She drove him
home like he was being so he had a tough mother,
a tough tough lady.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
David Pattinson, who sadly passed away shortly after speaking to
us during the making of this podcast, was in the
same primary school class as Reagan. He too heard about
the monster that was the Colonel.
Speaker 10 (27:22):
I remember.
Speaker 8 (27:23):
He god.
Speaker 12 (27:24):
He actually had a fight at school with Paul Gibson,
who all gave him my bloody nose. Then another took
him down to his mother and she's worked with the
behind the bar and she came out with it with
the cloth of the bar wiped his face, said you
(27:44):
get out of him and get back there and give
him a bleating nose.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
Another of Reagan's school friends, Michael Rule used to have
a sleepover at Reagan's place. When Johnny and the Colonel
stated her parents farm just outside town. During Alf's drinking belts,
Michael said if he and Johnny did anything wrong, Claire's father,
(28:12):
Johnny's grandfather would chase them with a stock whip. Real
confirmed that the Colonel also whipped Johnny. That violence, it seemed,
had rubbed off on Stuart John Reagan, who told his
friend about his inner tiger. Michael explained it to Kelly.
Speaker 10 (28:39):
Jarley, I don't think you played.
Speaker 13 (28:42):
He used to take people because he.
Speaker 8 (28:43):
Is to fly.
Speaker 14 (28:46):
He liked people, and then again you don't know what
city want and they have become a bisiness.
Speaker 8 (28:52):
He wasn't that good dad either.
Speaker 14 (28:55):
Short pees I said to me one day, I said,
you had the shortest fo years to go a buy her,
he said, he said, I've learned to control. When you control,
Beena Tiger, you have got a lot of control.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Brian had pitiful memories of Reagan's father Alf.
Speaker 10 (29:23):
The other thing you had with John was that Alf
was apparently a good worker when he wasn't drinking. But
Alf was a fiendish drinker. Other kids than I used
to see Alf in the city in the gutter outside
the Australia drinking lass flagans stuff. It wasn't there, it
(29:44):
was there was a fortified wine and I saw in
the one city in his own Europe in the gutter.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
Another schoolmate, John Woods, or Woodsy as he was known
as a kid, had fond memories of Reagan.
Speaker 13 (30:00):
Were any Mass once and there were some kids talking
in Mass and I sort of just turned around and said, hey, hey,
stop it, we're in Mass and they jumped on my
black told me I'm not the bloody bullied them or
something like that.
Speaker 8 (30:20):
Norlady was just so quiet.
Speaker 14 (30:22):
Anyway.
Speaker 13 (30:23):
Johnny came across and grab the bloke and I said,
you're him alone. He's you know, he's not caught in
any trouble, and he's just at different times.
Speaker 14 (30:33):
He was always not protective of me, but courteous, plot
whatever whatever.
Speaker 13 (30:39):
Word you want to use.
Speaker 6 (30:41):
He was just always just a nice bloke.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
Kelly asked Woodsy about the allegations of animal cruelty against Reagan,
pitchforking possums to death, killing kittens and dogs.
Speaker 4 (30:59):
Now, when you were growing up with John, like at
the school, did you ever see him hurt any animals?
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Animals that's one.
Speaker 4 (31:07):
Of the things they've portrayed him as that he as
a child he was a psychopath and he used to
kill animals, which I can find no proof of. He
put a stake through a possum, is the allegation. It's
not out of up and I would have murdered.
Speaker 8 (31:21):
Look awesome.
Speaker 12 (31:23):
I think it'd be more quite the opposite.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
Of local Kevy. Powdery also had no recollection of Reagan
and his so called psychopathic streak. He debunked the often
repeated myth that Reagan, as a boy, had run a
pitchfork through a possum. Kevy it was a class below
Reagan at school and set up an ingenious lunchtime scam.
(31:50):
When the marble craze hit Saint Joseph's in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 15 (31:56):
We were getting all the marbles in the school by
having a game with all the holes in the board,
and people used to fire their hole their marbles at it,
and if they got it through the hole, you got
paid the amount of marbles and whatever the number was
on them and at the mess and it didn't go through,
I got the marble, and after about two days I'd
taken every marble out of the school and in the
(32:19):
finish when I was taking the last of them and
no one had any marbles, And then the bigger kids
in the classes above came in and was going to
take the board and the marbles off me. Then Johnny
came along and told them to piss off, that there
was nothing wrong with what I was doing. You know,
if you don't want to play, don't play. They all left.
