June 5, 2025 • 63 mins
In this episode Regan, fresh from a boys’ correctional home, steps out into the wild streets of Sydney noir. He quickly makes his mark in notorious Kings Cross as a teenage brothel lord.
Regan also cements his reputation as a violent enforcer with a hair-trigger temper, willing to eliminate anyone who gets in the way of his ambition to be the most powerful gangster not just in Sydney, but Australia.
Then he meets Margaret, the love of his life. But it’s his complicated relationship with his mother – The Colonel – that continues to fuel his rage against women, men, the police and society in general. In short shrift he becomes the archetypal Wild Child, unleashed.
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:
- Gangster tried to strangle corruption whistleblower: Regan link to vice queen murder
- Who’s who of the Glittering Mile: Sydney’s one-time crim kings
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Transcript
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.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I can call it Australia's Barbary Coast, and there are
a few pirates there for sure. Others call it sidon
the city and the summer that around too, if you
can believe what you read about it. The inhabitants make
their living out of baker our dope, witch grant prostitutions,
stripping them selling each other so larly.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
It's King's Cross, Sydney in the nineteen sixties. Stuart John Reagan,
the good Catholic boy from young in Country, South Wales
and fresh from several stints in a boy's correctional home,
is about to step out into hedonistic sin city. He's
still a teenager. One of the nicknames hand written on
(01:14):
his criminal record is the Boy, though he already has
a police rap sheet that should belong to someone twice
his age, not a lame record of shoplifting or petty scams,
but a Sultan robbery. At no point is he ever
(01:35):
a lowly crime boss's dog's body, the Errand kid, or
Smoko Fetcher. By eighteen, he's a brothel enforcer in charge
of a handful of working girls. The jury is out
on whether his own mother, Claire, known to all as
the Colonel, set him up with a few working girls
(01:57):
to get his career started. From the outset, Reagan cements
a reputation as a violent enforcer with a hair trigger temper,
willing to eliminate anyone who gets in the way of
his ambition to be the most powerful gangster, not just
in Sydney but Australia.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
There is a.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Famous police mugshot of Reagan that is still used today
whenever his name pops up in the media. We have
used it for this podcast. It has become iconic and
shorthand for Australian gangster. Reagan is clean shaven. His thick,
(02:41):
slightly oiled hair flicks up off his forehead like black
cockatoo wings. His expression is sullen, his eyes in deep
sockets that are shaded by his brows. Those eyes are
seriously intense and offer menace. One glance at this photograph
(03:05):
and you think several things mean, violent, angry, stubborn. His
face carries a peculiar and chilling contradiction both movie star
good looks and a sense that he could hurt or
kill you at will. The picture was taken in June
(03:29):
nineteen sixty two, when he was just sixteen years old.
It's difficult to reconcile family photographs of Reagan as an
innocuous little country schoolboy just a few years earlier, and
this teenage embodiment of pure hatred. You can already see
(03:53):
the grown up mobster he is to become. It's as
if the gangster was fully formed inside that teenage body.
It just needed to be let loose, and it was
when he left the Gosford Boys Home and returned to
the loving embrace of his mother, The Colonel in Darlinghurst.
(04:20):
A nineteen sixty four documentary called The Glittering Mile from
the then Special Project's division of the National Nine Network
and narrated by David Lowe, was so successful in capturing
the seediness of the Cross at the time that it
made the headlines for being rude and lewde.
Speaker 5 (04:45):
And that's the way it is that King's cross.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
But this is the other face of the cross, not.
Speaker 5 (04:50):
So harmless, not so friendly, not so.
Speaker 6 (04:53):
Easy to forget.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
The night face that it alternately.
Speaker 5 (04:57):
Laughing and scowling, seeking comfort or for guest sensation or satisfaction.
Only here the search for something, whatever it is, goes
on all through the night.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
The key to Reagan, to his rage and violence, lies
somewhere in those formative years between Cherrytown and when he
was released from Mount Penang with its boomerang on the
front gate, when he was let off the leash in
Big bad Sydney. What happened during that period not only
(05:39):
shaped his short life, but also planted the seed of
his death. He was always going to die horribly, as
his own mother predicted, he was never destined to make
old bones. What he did with just over a decade
of adult life, from when he departed Gosford until he
(06:02):
ended up on the Morgue slab is still being discussed
half a century later. This podcast started out as a
(06:26):
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 with the generational stain of a murderer whose
death was celebrated by criminals and police alike. This is
(06:55):
episode four, Real Wild Child, The Wild One by Johnny O'Keefe.
(07:29):
It could have been written with Reagan in mind. As
for Sidney's King's Cross, a short walk from the house
the Colonel shared with her sister Thelma in Liverpool Street, Darlinghurst,
it was the perfect petri dish for Reagan's hyperkinetic some
would argue psychopathic ambitions. The cross, on a ridge between
(07:55):
the cities well to do inner eastern suburbs like Paddington,
Edgecliffe and Double and Rose Bays and the gritty wharves
on the eastern edge of the CBD, had long been
a magnet for artists and poets, for the sort of
dope smoking, carefree beatniks whose idealism had drifted across the
(08:15):
Pacific from the United States and found a home in
the pubs and bars and coffee shops and blocks of
flats that line Darlinghurst and Bayswater Roads, Victoria and McLay Streets.
It was no stranger to violence this place. In the
(08:35):
late nineteen twenties and early nineteen thirties, the infamous Razor Gangs,
led by mobsters Kate Lee and Tilly Devine, slashed away
at each other in the back streets and lanes. Their
violent lives have been the basis for a virtual cottage
industry of books, films and television shows like Channel Nines
(09:00):
Underbelly franchise.
Speaker 7 (09:03):
Judge says, Kate Lee must be the worst woman in Sydney.
Speaker 8 (09:06):
No mention of Tilly Divine.
Speaker 4 (09:08):
What do you want to be the worst woman in Sydney?
Speaker 9 (09:09):
Do you?
Speaker 7 (09:10):
I want to be recognized for what I am?
Speaker 3 (09:15):
That era spawned another criminal monster. His name was chow Hays,
an utterly ruthless thief, gunman and murderer, and he has
been credited as Australia's first true gangster. He came into
his own during the brutal Razor Wars in Sydney in
the nineteen twenties. He was jailed for murder in the
(09:36):
nineteen fifties and was fighting and stealing into old age.
Look at his police mugshot from the nineteen twenties and
Reagan's from the nineteen sixties, and you'd swear they were
father and son and they had something else in common.
(09:57):
This is from journalist Adam Shan's television series is Suburban Gangsters.
Speaker 10 (10:04):
Those gangs were the breeding ground for the criminals. And
in fact what happened to Hayes was he found himself
at age fourteen, after half a husand convictions for shoplifting,
being sent to Gosford Boy's Home, where he met at
age fourteen and a half murderers. It was the university
(10:26):
for criminals, and he learned everything by the time he
was seventeen about being a criminal.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
By the time young Reagan was finding his way in
the underworld in the early nineteen sixties, the Cross, that
densely populated suburban patch of artists and freethinkers and troubled
scribes was giving way to something else. Vice drugs and
(10:52):
illegal gambling and prostitution found a receptive host in King's Cross,
and then the virus, along with its enforces, simply took over.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
It's a no man's land worth something for everyone he
There's no boundaries to its name and no limits to
its way of light. In fact, the Cross is not
a place but a state of might.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Darlinghurst Road that ventricle from William Street to the El
Alaman fountain and its many narrow offshoots was the beating
heart of the Cross, and with its flashing neons and
dark enclaves, was a landscape made for a gangster like
Stuart John Reagan. Reagan embodied its state of mind, no boundaries,
(11:45):
no limits to its way of life. If Reagan hadn't,
by chance, been born into that time and place, it
would have created him anyhow. With its rich night life,
hatering for everything from cabaret to cocaine, supper clubs to prostitution,
(12:06):
it attracted suburban punters and overseas visitors, and the men
and women who would prey on them and their cash.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
From its hut, you can go about half a mile
in any direction before you run out of the lights
into the darkness of the outside world. A half mile
there and back, a glittering mile of dreams, delusions, hopes
and headaches.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
A glittering mile of dreams. And no other gangster in
Sydney at the time had bigger dreams than Reagan. The
famous brothel Madame Shirley Brifman, who arrived in Sydney from
Brisbane in the early nineteen sixties and built a hugely
lucrative Empire had several run ins with Reagan. The run
(12:59):
ins is a bit mild. On one occasion, he actually
tried to murder her. We'll hear more about Shirley in
future episodes of this podcast, but Briffman said in a
police interview that Reagan was not happy just trying to
control wece in Sydney. He wanted to run it right
(13:22):
across the country. He had a brain for business, both
legitimate and illegal. He would go on to orchestrate one
of the most successful scams in Australian history, but not yet.
As a teen thug, he traded in violence and fear.
(13:43):
Stories of his psychotic behavior, however they may have changed
or been exaggerated over time, are still legion.
Speaker 11 (13:54):
I remember a story about Reagan being in King's Cross
with a friend and he'd come across what he'd had
a disagreement with, bashed himtok pulp and as the guy
lay on the ground mortally wounded, Reagan turned to his
friend who was smoking a cigarette, made him give him
the cigarette, and he stubbed that lit cigarette in the
person's eye. That's how vicious Reagan was.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
That's veteran Sidney crime reporter Norm Lipsyn. In journalist and
author Adam Shann's television documentary series Suburban Gangsters.
Speaker 11 (14:28):
John Reagan built up a stable of prostitutes. He made
quite a lot of money out of that arm, and
he controlled them through fear and violence. If he found
out that there was a customer who was misbehaving or
wasn't paying, they'd be beaten within an inch of their lives.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
And this is the late New South Wales detective Roger
Rogerson who would die in jail as a convicted murderer,
also appearing on the Shan documentary.
Speaker 9 (14:56):
He was a pretty solid luck.
Speaker 12 (14:58):
He was pretty hard and you could not believe how
strong as basket was. If he grabbed you, he had you,
you couldn't get away.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
I spoke at length to both Norm Lipson and Roger
Rogerson before the latter was arrested, charged and ultimately convicted
of murder several years ago about Reagan. As a young
reporter in Sydney, I looked up to Norm. It was
the sort of older crime journalist who had a million
(15:28):
contacts and always seemed to get the best scoops. It's
a measure of the power of the Reagan name. Still
that Norm expressed some concerns about offering his thoughts on
the dead gangster for this podcast and whether there might
be repercussions from the Reagan family.
Speaker 13 (15:48):
Well, I know what I'm coming after me. I've still
got a lot of hard friends. But that's not the point,
you know.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
In a career filled with underworld characters, he clearly remembers Reagan.
Speaker 13 (16:02):
I grew up in the Southeastern suburbs and Reagan used
to knock around the Bondai Junction. I knew people who
knew him, and they used to tell me stories about him,
horrendous stories. And I was in their company and met
him a couple of times. He got the nickname the Magician,
and it wasn't because of his wizardry. It was because
(16:22):
he made people disappear. He used to beat people up
for nothing. A friend of mine who knew him, tell
me a story about how he was upset with somebody,
a guy once, and he was so upset that he
went and bashed this guy, put a dog collar and
a chain around his neck and made him walk to
(16:43):
a pub on all fours and sat him in the
pub with this dog collar and chain like a dog.
