July 10, 2025 • 59 mins
Matthew Condon and Kelly Slater Regan visit the site of the former Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane, where 15 innocent people lost their lives more than half a century ago.
Condon uncovers a document that suggests the private detective who investigated the horrific attack feared for his life if his findings – that the men convicted of the crime did not act alone – were ever made public.
And the Regan family finally confronts an allegation that's haunted them for half a century: did Stewart John Regan murder three-year-old Karlos Scott-Huie?
Read more about this case and see photographs, videos, timelines and more at gangstersghost.com.au
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Before we begin.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
This podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence. This is a
production by The Australian and our subscribers Here episodes first
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Join us at Gangstersghost dot com dot A.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Um, that's very fuss right, no one evens.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
No, I've been said, no, Okay.
Speaker 5 (00:44):
That's a look.
Speaker 6 (00:46):
This is the flower. The drums will rolled under here.
Speaker 5 (00:51):
And it was card.
Speaker 7 (00:54):
You would think if you drum roll the drums under there.
Speaker 6 (00:58):
Would which while there was cladding and ship on the walls.
Speaker 8 (01:06):
Wow, I'm so excited. That's empty. Oh my god, it's open.
Oh my god.
Speaker 9 (01:22):
Hello, Hello, Hi.
Speaker 10 (01:31):
Hello.
Speaker 11 (01:36):
We didn't need to say anything. Kelly Slater Reagan and
I just knew, without having to admit it, that all
roads would lead back.
Speaker 12 (01:46):
To this place.
Speaker 11 (01:50):
After years of research, dozens of interviews, hundreds of documents,
and countless hours spent on the phone mulling over the
short and furious life of Kelly's second cousin, the gangster
Stuart John Reagan, we were always going to end up here,
(02:11):
in this two story building at the corner of Saint
Paul's Terrace and Amelia Street in Fortitude Valley in Brisbane,
inside what used to be the old Whiskey Go Go nightclub,
the exact space where fifteen people lost their lives and
(02:33):
a clutch of criminals, possibly including Kelly's cousin Stuart John
Reagan literally got away with murder.
Speaker 9 (02:43):
Oh my god, that is so incredible.
Speaker 6 (02:49):
So you couldn't tell their windows curtains and they were
riveted shut.
Speaker 8 (02:55):
Oh my lord, so I guess for the air conditioning
which assisted in sucking the smoke up from the recycling one.
Speaker 11 (03:08):
And it was humbling to be inside the old Whiskey,
knowing what had happened half a century ago, and two
drums of fuel were lit in the downstairs foyer. The
flames ignited the carpet and walls of the stairwell and
sent thick, black smoke into the upstairs club. Many of
(03:31):
the fifty or so patrons tried to get out the
back exit, but it was locked. Others clambered through windows
at the back of the kitchen or at the rear
of the band's dressing room. The dead were not burned.
They all perished from smoke inhalation.
Speaker 9 (03:52):
Yes, so the bar was.
Speaker 8 (03:53):
Along here.
Speaker 6 (03:57):
And this was the most hence area for the fire
because it was burning up the walls and the carpet
and windows were blown out here.
Speaker 7 (04:08):
Oh really yeah, so that would have been with the impact.
Speaker 6 (04:10):
Yeah, but the rest was smoke funneling into here and
they were dead within two to three minutes.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
Carbon monoxide yeah, yeah, from the carpets.
Speaker 12 (04:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 11 (04:21):
And after years of following Reagan's trail, we now know
that he was in Brisbane on the night of the
Whiskey tragedy, and not after, as the story has always
been told, that he was observed in Blinker's nightclub with
some sort of injury. That gangster's paddles Anderson and Lenny
(04:42):
McPherson and even Reagan himself had been in and out
of the Whiskey in the days leading up to the
fire bombing. And after our brief, unexpected tour of the Whiskey,
we stood outside on the street and tried to take
it all in for a while. We studied the brass
(05:03):
plaque memorial to the victims embedded in the footpath outside
the old club, and unbelievable, we.
Speaker 9 (05:17):
Got to go in there.
Speaker 7 (05:21):
I just didn't stand here.
Speaker 11 (05:36):
I'm journalist Matthew Condon and This is the Gangster's Ghost
a podcast from The Australian. My co pilot on the
Gangster's Ghost, Kelly Slater. Reagan always suspected and dreaded that
we'd find a link between her second cousin and the
Whiskey Ego Go nightclub massacre in Brisbane in nineteen seventy three.
(06:02):
What she wanted to understand once and for all, however,
was whether he actually murdered Carlos Scott Huey, a three
year old toddler, just months before Reagan's own assassination in Sydney.
