Episode 3: Holystoning

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

Clare turns up in the city’s notorious red-light district of Darlinghurst, while Regan mysteriously disappears into the institutional nightmare of a Gosford boys’ home. There, he will befriend other wayward children who will ultimately emerge as the biggest and most lethal gangsters of their era.

And Regan, schooled as an apprentice criminal in the boys’ home, will enter the violent noir of Sydney’s Kings Cross in the 1960s and hone his skills as a murderous mobster, terrifying both his criminal milieu and law enforcement.

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: 

• The sheep farmer who hunted down a gangster
• The brutal boys’ home that created more crims than it cured
• Families sought answers about slain relatives from notorious crim Neddy Smith

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Before we begin. This podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence
and allegations of sexual abuse and adult language. 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.

(00:20):
Join us at Gangstersghost dot com dot a U.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Before I met Kelly Slater Reagan, before I traveled to
her and husband Rodney's farm in far Flung Young in
southwestern New South Wales, bounced about in the back of
a ute through sheep, paddicts and fields of canola, sat
down around a huge country homestead kitchen table with the

(00:46):
Slater Reagan clan and debated their notorious relative Stuart John Reagan,
and realized how digging up the past might upend Lowe
as we all knew it, and unleashed dark forces that
none of us had anticipated. There was, in the early

(01:09):
days of this investigation, an unspoken truth to the whole
saga that we all skirted around, not so much the
elephant in the room, but the dead gangster, fair and
square in the center of this family's history. And that

(01:32):
truth was the immovable corpse of Stuart John Reagan. The
ghost was already uncomfortably close when the audio team at
The Australian resurrected his secret telephone recordings. He could have
been sitting with us at that kitchen table.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
Have they tried to steen over you on or put
the hard one on it?

Speaker 4 (01:58):
So you can't charge you for civil e n gay you?

Speaker 5 (02:03):
So if he paid civil action won't be a backsiler.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
But given Kelly was a former New South Wales police
officer and I investigated crime as a journalist, there was
a singular question that two of us could not avoid.
Who killed Reagan exactly fifty years ago? That was something
that has remained steadfastly unresolved. Why you would think that

(02:32):
if a criminal was gunned down in cold blood today,
not just by one shooter but three in a Sydney
suburban street early on a Sunday evening, then answers would
be sought. You would think, given rumors circulated almost immediately

(02:53):
after Reagan's slaying that corrupt police might have been involved,
that answers might not only be urgently he sought, but
demanded from the top of the New South Wales police hierarchy.
Remember from episode one when Kelly was told by a
retired officer that not only were police possibly involved in

(03:15):
Reagan's murder, but the infamous killer cop Roger Rogerson himself.

Speaker 6 (03:24):
At the same time, I said, if you were there
in seventy four, do you remember stut John Ray? Oh, yeah, yeah,
I do. I said, well, he was my cousin. He said,
all right, I said, do you ever know who killed him?
He said, well, we were told that in the area
at the time there was a car with four detectives
seen in it. They were wearing these bowler hats or something,
and they had police coats on. And he said there

(03:44):
was always a whisper that it was Rogerson's first hit,
Roger Rogerson.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Yet, could anyone reasonably explain how a high profile criminal
could be shot dead in broad daylight, just meters from
a busy pub and a main without a single witness.
Irrespective of Reagan's infamous deeds, the appalling allegations that still

(04:11):
swirl around him, the certainty in some minds that he
was in fact a serial killer responsible for up to
a dozen murders, and the unthinkable possibility that he may
have slaughtered a toddler in cold blood, the assassination of
Stuart John Reagan in September nineteen seventy four was and

(04:36):
remains to this day a stone cold unsolved homicide case. Naturally,
as a member of Reagan's family, Kelly had dozens of
questions she wanted to ask New South Wales police had
a review into Reagan's murder ever been conducted, and if so,

(05:00):
what were the conclusions. Why had the family, including Reagan's
de facto wife Margaret formerly known as Margaret Yates, never
heard a word from police since he was blasted to
death on that spring afternoon in nineteen seventy four. Were

(05:22):
detectives still looking into this half century old unsolved case.
So Kelly did what Kelly does. She wrote an email
to Detective Inspector Nigel Warren of the New South Wales
Cold Case Homicide Squad based in Paramatta in Western Sydney,

(05:44):
to try and satisfy her curiosity and to get the
ball rolling. This is Kelly reading her first email, dated
Thursday March twenty four, twenty twenty five two two Detective
Inspector Nigel Warren, head of the New South Wales Cold

(06:05):
Case Homicide Unit.

Speaker 6 (06:09):
While writing these, it occurred to me that This is
probably what you discuss with any family while dealing with
a relative's death. I am disappointed this discussion has taken
forty eight years, but that is predominantly due to my
family's lack of interest or compassion leading to this point. Also,
the lack of police in the seventies to even give
a shit helped, I imagine, but I did myself wonder

(06:30):
if other relatives two more palatal desks had been asked
to do similar questions.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
Kelly remains incredulous that after five decades, the family had
never been contacted about Reagan's murder. She discovered that two
reviews of his cold case had been conducted without the
family's knowledge or cooperation. Both reviews had come to nothing.

Speaker 6 (07:00):
Email went on, I am aware that you and the
current crop of police are not responsible for the investigation,
if you could call it that, But what both you
and I are responsible for now is what happens moving forward.
I will be upfront. I am disappointed that the two
reviews twenty fourteen and twenty nineteen did not involve any
family consultation. I would have thought finding us was not

(07:23):
real hard as Dad is the only Reagan in young
and has been for some time.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
Kelly wanted simple answers to simple questions.

Speaker 6 (07:33):
Question one, what was the motives of the killing?

Speaker 4 (07:37):
Two?

Speaker 6 (07:39):
Who was the first responding police? If names can't be
used in car numbers and stations they were from? How
long did they take to respond? Who compiled the p
seventy nine A? Was there an official report of a
car leaving the scene with four men wearing hats?

Speaker 2 (07:52):
And Some of her queries involve some famous names and
even more infamous crimes, along with another very big and
to date unanswered query. If Reagan was the so called
millionaire gangster of his day, what happened to all his money?

(08:16):
She reeled off more questions.