To humiliating things like that this is a fellow who
used to torture and kill animals.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
I tell you a funny thing. When he was a kid,
he was an only child in young in country New
South Wales. We've spoken to people who witnessed this. His
mother chained him to a post in the backyard and
she would flog him with a stock whip.
Speaker 13 (17:10):
Oh no, wonder he turned out the way he did.
But he embraced violence. He embraced it. He loved it.
As I say, he embraced violence and random violence. It
didn't matter. He just loved hurting people.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
Norm agreed that Reagan had big plans for his future.
I've looked at the record of interview that Briffman did
in seventy one when she blew the whistle, and she
said that Reagan wanted to be not just the boss
of New South Wales but all of Australia. He seemed
to be very ambitious.
Speaker 13 (17:40):
I think he just wanted to be revered and feared
by all, and that's probably what led to his eventual demise.
This guy just wanted to take over everything, to be
feared by everybody and bowed to and revered, And a
lot of people suffered before he.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
As for Rogerson, he had no doubt that Reagan was
an absolute psychopath. Perhaps it took one to know one.
Rogerson argued that there were three uncontrollable criminal maniacs on
the loose during the heyday of his policing career in
the nineteen sixties and seventies. The first was Brisbane born
(18:26):
Raymond Ducky O'Connor, shot dead in a Sydney nightclub in
nineteen sixty seven, supposedly by the mob boss Lenny Mister
Big McPherson standover man. Ducky had a formidable reputation for
being a loose cannon. Police described him as mad and crazy.
(18:53):
The second was another Brisbane criminal, John Andrew Stewart. Stuart,
a graduate of yet another notorious boy's home, Westbrook outside
to Woomba, west of Brisbane, was also considered by fellow
criminals and detectives alike, a complete psychopath who could and
(19:15):
did kill at will. Incredibly, Stuart's own short and violent
life became significantly entangled with Reagan's, and you'll hear more
about that soon. The third on Rogerson's lunatic list was,
of course Reagan. The type of criminals so unhinged, that
(19:39):
they became dangerous not just to the public and police,
but the underworld itself.
Speaker 12 (19:49):
Lenny McPherson said me, watch Matt, he said Roger, he said,
you can control a bad man, but you can't control
a madn forgotten.
Speaker 4 (20:01):
That's a great quotion in it.
Speaker 12 (20:03):
That came from Annie McPherson, and I've created a few times,
you know, because that's exactly what he said. And it's
fucking right, because these blokes are just as dangerous to
the criminalal use who is that terminology? They are more
sometimes dangerous to them than to the public.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
And what a middle year it was when Reagan was
trying to make his way to the top. If Australia
ever had a Gilded Age of gangsters, then this was it.
Michael Duffy is a publisher, broadcaster and the author of
several crime novels, as well as two classic works of
historical non fiction that lay bare the Reagan era in
(20:46):
Sydney World War Noir and Sydney Noir The Golden Years,
both of which he co authored with Nick Horden. Michael
explained that there were a number of reasons why Reagan
flourished as a mobster, in the nineteen sixties and into
the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
Was that policing was much harder.
Speaker 14 (21:10):
Back then, it was much harder to lock people up
legally anyway, because police didn't have the resources they have now.
If you think about things like modern forensics, DNA, CCTV,
phone tapping, none of this was available. I mean there
were technological there were scientific limitations, and so really the
(21:30):
most powerful weapon in a CoP's armory when he was
usually he was trying to solve a crime was an informer.
Because the crooks would blab about what they'd done. The
informer would come and tell the detective, and the detective
would know because he knew he had a reliable informer,
he'd know who did the crime, but he couldn't really
prove it.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
Really, even if you're an honest cop. Honest maybe in
inverted commerce, in order to get convictions, they had the
load and they had the verbal, and they loaded evidence
onto the criminal they knew had done the crime, or
they verbal them they basically signed made them. You know, well, they.
Speaker 14 (22:09):
Drew up their own false confessions for these crooks because
it was the only way of locking them up.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
The police verbal was the bane of being a criminal.
Reagan went on about the verbal in his secretly recorded
phone calls with other criminals.
Speaker 15 (22:28):
Interesting, you're laying in the third flight, where can they picture?
Speaker 4 (22:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 9 (22:33):
Right, Actually, are you a riad of us? Had they
led you?
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Duffy went on.
Speaker 14 (22:41):
So if even honest cops for doing this thing called
noble cause corruption, you can imagine the opportunities that then
opened for dishonest cops to come along and yeah, just
start doing whatever they like and basically start letting off
the crooks they wanted to let off, and loading up
the competition of those crooks the other crooks, and that
led to these alliances between crooks and cops, such as
(23:05):
the famous one between Lenny McPherson and Ray Kelly, who
was the primary leading cop in the early sixties, which
did so much to contribute to corruption. So these things
are really important.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
According to Duffy. Reagan also landed in Sydney's Inner East
at a time of social change. From the mid nineteen fifties,
suburban clubs in New South Wales were allowed to feature
poker machines, effectively transforming them into mini casinos. The money
(23:37):
flooded in. With that cash injection, the clubs flew in
famous and famously expensive entertainers from around the world. You
could see great singers or lavish musicals in your local clubs.
King's Cross lost its appeal.
Speaker 14 (23:57):
And so the Cross basically repurposed itself, and throughout the
sixties and seventies it gradually turned from a bohemian entertainment precinct,
you know, into a sleezy place selling sex and later
on drugs, and that sort of led to the rise
of the Cross as a focal point for crime, especially towards.
Speaker 4 (24:15):
The end of the sixties into the seventies.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
As for the criminal top dogs who prowled this new
sleezy King's Cross as Reagan arrived on the scene, Michael
Duffy says one particular mob boss cast a huge shadow
over this era, and yet very few people have heard.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
Of him, Paddles Anderson.
Speaker 14 (24:39):
He had very big feet, or some people say I
had big hands, but I think it was big feet.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
So Paddles was a somewhat shadowy figure.
Speaker 14 (24:47):
But from what we've been able to work out, he
was by far the most influential person, probably to the
sixties and into the seventies. And it's a mark of
his skill that he remains so little know. Abe Saffron
is a more interesting figure because I mean he was
almost like a real estate figure slash would be entertainment
(25:09):
entrepreneur who just happened, who just had to get engaged
in a bit of crime, because you had to if
you're in that line of business.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
But yeah, there's a fascinating photo I have of Reagan
cutting a cake at Checkers for his twenty first birthday,
which would have been September nineteen sixty six, and sitting
opposite him at the table is Frederick Paddles Anderson.
Speaker 4 (25:35):
That's a good photo to have, But it's.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Interesting how a twenty one year old just turned twenty
one could have this huge crime figure at his little
birthday party at Checkers.
Speaker 4 (25:48):
It is extraordinary. It suggests that who is very well regarded,
doesn't it.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Yeah, you know, there's discussions in the family about Uncle
Paddles and they just seem to have been a relationship
there that I can't get to the origins of.
Speaker 14 (26:02):
But no, and we've been it's been very difficult to
find out anything at all about Anderson. I mean, he
spent some time in Melbourne, he came back. He was powerful.
But it's extraordinary how secretive he was. If you talk
to older crooks Carbonat and people like that, a lot
of them talk about Anderson has been this very influential figure.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
Would that suggest that he's one of the Master's apprentices
in that Anderson has in a way taking him under
his wing in a sense. Or is it that's stretching
too far.
Speaker 14 (26:31):
I think that sounds likely because there had to be
an implicit agreement amongst all these powerful crooks that they
each had their particular area, and if Rogan was, you know,
it was making ways and everything, there's no way they
would have let him do that without trying to draw
him in, as it were. I'm not aware of any
(26:52):
you know, any crooks that are operating at a high
level that were completely independent. I think at some point
they all had to form a sort of working agreement.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
By the time Stuart John Reagan was released from Mount
Penang around nineteen sixty three, the Swinging sixties were well underway.
It was during this time that he secured what may
have been the one legitimate job in his short life,
as a bouncer at the fabled Whisky You Go Go
nightclub in William Street near King's Cross's Magic Mile of
(27:28):
strip clubs and prostitution dens. The Whisky was managed by
a man called Ivor Balmaine, the father of Revel Balmain,
a sex worker who famously vanished and was presumed murdered
in Sydney in the nineteen nineties. Back in the nineteen sixties,
(27:50):
Balmain trumpeted the whisky as a beacon of respectability amidst
the sodoms and gomorahs of the Cross. The club was
popular with American soldiers on R and R from Vietnam,
and Balmaine had some very firm ideas about the sort
(28:10):
of women he expected to see in his club. This
is from an ABC four Corners report in nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 6 (28:21):
We like the family type of girl, a night type
of girl. You know, I don't particularly like these type
of girls that people say hang around the Cross. That's
a much used term, of course, But a girl that
I think I'd be glad to talk to, to screen
them at all in a way. Yes, we have two permissionaires.
(28:42):
We have two men of the rope down just before
they're going to the dining room. Then myself, we like
to see a girl that looks pretty wide open, feminine, type.
Nice hair, hasn't got that vindictive block on our face?
Speaker 2 (28:55):
How do you actually measure them? What sort of yardstick
do you use for a respective ODB?
Speaker 6 (29:00):
I don't like these. Sweat has very heavy tan bag makeup.
His atrocious looking glass. I like to see a nice
way out girl, a good little swinger. It's neatly dressed.
I suppose that's about the only thing I'd looked for. Really.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Reagan was one of those men down on the rope
near the front doors, as iver Belmaine put it, and
it was while working at the Whiskey that he met
perhaps his one and only true love, Margaret. The first
time he laid eyes on her, he was smitten. She would,
(29:37):
he knew, immediately become the gangster's wife. Margaret Reagan's wife
and mother to three of his children. Margaret, the suburban
Sydney girl whose life was changed one night when she
(30:00):
made the innocent decision to go dancing with a girlfriend
at a nightclub, the Whiskey, a go go in King's
Cross on Friday night. Margaret, daughter to respectable parents, who
went into that famous club for a bit of fun
(30:21):
and stumbled almost literally into the arms of Stuart John Reagan.
Marg has never talked in public about her relationship with Reagan.
She has never said a word outside the family about
being the gangster's wife until now. I sat down with
(30:43):
Marg for the first time out at Kelly's sheep farm
in Young Deep in Reagan Country. Kel used the opportunity
of Marg's visit to bring the entire clan together, her
brother Jeff, some of her children, Daniel and Carli, and
it had been quite a journey for Marg, who lives
(31:05):
on the New South Wales central coast. She hadn't been
too young in years. As we settled down to talk
to Marg in the farmhouse kitchen, Kell and the family
started drifting out of the room to give us privacy,
but Marg extended her arms and called everyone back in.
(31:26):
She wanted her family around her when she told her story.
Speaker 16 (31:34):
I don't want to keep repeating myself for everybody. It's
better to sell everyone here. Okay, that's I want that, Okay,
So what do you want to know now?
Speaker 3 (31:49):
Marg grew up in a modest house in Arncliffe, southwest
of the Sydney CBD and not far from the airport
at Mascot.
Speaker 16 (31:58):
I was seventeenth and I met this girl that was
a hairdresser, and she asked me, Mark, do you want
to come to the city, And I can't tell my father,
is how am I going to do? I lied, Indeed,
I've never been out of ever in the King's cross
Wing Street, nothing in my whole life, never been anywhere.
