June 12, 2025 • 50 mins
In this episode, Stewart John Regan’s transition from troubled youth, tow truck driver and nightclub bouncer goes to another level.
While courting his girlfriend Marg, he announces himself as a force to be reckoned with in Sydney’s notorious Kings Cross, muscling in on other criminals’ territory and developing a reputation as a man with a lethal temper. As his list of enemies grows, he is caught up in a Wild West-style shootout in a public street.
In the late 1960s, he is also charged with various rapes and assaults, triggering his endless dance with the law and frequent visits to prison. As his reputation as a dangerous madman grows, he signals his intention to become the number one mobster in Australia. It’s not until people around him start going missing that the underworld begins to take him seriously.
Read more about this case and see photographs, videos, timelines and more at gangstersghost.com.au
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
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 (00:35):
Welcome to Checkers. It's pleasure being here at Checkers in Sydney.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Now, of course it's pleasure.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
It's the winter of nineteen sixty eight and the popular
American musical duo The Everly Brothers are on stage at
Checkers Nightclub in Golden Street, in the heart of the
Sydney CBD. For years, the club the place to See
Be Seen, was known for its international acts Shirley Bassie,
(01:05):
Sammy Davis Junior, Liza Manelli, and equally for its client
tele from the rich and famous to the cream of
the city's criminal underworld.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
We'd like to sing our favorite song for you.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
We think it's the most beautiful song we ever had
the privilege of recording.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
Orchestra On this night, the Everly Brothers, Don and Phil
played a few of their old hits like Bye Bye
Love and Wake Up Little Susie, as well as the
haunting ballad Let It Be Me.
Speaker 5 (01:47):
Less the Dear.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
Just a couple of years earlier, gangster Stewart John had
celebrated his twenty first birthday at the fabled Checkers. He
dressed in a nice suit and pencil thin tie with
a white pocket handkerchief. There was a cream cake on
a silver foil tray with twenty one candles. His mother, Claire,
(02:20):
known by all as the Colonel, sat on one side
of him at the table. Marg the partner he had
fallen in love with at first sight when he was
working as a King's Cross nightclub bouncer, sat on the other.
A photograph was taken of a beaming Reagan cutting the cake.
(02:42):
What the picture didn't show was the guest sitting on
the other side of the table. That was a man
called Frederick Paddles Anderson, a man who lived in the shadows,
a man both police and criminals knew as the God
of Sydney, the boss of Bosses. Mark remembers the celebration
(03:09):
and the well dressed elderly gentleman at the table.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
I can still remember the outfit. He said, I'm buying
you an outfit. You're coming to my twenty first the
outfit was red velvet, opened a pel and saw the
little button, and I had a red skirt. Now I've
never owned anything about blood in my life, and you
will wear this and we're going to have a nast night.
I was very shy. I didn't speak to people. So
(03:37):
I was here on the left hands on John was there,
Claire was there, and Filman was there, and Parol Anson
was on the other side. That was that Checkers, I think, yes, Checkers.
Speaker 6 (03:49):
That was a small group.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Yes, if you see the picture, you can see him
cuting his cake, which he was very happy. But in
that picture you will see that mean in the corner
was a battle Lansing. So he was mixing with these
people and me not even not.
Speaker 6 (04:07):
So you didn't have a clue.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
I have no idea none.
Speaker 6 (04:11):
Time was he introduced to you as a friend or an.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Uncle, or oh this is my business partner, my friend,
and you know he was a very pleasant man to me.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
He was Mark was still in her late teens and
here she was a fancy Checkers. Champagne was flowing. The
boy from young had come so far so quickly. Now mentored,
it seemed by this big businessman.
Speaker 6 (04:41):
Did he get along well with Claire?
Speaker 3 (04:44):
I didn't see any problem. Who was a nice snock?
Speaker 7 (04:46):
Did you ever query what business is it that your
partner's in?
Speaker 3 (04:51):
No, who would never disclose it to me? I didn't
even have even any thoughts. That's what was happening in
this mantl because he was here, there, everywhere. Obviously he
was meeting people that were cluels.
Speaker 6 (05:06):
So when do you think that started.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
I think it started at that age, Yes.
Speaker 8 (05:11):
I do.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
Paddles Anderson was there to celebrate Stuart John Reagan coming
of age, and by the mid nineteen sixties he came
of age alright, not just as a legal adult, but
as one of the most dangerous and psychotic mobsters that
the city of Sydney and the nation had ever witnessed.
(06:01):
I'm journalist Matthew Condon and this is the Gangster's Ghost,
a podcast from The Australian. This podcast started out as
a clinical look at one of Australia's most reviled gangsters,
but when the Reagan family came on board, the project
took on another dimension and begged the question, how does
(06:27):
a family cope with the generational stain of a murderer
whose death was celebrated by criminals and police alike. This
is episode five Into the Underworld. At the start of
(06:56):
our investigation into Reagan, my co pilot Kelly Slater Reagan
was brimming with optimism. She'd tracked down some of Reagan's
old schoolmates in his hometown of Young and heard some
decent things about the gangster when he was a boy.
It encouraged Kelly that her second cousin was a bad man,
(07:20):
but perhaps not the monster that everyone else depicted him as.
But the more we learned, the more Kelly had her doubts.
Here she is out on the farm with one of
her audio diary entries.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
You know, up until I came back from Sydney last weekend,
and I was really buoyed by the fact that Annie
marg met Matt. You know, I thought we could tell
us some of the good stuff that we'd found, you know,
his friends from young saying he wasn't a psychopath. I mean,
it just wasn't making him look like a monster. But
in the last couple of days we've heard first hand
(08:01):
accounts that really really conflict with that. You know, at
the beginning, I said I wanted the truth and sometimes
the truth isn't real pretty, And to be faired income
with myself, I probably all along expected that it wouldn't
be good. But there'd been this hope that he wasn't
this monster, he wasn't this psychopath, he wasn't all these things.
(08:25):
And then you know, you hear stories from people and
you just shake your head and you feel sorry for
these people. And how do you say, someone who's committed
murders wasn't that bad? But then the whiskey, that fucking
whiskey go go, and that shameful police investigation, that shameful
whole thing. Yeah, I'm a bit rocked.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
I needed to tell Kelly that she'd better buckle her
seat belt. It was Reagan's twenty first birthday that flicked
a switch inside of him. He had firmly decided to
come of age as a gangster, and he was in
the right place at exactly the right time to achieve that.
(09:13):
What did Paddles, who beat a murder charge in Melbourne
as a young man, see in Reagan? How did they
even meet? Did Paddles witness glimmers of his ambitious former
self in this knockabout kid from rural New South Wales.
This reform school graduate and brothel enforcer. Did he notice
(09:38):
a formidable criminal mind at work, a prodigy? Or was
Reagan's reputation as a violent, ruthless, unhinged maniac who'd bash, maim,
or even kill without batting an eyelid in the forefront
(09:59):
of paddles This boy could cause major problems for established
gangsters who mostly worked harmoniously and stayed in their patch.
This boy might need to be watched very carefully. And
(10:19):
was there any meaning to be seen not just in
public with Reagan but alongside his family celebrating a significant
milestone in any adult's life. Was he giving Reagan permission
to operate at the top tier. There has never been
(10:42):
a time where youthful criminal ambition didn't try and push
its way to the top. To get a sense of
the generational doggy dog reality of the underworld, I talked
to notorious comment Peter Foster, now in his early sixties,
about the nineteen eighties when he first crossed paths with
(11:05):
the dark side. Foster, at nineteen, was the world's youngest
boxing promoter before he got into serious strife with various
weight loss schemes that saw him convicted and jailed around
the world, but thinking about his own youthful ambitions, he
(11:27):
had a fascinating observation that was as true then as
it was in the nineteen sixties in Sydney during Reagan's
brutal fight to the top.
Speaker 9 (11:38):
You know, I didn't like that world. I much preferred
the show business and the beautiful people, and the champagne
lifestyle and the nice restaurants and just the nice people
with good manners. I didn't like being around the thugs
and the gangsters, and you know, I had too many
moments of uneasiness. And you're dealing with psychopaths and sociopaths,
(12:00):
and you're dealing with people with no empathy, and it's
a dark underbelly. And I'm sure every city has it.
And don't get me wrong, I've had some funny, charming
nights out with some of the clever gangsters. You know,
it was never going to be a place I wanted
to spend too much time, But in the early days
(12:21):
there wasn't much I could do. Now, as I'm an
older man, I've done everything I can to keep myself
away from that world as long as I can.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
There were moments when Foster trying to stay outside the underbelly,
found himself caught in the vortex.
Speaker 9 (12:40):
You know, you own race horses and you mix with
them in that circle, and occasionally you get dragged in.
But it's amazing. All the gangsters want to be honest businessmen,
and all the young honest kids want to be bloody gangsters.