Speaker 6 (08:19):
Have you got a copy of the report to the coroner?
As the coroner's documents have been removed? What does a
review consist of? Reinterviews, DNA testing if relevant, etc. Why
has no member of the family ever been contacted or
Margaret Yates in relation to reviews? Please provide Margaret with
a copy of her statement. Was John's bank account seized

(08:39):
and if so, why was his accountant able to draw
dollars out of his account first thing Monday morning? How
much was recovered at the time of his death, where
is the evidence retreat.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
We will come to the matter of Reagan's millions in
cash and property holdings later in this podcast, as we
will the question of whether he was a part of
the Whiskey Go Go nightclub fire bombing in Brisbane in
nineteen seventy three, one of the biggest mass murders in

(09:10):
Australian history.

Speaker 7 (09:14):
The Whiskey You Go Go was bombed at ten past
two on the morning of March the eighth, nineteen seventy three.
It was a mass murder which sent a wave of
outraids through a country which is often apathetic about crime.
And the gruesome twist was that two months before the killings,
Brian Bolton had warned that a Brisbane nightclub would be bombed.

(09:34):
Bolden got his information from a well known.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
But before we could get anywhere near the truth, Kelly
and I would become involved in a cat and mouse
saga in our search for official documents that would go
on for years. It is still playing out. We will
take you inside this bureaucratic nightmare. It started with a

(10:02):
simple request Stuart John Reagan's criminal history.

Speaker 6 (10:08):
So today is the thirtieth of September and it's the
day after I received notification from the New South Wales
Police in relation to my GIBRA or freedom of information application,
where they've told me that I can in fact have
John's criminal history, but they can't find it.

Speaker 2 (10:27):
So you will see how Kelly told repeatedly that paperwork
had been lost, would, through sheer doggedness, be informed that
suddenly some fragments of paperwork had been found. And around
and around we went. But let's return to a curious

(10:49):
moment in Reagan's past. Reagan and his mother, Claire the Colonel,
left ruraled Young in the late nineteen fifties. She set
up in Sydney's notorious Darling Past, home to prostitution, illegal gambling, drugs,
and other vices. The Colonel and her only child, Johnny,

(11:15):
started their new life in Liverpool Street, a gritty, shadowy,
densely populated enclave in inner Sydney that couldn't have been
further from the wide streets and rolling hills of rural Young.
And this is where the story gets a little sketchy

(11:36):
and mysterious. We discovered that a teenage Johnny was for
some reason swiftly taken out of his new home and
incarcerated in a notorious boy's home, a place that equipped
him perfectly for the gloriously seedy and lawless streets of
Sydney in the nineteen sixties, and, as fate would have it,

(12:02):
a place he would step out of as a fully formed,
baby faced gangster. I'm journalist Matthew Condon and This is
the Gangster's Ghost, a podcast from The Australian. In this investigation,

(12:24):
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

(12:45):
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 most reviled gangsters, but when the Reagan family

(13:10):
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. This is Episode three. Holy Stony

(13:54):
as Reagan's mum the colonel settled into Sydney's Red Light District.
Her only child, little Johnny, was serving his apprenticeship as
an inmate of the Gosford Home for Boys, one hundred
kilometers north of Sydney on the New South Wales Central Coast.
That home would later be renamed Mount Penang Training School

(14:17):
for Boys. This brief period in Reagan's life remains vague
even to his own family. I talked about this with
Kelly Fair to say that the whole Gosford Mount Penang
Home for Boys period has always been a bit of

(14:37):
a mystery even to the Reagan family. This little window
in his life.

Speaker 6 (14:42):
Yeah, it wasn't heavily talked about. I do recall once
that Claire must have come back to young and she
went to one of his friend's houses and borrowed their
bag that he'd had in World War Two, like his
big Duffel bag, and she told them that she needed
it because John had to go to the Boy's Home

(15:02):
in Gosford. That's sort of all we know about the
Boy's Home, and there's that big gap from when he left,
so obviously when he came out the Boy's Home and
was a fair bit more notorious.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
The missing piece of the Reagan puzzle is how and
why he was removed from his controlling mother, the Colonel
and incarcerated in one of New South Wales's most infamous boys' homes.
The Colonel had moved into her sister's house in Liverpool
Street and soon took over. But what happened to Johnny?

(15:41):
He goes to Sydney and we're assuming Claire maintained some
form of care. I mean it was her sister's house
that she moved to in Liverpool Street, so they had
a roof over their head. Could Reagan have just gone
wild like a switch had been flicked once he got
to the city, or is it more like the situation

(16:03):
whereby somehow the issue of being placed in moral endangerment
courtesy of his mother could have been the issue.

Speaker 6 (16:12):
We know he went to a school down there, we're
just not quite so awhere. But has he been kicked
out of the school or has the school reported in
his behavior? Like at home, he could just walk across
the road and he's at home and it doesn't matter
if she's at home. But in Sydney, when she's running
the brothels, she's a different kettle of fish. Isn't it?

Speaker 2 (16:33):
And how was the colonel surviving in big, tough Sydney town,
a far cry from her simple life in rural Young.
She'd left her former husband alf behind, the extended Reagan family,
her work at the Australian Hotel. She may have accepted
the charity of her sister, but how did she really

(16:56):
get by? What did she do when she got to Sydney?
Did she resume being a bar maid like she wasn't
the Australian in Young or.

Speaker 6 (17:06):
We were always told that when she went to Sydney
she went straight into the brothels was running a brothel?
Remember Dad said that it was a brothel that he'd
heard that the Aussie had been as a brothel. Was
she running trick then, which would explain really why the
Reagans hated her. You can't just because she's Catholic.

Speaker 2 (17:29):
How had schoolboy Reagan ended up in a home for
juvenile delinquents, truants and uncontrollable boys. School records in Young
show that one year Reagan was attending classes and appearing
in school photographs, and the next year he simply wasn't there.