(32:20):
I was the shyest person. You wouldn't think that now.
I came from an ordinary suburban house that was made
of fiber and stinkham hot in summer, cold in winter.
That's how we leave. So anyhow, we decided we go
to the city. So we went to the city in
the train. So we trotted off to the city and
(32:43):
then we decided to go to a place called Whiskey
a Go. So Whiskey a Go Go in those days
was like a disco. So we get to the front
door and there's a glass there like this. As you
go down the steps, it was like steps.
Speaker 9 (33:04):
Was he like a bouncer or a doormant or a doormanus?
Speaker 16 (33:08):
I was very naive, but then very nive. And as
I'm going to go, he's come over to me and
he's gone.
Speaker 9 (33:18):
What's your name?
Speaker 16 (33:20):
And I didn't need to and he's gone, I'm coming
down I'm going to have a dance with you later.
Speaker 9 (33:28):
Oh my god, this is not this is you. Who
is this guy? What did he look like to you? Handsome? Handsome,
very strong looking.
Speaker 16 (33:41):
Man's sort of stubby but strong build, beautiful eyes, very
good looking man.
Speaker 9 (33:49):
I never I wasn't. I wouldn't know.
Speaker 16 (33:52):
Like if you said to me, is that we're good looking?
Man who knows says, I wouldn't know what you were
talking about. Okay, So I'm gone to my friend. Oh
what's that all about?
Speaker 9 (34:02):
Sort of thing?
Speaker 16 (34:03):
So how goes downstairs, and about half an hour to
an hour lady came over again. And because he'd been
working there, I didn't think he was supposed to be
taking the patrons and dancing on the floor. Okay, well,
when I think about it now, he comes up to
me again and he leans over and he says to me,
(34:28):
I want to see you again.
Speaker 9 (34:29):
I'm going to marry you.
Speaker 17 (34:31):
This is croop.
Speaker 9 (34:32):
I think, what creep, But I've never experienced that. I'm
going to marry you. Yep.
Speaker 16 (34:41):
And I said to my friend that man just said,
and that man I didn't know who was. So we
stayed there for a little while and we left and
he asked me for the phone number, and I didn't
give it to him. But if I remember back then,
I think my friend ain't give him the phone number.
So weeks went past, weeks went past.
Speaker 9 (35:03):
The ponies.
Speaker 16 (35:06):
And it was his pursy and he said I want
to see you with you and that's how it.
Speaker 8 (35:13):
Also, the naive young Mark was nervous, not.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
About the type of person reading was. She knew nothing
about him, just his brazenness and how her family might
react to this nightclub bouncer suddenly on the scene. On
the surface, it all appeared entirely respectful. On their first day,
a young man called John was coming to take Margu
(35:53):
for a pleasant sunday. What could possibly go wrong?
Speaker 16 (36:02):
And he used to travel from then Paddington Well down
to unc look by train, knock on the door and
say on John, eaton lot and drink taking or saying
that's okay. He would say, mother, that's okay. Is it's
a Sunday today, and so you make sure she's home
(36:25):
by five o'clock. That's what's the rules?
Speaker 9 (36:28):
Did you stick by the rule?
Speaker 4 (36:29):
Yes?
Speaker 16 (36:31):
From the train where we traveled to Paddington. At that
time he didn't have a car, so he used to
come out and get me and we're traveling and we'll
go to Paddington.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
Marg ended up outside the house in Liverpool Street where
Reagan lived with his mother. Marg wasn't invited inside on
that first date or many to follow, but she could
hear from inside the house the ravings of the woman
she would come to know as Reagan's mother. It was
(37:03):
the first time marg had encountered the cyclone that was the.
Speaker 16 (37:08):
Colonel Haddington had this tree out the front of this house,
and he would say, so it won't bear my mother.
I'm just going in to change my clothes my mother,
and that's here. And I could hear this woman in
the house saying, you don't bring any ass lucks in
the ear or whatever. You know, you know, she's not
(37:30):
allowed to and blah.
Speaker 18 (37:31):
Blah blah blah.
Speaker 16 (37:32):
I was like, what's going on? And she would say
that every time that I would wait out the front.
She did it to me about four or five times,
and to one day I says.
Speaker 9 (37:44):
I don't want to go in your bloody house. It's
that day on I was allowed in.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
Now, what young Margaret didn't know was that, despite her
suitor's youth, he already had a burgeoning criminal record. On
January twenty four, nineteen sixty three, aged just seventeen, Reagan
was charged with living on the earnings of prostitution charges dismissed.
(38:12):
March twenty two, nineteen sixty three. Charged with assault charge
dismissed April five, nineteen sixty three. Charged with selling liquor
without a license, fined thirty pounds. April twenty six, nineteen
sixty three, Charged with the use of indecent language, fined
(38:33):
three pounds. July three, nineteen sixty three, charged with a
salt occasion in actual bodily harm. Here he is committed
to an institution, which may have been his first stint
in the Gostford Boys Home. Then in nineteen sixty four,
the year he met Marg, he was charged on April
(38:55):
twenty six with speeding in a vehicle, driving without his
ELM plates, and driving unaccompanied by a licensed driver. He
was fined a total of thirty four pounds. This might
explain why he had to resort to public transport when
he was first dating Mark. In July nineteen sixty four,
(39:19):
he was also charged with a salt but again the
case was dismissed. Meanwhile, he pursued the attractive brunette from Arncliff.
Speaker 18 (39:32):
So in the early days of the courtship, what things
did you do?
Speaker 9 (39:37):
Let's go swim in?
Speaker 16 (39:38):
Where'd you go swimming at Bondi Because of the time
that we had for me leaving my home to come
into the city to go so's we didn't have much time.
So it's just more like hanging around time because he
really didn't do nothing. It was either him going in
and changes go. Once I was allowed in that house,
perhaps soul would have something to eat, and that's when
(40:01):
I met Thelma and I met his mother. The house
it was a very dark house because it was something detached,
true story. It was filled with older type dark furniture.
Had a kitchen with a round table that you know
(40:23):
in the olden days, and my mother used to do that.
Speaker 9 (40:26):
She used to meet the.
Speaker 16 (40:27):
Sauce in the paper and salt and sometimes a bother
on the middle of the table, and the conuments in
the middle of the table would stay there all day
with a table cross underneath it. Very small, but I
had an upstairs, so John's room was upstairs.
Speaker 9 (40:42):
I can't at the front. At the front front.
Speaker 16 (40:47):
Very rarely I was allowed to go upstairs to that room,
not with erdie, not that I did. I never went
there upstairs to that room.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
It was at this time that marg finally met the
Colonel Regan's domineering and formidable mother face to face. From
the outset, their relationship did not bode well for the future.
Speaker 9 (41:12):
In the matter.
Speaker 18 (41:14):
What did she look like sound like?
Speaker 9 (41:16):
Can you describe her? Angry? Always angry?
Speaker 18 (41:21):
Was she a big, big, white, small woman.
Speaker 16 (41:23):
She's a German Irish background and very solid book, very strong,
rookly except woman. So she was a very angry woman,
screaming all the time, just screaming at him. What are
you doing John or whatever? You're not screaming all the time.
(41:48):
But her sister, Delma. It was just like a little
person in the corner that had no sale or nothing
in even though that was her house. The control was
not only to her son, and she controlled John for
many many years. I don't think it was the biggest
gangster or whatever she had the control. John was still
(42:12):
controlled by his mother. Even at the latest station in
his life. He would say, they're pay any attention to him,
It's okay.
Speaker 4 (42:22):
It's all right.
Speaker 16 (42:23):
But she could be quite hurtful. I think she kept
for him, but carrying and John and Yer inst too
different closes.
Speaker 4 (42:31):
And bit.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
Reagan in many ways was still just a kid, and
Margaret saw that side to him very early in their relationship.
Speaker 16 (42:42):
If I wasn't allowed out on a Sunday and my
father saying not going next men and derby a ambulance
at the front of the house. My father I never
ran an ambulance or he would bring a fibrigade there,
and all the time he was up in what they
call the red phone boxes. Then I knew that he
(43:06):
was there, but I couldn't say anything. I didn't tell
my parents it's John doing this because I wasn't allowed out.
So he used to be up there and he ring
the ambulance, he ring the fibrigade, he ring.
Speaker 9 (43:20):
The police. I think he didn't want to. My father
was like pulling his hair out. What's going on here?
He better not be that boy that you're hanging around with.
Speaker 4 (43:29):
It.
Speaker 9 (43:30):
Better not be that guy well with a big him,
you know what I mean. They were fun times. It
was funny.
Speaker 16 (43:35):
It was funny, and he'd gone, you tell your father
you better be out out next week. Well, I'll be
doing the same thing. Again, he had that little bit
of devil went in him. That was funny and interesting.
Speaker 9 (43:50):
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8 (43:53):
To Mark.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
He was an interesting, devilish young man who had not
one but two jobs when him he was employed, obviously
had the whiskey he goes.
Speaker 18 (44:06):
Did he ever talk about his work or no?
Speaker 9 (44:09):
He also had a job as a toe jack.
Speaker 18 (44:13):
You never heard that.
Speaker 9 (44:15):
So he would have been all around.
Speaker 16 (44:16):
Those streets in Paddington, across the industreet or whatever.
Speaker 9 (44:22):
He would have been all around me.
Speaker 3 (44:28):
I didn't meet the monster, Mark says of the young Reagan,
but the monster was evolving slowly but surely. In late
nineteen sixty five, Reagan was charged with rape. Police alleged
that Reagan nineteen, a laborer of Victoria Street, King's Cross,
(44:49):
along with two accomplices, had raped a nurse in the
Cross Earlier that year. Police said Reagan and his two
offsiders had let to scar the seventeen year old woman's
male companion with a hot poker if she didn't submit
to intercourse. During a court hearing leading up to the
(45:12):
rape trial, Reagan complained that he'd been bashed by police.
I'm not a criminal, he told the court. I was
asked to go in a lineup. When I refused, I
was bashed by five policemen. I didn't do anything to anybody.
(45:32):
Reagan was ultimately acquitted of the rape charge, but he
was keeping some dangerous company in the mid nineteen sixties.
You might remember corrupt cop Roger Rogerson talking about the
handful of certified psychopathic criminals that were around in his day.
(45:53):
Reagan was one. The others were John Andrews Stewart and
Raymond Ducky O'Connor. Stewart and Ducky were both young Brisbane
crooks down in Sydney trying to cut it with the
big boys. Stuart, when he wasn't behind bars, was inseparable
from his good mate and fellow reformatory boy James Finch.
(46:16):
Ducky O'Connor would not be around for long. He was
shot dead in a nightclub in Sydney in nineteen sixty
seven in a brazen and totally insane attempt to assassinate
underworld heavy Lenny Mister Big McPherson. Ducky was shot in
the head. McPherson didn't cop a scratch. The obituaries weren't
(46:41):
kind to Ducky. Crime reporter Bill Archigord wrote in The
Sun it was as if a mad dog had been
put down in the interests of public safety. He was mean,
vicious and crazy, a standover who would sooner threaten you
(47:02):
with death than say Giday. John Andrew Stewart and Stuart John.
Reagan's lives would, however, become messily and almost fatally entangled.
Stuart was also mean, vicious and crazy, committed to Callen
(47:22):
Park Asylum in Sydney after bashing a police officer unconscious.