I just don't get it, you know. But all the
wise old heads just want to be, you know, respectable businessmen.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
If Reagan had ambitions to be the next Paddles Anderson,
he must have known that by the mid to late
nineteen sixties it was a pretty crowded junkyard and he'd
have to do something extraordinary to get noticed.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Made.
Speaker 10 (13:20):
Lenny McPherson Australia's mister Bid. He was the feared head
of Sydney's underworld for over thirty years. George Freeman race fixer,
casino king, organized crime boss and cold hearted executioner, the
self styled lucky Gambler to be a cold, calculating killer
whose reign over Sidneys.
Speaker 11 (13:39):
Under the half a century. Abe Saffron is the Vice
King of Sydney. He controls the illegal gambling, prostitution and
liquor rackets. By bribing and blackmailing police and politicians. He's
accused of arson and even murder, but like al Capone,
Abe Saffron only goes to jail because of evasion.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
Lenny McPherson, George Freeman, Abe Saffron, These were Sydney's top
gangsters when Reagan was trying to flex his youthful muscle,
and as the song goes, it was a jungle out there.
(14:24):
Reagan quickly became a recognizable face in the Darlinghurst and
King's Cross neighborhood, and that face was instantly associated with violence.
Former detective and best selling author Duncan McNabb, an expert
on the period, says Reagan's pathway to crime was in
(14:46):
a way predestined, starting at the front door of that
terrace house in Liverpool Street, Darlinghurst, one.
Speaker 5 (14:56):
Liverpool Street, from Hyde Park through to where it stops
in Paddington was just slums, brought a little Laneway's crims.
It's where in part of Jason's where the razor Gains
were working in the thirties and all that sort of stuff.
So Raffer's guts have gentrified about twenty years ago. In
that case, if he's living in Liverpool Street. There's a
(15:16):
reasonable charge. He just started hanging around the crust like
so many of them didn't. They found him useful because
he didn't have much in the way of moral so
he do whatever he was asked.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
Local John Waddy, who would go on to become an
internationally renowned fashion photographer, was a big socializer during the
nineteen sixties and knew everybody around the cross. In fact,
his father, doctor Bryan Woddy, had some close encounters with Reagan.
Speaker 12 (15:46):
My dad owned the house on the corner of Bruverpool
Street and darling Hurst Road, and our house was opposite
the Royal Sovereign, which is the pub, and that's where
he had We had the big house there and he
built a little surgery the office thing there. That's where
he saw his patients. And Reagan came in as a
patient wants to and I said, told me about it,
(16:08):
and I said, God, you're kidding. I'd be a bit
careful of him, you know. He said, oh no, He
said to me, you know you take cash. He noticed
that had the cashtraw there. He said, anybody ever attached you?
Speaker 13 (16:21):
What do you do?
Speaker 12 (16:22):
You kick him in the knee and heaved up a
lesson a fight, and I said that get to I
invite him up into the house and to meet the family.
You know, he's not good people, but kings. It wasn't
fantastic and we had Yeah. I knew every shopkeeper and
(16:45):
every paper boy, and you know, it was a fantastic life.
Speaker 4 (16:52):
That era when the Cross was a frantic hive of
crooks and curious civilians, corrupt police, seen slees and everything
in between is long gone. I lived on the edge
of the Cross in the late nineteen nineties and it
was par for the course to end up on a
(17:13):
barstool late at night in the famous Bourbon and beefsteak
bar near the El Alamaine Fountain and strike up a
conversation with a bloke who'd been released from Long Bay
jail just that morning. There were street fights, bashings, drug busts,
you name it. It was a place permanently on edge,
(17:38):
not anymore. Kelly decided she wanted to try and walk
in the footsteps of her famous relative, so we headed
out on foot together. We started outside the site of
the old Whiskey Ego Go nightclub in Busy William Street.
(18:04):
So it's disappeared, it is to be destroyed. Obviously beautiful, vile.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Building, but it would have been around soft after the Cross.
You see the neon lights.
Speaker 4 (18:16):
Absolutely so for those that didn't want.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
To party in the Cross, as would you go to
then you want? And this is where Marg went and
too many yeah, and the whiskey and go go. So
she went there with a friend on a night out
and that's when he said to her, I'm going to
marry you.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
Yeah, straight off, straight off. Never did marry her though, no, no,
And he was the discotheque promising ten thousand feet of
entertainment and the right decor for every mood, along with
its little cage circular stages for scantily clad female dancers
(18:57):
had been consigned to the distant past. But on this
spot Reagan got his entree into King's Cross and to Marg,
so I think he's probably got a job.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Yeah by night, yeah, working his other angles by day.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
Yeah, and meeting other criminals, absolutely, and starting to get
it to find his feet.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Well, you couldn't be this close as the Cross and
not have your age saffrons. McPherson's your freeman's No could yeah.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
No, And don't forget his mother didn't live far from here.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Oh no, bless her.
Speaker 4 (19:40):
Yeah, just would have been just over to it. So
this boocame his neighborhood very.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Quickly, and you can see the Coca Carla side.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
Yeah. We went up to Darlinghurst Road and strolled through
what was once a magic mile of depravity. Strip clubs,
Vice Denz, Legal Casinos, the Pink pussy Cat, the Mayfair Hotel,
the Rex Hotel, lay Girls all gone the place. Gentrified.
(20:13):
Sanitized might be a better word. It's all I like it.
So here we are col Darlinghurst Road, Darla back in
your relatives old, Yeah, stomping ground. What do you reckon?
She's changed a lot, hadn't it even in five to
ten years.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Yeah, it's been sad really because it was so much fun.
I mean it was always grotty, but it's this. It
was grotty with a spit of sponge cappen into it.
I think in today's terms we say not much of
a vibe.
Speaker 4 (20:46):
Yes, but can you imagine him here?
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Absolutely, you can imagine him walking up and down. I
can see him in a leather jacket. Yeah, do you reckon?
Speaker 4 (20:57):
Yeah? Looking for a quid?
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Absolutely, And back then you could make it in all
sorts of ways. But it's funny because once you listen
to the tapes and you hear all the names, and
you can sort of put yourself there, can't you.
Speaker 4 (21:15):
Like, yeah, like the Groovy Room. Yeah, you that groovy room.
I admit I felt a bit nostalgic for the King's Cross.
I remembered just a quarter century ago. Yeah, well, I am,
well twenty five years ago. It was still electric, you know,
(21:38):
I didn't come awake until midnight. No, and the neon
lines and blue lights of the police cars all the time,
the ambos, the big bounces in their bow ties.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Absolutely absolutely black shirt, bow.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
Tie, and it was still it was a bit dangerous
still go oh, go the Cross. What time is it?
You know, what time of day do you want to go?
It was still a possibility of danger right oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
She was rough and tumbled, absolutely rough and tumbled. There
was all the American sailors and she was a dent
iniquityquity with the big girl and a cake of Carla
signing off.
Speaker 9 (22:24):
You go.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:31):
It would have been amazing though back in the mid sixties.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
You just I can imagine it with the jags and
the old cars coming up.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
The street and the little ballman, yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
You know, and the music pumping everywhere, and drugs are
only just coming in. You've got Vietnam veterans everywhere.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
Even the clubs were pretty by today's standards, weren't exactly
you know, wildly riscue right, No, exactly, girls with little
things on the tassels, the tassel kitty tassels, the beef
and bourbon.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
You'd always find the King's Cross detective in there if you're.
Speaker 4 (23:09):
Looking for one. But now it's like, you know, there's
young families pushing prams up the main drag. We popped
over to the famous Tradesman's Arms Hotel on the corner
of Palmer and Liverpool Streets in Darlinghurst and what would
(23:29):
have been a quick walk from the Colonel and Reagan's
place in the nineteen sixties. This was one of your
true blue gangster pubs, the mobster tilly divine's favorite watering
hole in the late nineteen twenties, and an establishment with
a dangerous reputation through most of the twentieth century. For Reagan,
(23:55):
it would have been a handy port of call for
either something he needed like a weapon, or a person
he wanted to get in touch with through the criminal
telegraph network. He could also do business out of the
corner pub, and with his back to the wall, he
could see who was coming from at least two directions.
(24:19):
It's now a funky gastro pub called East Village. That's
an say, And we're actually not very far from where
the colonel.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Lived, the Colonel's one way, and Darling's first police stations
the other.
Speaker 4 (24:38):
Right in the middle of it yea dead set.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
And here because Arnie mag suggested we.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
Come and have a little bit back in the real world.