(32:39):
No one was going to come and stand it to
me because Johnny said piss off. He was bigger than
all the other kids. He just stood up for the
littler kids.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
So what does all this say about Reagan as a child,
That he disliked bullies and defended smaller children, that nobody
could recall his cruelty towards animals. As per the myth
about him that has continued to this day, the Colonel
we heard struck fear into adults and children alike, and
(33:16):
alf was a booze sodden ghost. As for Johnny Reagan,
his upbringing had been unstable from the outset. He was
subjected to cruelty at the hand of his own mother.
She was physically aggressive towards him and encouraged him to
(33:37):
be aggressive towards others. Her answer to a problem, it appeared,
was violence. One serious byproduct of all this, as Michael
Rule witnessed and others would experience firsthand through Reagan's brief
but explosive career as an underworld figure, was his notorious
(34:01):
short fuse, deadly force could seemingly come out of nowhere.
What's heartbreaking about this story is that on many occasions
a young Reagan actually snuck out of the family home
and young and went around to his paternal grandmother's house,
(34:23):
that's Alf's mum. He would see his father there and
be a part of a family, his family when his
mother was working behind the bar at the Australian Hotel.
Kelly and I discussed this. So the picture we're getting here,
from when he was a little boy to even leading
(34:45):
up to his death in his late twenties is that
you have a child sneaking around trying to connect with
an actual family, but doing so and trying to conceal
that connection from his own mother. What is that saying
about the Colonel.
Speaker 4 (35:02):
Well, it's not saying much about her, but it's also
not saying much about some of the Reagans either, that
they let that little boy stay with her when they
knew what she was like?
Speaker 3 (35:10):
Do you think they would have known or are we
giving them the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 4 (35:14):
I think giving them the benefit of the doubt would
be a bit rich because they would have had to
have known. Pop and Uncle Jack were certainly pillars. They
were well known in the community. They would have been
around the pubs. They would have known what Claire was like.
Talk would have come back to them for sure. Like
It's only a small town. Population would have been around
(35:34):
two or three thousand, I'd imagine.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
So how do you hide a sister in law and
a nephew in a town of that size.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
I don't think you would have hidden. It was kind
of they knew, but they didn't know, do you know
what I mean?
Speaker 4 (35:47):
Like wasn't talked about, or they probably didn't even know
that it was a secret and Dad was at a
different school.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Yeah, it's very weird.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
But it's safe to say from the stories with her
thus far, that the common element at the heart of
this fractured family is Claire Reagan. Everyone's tiptoeing around the.
Speaker 4 (36:08):
Colonel, absolutely tiptoeing or completely shutting her out. That marriage
never had a chance.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
The true depth of misery that was going on behind
closed doors in Reagan's various childhood homes, and what we
would say now were factors that contributed to a future
life of violence would soon be made public. By the
time Reagan was in his teens, the profession awaiting him
(36:41):
was almost inevitable gangster. In April nineteen forty six, less
than two years after they were married, Claire Reagan took
out what was called a prohibition order against her husband
(37:04):
Alf in the New South Wales Supreme Court. We don't
know the precise contents of the order, but given his
problem with alcohol, it may have contained directions that he
not be permitted inside a licensed premises purchase alcohol, or
even that he stay away from his wife and nineteen
(37:26):
month old son. Alf's drinking by this time was out
of control. According to court documents, Claire said that whenever
he was in town, he would head to the pub
on Saturday morning and returned home at night already drunk
and with more alcohol supplies, including a bottle of rum
(37:48):
and four bottles of wine, which he would drink throughout
the night. If he ran out of supplies, he would
head into town for more. We have used a voice
actor to read some excerpts from actual documents in Claire
Reagan's divorce court case. She said of the prohibition order,
(38:14):
according to those court documents.
Speaker 16 (38:19):
One of his brothers approached me and informed me that
he and the other brother had lodged an appeal and
pleaded to me to stand down from the appeal, which
I did. They said if he continued with the drinking bouts,
they would take out a prohibition order themselves against him,
to give him a chance. I did not turn up
to the appeal.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
Nothing changed, so on February five, nineteen forty nine, she
petitioned for a divorce. They had been married for just
over four and a half years and little Johnny was
three and a half years old. The petition also asked
that she be given custody of the child and weekly
(38:59):
maintenance payments. During the hearing before Judge Byrne, the Colonel
painted a scathing picture of husband alf as a habitual
drunk who had been hospitalized several times for alcohol abuse.