(17:50):
His mate said, Reagan just seemed to vanish nobody knew
why he left or where he'd gone. In young he
defended smaller boys from bullies. He liked art. He enjoyed
exploring the creek near his home, although some of his
mates saw the crouching tiger inside the quiet boy. Once

(18:16):
outside the young town limits, he found himself inside the
Nightmare of Gosford. But why the home catered for boys
aged fourteen to eighteen years Reagan turned fourteen on September thirteenth,
nineteen fifty nine. To be placed there, you had to

(18:39):
be committed by a court of law or receive what
was called a general committal. Had Reagan made it to
Sydney with his mother and failed to go to school,
had he stolen something and been caught, had he come
to police attention in the show streets of Darlinghurst as

(19:01):
a neglected child, Or had police removed him from the
Colonel's care after authorities discovered that she was running a
house of ill repute, as the family believes, putting young
Reagan in that deliciously ambiguous state of moral danger. Former

(19:25):
Sydney detective and best selling author Duncan McNabb wrote The
Definitive Biography of Roger Rogerson and is an expert on
the era. As chance would have it, he actually lives
in the heart of Darlinghurst, not far from the Liverpool
Street Terrace where Claire and Reagan settled when they left young.

(19:50):
He has his own theory on why Reagan ended up
in Mount Penang. He says it would have been a
similar path to that of killer Neddie Smith.

Speaker 4 (20:03):
Experience.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
Why would a boy of say thirteen or fourteen, how
would he end up in Mount Penang?

Speaker 8 (20:08):
Oh? Easily?

Speaker 9 (20:10):
The Netdie Smith is pretty much the blueprint. Uncontrollable. Back
in those days there was a you could send kids
off because they are uncontrollable. Their parents couldn't run them.
They were getting into all sorts of strife. The coppers
were also having troubles controlling. Rather than charge them that
they substantiate offense like breaking, entering, that sort of stuff,
they just happened declared uncontrollable by the children's could, which

(20:32):
in those days was done in Albion, straight dreadful fucking place.

Speaker 10 (20:36):
And then they'd head off to a boys home. If
they were really really problematic, they go to Mount Penang.
Neddie for example, was doing breaking edits all around the place, stealing,
anything was not nailed down bashing people that he decided
was appropriate to stab his brother Henry, I think from them,
so that's why he went to Mount Penang, and the
Mount Penang was probably the roughest of the rough.

Speaker 2 (21:01):
In the wake of Reagan's murder in nineteen seventy four,
the Sydney tabloids, particularly The Sun newspaper, ran a series
of articles about the life and times of Reagan. One
carried the single word headline gangster and summarized Reagan he

(21:25):
was a punk at fifteen, a pimp at seventeen, and
standover bully boy at nineteen, a suspected killer at twenty one.
An article by journalist Cyril Greet also provided a possible
clue into the trigger for Reagan's trip to the Gosford

(21:46):
Boys Home. He's a voice actor reading a section of
Greet's story.

Speaker 11 (21:52):
When he was thirteen, he came to live with an
aunt in East Sydney. Within a couple of years, the
solidly built youth was well known for painting swastikas on
cars and hitting the people who objected. It was after
one of these assaults that he made his first appearance
in the children's court and thereafter in the Gosford Boys'
Home and Mount Penang Training Center.

Speaker 2 (22:16):
The earliest entry in his official criminal history was dated
August thirty one, nineteen sixty two, when Reagan was still seventeen.
He was charged with assault and robbery. The case was
later dismissed. Was this assault related to the swastika incident?

(22:36):
As alleged by reporter Cyril Greet. At the time Reagan
was held at Gosford, several children's correctional institutions up and
down the East coast of Australia were already notorious. In Queensland,
there was Westbrook, the boy's farm outside to Woomba, west

(22:58):
of Brisbane. It was a crucible of sexual abuse and torture.
I should know. My great uncle was an inmate of
Westbrook in the late nineteen thirties, and when he left
at eighteen, he stepped straight into a life of crime
and sexual deviancy. New Southwell's juvenile institutions had their own

(23:22):
hierarchy of horrors to the general public. Boys homes or farms,
as many of them were innocuously described, were places where
wayward young men were sent to learn the basic requirements
for model citizenry. They were given the discipline that was

(23:44):
lacking in their young lives. They were to the outside observer,
taught manners and responsibility, and work ethics, and even the
skills for a future trade. Upon graduation, these floored youths
came out like shiny new pennies, ready for seamless integration

(24:09):
into the community. Time and again, government ministers of the
day were photographed visiting the homes alongside smiling, healthy boys
fallen angels on the path to redemption. The old newsreel's
advertised picture perfect institutions.

Speaker 12 (24:38):
Mount Fenang Training cor for Boys is situated fifty miles
north of Sydney, up seven hundred acres of farm and bushland,
high on the hills above Brisbane Waters and the town
of Gosford. This is a school without fences, where boys

(25:01):
are taught that standards of life which are built on
an understanding of solid responsibility make life richer and more
meaningful than the irresponsible conduct which brought them here. Most
of them are restless, insecure lads. The training program has
therefore been designed to condition them to living in an
organized community, so that they experienced the personal satisfactions which

(25:23):
come from acceptance in a communal group and through recognition
of their achievement.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
This is from a nineteen fifty nine documentary about the
Mount Penang Boys Home called New Horizons. It was nade
by the Child Welfare Department of New South Wales just
before Reagan became an inmate. The twelve minute film praises
the boys Home to the skies and depicts it as

(25:54):
a rival to any of the best private boarding schools
in Sydney.

Speaker 12 (26:02):
The ceremonial march and outings from Mount Penang are part
of the training plan. Parties of up to fifty boys
go to theaters and concerts in Sydney who visit Newcastle Steelworks,
to a motor show to serve beaches. One optor, who
regularly takes boys to symphony concerts has frequently been asked
what college do these boys come from?

Speaker 2 (26:24):
The boys dressed immaculately a scene happily working with farm animals,
fixing machinery, enjoying sport, reading, studying, and warmly welcoming visiting parents.
Everyone the film shows is living in blissful harmony.

Speaker 12 (26:48):
The standards of living and physical well being are no
lower and sometimes higher than those in a first class
boarding school. The assured routine and order of a well
run school helped to calm and reassure children who have
usually been insecure for a long while because they've felt

(27:08):
that nobody cared for them. The new vision of an orderly, cheerful,
well organized life in beautiful surroundings is the first step
towards rehabilitation.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
Only decades later would the truth about these boys' homes
come to light through journalistic investigations and various royal commissions.
The conclusions were the same across the board. The homes
were vile centers of abuse and sexual assault, and nurseries

(27:43):
for future criminals, including some of the most notorious murderers
in Australian criminal history. In New South Wales, the number
one house of Horrors was in Tamworth, west of Sydney.