Our hunt for official paperwork in relation to Reagan's life
and death became what could only be described as a
bureaucratic practical joke. Kelly set herself the task of getting
some of the most critical documents Reagan's criminal record and
(25:05):
the file for the coronial inquest into his murder in
nineteen seventy seven. From the outset. It felt like she
was hacking her way through thick Lantana. Kelly decided to
keep a record of the battle with our audio diaries.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
How hard can it be? Like, you know, everyone's saying
in the seventies it was really bad record keeping, but
people weren't stupid. In the seventies, they could still put
things back in a box that's clearly labeled. And how
do you lose the criminal record of one of Sidney's
most notorious criminals, who suspected of murdering twelve people? When't
you have a criminal record in his antecedents in each
(25:46):
one of those murder boxes. Like, it's really hard to
just blame cleric error. It's like, it's very, very frustrating.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
Reagan's voluminous police file. A source told me it amounted
to about ten boxes of material remained sealed away from
the public because his death was still an active cold case.
But Kelly didn't give up, and she never took no
(26:15):
for an answer. The first paperwork to bob to the
surface after almost fifty years was Reagan's police consorting cards. Consorting,
associating or communicating with at least two people who have
previously been convicted of an indictable offense is an offense
(26:39):
under the Crimes Act if prior to that consorting you'd
received an official warning by police. It's a law aimed
at disrupting organized criminal activity. In the nineteen sixties, the
persistent monitoring of criminals like Reagan not only kept them
(27:03):
on their toes, but was a legal path to detaining
them for questioning. Naturally enough, many criminals saw it as
official harassment. The consorting information on Reagan, where he was seen,
who he was seen with, what vehicle he was driving,
(27:24):
was a treasure trow for us. Here were more than
thirty five digitized pages of information on Reagan that had
never been made public before. The consorting cards were literally
the old fashioned, lined four by six inch index cards
used in pre computer offices as a convenient way to
(27:47):
accumulate and store information. Reagan's first card was written up
in the early nineteen sixties, and whether by accident or
Reagan's cunning, they had his name wrong. They typed John
(28:08):
Stuart Reagan and had Stuart John Reagan along with John
Stuart Carlton and the boy as alias's. He was described
as five foot eight inches or one hundred seventy two
centimeters tall, of medium build and complexion, with brown hair
(28:28):
and blue eyes. Under peculiarities, it stated scar left side
upper lip. His occupation was laborer. The first date was
July twenty, nineteen sixty two, when Reagan was sixteen, and
listed an assault and robbery a year later there was
(28:52):
another a salt of Fence in May nineteen sixty five,
he was seen driving a dark green Rover Sedan registration
an X zero three five. We'll come back to the
consorting cards throughout the podcast, given they literally run until
a matter of days before he was shot dead. In
(29:14):
nineteen seventy four, while we didn't yet have Reagan's criminal
record or the inquest paperwork, Kelly began pressing the New
South Wales Cold Case Homicide Unit for a meeting with
herself and Reagan's widow, Marg She phoned Detective Inspector Nigel
Warren of the New South Wales Unsolved Homicide Squad. Interestingly,
(29:39):
Detective Warren has also been a point of contact for
the Australian's hit podcast Bronwyn, which investigates the disappearance of
lennox head mother Bronwyn Winfield. In nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Three, I toiy might applied for the coronial file and
it would take twelve months, and then he said, oh,
that we probably wouldn't get a homicide file because it's
seen to still be an active case. And he said,
like they're never suspended, they're just sitting there waiting for
more information. And I said, oh, so when was the
(30:14):
review done And he said, well, we didn't investigation into
the death of two thousand and four, and then in
twenty sixteen the matters were reviewed again and they plan
on revealing them every five to ten years. And I said, well,
nobody from my family was contacted, and my Auntie marg
wasn't contacted. He said, oh no, and I thought, well
(30:34):
that's a bit strange. And then he said, look, we're
a bit gun shy giving out information because there was
a podcast where the next of Kim did a podcast
on Lynett Dawson.
Speaker 4 (30:46):
Yeah, that's the teacher's pet by at least correct. Kelly
said she was told that the Reagan Police murderphile contained
more than one hundred witness statements.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Well, I did say that to Nigel. I said, you
do realize of those one hundred statements you've got, probably
seventy five of them are deceased. We're getting to the
bottom of the barrel when it comes to people who
were even alive then. And if we don't, I mean,
the people are there. They could go back and speak
to them, but from what I gather when you review it,
(31:18):
they haven't. Because he did say to me on Nowadays
we've got all CCTV, but back then it saw footwork.
Speaker 4 (31:24):
Kelly's hard work bore fruit. She and Marg were invited
for a meeting at the New South Wales Unsolved Homicide
Squad offices in Parramatta, west of the Sydney CBD. Kelly
drove in from the farm in Young and met Marg
in Sydney. It was the first time Mark had spoken
(31:48):
to police about Reagan since his murder in September nineteen
seventy four. Kelly rang me straight after the meeting in
twenty twenty. You too, Hey, Matt, good akel. You just
(32:08):
got out of your meeting.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Yeah, ready to report in.
Speaker 4 (32:13):
This was a big moment for Kelly, the Reagan family
and especially Marg. Who did you meet with?
Speaker 2 (32:22):
So we met with Detective Inspector Nigel Warren, who's the
head of Unsolved Thomicide and he's offsideer Andrew.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
Did they allow you to record that meeting?
Speaker 2 (32:32):
I said, I brought a record. He said no, we
won't be recording on it.
Speaker 4 (32:35):
Right, okay, So tell me what happened off the bat well?
Speaker 2 (32:39):
He just said to me, can I ask you what
your motivation is? I said, Look, originally I wanted to
know two things. I said, You've got to understand all
my life, I've had this thrown at men, and I
wanted to know the truth. So primarily I wanted to know, ay,
was he a psychopath? Be it murdered this little child?
Speaker 4 (33:01):
Dominant?
Speaker 2 (33:01):
And then when I started picking and looking and contacting people,
I started to get another picture. And then I wanted
to dig more. And then I wanted to dig more,
and now I want answers. And he said, oh yeah,
well we get some people, you know, the media get
onto and they want to do their documentary, you know,
and the families driven by the media. And I said,
(33:22):
I'm the one doing the driving here.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
Police assured Kelly that they would once again review the
material at hand, and an official decision would be made
on whether to formally reopen the Reagan investigation. That decision
would take three years to materialize. Before Reagan had even
blown out the candles on his cake at Checkers, he
(33:48):
would be agitating the local underworld enough to be wearing
a bulletproof vest out in public and keeping a bodyguard
in tow. It was like he was daring sydney biggest
criminals and police to take him on I dare you,
Reagan was saying, Reagan's office, if you'd like to call it.
(34:12):
That was a business called Barrack Motors in Oxford Street, Paddington,
not far from where he was living with his mother,
the Colonel, in Liverpool Street. It was from here that
Reagan controlled his fledgling empire. Run of the mill extortion,
of course, petty theft goods that fell off the backs
(34:33):
of trucks and stolen consignments of electronic goods. But Reagan
saw the bigger picture. He saw money in the towing business,
in car rentals, in the taxi game, retail outlets and
flipping houses. In the property market, good old fashioned legitimate
(34:54):
buying and selling real estate itself, bricks and mortar, nothing
like it. Reagan was a relentless wheeler dealer. If he
wasn't concocting ways to earn a quid, he was on
the telephone keeping across business in the Sydney underworld. Who
was doing what, who had knocked off whom, who had
(35:17):
nailed a big score. Meanwhile, his manic brain was trying
to solve his own and his friend's legal problems. Like
his poor old mate Arthur. This was captured on the
secret Reagan tapes.
Speaker 13 (35:36):
Yeah, is Arthur there? Both they.
Speaker 12 (35:45):
That allow Arthur?
Speaker 8 (35:47):
What do you doing John?
Speaker 4 (35:51):
The area?
Speaker 14 (35:51):
Bugger?
Speaker 13 (35:52):
You're out of the prime.
Speaker 5 (35:53):
What are we out there?
Speaker 14 (35:56):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (35:57):
I know I heard about it.
Speaker 4 (35:59):
The yes said drugs. I was talking.
Speaker 13 (36:06):
I hadn't.
Speaker 5 (36:09):
Oh, I know, I was in a better week ago
at your piece for drugs or something.
Speaker 13 (36:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 14 (36:14):
Good, pop's got your pitch man, Hi Fay wildly.
Speaker 4 (36:21):
World. Here's the other bloke. I haven't known the other fellows.
Reagan here mentions a detective by the name of Worsley.
Reagan is familiar with him. It would be Worsley who
would track Reagan's movements before his death and ultimately deliver
the story of Reagan's murder at his inquest. That version
(36:44):
of events has never really been challenged in fifty years.
What they do?
Speaker 9 (36:50):
Like?
Speaker 4 (36:50):
Yo?
Speaker 14 (36:51):
Kay?
Speaker 4 (36:52):
What do they say?
Speaker 12 (36:53):
They could said?
Speaker 4 (36:54):
Hey, whatever they said, I just put the stuff in
it said you had it?
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Ah?
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Where did they get your cron Where did they pinch
upon and plash from vision?
Speaker 6 (37:12):
No?