The newspapers reported that Stuart had been certified as insane
during one of his stints in Longbay Jail. He was,
to put it mildly, an habitual offender. Stuart and Ducky O'Connor,
(47:43):
before Ducky had his head partially blown off by McPherson,
were charged with raping two prostitutes in the mid nineteen sixties.
When the matter came to court, Reagan threatened one of
the women with death if she appeared as a witness.
She didn't. Here's an assessment of Stuart from people who
(48:06):
knew him from the ABC podcast Danny's Inferno by journalist
Frank Robson.
Speaker 4 (48:14):
John was feared he was very fair mane. He's such
a strong, tough bugger and he.
Speaker 9 (48:20):
Could fight, you know.
Speaker 2 (48:23):
No, he was a pretty intractable prisoner as well.
Speaker 10 (48:25):
You know, he was a hard case inside and everyone
feed him inside, including the prison officers, just they couldn't
manage him.
Speaker 4 (48:31):
He was just too handy, you know.
Speaker 3 (48:36):
People like Stuart were Reagan's associates. As he was pranking Margaret,
circling her as his future wife and clearly steering her
clear off his subterranean gangster life. He was also playing
the field when it came to women, carousing his way
(48:58):
through the cross with thieves and working girls and promising
them the world. In the course of my investigations down
the years, I was lucky enough to become friends with
a woman called Dorothy Edith Knight. Dorothy was a self
(49:19):
confessed knockabout and did time in jail for fraud before
starting work as a sex worker in Brisbane and Sydney
in the nineteen sixties. She would go on to become
the lover of corrupt Queensland detective and member of the
so called rat Pack of crooked cops, Glenn Hallahan, ultimately
(49:40):
in trapping him in a sting operation, but Before that,
she plied her trade in Sydney. Her best friend back
then was a thief called Gloria, And through Gloria, Dorothy
met Stuart John Reagan. She used to see him in
(50:01):
the saloon bar of the old deco Mayfair Hotel on
Bayswater Road in the Cross. Tell me about Stuart John Reagan.
Speaker 7 (50:13):
He used to drink occasionally at the Mayfair. And if
you knew anything about this Gloria, if you knew what
charges she'd been up to, it could be the same person.
She was on with him for a lot of years,
but as she never lived together and they used to
have terrible fights and he'd blacken her eye, and no,
(50:34):
she was a petty thief flog. I met her in
jail in Bogga Road and they stole it us safe
and they put it on the back of the body
use and coming down the range they were taking it
into the bush to blow it up. The blood is safe.
Couldn't get it open, so they had it in the
use and it fell off the frecrant and the bloat
(50:55):
behind them ranged the cops and I think they got
eighteen months each. She knew every cream, She knew him
all don't worry.
Speaker 4 (51:04):
She knew what was what?
Speaker 3 (51:06):
So you met Reagan in the Mayfair in Sydney.
Speaker 7 (51:09):
Yeah, in the Mayfair. Gloria broke up with him eventually,
and he used to come in quite often and have
a drink. And I knew he liked me, and actually
I liked him.
Speaker 9 (51:20):
I liked him too.
Speaker 7 (51:21):
Anyway. I think I said something to Glory and I said, look,
he's invited me out, and she said, well, body go
with him. So she said, I'm never going to have
anything more to do with him. She said, the thing
I'll tell you is that he's mixed up in a
lot of stuff. She didn't tell me exactly what, and
she said, he's got a very very bad temper and
(51:41):
if he gets on the grove heavy look out. If
he's in one of his moods, you'd give you a
black eye as quick as a look at you. So
I went out with him and I finished up going
to the cop with him, and I liked him. He
never did the wrong thing by me. I have to say.
He used to go to this night club in Sydney
(52:02):
and he had a lot to do with the manager there,
and he would take me there for drinks and maybe
something to eat, and he disappeared for half an hour
and in the office with this bloke. So I don't
know really what they're up to. I'll tell you it
was caught. There's something cat, the pink pussy Cat.
Speaker 4 (52:19):
Yep.
Speaker 7 (52:20):
Yeah, I think it was on the corner there near
the Mayfair. I'm pretty sure that was the one.
Speaker 9 (52:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (52:26):
How do you remember how he dressed? It was just
like the suits in the sixties.
Speaker 7 (52:30):
You know, pretty respectable. Yeah, loved a gamble. I know
that he got pretty heavy on the races and used
to go to a lot of these nightclubs and there
was a room out back and you could play cards
the big money.
Speaker 9 (52:46):
He was into that a lot.
Speaker 3 (52:47):
Do you know if he carried a gun?
Speaker 16 (52:49):
Glory told me he did.
Speaker 7 (52:50):
He had it in his you know where they put
a thing around your leg, down the bottom. He carried
a little gun there.
Speaker 9 (52:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (52:58):
I'm pretty sure she did a lot of jobs with him.
I'm almost certain, but I can't tell you what because
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (53:05):
Well, Reagan never mistreated Dorothy. She saw the damage she
inflicted on her friend Gloria.
Speaker 4 (53:12):
God.
Speaker 7 (53:13):
He used to go off. She walked into the Mayfair
and she had the biggest black eyron cup of her
teeth out and said, oh, bashed the shit out of
me last night.
Speaker 9 (53:22):
That's the end of it.
Speaker 16 (53:23):
But she kept going back.
Speaker 7 (53:25):
But in the end, I mean she really had had enough,
because she said she was so terrified in the end
that in knocker and she hit her head and she
died and she lived.
Speaker 3 (53:36):
Dorothy said she was aware at the time that Reagan
had a partner, Margaret.
Speaker 9 (53:43):
Yes, that's right.
Speaker 7 (53:44):
Knew about her. Yes, I knew about that.
Speaker 3 (53:47):
Did Gloria ever talked about Margaret?
Speaker 7 (53:49):
No, she didn't like the idea, of course, because I
mean he told her that he loved her more than
anyone else, and he more or less told me the
same thing, that they were going to separate. She's still alive.
Speaker 3 (54:03):
She's still alive. How would she be she'd be a
mid to late seventies.
Speaker 7 (54:09):
Oh, okay, I'm wonder hash. I hope she got on
her in life.
Speaker 3 (54:15):
Dear Dorothy passed away last year after an extended illness.
For such a petit woman, she lived a big life
and took a lot of extraordinary stories of the underworld
with her. Around this period when Reagan was playing the field,
(54:37):
a strange entry appeared on his police record. On November sixteenth,
nineteen sixty six, Reagan was charged at Sydney's Central Police
Station with breaching the Wireless Act to wit being in
possession of a radio transceiver. He received a fine. This
(55:00):
is interesting because it showed that Reagan was what we
might call today an early a doctor of technology, not
just because it satisfied his feverish brain, but because it
might be useful to further or protect himself and his
criminal enterprises. I rang my old mate, former Queensland detective
(55:25):
and undercover operative, Jim Slade, and asked him to try
and explain the charge. What on earth did you have
to do to contravene the Wireless Act. Jim said that
prior to nineteen fifty seven, if you had a radio
in your home, you were required to have a license
(55:47):
at two pounds per year. After nineteen fifty seven you
were required to have a license for your radio and TV.
If no license was held, a substantial fine was imposed.
From nineteen fifty eight onwards, the fine was fifty pounds.
(56:09):
Jim said this was used by police to hurt someone
who they wanted to harass. Police were inspectors under the Act,
and to be ourseholes. Jim said they would use this,
along with sections of the Vagrants, Gaming and Other Offenses
Act to come down on targets and make life difficult.
(56:33):
Being charged under the Wireless Act by police would have
been to load the bastard up, said Jim. And we
now know Reagan was partial to secretly recording phone calls,
as well as taking mini recorders into the field and
capturing conversations with other people, including his sex workers, criminals,
(56:58):
and police.
Speaker 18 (57:00):
Season in masur if, I said, John, look, I want
you to sign this.
Speaker 9 (57:04):
I want you to do that.
Speaker 18 (57:05):
Here's the money, here's that he done it. Do you understand, Give.
Speaker 19 (57:09):
Me the Simons Civilly and then he can't take criminalation,
get the civil summons.
Speaker 3 (57:13):
On his official police consorting cards, the very first one
carries a warning in capital letters, believe to carry tape
recorder concealed under his coat to tape police going to.
Speaker 13 (57:31):
Be as loud as that talks. It's recording and what
we're saying here and be picked up very it's recording.
Speaker 9 (57:44):
Now. While we took three five.
Speaker 3 (57:52):
By the time Reagan hooked up with marg he was
a whiz with those clandestine recordings. Put in the war high.
In some of the tapes, you can actually sense marg
or his mother, the Colonel somewhere in the background. Reagan
(58:12):
will bark out and aside with his usual scatter gun
speed during a phone conversation.
Speaker 9 (58:21):
Yeah, I wouldn't wear makeup.
Speaker 15 (58:24):
You're pretty well, you're pretty all.
Speaker 3 (58:27):
In one instance, it seems he's deciding on what to
have for breakfast.
Speaker 15 (58:33):
The other thing, I won't belong well, well, watch the radiator, Jesus.
Speaker 9 (58:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (58:47):
And the constant in all the tapes, the one thing
that everything gravitates around is determined by and ruled by money.
Speaker 19 (58:58):
He signed and he's brother told him to sign it,
and then his brother said, you should have made the
document more water to I'd say that he's shyl the
diamonds to you. I said, now, I'm going to do
it legally. But no, Blue, I've given him a kind
period to give him the money back.
Speaker 8 (59:11):
He doesn't.
Speaker 18 (59:11):
He loses the money, he said, all right, he's brothers.
Speaker 19 (59:13):
All right, I'll see he doesn't get I remember once before,
when he first insured him, his idea was to have
him stolen or get bashed or robbed off him, and then.
Speaker 18 (59:23):
He was going to report them. Starle un claiming insurance.
Speaker 3 (59:25):
Remember that Reagan's mad brain never stopped cooking up money
making schemes. He quickly graduated from the ten Knuckles school
of business to scams that teetered on the edge of legitimacy.
By the mid to late sixties, he was well and
truly on his way to becoming a millionaire gangster. As
(59:51):
you will hear in the next episode of The Gangster's Ghosts.
That was not before Reagan hit a few snags and
dodged a f few bullets along the way. He'd be
involved in an almost Wild West shootout in a major
Sydney street in broad daylight with fellows psychopath John Andrew Stewart,
(01:00:15):
and he'd be pursued by police in a high speed
car chase.
Speaker 4 (01:00:22):
It's coming back.
Speaker 17 (01:00:23):
I looked Graven Street to my right and what he done?
He'd followed me so soon? Yes, So then a chase
his shirt. I've chased him in my car and we've
had a about the five hundred around Kentington, and he's
(01:00:45):
gone a street called day Avenue and stops one at
the top.
Speaker 4 (01:00:50):
And I was screaming up and had to stop me.
Speaker 17 (01:00:54):
When he's turning in a punchl Avenue. So I've fired
four shots, Chaddy.
Speaker 20 (01:01:01):
Well, unfortunately I was firing right handed. I'm left handed.
So one of them was an air wing and three
of them penetrated the back of each car.
Speaker 4 (01:01:15):
Anyway, he got away.