Speaker 12 (28:01):
Dammouth Boys Hoim was known as the toughest institution probably
in the whole of Australia.

Speaker 8 (28:08):
When you got in the Tamworth you're beaten, he said.

Speaker 13 (28:10):
You got in the door, you were starved, you were tortured,
and you just degraded.

Speaker 4 (28:16):
Kill will be killed.

Speaker 8 (28:18):
Everyone come out there the same. That's why there's so
many buddies murders.

Speaker 2 (28:26):
But if Tamworth was the criminal High School. There were
dangerous primary schools churning out students as well. One was
the Dearreck Home for Boys in Winter in western Sydney.
Respected journalist Ross coulthardt reported on Darrek for sixty minutes Australia,

(28:48):
this institution, similar to Mount Penang, was a hotbed of abuse.
Its horrors were only exposed thanks to a new South
Wales police investigation headed up by Detective Sergeant Ben Hallam.
He is Ross Coulthard reporting on Derek for sixty minutes.

(29:10):
Heeded by Detective Sergeant Ben Hallam.

Speaker 14 (29:13):
When you sit down with them and listen to them
tell their story about what happened at Derek and then
they break down and cry, it's very confronted.

Speaker 4 (29:22):
He told them to strip me down.

Speaker 8 (29:25):
I think they were trying to break me.

Speaker 14 (29:27):
These were vulnerable kids from broken families. The tragedy of
this is that the people that were entrusted to care
for them and help them were alleged to have abused them.

Speaker 2 (29:38):
And the other infamous school was, of course Mount Penang
in Gosford. In nineteen fifty nine, on the eve of
Reagan's arrival at the home, The Sydney Morning Herald reported
that child crime in New South Wales was out of control.
Sexual offenses by youths had increased by three hundred percent

(30:03):
through the nineteen fifties. Institutions for boys and girls were
bursting at the seams. The Gosford Home, built to house
two hundred and eighty children, had four hundred inmates at
the end of nineteen fifty nine. For decades it was
run like a military academy, but one where sexual abuse

(30:28):
and torture were the norm. Fred was a young Indigenous
man from western New South Wales in the early to
mid nineteen sixties when he started hanging with the wrong crowd.
One night, he was caught by police in a car
stolen by some of his mates. Fred was a passenger,

(30:51):
but it was enough to get him removed from his
family and installed in Darreck and then Mount Penang. Fred
remembers to this day the atrocities of Mount Penang. When
it rained, the boys were ordered to get on their
hands and knees with a scrubbing brush and clean the

(31:12):
floors until they shone on work projects in bushlands surrounding
the home. Young innocent kids new to Mount Penang were
sexually assaulted by older boys out of sight of the guards.
Some staff sexually abused the boys. And then there was

(31:35):
the practice of holy stoning, a form of torture unique
to Mount Penang that went back to the nineteen forties.
Fred is today a respected Indigenous elder, but holy stoning
scarred him for life.

Speaker 8 (31:57):
Well, I used to stand as had in front of
the deck, especially when we did the barking. They think
you were sucking it was. We had to stand there
and a lot of the lads were clapsy. And then
on the on the other side of it, when individuals
got into trouble, they used to put them on the

(32:18):
holy stone.

Speaker 2 (32:20):
Tell me about the holy stone. I haven't heard about that.

Speaker 8 (32:23):
The Holy star was up the back in the dairy
there was were there's a lot of the sandstones and
they bring about two or three and then down to
the deck. They put them in front of the deck
and if.

Speaker 15 (32:37):
You fucked up, they'd take his shoes and socks off
here to roll your trousers up, say your knees and
the and your toes supposed to the to the board
and and then you got to get on your knees
and pushed this rock back and forward Jesus. And by

(32:57):
the time you got up from them, your knees were
all cut and plastiated your toes and then for days
after your knees or where the skin sprake and could
even infected.

Speaker 8 (33:13):
Or they put you out in the in the dot
of the little dormitory where we used to watch the pictures,
and they'd give you a dry brush. An arling stone
was well, what's the one that really made the boys
set up? And they didn't didn't like the holy stone.

Speaker 2 (33:33):
There were three types of holy stoning. The one Fred
described where you pushed the stone back and forth, another
where you moved it from side to side. The third
was called a holly off, where a guard would use
chalk to mark two places on the deck and you

(33:54):
carried the rock repeatedly from one mark to the other.
In twenty twenty, doctor Wayne Appleby, now a distinguished academic
at the University of Canberra, submitted his PhD thesis on
the impact of social media on Indigenous people. In the manuscript, however,

(34:18):
he included some autobiographical material, including a harrowing account of
his time as a young man spent in Mount Penang
in the nineteen sixties. He recalled getting into a fight
with seasoned inmates, the storeboys when he first arrived at
the Gosford home, and the practice of holy stoning. Here

(34:45):
are some extracts from doctor Appleby's thesis titled from Homo's
Saca to Subalton Becoming Aboriginal Online. These are his words
read by A. Nunnawohl Man.

Speaker 16 (35:01):
I had the misfortune of meeting the storeboys on the
first day at Mount Penang. I had arrived by train
and was driven to Mount Penang. Then upon arrival, I
was ushered into the store by the storeboys. I was
aft to hand over my tobacco, which in the language
of institutions is called grass, and over your grouse, as
store boys said. I refused, resulting in an altercation with

(35:24):
the store boys. I held my own for a time,
but I was bashed and kicked by the three store
boys and then paraded for starting to fight. After that,
I was physically tortured through a process called holy stoning.

Speaker 2 (35:38):
Dr Appleby's recollection was identical to Fred's.

Speaker 16 (35:42):
Holly stoning is where a person squats on their knees
with a piece of sandstone measuring between four hundred and
fifty mili by three hundred and two hundred deep, and
it entails moving the block from side to side across
the wooden boards for up to three hours. After just
a few minutes my knees were bleeding. It would be
weeks before my knees healed. Each night they would weep

(36:05):
enough to cause the sheets to stick to them.