Speaker 5 (37:14):
I just want a name because you're not about to
found out of it.
Speaker 14 (37:21):
Because visuals fuck can't.
Speaker 4 (37:25):
I'm not a bay Shadier. In late nineteen sixty five. However,
death came to Reagan's office in Oxford Street. That insane
Brisbane crook John Andrew Stewart, part of the Brisbane mafia
at the time that tried to crack the Sydney underworld,
(37:48):
and his reform school buddy, the English born James Finch,
decided to pay Reagan a visit at Barrack Motors. It
was five days before Christmas and Stuart had already been
on a rampage across Sydney. On November twenty six, Stuart,
(38:12):
brandishing a sawn off twelve gage shotgun, had tried to
murder gangster Robert Lawrence Steele at Wallara. In court. Steel
stayed staunch. He said he couldn't see who had shot
at him. Then, on December four, Stuart impersonated a New
(38:34):
South Wales police officer and raped a woman in Elizabeth Bay.
Stuart on bail, turned up outside Barrick Motors with Finch
on December twenty and a gunfight broke out. Reagan was wounded.
A stray bullet hit Giuseppe Kappa, one of the Barrack
(38:56):
Motors employees. Kappa survived. Why had Stuart and Finch lashed
out at Reagan. Stuart was twenty four, Reagan was twenty.
Was it a brash attempt from Stuart to eliminate the
rising criminal star that was Reagan? Incredibly girlfriend Mark remembers
(39:22):
Johnny coming home that day covered in blood.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
I remember, not the actual, isn't it? But I remember
john coming to his mother's house with Benes all over
his last name, black T shirt and I think there's
a picture there somewhere really with black T shirt and
(39:50):
on his left shoulder, Yeah, whatever shoulder it was in
behind the T shirt and his mother. By now, his
mother didn't have priet, so I don't know. I think
he wouldn't ask able. Okay, he is to accuse Johnny.
Speaker 6 (40:08):
You remember him talking about James Finch.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
I think for that he said that I was shot,
but he accused. I think his words were, James Spinch,
Did you wonder why you did it? I thought, where?
What's going on? This is a new world I've walked
into it.
Speaker 7 (40:30):
Do you think it was around this period that things
started getting different in terms of him escalating and is
diversifying in.
Speaker 6 (40:40):
Terms of his work.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
Yeah, I said it started.
Speaker 14 (40:47):
Then.
Speaker 6 (40:47):
Did you ever ask about the shooting?
Speaker 3 (40:51):
You weren't supposed to ask questions. You don't ask questions,
is what it is.
Speaker 4 (40:56):
Tell I knew this.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
I learned how to drive in the back streets, okay,
in those narrow streets, just meaning him. Okay, if I
didn't do the right thing, he was, get out of
the car. I'll get out of the car and I'll
sit on the fence. I told you a million times.
I had drunk this time, and you pie, if we plant,
(41:20):
you're not listening. And you listened to what I was saying.
Now let's try again. I learned how to read number plates.
This is when my life changed. I learned to have
to read number plates from the looking through the vision mirror.
What number plate is that one behind me?
Speaker 13 (41:39):
Mark how it was?
Speaker 4 (41:43):
That's when it started.
Speaker 6 (41:47):
And wasn't assumed that you didn't ask questions.
Speaker 3 (41:52):
You don't ask questions. So I know now it was
paddlings and it wasn't his business partners. I think his
life changed. He changed completely. And sometimes in life, greed
and money and to be powerful came me into his world.
(42:15):
I think that he loved it.
Speaker 4 (42:17):
He loved what he was doing.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
He loved the sense that he was mixing with those
people so biggest mistati of manly his life.
Speaker 4 (42:29):
The deepening of Reagan's violence was beginning to show by
the time he turned twenty one. Before that he had
attracted attention for various instances of assault, and by the
end of nineteen sixty five he had crossed over by
mixing with those people. As marg had described it. Now
firearms had entered the Reagan picture. He had already engaged
(42:54):
in a Wild West style shootout with other criminals in
a public street, and he was arming himself with a
variety of weapons. Guns too, were suddenly being hidden in
the various places he lived in and frequented. There was
no turning back. Young Probationary Constable John Burks first posting
(43:18):
in the early nineteen sixties was Darlinghurst Police Station and
he served there for eleven years. He would come to
know all the crooks, and he would never forget Stuart John.
Speaker 14 (43:32):
Reagan going back in those days. And they said there
was no drugs, Yes, no, I mean you know there was.
Well I first went there. All the lanes were open
Woods Lane, and that you know, all the brothels, yes,
and all the strip clubs were going up the cross,
(43:52):
you know at Surf city there at the top of
the cross there at William and Darlings Road. Well, they
used to have all the top acts beal he thought,
from the Aztecs raying Brown on the whispers and the
joint was really rocking, you know.
Speaker 8 (44:09):
But there was no.
Speaker 14 (44:11):
A lot of violence, but there was no drugs. I
can remember as a protective was my mate. We saw
this blake shifting back in the village and what's he doing?
We're pulling up listening here with you and what do
you do? Anyway, we searched him and he had a
(44:32):
match box with a bit of grass in it. Yes,
probably enough to roll a joint.
Speaker 4 (44:39):
You did you have any words one on ones with
I know you'd had a check car chase, but with
Reagan in the streets.
Speaker 14 (44:46):
Oh yeah, quite a few times.
Speaker 4 (44:48):
And what was he like was he shifting?
Speaker 14 (44:51):
I know it was just to fall on you know.
You can't talk to me, you can't do you know.
He was sort of right face. He's that sort of blake,
very violent, vicious bloke, and would if he thought you
were some sort of a threat to him, he would
just try and make up things about you. He was
(45:12):
a real snake in the grass.
Speaker 3 (45:15):
He was no good.
Speaker 14 (45:17):
It's probably one of the worst blokes I ever had
him to do it, very violent, yeah, always.
Speaker 4 (45:23):
One morning and off, Judy Burke spotted Reagan driving in
Sydney's Inner East.
Speaker 14 (45:30):
And one day I was on the day off actually,
but I had an old court matter down at Central
and I left home and in the morning, and I
had my daughter with me. I was dropping her at school. Anyway,
I come out and I had my gun and handcuff,
my shoulder in one hand and my coat over my shoulder.
(45:52):
I'll put him on the bottom of the car and
unlocked the card let my daughter. Anyway, I had back
to Susy raid and I heard this car coming but
I didn't look, and I drove around passed me. When
I looked, I thought it was a green Jaguar and
it was Reagan. I didn't say I recognized the car,
(46:14):
and I thought he's going down there the Jet street.
Each other's face, and I knew at the time he
was wanted for rape because it was in the days
the name pg Fanes and I'm trying to think, where's
a phone box. Anyway, I dropped a girl and then
when I was coming back, I looked Graven Street to
(46:35):
my right, and what he done, he'd followed me, so
then a chase ensued. I've chased him in my car
and we've had a bathist five hundred around Kensington.
Speaker 4 (46:53):
Burke screamed at Reagan to stop.
Speaker 14 (46:57):
He didn't, and he's gone up a street called Day
Avenue and there's a stop sign at the top. So
I've fired four shots that he was but unfortunately I
was firing right handed. I'm left handed, so one of
them was an air squink. Three of them penetrated the
(47:19):
back of his car. Anyway, he got away.
Speaker 4 (47:24):
Reagan was dicing with death, and the only thing not
on his books, as far as anyone knew, was murder.
Until January seventeen, nineteen sixty seven, a.
Speaker 8 (47:44):
Man known as Big Barry was found yesterday with four
bullet wounds in his head in jungle like undergrowth in Paddington.
Police said the man, Barry Leonard Flock, twenty eight, had
told a friend he had been marked down for execution
by the underworld a week ago. His body was discovered
yesterday just before noon by a woman she was exercising
(48:05):
her dog in an extensive area of undergrowth part of
the Scottish Hospital. Police believe Flock was lured or forced
to march at gunpoint by his killer or killers into
the thick undergrowth. Flock apparently put up his hands as
the bullet smashed into him.
Speaker 4 (48:23):
For the first time. Johnny Reagan was now a murder suspect.
In the next episode of The Gangster's Ghost, Thank You John.
Speaker 13 (48:38):
Murdering Barry Flock, What was he like an new time?
And John's relationship with him I could see.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
The Gangster's Ghost is a production of The Australian. It's
written and presented by senior writer Matthew Condon and produced
and edited by multimedia editor leatsamaglu Our. Executive producer is Me,
(49:11):
Editorial director Claire Harvey. Special thanks to Lara Kamenos, Erica Rutlidge,
Kristin Amiot, Jasper Leik, Stephanie Coombs, Sean Callanan, Lachlan Clear,
Ryan Osland, Amanda Willim Williams, Christine Kellet, Taron Blackhurst, Magdalena Zajak,
Gisel Boetti, Genevieve Brammel, Lauren Bruce, sus Rolf and Jachina Carlson.