Speaker 1 (01:01:31):
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, Editorial director Claire Harvey. Special thanks to Lara Kamenos,
Erica Rutlidge, Kristin Amiot, Jasper Leik, Stephanie Coombs, Sean Callanan Lachland, Clear,
(01:01:52):
Ryan Osland, Amanda will Williams, Christine Keller, Tarn Blackhurst, Magdalena Zajak, Giselbuerti,
Genevieve Brammel, Lauren brow 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
(01:02:13):
best journalism twenty four to seven. Join us at Gangstersghost
dot com dot AU.
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.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I can call it Australia's Barbary Coast, and there are
a few pirates there for sure. Others call it sidon
the city and the summer that around too, if you
can believe what you read about it. The inhabitants make
their living out of baker our dope, witch grant prostitutions,
stripping them selling each other so larly.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
It's King's Cross, Sydney in the nineteen sixties. Stuart John Reagan,
the good Catholic boy from young in Country, South Wales
and fresh from several stints in a boy's correctional home,
is about to step out into hedonistic sin city. He's
still a teenager. One of the nicknames hand written on
(01:14):
his criminal record is the Boy, though he already has
a police rap sheet that should belong to someone twice
his age, not a lame record of shoplifting or petty scams,
but a Sultan robbery. At no point is he ever
(01:35):
a lowly crime boss's dog's body, the Errand kid, or
Smoko Fetcher. By eighteen, he's a brothel enforcer in charge
of a handful of working girls. The jury is out
on whether his own mother, Claire, known to all as
the Colonel, set him up with a few working girls
(01:57):
to get his career started. From the outset, Reagan cements
a reputation as a violent enforcer with a hair trigger temper,
willing to eliminate anyone who gets in the way of
his ambition to be the most powerful gangster, not just
in Sydney but Australia.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
There is a.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Famous police mugshot of Reagan that is still used today
whenever his name pops up in the media. We have
used it for this podcast. It has become iconic and
shorthand for Australian gangster. Reagan is clean shaven. His thick,
(02:41):
slightly oiled hair flicks up off his forehead like black
cockatoo wings. His expression is sullen, his eyes in deep
sockets that are shaded by his brows. Those eyes are
seriously intense and offer menace. One glance at this photograph
(03:05):
and you think several things mean, violent, angry, stubborn. His
face carries a peculiar and chilling contradiction both movie star
good looks and a sense that he could hurt or
kill you at will. The picture was taken in June
(03:29):
nineteen sixty two, when he was just sixteen years old.
It's difficult to reconcile family photographs of Reagan as an
innocuous little country schoolboy just a few years earlier, and
this teenage embodiment of pure hatred. You can already see
(03:53):
the grown up mobster he is to become. It's as
if the gangster was fully formed inside that teenage body.
It just needed to be let loose, and it was
when he left the Gosford Boys Home and returned to
the loving embrace of his mother, The Colonel in Darlinghurst.
(04:20):
A nineteen sixty four documentary called The Glittering Mile from
the then Special Project's division of the National Nine Network
and narrated by David Lowe, was so successful in capturing
the seediness of the Cross at the time that it
made the headlines for being rude and lewde.
Speaker 5 (04:45):
And that's the way it is that King's cross.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
But this is the other face of the cross, not.
Speaker 5 (04:50):
So harmless, not so friendly, not so.
Speaker 6 (04:53):
Easy to forget.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
The night face that it alternately.
Speaker 5 (04:57):
Laughing and scowling, seeking comfort or for guest sensation or satisfaction.
Only here the search for something, whatever it is, goes
on all through the night.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
The key to Reagan, to his rage and violence, lies
somewhere in those formative years between Cherrytown and when he
was released from Mount Penang with its boomerang on the
front gate, when he was let off the leash in
Big bad Sydney. What happened during that period not only
(05:39):
shaped his short life, but also planted the seed of
his death. He was always going to die horribly, as
his own mother predicted, he was never destined to make
old bones. What he did with just over a decade
of adult life, from when he departed Gosford until he
(06:02):
ended up on the Morgue slab is still being discussed
half a century later. This podcast started out as a
(06:26):
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 with the generational stain of a murderer whose
death was celebrated by criminals and police alike. This is
(06:55):
episode four, Real Wild Child, The Wild One by Johnny O'Keefe.
(07:29):
It could have been written with Reagan in mind. As
for Sidney's King's Cross, a short walk from the house
the Colonel shared with her sister Thelma in Liverpool Street, Darlinghurst,
it was the perfect petri dish for Reagan's hyperkinetic some
would argue psychopathic ambitions. The cross, on a ridge between
(07:55):
the cities well to do inner eastern suburbs like Paddington,
Edgecliffe and Double and Rose Bays and the gritty wharves
on the eastern edge of the CBD, had long been
a magnet for artists and poets, for the sort of
dope smoking, carefree beatniks whose idealism had drifted across the
(08:15):
Pacific from the United States and found a home in
the pubs and bars and coffee shops and blocks of
flats that line Darlinghurst and Bayswater Roads, Victoria and McLay Streets.
It was no stranger to violence this place. In the
(08:35):
late nineteen twenties and early nineteen thirties, the infamous Razor Gangs,
led by mobsters Kate Lee and Tilly Devine, slashed away
at each other in the back streets and lanes. Their
violent lives have been the basis for a virtual cottage
industry of books, films and television shows like Channel Nines
(09:00):
Underbelly franchise.
Speaker 7 (09:03):
Judge says, Kate Lee must be the worst woman in Sydney.
Speaker 8 (09:06):
No mention of Tilly Divine.
Speaker 4 (09:08):
What do you want to be the worst woman in Sydney?
Speaker 9 (09:09):
Do you?
Speaker 7 (09:10):
I want to be recognized for what I am?
Speaker 3 (09:15):
That era spawned another criminal monster. His name was chow Hays,
an utterly ruthless thief, gunman and murderer, and he has
been credited as Australia's first true gangster. He came into
his own during the brutal Razor Wars in Sydney in
the nineteen twenties. He was jailed for murder in the
(09:36):
nineteen fifties and was fighting and stealing into old age.
Look at his police mugshot from the nineteen twenties and
Reagan's from the nineteen sixties, and you'd swear they were
father and son and they had something else in common.
(09:57):
This is from journalist Adam Shan's television series is Suburban Gangsters.
Speaker 10 (10:04):
Those gangs were the breeding ground for the criminals. And
in fact what happened to Hayes was he found himself
at age fourteen, after half a husand convictions for shoplifting,
being sent to Gosford Boy's Home, where he met at
age fourteen and a half murderers. It was the university
(10:26):
for criminals, and he learned everything by the time he
was seventeen about being a criminal.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
By the time young Reagan was finding his way in
the underworld in the early nineteen sixties, the Cross, that
densely populated suburban patch of artists and freethinkers and troubled
scribes was giving way to something else. Vice drugs and
(10:52):
illegal gambling and prostitution found a receptive host in King's Cross,
and then the virus, along with its enforces, simply took over.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
It's a no man's land worth something for everyone he
There's no boundaries to its name and no limits to
its way of light. In fact, the Cross is not
a place but a state of might.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Darlinghurst Road that ventricle from William Street to the El
Alaman fountain and its many narrow offshoots was the beating
heart of the Cross, and with its flashing neons and
dark enclaves, was a landscape made for a gangster like
Stuart John Reagan. Reagan embodied its state of mind, no boundaries,
(11:45):
no limits to its way of life. If Reagan hadn't,
by chance, been born into that time and place, it
would have created him anyhow. With its rich night life,
hatering for everything from cabaret to cocaine, supper clubs to prostitution,
(12:06):
it attracted suburban punters and overseas visitors, and the men
and women who would prey on them and their cash.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
From its hut, you can go about half a mile
in any direction before you run out of the lights
into the darkness of the outside world. A half mile
there and back, a glittering mile of dreams, delusions, hopes
and headaches.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
A glittering mile of dreams. And no other gangster in
Sydney at the time had bigger dreams than Reagan. The
famous brothel Madame Shirley Brifman, who arrived in Sydney from
Brisbane in the early nineteen sixties and built a hugely
lucrative Empire had several run ins with Reagan. The run
(12:59):
ins is a bit mild. On one occasion, he actually
tried to murder her. We'll hear more about Shirley in
future episodes of this podcast, but Briffman said in a
police interview that Reagan was not happy just trying to
control wece in Sydney. He wanted to run it right
(13:22):
across the country. He had a brain for business, both
legitimate and illegal. He would go on to orchestrate one
of the most successful scams in Australian history, but not yet.
As a teen thug, he traded in violence and fear.
(13:43):
Stories of his psychotic behavior, however they may have changed
or been exaggerated over time, are still legion.
Speaker 11 (13:54):
I remember a story about Reagan being in King's Cross
with a friend and he'd come across what he'd had
a disagreement with, bashed himtok pulp and as the guy
lay on the ground mortally wounded, Reagan turned to his
friend who was smoking a cigarette, made him give him
the cigarette, and he stubbed that lit cigarette in the
person's eye. That's how vicious Reagan was.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
That's veteran Sidney crime reporter Norm Lipsyn. In journalist and
author Adam Shann's television documentary series Suburban Gangsters.
Speaker 11 (14:28):
John Reagan built up a stable of prostitutes. He made
quite a lot of money out of that arm, and
he controlled them through fear and violence. If he found
out that there was a customer who was misbehaving or
wasn't paying, they'd be beaten within an inch of their lives.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
And this is the late New South Wales detective Roger
Rogerson who would die in jail as a convicted murderer,
also appearing on the Shan documentary.
Speaker 9 (14:56):
He was a pretty solid luck.
Speaker 12 (14:58):
He was pretty hard and you could not believe how
strong as basket was. If he grabbed you, he had you,
you couldn't get away.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
I spoke at length to both Norm Lipson and Roger
Rogerson before the latter was arrested, charged and ultimately convicted
of murder several years ago about Reagan. As a young
reporter in Sydney, I looked up to Norm. It was
the sort of older crime journalist who had a million
(15:28):
contacts and always seemed to get the best scoops. It's
a measure of the power of the Reagan name. Still
that Norm expressed some concerns about offering his thoughts on
the dead gangster for this podcast and whether there might
be repercussions from the Reagan family.
Speaker 13 (15:48):
Well, I know what I'm coming after me. I've still
got a lot of hard friends. But that's not the point,
you know.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
In a career filled with underworld characters, he clearly remembers Reagan.
Speaker 13 (16:02):
I grew up in the Southeastern suburbs and Reagan used
to knock around the Bondai Junction. I knew people who
knew him, and they used to tell me stories about him,
horrendous stories. And I was in their company and met
him a couple of times. He got the nickname the Magician,
and it wasn't because of his wizardry. It was because
(16:22):
he made people disappear. He used to beat people up
for nothing. A friend of mine who knew him, tell
me a story about how he was upset with somebody,
a guy once, and he was so upset that he
went and bashed this guy, put a dog collar and
a chain around his neck and made him walk to
(16:43):
a pub on all fours and sat him in the
pub with this dog collar and chain like a dog.
To humiliating things like that this is a fellow who
used to torture and kill animals.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
I tell you a funny thing. When he was a kid,
he was an only child in young in country New
South Wales. We've spoken to people who witnessed this. His
mother chained him to a post in the backyard and
she would flog him with a stock whip.
Speaker 13 (17:10):
Oh no, wonder he turned out the way he did.
But he embraced violence. He embraced it. He loved it.