Speaker 2 (36:10):
Was a young Johnny Reagan there at some point, gen
reflecting with bloodied knees before the Holy Stone, with each
painful push and shove, consolidating his hatred for authority. Mount
Penang had its fair share of illustrious criminal graduates, and

(36:34):
one of those was the bank robber Bernie Matthews. Here
is Bernie being interviewed about the art of bank robbing
on the ABC's Four Corners back in two thousand and four.

Speaker 17 (36:51):
I selected the bank. I parked the car up the
shide lane and I had a short off twenty two
twenty two automatic, a gloves balaclava. I was physicianed on
a main road on Victoria Road. I selected the bank
simply because it was on a main road and people
didn't rob banks on the main road, and it had

(37:13):
the side street so I could get to to getaway car.

Speaker 1 (37:17):
Write it down.

Speaker 17 (37:20):
I went in, I jumped on the counter, forced everybody
onto the floor, customers and bank and staff. I got
one teller and I threw the bags and made him
go along to each individual telescage and fill the bag.
In all of my robberies, I use the voice, I
mean mannerism as the threat, and the gun becomes an
extension on the threat that.

Speaker 2 (37:41):
I interviewed Bernie just a couple of months before he
died in twenty twenty two. He sounded unwell on the
end of the phone. Sometimes I felt he was reading
from prepared notes, perhaps from articles he'd written in the past.

(38:02):
After his life of crime, Bernie reinvented himself as a
respected journalist. His work was even nominated for a Distinguished Award.
But on the day we spoke, and when he went
off script, his memories were excruciatingly clear. Bernie was born
in nineteen forty nine, just four years after Reagan, and

(38:25):
the reason I tracked him down was because in his
teenage years, he too spent some time at the Mount
Penang Training School for boys. He doesn't recall being there
at the same time as Reagan, but of course knew
of him.

Speaker 18 (38:46):
If he was in Mount penajuvenile offense jish. Mount Penang
was the boy's arm and like a lot of the
kids went through Ronnie Ferni just a hell of a lot,
George Freeman, and they all went through a Mount Pane.

Speaker 4 (39:02):
At some stage. So what was like, where do we start?

Speaker 18 (39:07):
They called it the Mount Penang Training School for boys
at goslein or utilized to accommodate aspiring juvenile incarceration rate.

Speaker 4 (39:15):
Now, in those days.

Speaker 18 (39:17):
Magistrates were institutionalized juvenile offenders for truancy, running away from home,
bringing an executed child of Berne and Charlie's, both from
mal dangers.

Speaker 2 (39:29):
It was for this reason, being a child exposed to
moral dangers that Kelly and I presumed Reagan had been
ordered to Mount Panang. Bernie went on, when did you
first go into Mount Penang.

Speaker 4 (39:46):
Last Stary sixty five?

Speaker 2 (39:48):
What was that for?

Speaker 4 (39:49):
I was for arsenal and breaking head her?

Speaker 2 (39:52):
How old were you?

Speaker 4 (39:53):
I was sixteen when I got arrested.

Speaker 18 (39:54):
I was sixteen when I went to Gospin in nineteen
sixty five. The new superintendent with a boat called Fowler,
and they used to call him Chicken, and he was
an autocratic disciplinarian, so inexplicable reason.

Speaker 4 (40:09):
You just love to see the kids suffer. At the
drop of a hat. That was his bag.

Speaker 18 (40:15):
He was a public service. The progress through the show
offered apartment.

Speaker 2 (40:20):
What sort of physical work were you required to do
when you were there?

Speaker 4 (40:24):
I had what I call work gangs. You had two
different types. You had school groups.

Speaker 18 (40:32):
There were kids that could go to school and learned
to read and write and all the rest of it.
And you had work gangs where you worked out in
the field and you dug up and.

Speaker 4 (40:44):
Acres and acres of the property. All you went.

Speaker 18 (40:48):
You went down to the oval and you cut rock
like fish and rocks. The benefit there was this, if
you're on work gangs, you've got a better relotment of points,
so therefore you moved up the sections quicker.

Speaker 4 (41:03):
If you're in school groups.

Speaker 18 (41:05):
And your point a lotment wasn't as high, and you
just travel through the system at a slow place. That
allads the philosophy areas. We don't want you to study
and learn school work. We're wanting to get out there
and dig paddic. The one strange thing at Mount Nanga
I found when you go in the front gate, they've

(41:25):
got a front gate there that comes off the highway
and it leads up a driveway, flooding the main quarter deck.
And the strangest thing I ever saw was the entrance
is a boomerang. I couldn't work out why they had
this boomerang over the entrance. It was really quite simple,

(41:48):
You're going to come back. That was that. That was
the message you carry now you come here, You're going
to come back. Obviously someone in a higher bureaucratic thought
of a numerous touch to the boys Zone.

Speaker 2 (42:04):
And if it was anything like Westbrook too, I mean
these places were sort of nurseries for future criminals.

Speaker 18 (42:12):
Actually exactly what they were high school of all criminality
who taught the art of resourcefulness, how to lie, how
to treat, how to get what you want by manipulation.

Speaker 4 (42:24):
And of course that carried into the world outside.

Speaker 2 (42:28):
Yeah, and I guess friendships made inside too, I certainly did.

Speaker 18 (42:32):
I did an article at a paramount at Jaile.

Speaker 4 (42:37):
It was ninety seventy nine.

Speaker 18 (42:39):
I went through the whole jail to find out how
many men had come up through the Boys' Aims and
ended up in jail.

Speaker 4 (42:46):
I worked out about eighty eighty five percent.

Speaker 8 (42:48):
Wow, it's incredible.

Speaker 4 (42:50):
I was mind by room, but it didn't surprise me.

Speaker 18 (42:53):
That's the whole philosophy behind the juvenile justice system, Matthew.
The whole philosophy is the treatment come went back, treat
the jile cells full.

Speaker 2 (43:04):
I ran Kelly and talked to her about the practice
of holy stoning. She was horrified to think that Johnny
Reagan most likely went through that ordeal.