(49:31):
We can only do journalism like this with the support
of US subscribers who hear episodes first and get full
access to photos, video, news stories and features, plus all
Australia's best journalism twenty four to seven. Join us at
gangsters Ghost dot com dot au.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
St st.
Speaker 6 (50:10):
St st
Speaker 7 (50:15):
St st
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 (00:35):
Welcome to Checkers. It's pleasure being here at Checkers in Sydney.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Now, of course it's pleasure.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
It's the winter of nineteen sixty eight and the popular
American musical duo The Everly Brothers are on stage at
Checkers Nightclub in Golden Street, in the heart of the
Sydney CBD. For years, the club the place to See
Be Seen, was known for its international acts Shirley Bassie,
(01:05):
Sammy Davis Junior, Liza Manelli, and equally for its client
tele from the rich and famous to the cream of
the city's criminal underworld.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
We'd like to sing our favorite song for you.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
We think it's the most beautiful song we ever had
the privilege of recording.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
Orchestra On this night, the Everly Brothers, Don and Phil
played a few of their old hits like Bye Bye
Love and Wake Up Little Susie, as well as the
haunting ballad Let It Be Me.
Speaker 5 (01:47):
Less the Dear.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
Just a couple of years earlier, gangster Stewart John had
celebrated his twenty first birthday at the fabled Checkers. He
dressed in a nice suit and pencil thin tie with
a white pocket handkerchief. There was a cream cake on
a silver foil tray with twenty one candles. His mother, Claire,
(02:20):
known by all as the Colonel, sat on one side
of him at the table. Marg the partner he had
fallen in love with at first sight when he was
working as a King's Cross nightclub bouncer, sat on the other.
A photograph was taken of a beaming Reagan cutting the cake.
(02:42):
What the picture didn't show was the guest sitting on
the other side of the table. That was a man
called Frederick Paddles Anderson, a man who lived in the shadows,
a man both police and criminals knew as the God
of Sydney, the boss of Bosses. Mark remembers the celebration
(03:09):
and the well dressed elderly gentleman at the table.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
I can still remember the outfit. He said, I'm buying
you an outfit. You're coming to my twenty first the
outfit was red velvet, opened a pel and saw the
little button, and I had a red skirt. Now I've
never owned anything about blood in my life, and you
will wear this and we're going to have a nast night.
I was very shy. I didn't speak to people. So
(03:37):
I was here on the left hands on John was there,
Claire was there, and Filman was there, and Parol Anson
was on the other side. That was that Checkers, I think, yes, Checkers.
Speaker 6 (03:49):
That was a small group.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Yes, if you see the picture, you can see him
cuting his cake, which he was very happy. But in
that picture you will see that mean in the corner
was a battle Lansing. So he was mixing with these
people and me not even not.
Speaker 6 (04:07):
So you didn't have a clue.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
I have no idea none.
Speaker 6 (04:11):
Time was he introduced to you as a friend or an.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Uncle, or oh this is my business partner, my friend,
and you know he was a very pleasant man to me.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
He was Mark was still in her late teens and
here she was a fancy Checkers. Champagne was flowing. The
boy from young had come so far so quickly. Now mentored,
it seemed by this big businessman.
Speaker 6 (04:41):
Did he get along well with Claire?
Speaker 3 (04:44):
I didn't see any problem. Who was a nice snock?
Speaker 7 (04:46):
Did you ever query what business is it that your
partner's in?
Speaker 3 (04:51):
No, who would never disclose it to me? I didn't
even have even any thoughts. That's what was happening in
this mantl because he was here, there, everywhere. Obviously he
was meeting people that were cluels.
Speaker 6 (05:06):
So when do you think that started.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
I think it started at that age, Yes.
Speaker 8 (05:11):
I do.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
Paddles Anderson was there to celebrate Stuart John Reagan coming
of age, and by the mid nineteen sixties he came
of age alright, not just as a legal adult, but
as one of the most dangerous and psychotic mobsters that
the city of Sydney and the nation had ever witnessed.
(06:01):
I'm journalist Matthew Condon and this is the Gangster's Ghost,
a podcast from The Australian. This podcast started out as
a clinical look at one of Australia's most reviled gangsters,
but when the Reagan family came on board, the project
took on another dimension and begged the question, how does
(06:27):
a family cope with the generational stain of a murderer
whose death was celebrated by criminals and police alike. This
is episode five Into the Underworld. At the start of
(06:56):
our investigation into Reagan, my co pilot Kelly Slater Reagan
was brimming with optimism. She'd tracked down some of Reagan's
old schoolmates in his hometown of Young and heard some
decent things about the gangster when he was a boy.
It encouraged Kelly that her second cousin was a bad man,
(07:20):
but perhaps not the monster that everyone else depicted him as.
But the more we learned, the more Kelly had her doubts.
Here she is out on the farm with one of
her audio diary entries.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
You know, up until I came back from Sydney last weekend,
and I was really buoyed by the fact that Annie
marg met Matt. You know, I thought we could tell
us some of the good stuff that we'd found, you know,
his friends from young saying he wasn't a psychopath. I mean,
it just wasn't making him look like a monster. But
in the last couple of days we've heard first hand
(08:01):
accounts that really really conflict with that. You know, at
the beginning, I said I wanted the truth and sometimes
the truth isn't real pretty, And to be faired income
with myself, I probably all along expected that it wouldn't
be good. But there'd been this hope that he wasn't
this monster, he wasn't this psychopath, he wasn't all these things.
(08:25):
And then you know, you hear stories from people and
you just shake your head and you feel sorry for
these people. And how do you say, someone who's committed
murders wasn't that bad? But then the whiskey, that fucking
whiskey go go, and that shameful police investigation, that shameful
whole thing. Yeah, I'm a bit rocked.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
I needed to tell Kelly that she'd better buckle her
seat belt. It was Reagan's twenty first birthday that flicked
a switch inside of him. He had firmly decided to
come of age as a gangster, and he was in
the right place at exactly the right time to achieve that.
(09:13):
What did Paddles, who beat a murder charge in Melbourne
as a young man, see in Reagan? How did they
even meet? Did Paddles witness glimmers of his ambitious former
self in this knockabout kid from rural New South Wales.
This reform school graduate and brothel enforcer. Did he notice
(09:38):
a formidable criminal mind at work, a prodigy? Or was
Reagan's reputation as a violent, ruthless, unhinged maniac who'd bash, maim,
or even kill without batting an eyelid in the forefront
(09:59):
of paddles This boy could cause major problems for established
gangsters who mostly worked harmoniously and stayed in their patch.
This boy might need to be watched very carefully. And
(10:19):
was there any meaning to be seen not just in
public with Reagan but alongside his family celebrating a significant
milestone in any adult's life. Was he giving Reagan permission
to operate at the top tier. There has never been
(10:42):
a time where youthful criminal ambition didn't try and push
its way to the top. To get a sense of
the generational doggy dog reality of the underworld, I talked
to notorious comment Peter Foster, now in his early sixties,
about the nineteen eighties when he first crossed paths with
(11:05):
the dark side. Foster, at nineteen, was the world's youngest
boxing promoter before he got into serious strife with various
weight loss schemes that saw him convicted and jailed around
the world, but thinking about his own youthful ambitions, he
(11:27):
had a fascinating observation that was as true then as
it was in the nineteen sixties in Sydney during Reagan's
brutal fight to the top.
Speaker 9 (11:38):
You know, I didn't like that world. I much preferred
the show business and the beautiful people, and the champagne
lifestyle and the nice restaurants and just the nice people
with good manners. I didn't like being around the thugs
and the gangsters, and you know, I had too many
moments of uneasiness. And you're dealing with psychopaths and sociopaths,
(12:00):
and you're dealing with people with no empathy, and it's
a dark underbelly. And I'm sure every city has it.
And don't get me wrong, I've had some funny, charming
nights out with some of the clever gangsters. You know,
it was never going to be a place I wanted
to spend too much time, But in the early days
(12:21):
there wasn't much I could do. Now, as I'm an
older man, I've done everything I can to keep myself
away from that world as long as I can.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
There were moments when Foster trying to stay outside the underbelly,
found himself caught in the vortex.
Speaker 9 (12:40):
You know, you own race horses and you mix with
them in that circle, and occasionally you get dragged in.
But it's amazing. All the gangsters want to be honest businessmen,
and all the young honest kids want to be bloody gangsters.
I just don't get it, you know. But all the
wise old heads just want to be, you know, respectable businessmen.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
If Reagan had ambitions to be the next Paddles Anderson,
he must have known that by the mid to late
nineteen sixties it was a pretty crowded junkyard and he'd
have to do something extraordinary to get noticed.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Made.