As I say, he embraced violence and random violence. It
didn't matter. He just loved hurting people.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
Norm agreed that Reagan had big plans for his future.
I've looked at the record of interview that Briffman did
in seventy one when she blew the whistle, and she
said that Reagan wanted to be not just the boss
of New South Wales but all of Australia. He seemed
to be very ambitious.
Speaker 13 (17:40):
I think he just wanted to be revered and feared
by all, and that's probably what led to his eventual demise.
This guy just wanted to take over everything, to be
feared by everybody and bowed to and revered, And a
lot of people suffered before he.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
As for Rogerson, he had no doubt that Reagan was
an absolute psychopath. Perhaps it took one to know one.
Rogerson argued that there were three uncontrollable criminal maniacs on
the loose during the heyday of his policing career in
the nineteen sixties and seventies. The first was Brisbane born
(18:26):
Raymond Ducky O'Connor, shot dead in a Sydney nightclub in
nineteen sixty seven, supposedly by the mob boss Lenny Mister
Big McPherson standover man. Ducky had a formidable reputation for
being a loose cannon. Police described him as mad and crazy.
(18:53):
The second was another Brisbane criminal, John Andrew Stewart. Stuart,
a graduate of yet another notorious boy's home, Westbrook outside
to Woomba, west of Brisbane, was also considered by fellow
criminals and detectives alike, a complete psychopath who could and
(19:15):
did kill at will. Incredibly, Stuart's own short and violent
life became significantly entangled with Reagan's, and you'll hear more
about that soon. The third on Rogerson's lunatic list was,
of course Reagan. The type of criminals so unhinged, that
(19:39):
they became dangerous not just to the public and police,
but the underworld itself.
Speaker 12 (19:49):
Lenny McPherson said me, watch Matt, he said Roger, he said,
you can control a bad man, but you can't control
a madn forgotten.
Speaker 4 (20:01):
That's a great quotion in it.
Speaker 12 (20:03):
That came from Annie McPherson, and I've created a few times,
you know, because that's exactly what he said. And it's
fucking right, because these blokes are just as dangerous to
the criminalal use who is that terminology? They are more
sometimes dangerous to them than to the public.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
And what a middle year it was when Reagan was
trying to make his way to the top. If Australia
ever had a Gilded Age of gangsters, then this was it.
Michael Duffy is a publisher, broadcaster and the author of
several crime novels, as well as two classic works of
historical non fiction that lay bare the Reagan era in
(20:46):
Sydney World War Noir and Sydney Noir The Golden Years,
both of which he co authored with Nick Horden. Michael
explained that there were a number of reasons why Reagan
flourished as a mobster, in the nineteen sixties and into
the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
Was that policing was much harder.
Speaker 14 (21:10):
Back then, it was much harder to lock people up
legally anyway, because police didn't have the resources they have now.
If you think about things like modern forensics, DNA, CCTV,
phone tapping, none of this was available. I mean there
were technological there were scientific limitations, and so really the
(21:30):
most powerful weapon in a CoP's armory when he was
usually he was trying to solve a crime was an informer.
Because the crooks would blab about what they'd done. The
informer would come and tell the detective, and the detective
would know because he knew he had a reliable informer,
he'd know who did the crime, but he couldn't really
prove it.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
Really, even if you're an honest cop. Honest maybe in
inverted commerce, in order to get convictions, they had the
load and they had the verbal, and they loaded evidence
onto the criminal they knew had done the crime, or
they verbal them they basically signed made them. You know, well, they.
Speaker 14 (22:09):
Drew up their own false confessions for these crooks because
it was the only way of locking them up.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
The police verbal was the bane of being a criminal.
Reagan went on about the verbal in his secretly recorded
phone calls with other criminals.
Speaker 15 (22:28):
Interesting, you're laying in the third flight, where can they picture?
Speaker 4 (22:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 9 (22:33):
Right, Actually, are you a riad of us? Had they
led you?
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Duffy went on.
Speaker 14 (22:41):
So if even honest cops for doing this thing called
noble cause corruption, you can imagine the opportunities that then
opened for dishonest cops to come along and yeah, just
start doing whatever they like and basically start letting off
the crooks they wanted to let off, and loading up
the competition of those crooks the other crooks, and that
led to these alliances between crooks and cops, such as
(23:05):
the famous one between Lenny McPherson and Ray Kelly, who
was the primary leading cop in the early sixties, which
did so much to contribute to corruption. So these things
are really important.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
According to Duffy. Reagan also landed in Sydney's Inner East
at a time of social change. From the mid nineteen fifties,
suburban clubs in New South Wales were allowed to feature
poker machines, effectively transforming them into mini casinos. The money
(23:37):
flooded in. With that cash injection, the clubs flew in
famous and famously expensive entertainers from around the world. You
could see great singers or lavish musicals in your local clubs.
King's Cross lost its appeal.
Speaker 14 (23:57):
And so the Cross basically repurposed itself, and throughout the
sixties and seventies it gradually turned from a bohemian entertainment precinct,
you know, into a sleezy place selling sex and later
on drugs, and that sort of led to the rise
of the Cross as a focal point for crime, especially towards.
Speaker 4 (24:15):
The end of the sixties into the seventies.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
As for the criminal top dogs who prowled this new
sleezy King's Cross as Reagan arrived on the scene, Michael
Duffy says one particular mob boss cast a huge shadow
over this era, and yet very few people have heard.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
Of him, Paddles Anderson.
Speaker 14 (24:39):
He had very big feet, or some people say I
had big hands, but I think it was big feet.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
So Paddles was a somewhat shadowy figure.
Speaker 14 (24:47):
But from what we've been able to work out, he
was by far the most influential person, probably to the
sixties and into the seventies. And it's a mark of
his skill that he remains so little know. Abe Saffron
is a more interesting figure because I mean he was
almost like a real estate figure slash would be entertainment
(25:09):
entrepreneur who just happened, who just had to get engaged
in a bit of crime, because you had to if
you're in that line of business.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
But yeah, there's a fascinating photo I have of Reagan
cutting a cake at Checkers for his twenty first birthday,
which would have been September nineteen sixty six, and sitting
opposite him at the table is Frederick Paddles Anderson.
Speaker 4 (25:35):
That's a good photo to have, But it's.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Interesting how a twenty one year old just turned twenty
one could have this huge crime figure at his little
birthday party at Checkers.
Speaker 4 (25:48):
It is extraordinary. It suggests that who is very well regarded,
doesn't it.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Yeah, you know, there's discussions in the family about Uncle
Paddles and they just seem to have been a relationship
there that I can't get to the origins of.
Speaker 14 (26:02):
But no, and we've been it's been very difficult to
find out anything at all about Anderson. I mean, he
spent some time in Melbourne, he came back. He was powerful.
But it's extraordinary how secretive he was. If you talk
to older crooks Carbonat and people like that, a lot
of them talk about Anderson has been this very influential figure.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
Would that suggest that he's one of the Master's apprentices
in that Anderson has in a way taking him under
his wing in a sense. Or is it that's stretching
too far.
Speaker 14 (26:31):
I think that sounds likely because there had to be
an implicit agreement amongst all these powerful crooks that they
each had their particular area, and if Rogan was, you know,
it was making ways and everything, there's no way they
would have let him do that without trying to draw
him in, as it were. I'm not aware of any
(26:52):
you know, any crooks that are operating at a high
level that were completely independent. I think at some point
they all had to form a sort of working agreement.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
By the time Stuart John Reagan was released from Mount
Penang around nineteen sixty three, the Swinging sixties were well underway.
It was during this time that he secured what may
have been the one legitimate job in his short life,
as a bouncer at the fabled Whisky You Go Go
nightclub in William Street near King's Cross's Magic Mile of
(27:28):
strip clubs and prostitution dens. The Whisky was managed by
a man called Ivor Balmaine, the father of Revel Balmain,
a sex worker who famously vanished and was presumed murdered
in Sydney in the nineteen nineties. Back in the nineteen sixties,
(27:50):
Balmain trumpeted the whisky as a beacon of respectability amidst
the sodoms and gomorahs of the Cross. The club was
popular with American soldiers on R and R from Vietnam,
and Balmaine had some very firm ideas about the sort
(28:10):
of women he expected to see in his club. This
is from an ABC four Corners report in nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 6 (28:21):
We like the family type of girl, a night type
of girl. You know, I don't particularly like these type
of girls that people say hang around the Cross. That's
a much used term, of course, But a girl that
I think I'd be glad to talk to, to screen
them at all in a way. Yes, we have two permissionaires.
(28:42):
We have two men of the rope down just before
they're going to the dining room. Then myself, we like
to see a girl that looks pretty wide open, feminine, type.
Nice hair, hasn't got that vindictive block on our face?
Speaker 2 (28:55):
How do you actually measure them? What sort of yardstick
do you use for a respective ODB?
Speaker 6 (29:00):
I don't like these. Sweat has very heavy tan bag makeup.
His atrocious looking glass. I like to see a nice
way out girl, a good little swinger. It's neatly dressed.
I suppose that's about the only thing I'd looked for. Really.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Reagan was one of those men down on the rope
near the front doors, as iver Belmaine put it, and
it was while working at the Whiskey that he met
perhaps his one and only true love, Margaret. The first
time he laid eyes on her, he was smitten. She would,
(29:37):
he knew, immediately become the gangster's wife. Margaret Reagan's wife
and mother to three of his children. Margaret, the suburban
Sydney girl whose life was changed one night when she
(30:00):
made the innocent decision to go dancing with a girlfriend
at a nightclub, the Whiskey, a go go in King's
Cross on Friday night. Margaret, daughter to respectable parents, who
went into that famous club for a bit of fun
(30:21):
and stumbled almost literally into the arms of Stuart John Reagan.
Marg has never talked in public about her relationship with Reagan.
She has never said a word outside the family about
being the gangster's wife until now. I sat down with
(30:43):
Marg for the first time out at Kelly's sheep farm
in Young Deep in Reagan Country. Kel used the opportunity
of Marg's visit to bring the entire clan together, her
brother Jeff, some of her children, Daniel and Carli, and
it had been quite a journey for Marg, who lives
(31:05):
on the New South Wales central coast. She hadn't been
too young in years. As we settled down to talk
to Marg in the farmhouse kitchen, Kell and the family
started drifting out of the room to give us privacy,
but Marg extended her arms and called everyone back in.
(31:26):
She wanted her family around her when she told her story.
Speaker 16 (31:34):
I don't want to keep repeating myself for everybody. It's
better to sell everyone here. Okay, that's I want that, Okay,
So what do you want to know now?
Speaker 3 (31:49):
Marg grew up in a modest house in Arncliffe, southwest
of the Sydney CBD and not far from the airport
at Mascot.
Speaker 16 (31:58):
I was seventeenth and I met this girl that was
a hairdresser, and she asked me, Mark, do you want
to come to the city, And I can't tell my father,
is how am I going to do? I lied, Indeed,
I've never been out of ever in the King's cross
Wing Street, nothing in my whole life, never been anywhere.
(32:20):
I was the shyest person. You wouldn't think that now.
I came from an ordinary suburban house that was made
of fiber and stinkham hot in summer, cold in winter.
That's how we leave. So anyhow, we decided we go
to the city. So we went to the city in
the train. So we trotted off to the city and
(32:43):
then we decided to go to a place called Whiskey
a Go. So Whiskey a Go Go in those days
was like a disco. So we get to the front
door and there's a glass there like this. As you
go down the steps, it was like steps.