Speaker 6 (43:16):
Poor bloody git. He couldn't pull a brake. Could if
there's evidence that he was really good with his friends
and everything, and then his mother, he goes home and
his mother whips him at the clothesline, and then he
sent away to Mount Penang and then that's virtually paw
torture stuff. And you wonder, you wonder if people say, oh,
he was a psychopath, what did you think was going
to happen when you treat people like that, when you

(43:38):
treat people and their little boys like at this stage,
what we don't even know what he was in there for.
But let's just say he's in there for a style
of motor vehicle or an assault, which a lot of
them were just in there for first offenses. Imagine if
that's what he's done and then you do this to
him in his formative years. What did you think was
going to happen?

Speaker 4 (43:56):
You know?

Speaker 6 (43:56):
And I just think it's I just look at my
family sometimes and I just think, why didn't anyone step in?

Speaker 2 (44:01):
Yeah, I mean, as Bernie Matthews said, in the boys' homes,
there was a hierarchy. So Mount Penang was like a
primary school for criminals, and then you graduated to Tamworth,
which was the high school, and then they were unleashed
into the world.

Speaker 6 (44:16):
Absolutely absolutely no respect for authority, high paying thresholds. Violence
is the way to get people to do what you
want them to do. They're the lessons, that's what you're learning.
Violence one A one.

Speaker 2 (44:32):
One of Reagan's childhood friends from Young Brian English, who
we heard from in the last episode, was working in
Sydney in the late nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies
when the matter of Reagan's incarceration in Gosford came up
over drinks in a pub with police and government officials. Brian,

(44:55):
who had witnessed first hand the brutality Reagan suffered at
the hands of his own mother when they were living
in Young Now, by chance, became Privy to another brutal
phase in Reagan's life, his time at Mount Penang. Brian
told Kelly about the moment in the Sydney pub when

(45:17):
Reagan was brought up in conversation.

Speaker 19 (45:21):
While I was working at Newt Wow Jenny. I was
also lecturing police officers in Newtown Police Station on sociology
and these to do with crime. And we used to
have drinks. We do the electors I have have elected
our brid we'd all go out for a drink at
a hotel in Yuta. And one of the people at

(45:41):
the hotel they would come for drinks was the head
of the child welfare office in that area. This is
before John died. And something came up in that in
one of those conversations about John Reagan for some reason,
and he said, I was in charge of the boys home,
the Gospet boys when Reagan was there, and John had

(46:04):
told me that he was quite running the boy's home.
John laws, that's how prisons and things work. But this
guy said, ah, he used to run you. And I said,
they did him up.

Speaker 4 (46:16):
We got him.

Speaker 19 (46:17):
We made sure we dressed the little bastard. I mean,
that was the nature of the times that at that date.
The Premier View. Deel Wales was corrupt, the end of
the President's department. The Police commissioner was corrupt, well, the
chiefs of famiary magistrate and we used to visit the
Prisidon's was corrupt. Minister for Police was corrupt. And it's
all come out and I'm not making us out.

Speaker 2 (46:40):
A handful of television crime documentaries have tried to understand
Reagan's psychosis and in particular, to get to the heart
of his rage. Exactly what was it to turn this
once innocent boy into Australia's most beard killer. Historians, journalists

(47:04):
and psychologists have grappled with Reagan's reign of terror and
his flame out. How to explain the enigma that was Reagan.
The passage of fifty years has reduced that understanding to
a couple of factors. The damage inflicted at the Gosford

(47:25):
Boy's home and the certainty of his psychopathy when he
allegedly murdered a toddler for no explicable reason a few
months before he was assassinated in nineteen seventy four. Reagan
has been distilled into this a child killer and a psychopath.

(47:47):
One of the few full length television documentaries focusing on
Reagan was Tough Nuts Australia's Toughest Criminals, hosted by respected
writer Tara Moss and first air on the Nine Network
in twoenty ten. This is Tara summarizing Reagan's childhood and

(48:08):
hinting at the reasons behind his clearly damaged mind.

Speaker 20 (48:14):
Reagan's parents divorced when he was young, and he moved
to Sydney with his mother. Here he progressed from hurting
animals to inflicting pain on people. By his early teens,
he was attacking strangers in the street, and aged just fourteen,
he was sent to the brutal Gosford Reformatory. There he
met other up and coming criminals, including future murderer Arthur

(48:37):
Nettie Smith, who described Reagan as having the coldest eyes
he'd ever seen. Psychologists agree that children incarcerated so young
inevitably have their development affected by the experience.

Speaker 2 (48:50):
And here are the psychologists trying to work out Reagan.

Speaker 21 (48:56):
So in psychology we talk about how people learn to
be the people they are, and so we learned through
modeling is copying others. The other way we learn is
in response to our environment or what happens to us.

Speaker 2 (49:11):
So if somebody's been.

Speaker 21 (49:12):
Abused and violated punished, they learned that perhaps that's something
that makes you feel bad, but it gives you a
sense of power to inflict it on somebody else.

Speaker 22 (49:24):
Especially in places like Gosford Boys Home, not only were
they not being given the pro social kinds of skills
that they needed, but they're also being exposed to really
anti social influences, not just from their peers, but also
from the people who are in authority, the people who
should have been providing the deterrence or the correction that
was hopefully gained by placing them there in the first place.

Speaker 2 (49:48):
And this is former Sydney Morning Herald editor and true
crime author David Hickey.

Speaker 13 (49:55):
Amazingly, at seventeen, Reagan hurts up his first conviction for
living off the earnings of prostitution. He's a person who,
because he's not very smart but he is so violent
and unpredictable, is immediately feared by madams who run suburban

(50:17):
brothels in Sydney. He literally arrived at the door of
some of these places and demands standover money, and the madams,
who are already paying standover money elsewhere, quickly find that
the protection they thought they had doesn't exist because a
lot of the criminals who are in the world supposedly
providing standover do not want to deal with Reagan.

Speaker 2 (50:41):
Tara again returns to Reagan's past to try and explain
his state of mind.

Speaker 20 (50:48):
Reagan was a man who inspired fear wherever he went,
as Nettie Smith, who was incarcerated with Reagan at Gosford,
would later rate, Reagan had always wanted to join the
army so we could kill people with no questions asked,
but he had been rejected. Unable to satisfy his bloodlust
through legal means, Reagan unleashed his own personal war on

(51:09):
the streets of Sydney and on the prostitutes to seventeen
year old Pemp Controlled.