Speaker 10 (13:20):
Lenny McPherson Australia's mister Bid. He was the feared head
of Sydney's underworld for over thirty years. George Freeman race fixer,
casino king, organized crime boss and cold hearted executioner, the
self styled lucky Gambler to be a cold, calculating killer
whose reign over Sidneys.
Speaker 11 (13:39):
Under the half a century. Abe Saffron is the Vice
King of Sydney. He controls the illegal gambling, prostitution and
liquor rackets. By bribing and blackmailing police and politicians. He's
accused of arson and even murder, but like al Capone,
Abe Saffron only goes to jail because of evasion.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
Lenny McPherson, George Freeman, Abe Saffron, These were Sydney's top
gangsters when Reagan was trying to flex his youthful muscle,
and as the song goes, it was a jungle out there.
(14:24):
Reagan quickly became a recognizable face in the Darlinghurst and
King's Cross neighborhood, and that face was instantly associated with violence.
Former detective and best selling author Duncan McNabb, an expert
on the period, says Reagan's pathway to crime was in
(14:46):
a way predestined, starting at the front door of that
terrace house in Liverpool Street, Darlinghurst, one.
Speaker 5 (14:56):
Liverpool Street, from Hyde Park through to where it stops
in Paddington was just slums, brought a little Laneway's crims.
It's where in part of Jason's where the razor Gains
were working in the thirties and all that sort of stuff.
So Raffer's guts have gentrified about twenty years ago. In
that case, if he's living in Liverpool Street. There's a
(15:16):
reasonable charge. He just started hanging around the crust like
so many of them didn't. They found him useful because
he didn't have much in the way of moral so
he do whatever he was asked.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
Local John Waddy, who would go on to become an
internationally renowned fashion photographer, was a big socializer during the
nineteen sixties and knew everybody around the cross. In fact,
his father, doctor Bryan Woddy, had some close encounters with Reagan.
Speaker 12 (15:46):
My dad owned the house on the corner of Bruverpool
Street and darling Hurst Road, and our house was opposite
the Royal Sovereign, which is the pub, and that's where
he had We had the big house there and he
built a little surgery the office thing there. That's where
he saw his patients. And Reagan came in as a
patient wants to and I said, told me about it,
(16:08):
and I said, God, you're kidding. I'd be a bit
careful of him, you know. He said, oh no, He
said to me, you know you take cash. He noticed
that had the cashtraw there. He said, anybody ever attached you?
Speaker 13 (16:21):
What do you do?
Speaker 12 (16:22):
You kick him in the knee and heaved up a
lesson a fight, and I said that get to I
invite him up into the house and to meet the family.
You know, he's not good people, but kings. It wasn't
fantastic and we had Yeah. I knew every shopkeeper and
(16:45):
every paper boy, and you know, it was a fantastic life.
Speaker 4 (16:52):
That era when the Cross was a frantic hive of
crooks and curious civilians, corrupt police, seen slees and everything
in between is long gone. I lived on the edge
of the Cross in the late nineteen nineties and it
was par for the course to end up on a
(17:13):
barstool late at night in the famous Bourbon and beefsteak
bar near the El Alamaine Fountain and strike up a
conversation with a bloke who'd been released from Long Bay
jail just that morning. There were street fights, bashings, drug busts,
you name it. It was a place permanently on edge,
(17:38):
not anymore. Kelly decided she wanted to try and walk
in the footsteps of her famous relative, so we headed
out on foot together. We started outside the site of
the old Whiskey Ego Go nightclub in Busy William Street.
(18:04):
So it's disappeared, it is to be destroyed. Obviously beautiful, vile.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Building, but it would have been around soft after the Cross.
You see the neon lights.
Speaker 4 (18:16):
Absolutely so for those that didn't want.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
To party in the Cross, as would you go to
then you want? And this is where Marg went and
too many yeah, and the whiskey and go go. So
she went there with a friend on a night out
and that's when he said to her, I'm going to
marry you.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
Yeah, straight off, straight off. Never did marry her though, no, no,
And he was the discotheque promising ten thousand feet of
entertainment and the right decor for every mood, along with
its little cage circular stages for scantily clad female dancers
(18:57):
had been consigned to the distant past. But on this
spot Reagan got his entree into King's Cross and to Marg,
so I think he's probably got a job.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Yeah by night, yeah, working his other angles by day.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
Yeah, and meeting other criminals, absolutely, and starting to get
it to find his feet.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Well, you couldn't be this close as the Cross and
not have your age saffrons. McPherson's your freeman's No could yeah.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
No, And don't forget his mother didn't live far from here.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Oh no, bless her.
Speaker 4 (19:40):
Yeah, just would have been just over to it. So
this boocame his neighborhood very.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Quickly, and you can see the Coca Carla side.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
Yeah. We went up to Darlinghurst Road and strolled through
what was once a magic mile of depravity. Strip clubs,
Vice Denz, Legal Casinos, the Pink pussy Cat, the Mayfair Hotel,
the Rex Hotel, lay Girls all gone the place. Gentrified.
(20:13):
Sanitized might be a better word. It's all I like it.
So here we are col Darlinghurst Road, Darla back in
your relatives old, Yeah, stomping ground. What do you reckon?
She's changed a lot, hadn't it even in five to
ten years.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Yeah, it's been sad really because it was so much fun.
I mean it was always grotty, but it's this. It
was grotty with a spit of sponge cappen into it.
I think in today's terms we say not much of
a vibe.
Speaker 4 (20:46):
Yes, but can you imagine him here?
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Absolutely, you can imagine him walking up and down. I
can see him in a leather jacket. Yeah, do you reckon?
Speaker 4 (20:57):
Yeah? Looking for a quid?
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Absolutely, And back then you could make it in all
sorts of ways. But it's funny because once you listen
to the tapes and you hear all the names, and
you can sort of put yourself there, can't you.
Speaker 4 (21:15):
Like, yeah, like the Groovy Room. Yeah, you that groovy room.
I admit I felt a bit nostalgic for the King's Cross.
I remembered just a quarter century ago. Yeah, well, I am,
well twenty five years ago. It was still electric, you know,
(21:38):
I didn't come awake until midnight. No, and the neon
lines and blue lights of the police cars all the time,
the ambos, the big bounces in their bow ties.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Absolutely absolutely black shirt, bow.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
Tie, and it was still it was a bit dangerous
still go oh, go the Cross. What time is it?
You know, what time of day do you want to go?
It was still a possibility of danger right oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
She was rough and tumbled, absolutely rough and tumbled. There
was all the American sailors and she was a dent
iniquityquity with the big girl and a cake of Carla
signing off.
Speaker 9 (22:24):
You go.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:31):
It would have been amazing though back in the mid sixties.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
You just I can imagine it with the jags and
the old cars coming up.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
The street and the little ballman, yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
You know, and the music pumping everywhere, and drugs are
only just coming in. You've got Vietnam veterans everywhere.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
Even the clubs were pretty by today's standards, weren't exactly
you know, wildly riscue right, No, exactly, girls with little
things on the tassels, the tassel kitty tassels, the beef
and bourbon.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
You'd always find the King's Cross detective in there if you're.
Speaker 4 (23:09):
Looking for one. But now it's like, you know, there's
young families pushing prams up the main drag. We popped
over to the famous Tradesman's Arms Hotel on the corner
of Palmer and Liverpool Streets in Darlinghurst and what would
(23:29):
have been a quick walk from the Colonel and Reagan's
place in the nineteen sixties. This was one of your
true blue gangster pubs, the mobster tilly divine's favorite watering
hole in the late nineteen twenties, and an establishment with
a dangerous reputation through most of the twentieth century. For Reagan,
(23:55):
it would have been a handy port of call for
either something he needed like a weapon, or a person
he wanted to get in touch with through the criminal
telegraph network. He could also do business out of the
corner pub, and with his back to the wall, he
could see who was coming from at least two directions.
(24:19):
It's now a funky gastro pub called East Village. That's
an say, And we're actually not very far from where
the colonel.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Lived, the Colonel's one way, and Darling's first police stations
the other.
Speaker 4 (24:38):
Right in the middle of it yea dead set.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
And here because Arnie mag suggested we.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
Come and have a little bit back in the real world.
Our hunt for official paperwork in relation to Reagan's life
and death became what could only be described as a
bureaucratic practical joke. Kelly set herself the task of getting
some of the most critical documents Reagan's criminal record and
(25:05):
the file for the coronial inquest into his murder in
nineteen seventy seven. From the outset. It felt like she
was hacking her way through thick Lantana. Kelly decided to
keep a record of the battle with our audio diaries.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
How hard can it be? Like, you know, everyone's saying
in the seventies it was really bad record keeping, but
people weren't stupid. In the seventies, they could still put
things back in a box that's clearly labeled. And how
do you lose the criminal record of one of Sidney's
most notorious criminals, who suspected of murdering twelve people? When't
you have a criminal record in his antecedents in each
(25:46):
one of those murder boxes. Like, it's really hard to
just blame cleric error. It's like, it's very, very frustrating.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
Reagan's voluminous police file. A source told me it amounted
to about ten boxes of material remained sealed away from
the public because his death was still an active cold case.