She said he had lost jobs because of his drinking
(39:20):
and that he regularly suffered the horrors.
Speaker 16 (39:26):
I was going to work one morning and he came
out and he asked me if he could see the
child he was standing out in the rain, and I
said yes, And he came in and he was scared
out of his wits. He said there were men chasing him.
I was a bit doubtful myself, and I did not
know what he was talking about. He said, chaps with
tortoise were chasing him. My father informed me he was
(39:46):
in the horrors.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
Her legal counsel, Mister Clements, then asked about Alf's temperament
when he was drunk, when he was in these bouts.
Speaker 8 (39:57):
What was his attitude towards you? Was he treatment kind? No?
Speaker 16 (40:02):
It was not. If I said the wrong thing, I
was likely to have a blow come at me. Would
it be with a closed fist, yes, closed fist.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
Did you receive them regularly.
Speaker 16 (40:15):
Oh, yes, quite frequently.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
Claire was also asked about a specific visit by Alf
in October nineteen forty six.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
What was his condition when he came to see you?
Speaker 16 (40:29):
He was practically drunk the whole time I was there.
He came home and he was very drunk and he
hit me and as a result I had to bring
Constable Bagnol to my assistance. He hit me with his
fist on the face.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
Did he do anything to the baby On that occasion.
Speaker 16 (40:45):
He pulled the baby and me both out of bed.
He pulled the tick right off the bed.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
Claire told the court that Alf had struck her or
attempted to pull out her hair more than twenty times
during their short marriage. For the bulk of it, Claire
and the baby lived with her parents on their farm
on the edge of young On Boxing Day nineteen forty eight,
(41:12):
there was another major drama. Claire told the court.
Speaker 16 (41:18):
He came out on Sunday and had a bottle of
beer and insisted on me having a drink. But I
had never drink at all. I'm a non drinker. I
did not mind him having a bottle, seeing it was
Christmas time. With a result, I only thought he had
a beer, and then I went to a neighbor's place.
I was away about three quarters of an hour when
it came back. A bottle of OPI rum was nearly
empty on the table.
Speaker 8 (41:40):
She said.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
Alf was splayed across her bed, unable to speak. She
got him off the bed and out of the house.
Alf then roused, went to the back door and kicked
it in. Claire went on.
Speaker 16 (41:58):
My father interfered then and said you'll have to pay
for that door.
Speaker 8 (42:01):
Alf.
Speaker 16 (42:02):
With a result, he pulled my father out of the
door and put the boot in his head. I stood
between them and he hit me again. My father had
to go to the hospital. Needless to say, I hit
my husband two on that particular occasion.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
What did you hit him with with a bottle?
Speaker 3 (42:18):
In the end, Judge Byrne decided unanimously in Claire Reagan's favor.
Speaker 17 (42:25):
I accept the petitioner's evidence and all the other evidence
in this case. She appears to me to be a
particularly good type of woman, and I have no hesitation
at all in accepting her evidence. I find the three
issues in the affirmative.
Speaker 3 (42:48):
The colonel's recollection of Alf in her evidence as some
wife bashing, hair pulling, door destroying maniac while under the influence,
didn't match the Reagan family's memory of him. He is
Kelly talking to her father, Lindsey, who was Alf's nephew.
Speaker 4 (43:09):
Now, Dad, can you tell me what you remember about
Uncle Alf.
Speaker 8 (43:14):
To anybody to say that Uncle Alf was violent, he
is absolutely a joke. I knew him very well. I
never ever saw him get upset, cranky, or even nasty
because Uncle Alf never had a violent bone in his body.
I used to see him on a very regular basis,
because he would come in the office when he was
in young and when he was saber, he would come
(43:35):
in and say. One day he came in, he said
to me something about I hadn't done the right thing,
or I'd done something wrong. He wasn't cranky, he wasn't nasty,
and he walked out, and quarter of an hour later
he came back in tears, apologizing to me that he
went cook on me. Now, that was the sort of
person he was. I don't think he ever swore at
(43:56):
anybody in his life. I don't think he ever raised
his voice to anybody. I certainly never heard him do
it anyhow.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
So what was true? There is ample evidence that Alf
was a hopeless alcoholic, also that he had an endearing
side to him, and this is the phrase often used
by family and friends when he was sober. But Claire
Reagan's court testimony about his alleged violence is excruciatingly emotive, detailed,
(44:31):
and on the written page, even after seventy five years,
difficult to dismiss. This was not the end of the affair.