Speaker 9 (33:04):
Was he like a bouncer or a doormant or a doormanus?
Speaker 16 (33:08):
I was very naive, but then very nive. And as
I'm going to go, he's come over to me and
he's gone.
Speaker 9 (33:18):
What's your name?
Speaker 16 (33:20):
And I didn't need to and he's gone, I'm coming
down I'm going to have a dance with you later.
Speaker 9 (33:28):
Oh my god, this is not this is you. Who
is this guy? What did he look like to you? Handsome? Handsome,
very strong looking.
Speaker 16 (33:41):
Man's sort of stubby but strong build, beautiful eyes, very
good looking man.
Speaker 9 (33:49):
I never I wasn't. I wouldn't know.
Speaker 16 (33:52):
Like if you said to me, is that we're good looking?
Man who knows says, I wouldn't know what you were
talking about. Okay, So I'm gone to my friend. Oh
what's that all about?
Speaker 9 (34:02):
Sort of thing?
Speaker 16 (34:03):
So how goes downstairs, and about half an hour to
an hour lady came over again. And because he'd been
working there, I didn't think he was supposed to be
taking the patrons and dancing on the floor. Okay, well,
when I think about it now, he comes up to
me again and he leans over and he says to me,
(34:28):
I want to see you again.
Speaker 9 (34:29):
I'm going to marry you.
Speaker 17 (34:31):
This is croop.
Speaker 9 (34:32):
I think, what creep, But I've never experienced that. I'm
going to marry you. Yep.
Speaker 16 (34:41):
And I said to my friend that man just said,
and that man I didn't know who was. So we
stayed there for a little while and we left and
he asked me for the phone number, and I didn't
give it to him. But if I remember back then,
I think my friend ain't give him the phone number.
So weeks went past, weeks went past.
Speaker 9 (35:03):
The ponies.
Speaker 16 (35:06):
And it was his pursy and he said I want
to see you with you and that's how it.
Speaker 8 (35:13):
Also, the naive young Mark was nervous, not.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
About the type of person reading was. She knew nothing
about him, just his brazenness and how her family might
react to this nightclub bouncer suddenly on the scene. On
the surface, it all appeared entirely respectful. On their first day,
a young man called John was coming to take Margu
(35:53):
for a pleasant sunday. What could possibly go wrong?
Speaker 16 (36:02):
And he used to travel from then Paddington Well down
to unc look by train, knock on the door and
say on John, eaton lot and drink taking or saying
that's okay. He would say, mother, that's okay. Is it's
a Sunday today, and so you make sure she's home
(36:25):
by five o'clock. That's what's the rules?
Speaker 9 (36:28):
Did you stick by the rule?
Speaker 4 (36:29):
Yes?
Speaker 16 (36:31):
From the train where we traveled to Paddington. At that
time he didn't have a car, so he used to
come out and get me and we're traveling and we'll
go to Paddington.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
Marg ended up outside the house in Liverpool Street where
Reagan lived with his mother. Marg wasn't invited inside on
that first date or many to follow, but she could
hear from inside the house the ravings of the woman
she would come to know as Reagan's mother. It was
(37:03):
the first time marg had encountered the cyclone that was the.
Speaker 16 (37:08):
Colonel Haddington had this tree out the front of this house,
and he would say, so it won't bear my mother.
I'm just going in to change my clothes my mother,
and that's here. And I could hear this woman in
the house saying, you don't bring any ass lucks in
the ear or whatever. You know, you know, she's not
(37:30):
allowed to and blah.
Speaker 18 (37:31):
Blah blah blah.
Speaker 16 (37:32):
I was like, what's going on? And she would say
that every time that I would wait out the front.
She did it to me about four or five times,
and to one day I says.
Speaker 9 (37:44):
I don't want to go in your bloody house. It's
that day on I was allowed in.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
Now, what young Margaret didn't know was that, despite her
suitor's youth, he already had a burgeoning criminal record. On
January twenty four, nineteen sixty three, aged just seventeen, Reagan
was charged with living on the earnings of prostitution charges dismissed.
(38:12):
March twenty two, nineteen sixty three. Charged with assault charge
dismissed April five, nineteen sixty three. Charged with selling liquor
without a license, fined thirty pounds. April twenty six, nineteen
sixty three, Charged with the use of indecent language, fined
(38:33):
three pounds. July three, nineteen sixty three, charged with a
salt occasion in actual bodily harm. Here he is committed
to an institution, which may have been his first stint
in the Gostford Boys Home. Then in nineteen sixty four,
the year he met Marg, he was charged on April
(38:55):
twenty six with speeding in a vehicle, driving without his
ELM plates, and driving unaccompanied by a licensed driver. He
was fined a total of thirty four pounds. This might
explain why he had to resort to public transport when
he was first dating Mark. In July nineteen sixty four,
(39:19):
he was also charged with a salt but again the
case was dismissed. Meanwhile, he pursued the attractive brunette from Arncliff.
Speaker 18 (39:32):
So in the early days of the courtship, what things
did you do?
Speaker 9 (39:37):
Let's go swim in?
Speaker 16 (39:38):
Where'd you go swimming at Bondi Because of the time
that we had for me leaving my home to come
into the city to go so's we didn't have much time.
So it's just more like hanging around time because he
really didn't do nothing. It was either him going in
and changes go. Once I was allowed in that house,
perhaps soul would have something to eat, and that's when
(40:01):
I met Thelma and I met his mother. The house
it was a very dark house because it was something detached,
true story. It was filled with older type dark furniture.
Had a kitchen with a round table that you know
(40:23):
in the olden days, and my mother used to do that.
Speaker 9 (40:26):
She used to meet the.
Speaker 16 (40:27):
Sauce in the paper and salt and sometimes a bother
on the middle of the table, and the conuments in
the middle of the table would stay there all day
with a table cross underneath it. Very small, but I
had an upstairs, so John's room was upstairs.
Speaker 9 (40:42):
I can't at the front. At the front front.
Speaker 16 (40:47):
Very rarely I was allowed to go upstairs to that room,
not with erdie, not that I did. I never went
there upstairs to that room.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
It was at this time that marg finally met the
Colonel Regan's domineering and formidable mother face to face. From
the outset, their relationship did not bode well for the future.
Speaker 9 (41:12):
In the matter.
Speaker 18 (41:14):
What did she look like sound like?
Speaker 9 (41:16):
Can you describe her? Angry? Always angry?
Speaker 18 (41:21):
Was she a big, big, white, small woman.
Speaker 16 (41:23):
She's a German Irish background and very solid book, very strong,
rookly except woman. So she was a very angry woman,
screaming all the time, just screaming at him. What are
you doing John or whatever? You're not screaming all the time.
(41:48):
But her sister, Delma. It was just like a little
person in the corner that had no sale or nothing
in even though that was her house. The control was
not only to her son, and she controlled John for
many many years. I don't think it was the biggest
gangster or whatever she had the control. John was still
(42:12):
controlled by his mother. Even at the latest station in
his life. He would say, they're pay any attention to him,
It's okay.
Speaker 4 (42:22):
It's all right.
Speaker 16 (42:23):
But she could be quite hurtful. I think she kept
for him, but carrying and John and Yer inst too
different closes.
Speaker 4 (42:31):
And bit.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
Reagan in many ways was still just a kid, and
Margaret saw that side to him very early in their relationship.
Speaker 16 (42:42):
If I wasn't allowed out on a Sunday and my
father saying not going next men and derby a ambulance
at the front of the house. My father I never
ran an ambulance or he would bring a fibrigade there,
and all the time he was up in what they
call the red phone boxes. Then I knew that he
(43:06):
was there, but I couldn't say anything. I didn't tell
my parents it's John doing this because I wasn't allowed out.
So he used to be up there and he ring
the ambulance, he ring the fibrigade, he ring.
Speaker 9 (43:20):
The police. I think he didn't want to. My father
was like pulling his hair out. What's going on here?
He better not be that boy that you're hanging around with.
Speaker 4 (43:29):
It.
Speaker 9 (43:30):
Better not be that guy well with a big him,
you know what I mean. They were fun times. It
was funny.
Speaker 16 (43:35):
It was funny, and he'd gone, you tell your father
you better be out out next week. Well, I'll be
doing the same thing. Again, he had that little bit
of devil went in him. That was funny and interesting.
Speaker 9 (43:50):
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8 (43:53):
To Mark.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
He was an interesting, devilish young man who had not
one but two jobs when him he was employed, obviously
had the whiskey he goes.
Speaker 18 (44:06):
Did he ever talk about his work or no?
Speaker 9 (44:09):
He also had a job as a toe jack.
Speaker 18 (44:13):
You never heard that.
Speaker 9 (44:15):
So he would have been all around.
Speaker 16 (44:16):
Those streets in Paddington, across the industreet or whatever.
Speaker 9 (44:22):
He would have been all around me.
Speaker 3 (44:28):
I didn't meet the monster, Mark says of the young Reagan,
but the monster was evolving slowly but surely. In late
nineteen sixty five, Reagan was charged with rape. Police alleged
that Reagan nineteen, a laborer of Victoria Street, King's Cross,
(44:49):
along with two accomplices, had raped a nurse in the
Cross Earlier that year. Police said Reagan and his two
offsiders had let to scar the seventeen year old woman's
male companion with a hot poker if she didn't submit
to intercourse. During a court hearing leading up to the
(45:12):
rape trial, Reagan complained that he'd been bashed by police.
I'm not a criminal, he told the court. I was
asked to go in a lineup. When I refused, I
was bashed by five policemen. I didn't do anything to anybody.
(45:32):
Reagan was ultimately acquitted of the rape charge, but he
was keeping some dangerous company in the mid nineteen sixties.
You might remember corrupt cop Roger Rogerson talking about the
handful of certified psychopathic criminals that were around in his day.
(45:53):
Reagan was one. The others were John Andrews Stewart and
Raymond Ducky O'Connor. Stewart and Ducky were both young Brisbane
crooks down in Sydney trying to cut it with the
big boys. Stuart, when he wasn't behind bars, was inseparable
from his good mate and fellow reformatory boy James Finch.
(46:16):
Ducky O'Connor would not be around for long. He was
shot dead in a nightclub in Sydney in nineteen sixty
seven in a brazen and totally insane attempt to assassinate
underworld heavy Lenny Mister Big McPherson. Ducky was shot in
the head. McPherson didn't cop a scratch. The obituaries weren't
(46:41):
kind to Ducky. Crime reporter Bill Archigord wrote in The
Sun it was as if a mad dog had been
put down in the interests of public safety. He was mean,
vicious and crazy, a standover who would sooner threaten you
(47:02):
with death than say Giday. John Andrew Stewart and Stuart John.
Reagan's lives would, however, become messily and almost fatally entangled.
Stuart was also mean, vicious and crazy, committed to Callen
(47:22):
Park Asylum in Sydney after bashing a police officer unconscious.
The newspapers reported that Stuart had been certified as insane
during one of his stints in Longbay Jail. He was,
to put it mildly, an habitual offender. Stuart and Ducky O'Connor,
(47:43):
before Ducky had his head partially blown off by McPherson,
were charged with raping two prostitutes in the mid nineteen sixties.
When the matter came to court, Reagan threatened one of
the women with death if she appeared as a witness.