But Kelly didn't give up, and she never took no
(26:15):
for an answer. The first paperwork to bob to the
surface after almost fifty years was Reagan's police consorting cards. Consorting,
associating or communicating with at least two people who have
previously been convicted of an indictable offense is an offense
(26:39):
under the Crimes Act if prior to that consorting you'd
received an official warning by police. It's a law aimed
at disrupting organized criminal activity. In the nineteen sixties, the
persistent monitoring of criminals like Reagan not only kept them
(27:03):
on their toes, but was a legal path to detaining
them for questioning. Naturally enough, many criminals saw it as
official harassment. The consorting information on Reagan, where he was seen,
who he was seen with, what vehicle he was driving,
(27:24):
was a treasure trow for us. Here were more than
thirty five digitized pages of information on Reagan that had
never been made public before. The consorting cards were literally
the old fashioned, lined four by six inch index cards
used in pre computer offices as a convenient way to
(27:47):
accumulate and store information. Reagan's first card was written up
in the early nineteen sixties, and whether by accident or
Reagan's cunning, they had his name wrong. They typed John
(28:08):
Stuart Reagan and had Stuart John Reagan along with John
Stuart Carlton and the boy as alias's. He was described
as five foot eight inches or one hundred seventy two
centimeters tall, of medium build and complexion, with brown hair
(28:28):
and blue eyes. Under peculiarities, it stated scar left side
upper lip. His occupation was laborer. The first date was
July twenty, nineteen sixty two, when Reagan was sixteen, and
listed an assault and robbery a year later there was
(28:52):
another a salt of Fence in May nineteen sixty five,
he was seen driving a dark green Rover Sedan registration
an X zero three five. We'll come back to the
consorting cards throughout the podcast, given they literally run until
a matter of days before he was shot dead. In
(29:14):
nineteen seventy four, while we didn't yet have Reagan's criminal
record or the inquest paperwork, Kelly began pressing the New
South Wales Cold Case Homicide Unit for a meeting with
herself and Reagan's widow, Marg She phoned Detective Inspector Nigel
Warren of the New South Wales Unsolved Homicide Squad. Interestingly,
(29:39):
Detective Warren has also been a point of contact for
the Australian's hit podcast Bronwyn, which investigates the disappearance of
lennox head mother Bronwyn Winfield. In nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Three, I toiy might applied for the coronial file and
it would take twelve months, and then he said, oh,
that we probably wouldn't get a homicide file because it's
seen to still be an active case. And he said,
like they're never suspended, they're just sitting there waiting for
more information. And I said, oh, so when was the
(30:14):
review done And he said, well, we didn't investigation into
the death of two thousand and four, and then in
twenty sixteen the matters were reviewed again and they plan
on revealing them every five to ten years. And I said, well,
nobody from my family was contacted, and my Auntie marg
wasn't contacted. He said, oh no, and I thought, well
(30:34):
that's a bit strange. And then he said, look, we're
a bit gun shy giving out information because there was
a podcast where the next of Kim did a podcast
on Lynett Dawson.
Speaker 4 (30:46):
Yeah, that's the teacher's pet by at least correct. Kelly
said she was told that the Reagan Police murderphile contained
more than one hundred witness statements.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Well, I did say that to Nigel. I said, you
do realize of those one hundred statements you've got, probably
seventy five of them are deceased. We're getting to the
bottom of the barrel when it comes to people who
were even alive then. And if we don't, I mean,
the people are there. They could go back and speak
to them, but from what I gather when you review it,
(31:18):
they haven't. Because he did say to me on Nowadays
we've got all CCTV, but back then it saw footwork.
Speaker 4 (31:24):
Kelly's hard work bore fruit. She and Marg were invited
for a meeting at the New South Wales Unsolved Homicide
Squad offices in Parramatta, west of the Sydney CBD. Kelly
drove in from the farm in Young and met Marg
in Sydney. It was the first time Mark had spoken
(31:48):
to police about Reagan since his murder in September nineteen
seventy four. Kelly rang me straight after the meeting in
twenty twenty. You too, Hey, Matt, good akel. You just
(32:08):
got out of your meeting.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Yeah, ready to report in.
Speaker 4 (32:13):
This was a big moment for Kelly, the Reagan family
and especially Marg. Who did you meet with?
Speaker 2 (32:22):
So we met with Detective Inspector Nigel Warren, who's the
head of Unsolved Thomicide and he's offsideer Andrew.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
Did they allow you to record that meeting?
Speaker 2 (32:32):
I said, I brought a record. He said no, we
won't be recording on it.
Speaker 4 (32:35):
Right, okay, So tell me what happened off the bat well?
Speaker 2 (32:39):
He just said to me, can I ask you what
your motivation is? I said, Look, originally I wanted to
know two things. I said, You've got to understand all
my life, I've had this thrown at men, and I
wanted to know the truth. So primarily I wanted to know, ay,
was he a psychopath? Be it murdered this little child?
Speaker 4 (33:01):
Dominant?
Speaker 2 (33:01):
And then when I started picking and looking and contacting people,
I started to get another picture. And then I wanted
to dig more. And then I wanted to dig more,
and now I want answers. And he said, oh yeah,
well we get some people, you know, the media get
onto and they want to do their documentary, you know,
and the families driven by the media. And I said,
(33:22):
I'm the one doing the driving here.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
Police assured Kelly that they would once again review the
material at hand, and an official decision would be made
on whether to formally reopen the Reagan investigation. That decision
would take three years to materialize. Before Reagan had even
blown out the candles on his cake at Checkers, he
(33:48):
would be agitating the local underworld enough to be wearing
a bulletproof vest out in public and keeping a bodyguard
in tow. It was like he was daring sydney biggest
criminals and police to take him on I dare you,
Reagan was saying, Reagan's office, if you'd like to call it.
(34:12):
That was a business called Barrack Motors in Oxford Street, Paddington,
not far from where he was living with his mother,
the Colonel, in Liverpool Street. It was from here that
Reagan controlled his fledgling empire. Run of the mill extortion,
of course, petty theft goods that fell off the backs
(34:33):
of trucks and stolen consignments of electronic goods. But Reagan
saw the bigger picture. He saw money in the towing business,
in car rentals, in the taxi game, retail outlets and
flipping houses. In the property market, good old fashioned legitimate
(34:54):
buying and selling real estate itself, bricks and mortar, nothing
like it. Reagan was a relentless wheeler dealer. If he
wasn't concocting ways to earn a quid, he was on
the telephone keeping across business in the Sydney underworld. Who
was doing what, who had knocked off whom, who had
(35:17):
nailed a big score. Meanwhile, his manic brain was trying
to solve his own and his friend's legal problems. Like
his poor old mate Arthur. This was captured on the
secret Reagan tapes.
Speaker 13 (35:36):
Yeah, is Arthur there? Both they.
Speaker 12 (35:45):
That allow Arthur?
Speaker 8 (35:47):
What do you doing John?
Speaker 4 (35:51):
The area?
Speaker 14 (35:51):
Bugger?
Speaker 13 (35:52):
You're out of the prime.
Speaker 5 (35:53):
What are we out there?
Speaker 14 (35:56):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (35:57):
I know I heard about it.
Speaker 4 (35:59):
The yes said drugs. I was talking.
Speaker 13 (36:06):
I hadn't.
Speaker 5 (36:09):
Oh, I know, I was in a better week ago
at your piece for drugs or something.
Speaker 13 (36:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 14 (36:14):
Good, pop's got your pitch man, Hi Fay wildly.
Speaker 4 (36:21):
World. Here's the other bloke. I haven't known the other fellows.
Reagan here mentions a detective by the name of Worsley.
Reagan is familiar with him. It would be Worsley who
would track Reagan's movements before his death and ultimately deliver
the story of Reagan's murder at his inquest. That version
(36:44):
of events has never really been challenged in fifty years.
What they do?
Speaker 9 (36:50):
Like?
Speaker 4 (36:50):
Yo?
Speaker 14 (36:51):
Kay?
Speaker 4 (36:52):
What do they say?
Speaker 12 (36:53):
They could said?
Speaker 4 (36:54):
Hey, whatever they said, I just put the stuff in
it said you had it?
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Ah?
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Where did they get your cron Where did they pinch
upon and plash from vision?
Speaker 6 (37:12):
No?
Speaker 5 (37:14):
I just want a name because you're not about to
found out of it.
Speaker 14 (37:21):
Because visuals fuck can't.