Speaker 2 (51:16):
The Psychologists and commentators would go on to describe the
characteristics of a psychopath like Reagan, that he was a
pimp because disempowering women empowered him, that he got what
he wanted through violence and fear, and the final assessment.

Speaker 3 (51:36):
Reagan was dangerous man. Reagan had always been a dangerous man.
He ended associations asuit himself. He killed his peers, he
killed his rivals, he killed anyone and heard anyone who
got in his way. Reagan was a significantly unattractive man
in gangster terms.

Speaker 2 (51:57):
Let's think about Mount Penang, Gosford had many illustrious graduates. Lenny,
mister big, McPherson.

Speaker 11 (52:06):
Let's say that mister big, mister big, now Dancy, now
mister big enough.

Speaker 2 (52:11):
All these things, George Freeman.

Speaker 8 (52:16):
All my crimes are association.

Speaker 19 (52:18):
People know me, knowing me, And if you want me
to stop taking the people, I'm not going to do that.

Speaker 2 (52:23):
A man called Anthony Zizza, who would go on to
be one of Reagan's closest friends and personal bodyguard right
up until the day the magician was murdered. You'll be
hearing more about Tony Zizza later in this podcast. And
one of the underworld's most beard psychopaths, Arthur Lennie Smith,

(52:45):
who was also a Mount Penang graduate. I wasn't surprised
to learn that long before Kelly Slater, Reagan contacted me
to help her investigate her cousin. She had tried to
get in touch with me Neddie Smith in Long Bay
Jail in Sydney before he passed away in September twenty

(53:07):
twenty one. This was the funny thing about Reagan for
his outsized reputation. Close to nothing had been written about
his complicated life. He had become the cliche of a gangster.
Kelly wanted more, so she wrote to Neddie and she

(53:29):
asked him what parts of the story that we know
about him are true? How big a monster was he?
Neddie Smith never wrote back for years. He'd been suffering
from advanced dementia. It's not known if he ever got
Kelly's letter in the first place. I talked to Kell

(53:53):
about why she reached out to this killer. So, Kell,
you learned that one of Johnnie Reagan's little cohorts in
the Gosford Boys' Home was a young boy called Arthur
Smith who would go on to evolve as the notorious
killer Neddie Smith. And you read well Neddie's autobiography. Do

(54:16):
you remember what he had to say about Reagan and
Mount Penang in that book?

Speaker 6 (54:23):
I think with Mount Panang he just said that he
met him there, but he really bagged him out along
the same lines of psychopath blah blah blah blah blah.
But then he goes on. Then he flips and he
says when he was in solitary confinement in Long Bay, jail.
John was the only one that brought in books and
helped him out and did stuff for him. And one
of the kids, I think it was Helen, actually was

(54:44):
asked to visit Nettie Smith in jail when he still
had his marbles, and he said, I always promised your
father I'd look after you. Is there anything you need
me to do before I can't function anymore? And gave
her a little house or something made out of well,
what do you call it? Bollipop? Yes, bizarre. I think
his book was pretty rubbish. I write him a letter

(55:08):
to get some clarification, but Neddie never wrote back.

Speaker 2 (55:12):
And what did you want to know from Neddie?

Speaker 6 (55:15):
I just I asked him what his relationship with was John.
I said, I've read your book and what you said
in there, and I find it contradicts itself. So when
did you first meet him? You said he was good
to you in jail. Can we talk? Can you tell
me what your recollection of it is it? And do
you know who killed him?

Speaker 2 (55:36):
Earlier in this episode, you heard about Kelly's attempts to
try and get some answers from the New South Wales
Police Unsolved Homicide Team about the murder of her gangster cousin.
She eventually heard back from Detective Inspector Nigel Warren on
March twenty nine, twenty twenty two. These are his written words,

(56:00):
but not his voice.

Speaker 5 (56:05):
Dear Kelly, thank you for your email. Your request is
comprehensive and has raised several issues. The Unsolved Homicide Team
does not, as a matter of course, discuss with members
of the family or senior next of kin detailed information
about unsolved homicide investigations, investigative processes, or the unsolved homicide

(56:25):
review process. We have an ongoing unsolved homicide review process
that continually assesses information that comes to light. If the
information leads to something substantial which significantly progresses the matter,
then we would look to contact and consult with the
senior next of kin at an appropriate time.

Speaker 2 (56:46):
Detective Inspector Warren wanted to set the record straight with
Kelly about cold case murders and the police responsibilities in
speaking with the relatives of the dead over the years.

Speaker 5 (56:58):
At this stage, whilst if I am happy to meet,
I will be unable to answer your detailed questions during
any meeting. If you are unsatisfied with this response, you
may seek a response through the appropriate channels, such as
the Government Information Privacy Act GIPA.

Speaker 2 (57:17):
Kelly saw this as a hiccup, not an obstacle, so
she pushed for an actual in person meeting with the
cold case unit, and she got it. The Unsolved Homicide
team agreed to meet Kelly and Reagan's de facto wife, Margaret,

(57:38):
in their offices in Parramatta in Western Sydney, almost fifty
years after Reagan was gunned down in the streets of Marrickville. Kel,
as far as I could tell, was happy with this development,
but also frustrated. For Kell, out on the farm in
young problem's surface and obstacles present themselves on the land,

(58:05):
you solve the issue and move on. Farmers like Kel,
even as a former cop, are not used to modern
double talk or the hidden complications of bureaucracy. But she
wouldn't miss the appointment for quins. Here was a chance,

(58:28):
finally to talk to law enforcement about Reagan. Marg had
never spoken with police since Reagan's murder. Her partner was
killed with eight bullets. He went to the morgue, he
was cremated. There was a brief inquest, killer or killers unknown.

(58:51):
Marg was never even called to give evidence. Then life
went on. The meeting with the Cold Case team was
a big moment for Marg. She risked having to relieve
a time she wanted to forget, or learning something she'd

(59:11):
rather not know. This was another lifetime ago. She was
now a grandmother, in her seventies and living quietly on
the New South Wales central Coast. Why risk derailing everything now?
Even Kel was unsure what Marg wanted out of the

(59:34):
meeting with the Cold Case team, out of this podcast
investigation itself. What if the whole situation was the reverse
that it was Marg who was holding onto information that
might have helped police solve Reagan's murder decades ago. What

(59:55):
if she possessed the key the identity of her husband's killers.
What if the loyal gangster's wife actually knew all that
and was never going to tell Ever, she'll be fully cooperative.
Do you think by her nature she might, like most people,

(01:00:17):
hold something back.