She didn't. Here's an assessment of Stuart from people who
(48:06):
knew him from the ABC podcast Danny's Inferno by journalist
Frank Robson.
Speaker 4 (48:14):
John was feared he was very fair mane. He's such
a strong, tough bugger and he.
Speaker 9 (48:20):
Could fight, you know.
Speaker 2 (48:23):
No, he was a pretty intractable prisoner as well.
Speaker 10 (48:25):
You know, he was a hard case inside and everyone
feed him inside, including the prison officers, just they couldn't
manage him.
Speaker 4 (48:31):
He was just too handy, you know.
Speaker 3 (48:36):
People like Stuart were Reagan's associates. As he was pranking Margaret,
circling her as his future wife and clearly steering her
clear off his subterranean gangster life. He was also playing
the field when it came to women, carousing his way
(48:58):
through the cross with thieves and working girls and promising
them the world. In the course of my investigations down
the years, I was lucky enough to become friends with
a woman called Dorothy Edith Knight. Dorothy was a self
(49:19):
confessed knockabout and did time in jail for fraud before
starting work as a sex worker in Brisbane and Sydney
in the nineteen sixties. She would go on to become
the lover of corrupt Queensland detective and member of the
so called rat Pack of crooked cops, Glenn Hallahan, ultimately
(49:40):
in trapping him in a sting operation, but Before that,
she plied her trade in Sydney. Her best friend back
then was a thief called Gloria, And through Gloria, Dorothy
met Stuart John Reagan. She used to see him in
(50:01):
the saloon bar of the old deco Mayfair Hotel on
Bayswater Road in the Cross. Tell me about Stuart John Reagan.
Speaker 7 (50:13):
He used to drink occasionally at the Mayfair. And if
you knew anything about this Gloria, if you knew what
charges she'd been up to, it could be the same person.
She was on with him for a lot of years,
but as she never lived together and they used to
have terrible fights and he'd blacken her eye, and no,
(50:34):
she was a petty thief flog. I met her in
jail in Bogga Road and they stole it us safe
and they put it on the back of the body
use and coming down the range they were taking it
into the bush to blow it up. The blood is safe.
Couldn't get it open, so they had it in the
use and it fell off the frecrant and the bloat
(50:55):
behind them ranged the cops and I think they got
eighteen months each. She knew every cream, She knew him
all don't worry.
Speaker 4 (51:04):
She knew what was what?
Speaker 3 (51:06):
So you met Reagan in the Mayfair in Sydney.
Speaker 7 (51:09):
Yeah, in the Mayfair. Gloria broke up with him eventually,
and he used to come in quite often and have
a drink. And I knew he liked me, and actually
I liked him.
Speaker 9 (51:20):
I liked him too.
Speaker 7 (51:21):
Anyway. I think I said something to Glory and I said, look,
he's invited me out, and she said, well, body go
with him. So she said, I'm never going to have
anything more to do with him. She said, the thing
I'll tell you is that he's mixed up in a
lot of stuff. She didn't tell me exactly what, and
she said, he's got a very very bad temper and
(51:41):
if he gets on the grove heavy look out. If
he's in one of his moods, you'd give you a
black eye as quick as a look at you. So
I went out with him and I finished up going
to the cop with him, and I liked him. He
never did the wrong thing by me. I have to say.
He used to go to this night club in Sydney
(52:02):
and he had a lot to do with the manager there,
and he would take me there for drinks and maybe
something to eat, and he disappeared for half an hour
and in the office with this bloke. So I don't
know really what they're up to. I'll tell you it
was caught. There's something cat, the pink pussy Cat.
Speaker 4 (52:19):
Yep.
Speaker 7 (52:20):
Yeah, I think it was on the corner there near
the Mayfair. I'm pretty sure that was the one.
Speaker 9 (52:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (52:26):
How do you remember how he dressed? It was just
like the suits in the sixties.
Speaker 7 (52:30):
You know, pretty respectable. Yeah, loved a gamble. I know
that he got pretty heavy on the races and used
to go to a lot of these nightclubs and there
was a room out back and you could play cards
the big money.
Speaker 9 (52:46):
He was into that a lot.
Speaker 3 (52:47):
Do you know if he carried a gun?
Speaker 16 (52:49):
Glory told me he did.
Speaker 7 (52:50):
He had it in his you know where they put
a thing around your leg, down the bottom. He carried
a little gun there.
Speaker 9 (52:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (52:58):
I'm pretty sure she did a lot of jobs with him.
I'm almost certain, but I can't tell you what because
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (53:05):
Well, Reagan never mistreated Dorothy. She saw the damage she
inflicted on her friend Gloria.
Speaker 4 (53:12):
God.
Speaker 7 (53:13):
He used to go off. She walked into the Mayfair
and she had the biggest black eyron cup of her
teeth out and said, oh, bashed the shit out of
me last night.
Speaker 9 (53:22):
That's the end of it.
Speaker 16 (53:23):
But she kept going back.
Speaker 7 (53:25):
But in the end, I mean she really had had enough,
because she said she was so terrified in the end
that in knocker and she hit her head and she
died and she lived.
Speaker 3 (53:36):
Dorothy said she was aware at the time that Reagan
had a partner, Margaret.
Speaker 9 (53:43):
Yes, that's right.
Speaker 7 (53:44):
Knew about her. Yes, I knew about that.
Speaker 3 (53:47):
Did Gloria ever talked about Margaret?
Speaker 7 (53:49):
No, she didn't like the idea, of course, because I
mean he told her that he loved her more than
anyone else, and he more or less told me the
same thing, that they were going to separate. She's still alive.
Speaker 3 (54:03):
She's still alive. How would she be she'd be a
mid to late seventies.
Speaker 7 (54:09):
Oh, okay, I'm wonder hash. I hope she got on
her in life.
Speaker 3 (54:15):
Dear Dorothy passed away last year after an extended illness.
For such a petit woman, she lived a big life
and took a lot of extraordinary stories of the underworld
with her. Around this period when Reagan was playing the field,
(54:37):
a strange entry appeared on his police record. On November sixteenth,
nineteen sixty six, Reagan was charged at Sydney's Central Police
Station with breaching the Wireless Act to wit being in
possession of a radio transceiver. He received a fine. This
(55:00):
is interesting because it showed that Reagan was what we
might call today an early a doctor of technology, not
just because it satisfied his feverish brain, but because it
might be useful to further or protect himself and his
criminal enterprises. I rang my old mate, former Queensland detective
(55:25):
and undercover operative, Jim Slade, and asked him to try
and explain the charge. What on earth did you have
to do to contravene the Wireless Act. Jim said that
prior to nineteen fifty seven, if you had a radio
in your home, you were required to have a license
(55:47):
at two pounds per year. After nineteen fifty seven you
were required to have a license for your radio and TV.
If no license was held, a substantial fine was imposed.
From nineteen fifty eight onwards, the fine was fifty pounds.
(56:09):
Jim said this was used by police to hurt someone
who they wanted to harass. Police were inspectors under the Act,
and to be ourseholes. Jim said they would use this,
along with sections of the Vagrants, Gaming and Other Offenses
Act to come down on targets and make life difficult.
(56:33):
Being charged under the Wireless Act by police would have
been to load the bastard up, said Jim. And we
now know Reagan was partial to secretly recording phone calls,
as well as taking mini recorders into the field and
capturing conversations with other people, including his sex workers, criminals,
(56:58):
and police.
Speaker 18 (57:00):
Season in masur if, I said, John, look, I want
you to sign this.
Speaker 9 (57:04):
I want you to do that.
Speaker 18 (57:05):
Here's the money, here's that he done it. Do you understand, Give.
Speaker 19 (57:09):
Me the Simons Civilly and then he can't take criminalation,
get the civil summons.
Speaker 3 (57:13):
On his official police consorting cards, the very first one
carries a warning in capital letters, believe to carry tape
recorder concealed under his coat to tape police going to.
Speaker 13 (57:31):
Be as loud as that talks. It's recording and what
we're saying here and be picked up very it's recording.
Speaker 9 (57:44):
Now. While we took three five.
Speaker 3 (57:52):
By the time Reagan hooked up with marg he was
a whiz with those clandestine recordings. Put in the war high.
In some of the tapes, you can actually sense marg
or his mother, the Colonel somewhere in the background. Reagan
(58:12):
will bark out and aside with his usual scatter gun
speed during a phone conversation.
Speaker 9 (58:21):
Yeah, I wouldn't wear makeup.
Speaker 15 (58:24):
You're pretty well, you're pretty all.
Speaker 3 (58:27):
In one instance, it seems he's deciding on what to
have for breakfast.
Speaker 15 (58:33):
The other thing, I won't belong well, well, watch the radiator, Jesus.
Speaker 9 (58:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (58:47):
And the constant in all the tapes, the one thing
that everything gravitates around is determined by and ruled by money.
Speaker 19 (58:58):
He signed and he's brother told him to sign it,
and then his brother said, you should have made the
document more water to I'd say that he's shyl the
diamonds to you. I said, now, I'm going to do
it legally. But no, Blue, I've given him a kind
period to give him the money back.
Speaker 8 (59:11):
He doesn't.
Speaker 18 (59:11):
He loses the money, he said, all right, he's brothers.
Speaker 19 (59:13):
All right, I'll see he doesn't get I remember once before,
when he first insured him, his idea was to have
him stolen or get bashed or robbed off him, and then.
Speaker 18 (59:23):
He was going to report them. Starle un claiming insurance.
Speaker 3 (59:25):
Remember that Reagan's mad brain never stopped cooking up money
making schemes. He quickly graduated from the ten Knuckles school
of business to scams that teetered on the edge of legitimacy.
By the mid to late sixties, he was well and
truly on his way to becoming a millionaire gangster. As
(59:51):
you will hear in the next episode of The Gangster's Ghosts.
That was not before Reagan hit a few snags and
dodged a f few bullets along the way. He'd be
involved in an almost Wild West shootout in a major
Sydney street in broad daylight with fellows psychopath John Andrew Stewart,
(01:00:15):
and he'd be pursued by police in a high speed
car chase.
Speaker 4 (01:00:22):
It's coming back.
Speaker 17 (01:00:23):
I looked Graven Street to my right and what he done?
He'd followed me so soon? Yes, So then a chase
his shirt. I've chased him in my car and we've
had a about the five hundred around Kentington, and he's
(01:00:45):
gone a street called day Avenue and stops one at
the top.
Speaker 4 (01:00:50):
And I was screaming up and had to stop me.
Speaker 17 (01:00:54):
When he's turning in a punchl Avenue. So I've fired
four shots, Chaddy.
Speaker 20 (01:01:01):
Well, unfortunately I was firing right handed. I'm left handed.
So one of them was an air wing and three
of them penetrated the back of each car.
Speaker 4 (01:01:15):
Anyway, he got away.
Speaker 1 (01:01:31):
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, Editorial director Claire Harvey. Special thanks to Lara Kamenos,
Erica Rutlidge, Kristin Amiot, Jasper Leik, Stephanie Coombs, Sean Callanan Lachland, Clear,
(01:01:52):
Ryan Osland, Amanda will Williams, Christine Keller, Tarn Blackhurst, Magdalena Zajak, Giselbuerti,
Genevieve Brammel, Lauren brow 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
(01:02:13):
best journalism twenty four to seven. Join us at Gangstersghost
dot com dot AU.
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