Speaker 4 (37:25):
I'm not a bay Shadier. In late nineteen sixty five. However,
death came to Reagan's office in Oxford Street. That insane
Brisbane crook John Andrew Stewart, part of the Brisbane mafia
at the time that tried to crack the Sydney underworld,
(37:48):
and his reform school buddy, the English born James Finch,
decided to pay Reagan a visit at Barrack Motors. It
was five days before Christmas and Stuart had already been
on a rampage across Sydney. On November twenty six, Stuart,
(38:12):
brandishing a sawn off twelve gage shotgun, had tried to
murder gangster Robert Lawrence Steele at Wallara. In court. Steel
stayed staunch. He said he couldn't see who had shot
at him. Then, on December four, Stuart impersonated a New
(38:34):
South Wales police officer and raped a woman in Elizabeth Bay.
Stuart on bail, turned up outside Barrick Motors with Finch
on December twenty and a gunfight broke out. Reagan was wounded.
A stray bullet hit Giuseppe Kappa, one of the Barrack
(38:56):
Motors employees. Kappa survived. Why had Stuart and Finch lashed
out at Reagan. Stuart was twenty four, Reagan was twenty.
Was it a brash attempt from Stuart to eliminate the
rising criminal star that was Reagan? Incredibly girlfriend Mark remembers
(39:22):
Johnny coming home that day covered in blood.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
I remember, not the actual, isn't it? But I remember
john coming to his mother's house with Benes all over
his last name, black T shirt and I think there's
a picture there somewhere really with black T shirt and
(39:50):
on his left shoulder, Yeah, whatever shoulder it was in
behind the T shirt and his mother. By now, his
mother didn't have priet, so I don't know. I think
he wouldn't ask able. Okay, he is to accuse Johnny.
Speaker 6 (40:08):
You remember him talking about James Finch.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
I think for that he said that I was shot,
but he accused. I think his words were, James Spinch,
Did you wonder why you did it? I thought, where?
What's going on? This is a new world I've walked
into it.
Speaker 7 (40:30):
Do you think it was around this period that things
started getting different in terms of him escalating and is
diversifying in.
Speaker 6 (40:40):
Terms of his work.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
Yeah, I said it started.
Speaker 14 (40:47):
Then.
Speaker 6 (40:47):
Did you ever ask about the shooting?
Speaker 3 (40:51):
You weren't supposed to ask questions. You don't ask questions,
is what it is.
Speaker 4 (40:56):
Tell I knew this.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
I learned how to drive in the back streets, okay,
in those narrow streets, just meaning him. Okay, if I
didn't do the right thing, he was, get out of
the car. I'll get out of the car and I'll
sit on the fence. I told you a million times.
I had drunk this time, and you pie, if we plant,
(41:20):
you're not listening. And you listened to what I was saying.
Now let's try again. I learned how to read number plates.
This is when my life changed. I learned to have
to read number plates from the looking through the vision mirror.
What number plate is that one behind me?
Speaker 13 (41:39):
Mark how it was?
Speaker 4 (41:43):
That's when it started.
Speaker 6 (41:47):
And wasn't assumed that you didn't ask questions.
Speaker 3 (41:52):
You don't ask questions. So I know now it was
paddlings and it wasn't his business partners. I think his
life changed. He changed completely. And sometimes in life, greed
and money and to be powerful came me into his world.
(42:15):
I think that he loved it.
Speaker 4 (42:17):
He loved what he was doing.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
He loved the sense that he was mixing with those
people so biggest mistati of manly his life.
Speaker 4 (42:29):
The deepening of Reagan's violence was beginning to show by
the time he turned twenty one. Before that he had
attracted attention for various instances of assault, and by the
end of nineteen sixty five he had crossed over by
mixing with those people. As marg had described it. Now
firearms had entered the Reagan picture. He had already engaged
(42:54):
in a Wild West style shootout with other criminals in
a public street, and he was arming himself with a
variety of weapons. Guns too, were suddenly being hidden in
the various places he lived in and frequented. There was
no turning back. Young Probationary Constable John Burks first posting
(43:18):
in the early nineteen sixties was Darlinghurst Police Station and
he served there for eleven years. He would come to
know all the crooks, and he would never forget Stuart John.
Speaker 14 (43:32):
Reagan going back in those days. And they said there
was no drugs, Yes, no, I mean you know there was.
Well I first went there. All the lanes were open
Woods Lane, and that you know, all the brothels, yes,
and all the strip clubs were going up the cross,
(43:52):
you know at Surf city there at the top of
the cross there at William and Darlings Road. Well, they
used to have all the top acts beal he thought,
from the Aztecs raying Brown on the whispers and the
joint was really rocking, you know.
Speaker 8 (44:09):
But there was no.
Speaker 14 (44:11):
A lot of violence, but there was no drugs. I
can remember as a protective was my mate. We saw
this blake shifting back in the village and what's he doing?
We're pulling up listening here with you and what do
you do? Anyway, we searched him and he had a
(44:32):
match box with a bit of grass in it. Yes,
probably enough to roll a joint.
Speaker 4 (44:39):
You did you have any words one on ones with
I know you'd had a check car chase, but with
Reagan in the streets.
Speaker 14 (44:46):
Oh yeah, quite a few times.
Speaker 4 (44:48):
And what was he like was he shifting?
Speaker 14 (44:51):
I know it was just to fall on you know.
You can't talk to me, you can't do you know.
He was sort of right face. He's that sort of blake,
very violent, vicious bloke, and would if he thought you
were some sort of a threat to him, he would
just try and make up things about you. He was
(45:12):
a real snake in the grass.
Speaker 3 (45:15):
He was no good.
Speaker 14 (45:17):
It's probably one of the worst blokes I ever had
him to do it, very violent, yeah, always.
Speaker 4 (45:23):
One morning and off, Judy Burke spotted Reagan driving in
Sydney's Inner East.
Speaker 14 (45:30):
And one day I was on the day off actually,
but I had an old court matter down at Central
and I left home and in the morning, and I
had my daughter with me. I was dropping her at school. Anyway,
I come out and I had my gun and handcuff,
my shoulder in one hand and my coat over my shoulder.
(45:52):
I'll put him on the bottom of the car and
unlocked the card let my daughter. Anyway, I had back
to Susy raid and I heard this car coming but
I didn't look, and I drove around passed me. When
I looked, I thought it was a green Jaguar and
it was Reagan. I didn't say I recognized the car,
(46:14):
and I thought he's going down there the Jet street.
Each other's face, and I knew at the time he
was wanted for rape because it was in the days
the name pg Fanes and I'm trying to think, where's
a phone box. Anyway, I dropped a girl and then
when I was coming back, I looked Graven Street to
(46:35):
my right, and what he done, he'd followed me, so
then a chase ensued. I've chased him in my car
and we've had a bathist five hundred around Kensington.
Speaker 4 (46:53):
Burke screamed at Reagan to stop.
Speaker 14 (46:57):
He didn't, and he's gone up a street called Day
Avenue and there's a stop sign at the top. So
I've fired four shots that he was but unfortunately I
was firing right handed. I'm left handed, so one of
them was an air squink. Three of them penetrated the
(47:19):
back of his car. Anyway, he got away.
Speaker 4 (47:24):
Reagan was dicing with death, and the only thing not
on his books, as far as anyone knew, was murder.
Until January seventeen, nineteen sixty seven, a.
Speaker 8 (47:44):
Man known as Big Barry was found yesterday with four
bullet wounds in his head in jungle like undergrowth in Paddington.
Police said the man, Barry Leonard Flock, twenty eight, had
told a friend he had been marked down for execution
by the underworld a week ago. His body was discovered
yesterday just before noon by a woman she was exercising
(48:05):
her dog in an extensive area of undergrowth part of
the Scottish Hospital. Police believe Flock was lured or forced
to march at gunpoint by his killer or killers into
the thick undergrowth. Flock apparently put up his hands as
the bullet smashed into him.
Speaker 4 (48:23):
For the first time. Johnny Reagan was now a murder suspect.
In the next episode of The Gangster's Ghost, Thank You John.
Speaker 13 (48:38):
Murdering Barry Flock, What was he like an new time?
And John's relationship with him I could see.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
The Gangster's Ghost is a production of The Australian. It's
written and presented by senior writer Matthew Condon and produced
and edited by multimedia editor leatsamaglu Our. Executive producer is Me,
(49:11):
Editorial director Claire Harvey. Special thanks to Lara Kamenos, Erica Rutlidge,
Kristin Amiot, Jasper Leik, Stephanie Coombs, Sean Callanan, Lachlan Clear,
Ryan Osland, Amanda Willim Williams, Christine Kellet, Taron Blackhurst, Magdalena Zajak,
Gisel Boetti, Genevieve Brammel, Lauren Bruce, sus Rolf and Jachina Carlson.
(49:31):
We can only do journalism like this with the support
of US subscribers who hear episodes first and get full
access to photos, video, news stories and features, plus all
Australia's best journalism twenty four to seven. Join us at
gangsters Ghost dot com dot au.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
St st.
Speaker 6 (50:10):
St st
Speaker 7 (50:15):
St st
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