Speaker 6 (01:00:18):
What do you reckon the skills she's been taught by
him is to say nothing, to keep your mouth shut,
Just keep your mouth shut. So I think she really
wants to open and tell all that she knows. Imagine
if Ani Mah did know something and then she tells
the family like that's the backlash to that that she
would perceive would be huge. I think she wants to

(01:00:39):
tell us, but I don't know if she'll get over
the line.

Speaker 2 (01:00:43):
Why do you think, after all these decade she has
agreed to talk to us now?

Speaker 6 (01:00:48):
I think partly because she loves us. She loves us
the reaganside. I know she does. She's the one when
we had all the fallout. She was the one who
said to me, I want you to do this. I
want you to do this.

Speaker 2 (01:01:03):
Marg is a huge part of this story. She lived
with the man, was inside the gangster's life, yet she
has never spoken publicly about him or their relationship. Ever,
in over fifty years, she knows a lot. Not even

(01:01:26):
Call and I were confident we'd ever get to the
bottom of what Marg actually knew. But the meeting with
police was set. Was it a genuine sit down? Did
the cold case team really want to progress Reagan's case

(01:01:46):
after it had gathered dust for decades? Would they listen
to Kelly and Marg or would this be an exercise
in satisfying Kelly with a face to face than expecting
her to go away? Were police hoping to get the
Reagans off their backs once and for all. Kell and

(01:02:10):
I molded over the idea of what will happen, what's
the setup.

Speaker 6 (01:02:18):
I had to submit a list of questions, but he
wanted to know what I wanted to know about. I'll
send him those And so now he's come back and
said that he can't answer those, but he's willing to
meet both Margaret and I, which that's very kind of him.
It's what forty eight years later and you're going to, well,
what do you do next? Of kin chat?

Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
What does the family think of the meeting arranged after
as you said, forty eight long years, There's never been
anything remotely like this as there in the Fast and
its relationship with the police in terms of Reagan's murder.

Speaker 6 (01:02:57):
And what they say is they probably didn't know Dad
was the next of King John comes from young back
then you could look it up in a phone book.
There was only two Reagans, Uncle, Ron and Dad. You're
going to get a hit either way, So why wouldn't
anybody just contact us and ask They don't even know
what the family knows. And then Arnie Mark they knew
because they interviewed her. They took a statement of her,

(01:03:18):
so they knew she was his partner. She didn't even
get called to the coronial inquiry. Nobody. Forty eight years
later and you've virtually got a beg for a chat.

Speaker 2 (01:03:28):
I'm going to I'm going to be the devil's advocate
here and say, okay, say there's hundreds of cold case
murders on their books, A family member of those hundreds
and hundreds of cold cases to be contacted on rotation.
I guess it would take thousands of manails to do that.
But having said that, all murders are shocking. But this,

(01:03:50):
this is a murder that is still captivating the public
after forty eight plus years.

Speaker 6 (01:03:57):
And I get this how people say, oh, he was
a shit bag, you know, is a crook, He was this,
he was that. Okay, well, let's still find out why
he was killed because the reasons we're being told is wrong.
There's still a little boy that was murdered in relation
to him. Nothing's been done there. And there's more things
that contribute around this. And I agree with you because

(01:04:18):
being an ex police officer, you can't keep up with everything.
But when you do a review, it's one courtesy call.
You know, you could say that we didn't know who
his relations were. Well, I'm pretty sure people did know
who his relations were. They certainly knew at my interview
who I was and who he was. You know, it
wouldn't be hard to go up during a review. We're
going to look for his background. Let's look up and

(01:04:39):
see if there's any reagans in young.

Speaker 2 (01:04:42):
Let me ask you this, and it's no criticism of Marg,
but do you have any sense that marg actually wants
to see this resolve? You could argue from the other
side of the coin that if she was that interested
in resolving the murder of her partner, she might have
contacted them, the police.

Speaker 6 (01:05:02):
I think Mark is doing it more for me and
for her children. I don't We don't know what Mark knows.
And I think when John died, and I would not
blame Annie Mark if she just felt released. The night
he was killed, he brings his lover into her house
and shares his like and she lived in fear, and
she left and names were changed and things like that happened.

(01:05:27):
So I think she she'd have to be curious.

Speaker 2 (01:05:30):
Yeah, I mean his death released her, absolutely, let her free,
really so absolutely?

Speaker 6 (01:05:36):
Could you know she could cut her hair? She could
wear makeup, she could go out when she wanted to
go out. We till take that for granted. You sit
in judgment of you. You've got to wear shoes, haven't you.

Speaker 2 (01:06:07):
In the next episode of The Gangster's Ghost, we'll take
you inside the smoky nightclubs, go go bars and shadowy
saloons of Sydney's King's Cross in the swinging sixties, and
you'll meet the woman who captured Johnny Reagan's heart the
moment he saw her and would become the Gangster's wife.

Speaker 19 (01:06:31):
He comes up to me again and he leans over
and he says to me, I'm going to marry you.

Speaker 1 (01:06:48):
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 samaglu Our. Executive producer
is Me editor Oryeals director Claire Harvey. Special thanks to
Lara Kamenos, Erica Rutlidge, Kristin Amiot, Jasper Leek, Stephanie Coombs,
Sean Callanan Lachland, Clear Ryan Osland, Amanda Winn Williams, Christine Keller,

(01:07:12):
Tarn Blackhurst, Magdalena Zajak, Gisel Boetti, Genevieve Rammel, Lauren Bruce,
Sus Rolf and Yaquina 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 a you.

Speaker 4 (01:08:19):
Or reading.

Speaker 12 (01:08:21):
Mount Penang is a school in which the emphasis is
not on formal school education, but on the art of
living with others and being an acceptable member of our society.
It is a place in which a new spirit is
engendered in wayward boys, so that they leave Mount Penang
with a new horizon to steer by.

Speaker 4 (01:09:00):
U