Speaker 8 (44:47):
For years in the.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Town of Young As Johnny Reagan got hit on the
head by cricket balls at school and defended small children
from bullies and got horsewhipped in public by his mother.
His father Alf passed out in the town gutters, and
the Colonel pulled biers at the Australian. As Alf lived
with his parents and Claire lived with hers, their matrimonial
(45:12):
war continued to play out. When Johnny was six years
old in nineteen fifty one, his father was sent to
a mental institution in Morrissett, south of Newcastle for twelve months.
The Colonel relentlessly pursued Alf for alimony payments. This went
(45:35):
on for several years. Very few people in town by
this stage would not have heard of the ongoing saga
that was Reagan versus Reagan. Then came a major turning
point in the late nineteen fifties. Alf, hopelessly behind on
(45:56):
his alimony payments, was sentenced to a short stint in
Long Bay Jail in Sydney, and Claire and Johnny would
disappear from Young. The Colonel went from her parents strawberry
farm outside a country town to a narrow townhouse in
(46:17):
Liverpool Street, Darlinghurst, in the heart of Sydney's Red Light district,
and Johnny would serve time in one of New South
Wales's most fertile schools for future criminals, the Mount Penang
Home for Boys in Gosford on the New South Wales
(46:38):
Central Coast. There he would meet boys who would become
in just a few short years the toughest gangsters and
most ruthless killers in the Sydney Underworld, men Reagan would
mix with and do business with on the outside, and
(47:00):
ad men who may have played a role in Reagan's
actual murder in distant nineteen seventy four. Families have their
fair share of secrets, But when your clan has featured
not just one of Australia's most notorious crook's killers in
(47:23):
Stuart John Reagan, but a man whose murder has remained
unsolved for fifty years, unexpected facts, hidden or forgotten can
rise to the surface over time. For the Reagans, one
story has never gone away. After Reagan's stretch at Mount Penang,
(47:49):
he would return to the Colonel in Liverpool Street, primed
and ready for a criminal career. History shows he quickly
went to work as a standover man in Darlinghurst and
King's Cross, a teenage pimp and protector known for his
explosive temper and extreme violence. He would soon come to
(48:14):
the attention of Sydney's underworld boss Frederick Paddles Anderson meet
his future de facto wife marg In a go go bar,
and bash and bludgeon his way up the criminal ladder.
But exactly how did this boy straight out of a
(48:36):
reformatory school almost instantly find himself a fixture in Sydney's
shadowy criminal world. Kelly remembers a shocking family anecdote about
the Colonel, a story that may explain, after half a century,
(48:58):
how this country kid Cherrytown transformed overnight into a budding gangster.
Speaker 18 (49:08):
So we've worked out with John it looks like he
left young after year five because we can't find a
year six photo of him, so he's obviously gone to Sydney. Then,
it's just feels strange that if she's petitioning for prohibition
and divorce in nineteen forty six, it's just two years
after they've been married. Obviously they have stayed in town
for reasons unknown, and then they've gone to Sydney. It
(49:31):
just seems a bit strange like we know that during
her time in young she worked at the Australian Hotel,
which to my mind was always just a local pub
in town. But we've been told by the current owners
of the Aussie Hotel now that grandmother worked back in
the day and that it was actually a brothel, which
I had not known, but had tied in with the
(49:53):
things that the family had always talked about that when
she'd gone to Sydney, she'd set up a brothel. When
John comes out of Nang the Boys Home, he's got
a ready made job there.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
His mother's got a brock a running.
Speaker 4 (50:07):
She's already got girls working and that's where he got
his start.
Speaker 3 (50:14):
In the next episode of The Gangster's Ghost, the.
Speaker 19 (50:18):
One strange thing at Mount Ernanga like thel, when you
go in the front gate is a boomerang. I couldn't
work out why they had this boomerang over the entrance.
It was really quite simple and you come here, you're
going to come back.
Speaker 1 (50:45):
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 Leat samagru our executive producer
is Me, Editorial director Claire Harvey. Special thanks to Laura i'mos,
Erica Rutledge, Kristin Amiot, Jasper Leek, Stephanie Coombs, Sean Callanan,
Lachlan Clear, Ryan Osland, Amanda will Williams, Christine Kelleg, Taron Blackhurst,
(51:10):
Magdalena Zajack, Giselle Boetti, Genevieve Brammel, Lauren Bruce, Sus Rolf
and Yachini 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 dot au
Speaker 12 (52:01):
Ca.
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