This is Episode nine, Carlos. For fifty years, the horror
(06:39):
story of what happened at the Whiskey Goog on March eight,
nineteen seventy three has never changed. Two rogue criminals, John
Andrew Stewart and James Finch decided to burn the club
as part of some twisted extortion racket over clubs and
pubs in Brisbane. Finch, Billy Kulkan and Clockwork Orange Gang
(07:02):
member Tommy Hamilton drove to the club. Finch rolled out
two barrels of fuel into the foyer at two eight
am and through the match Stewart was in a nearby club,
though he supposedly masterminded the attack. The theory was that
(07:23):
the whiskey had been part of a so called Southern
takeover of the Brisbane vice scene, a warning shot to
locals that the city was under new criminal management. The
fire was meant to be a scare tactic. No one
(07:43):
foresaw that the deadly smoke from the foyer flames would
quickly overwhelm the club and within minutes leave fifteen people dead.
That wasn't part of the plan. In the end, Finch
and Stewart were found guilty of the crime and sentenced
to life in prison. Nobody believed the story that big
(08:08):
bad gangsters from Sydney wanted to take control of Brisbane.
It was a fantasy cooked up by John Andrew Stewart.
What wasn't a fantasy was the deadly fire. I spoke
to Donna Phillips, who was a waitress working in the
club that night and miraculously survived the inferno.
Speaker 13 (08:31):
Just normal night's work until the event itself. Until eight
to ten minutes past two, when I'd come back from
the front desk. I'd been put on the front reception
by the owners. You know, if the fire was tin
(08:55):
passed and I was, I'd had enough time to leave
the front reception, come down to the bar, where Dessimer
Carroll was one of my co workers, and I got
a drink. I don't know whether it was orange juice
or water, but it would have been ten minutes so
I would have finished to come down, had to drink.
Speaker 11 (09:15):
Donna, a part time model, had made a lot of
good friends at the whiskey, including young mother Decima and
a barman called Peter Marcus.
Speaker 13 (09:26):
And about ten past I've seen fire. I didn't hear anything,
but I saw the fire burst through the front door
and then catch a light across the curtains. Naturally, because
my line of sight also took in Peter Marcas. And
I still to this day say that I saw part
(09:49):
of his shirt catch fire, and watched him run around
the back of the bar, which was facing Amelia Street,
and then turn right and then rung down the bar
on the side of Saint Paul's Terrace to the end
of the bar, and I've seen him kneel down, and
I don't know what he was doing, you know, he
(10:11):
seemed purposeful, and he did something in the shelf area
under the barroom and then just fell forward.
Speaker 8 (10:21):
In line with the door.
Speaker 13 (10:23):
The fire has burst through that doorway, caught the curtains,
as I mentioned before, and then when I didn't see
it burn further than close to Peter on the ground,
Peter Marcus. But at that stage and then the lights
(10:44):
were starting to appear as though they were going out, and.
Speaker 8 (10:47):
The smoke was below them. Pad it was black, It
was dark.
Speaker 13 (10:54):
It was dark, Yes, it was dark.
Speaker 8 (10:56):
Yeah, And moving into the club.
Speaker 13 (10:58):
Yes, well for me, as I remember it, it was
cooling up over the ceiling and running forwards that way.
And then because I seemed to be frozen in that moment,
my story is that two men passed in front of me,
went to the sliding door opened from one of them
to and something like, what are you coming now? And
(11:22):
you know, it's kind of well, okay, I've better got
to go now if I go, and off down the stairs.
Speaker 11 (11:33):
Against all odds, Donna made it out of the club.
Her friends, Decima and Peter were not so lucky. Another
survivor was police officer hunt and Nickel, who was enjoying
a night out with friends.
Speaker 10 (11:50):
I honestly and totally on one hundred Temple as I
believe that night I was going to die, and I
just before I got the window and the fresh air
came in, I was on the point of collapse. I
remember thinking, God, Mom and Dad's going me dirty. I
died this way and then the fresh air hit me.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
But you resign.
Speaker 10 (12:09):
I had resigned to the fact that I was dying.
And I saw a white light. You did, I did
see a white light. Sounds stupid, mind taking over, and
I was on point of collapse. I don't know, but
I honestly and totally utterly believe I was on the
point of dying.
Speaker 8 (12:25):
And then some fingers of fresh air came in.
Speaker 10 (12:28):
Yeah, wafted it in through that window. That somebody that
that hopper window. Uh, this fresh air came in. I
breathe that in fresh air. I'll tell you that it
has a sweet taste, a very sweet taste. You can
say what you like. Hair has a sweet taste. I
breathe a few lungs of that.
Speaker 14 (12:47):
End.
Speaker 10 (12:47):
At best, I couldn't have to revive me pushed out
white people. I couldn't get out myself. It was touch
and goes. I was on the point. Give me another
ihreagon five to ten seconds. I was gone. Somebody open
that window. Fresh air came in against the smoke. And
when you saw how thick pungent that smoke was, how
(13:08):
that air got in, I don't know. Bo's enough to
revolve us that got out.
Speaker 11 (13:17):
Visiting the site of the whisky tragedy. Being inside the
scene of the mass murder had a big impact on Kelly.
Ever since she was a child, Kelly had linked her
second cousin, Johnny Reagan with the Whiskey Go Go firebombing
through stories repeated by the Reagan family.
Speaker 9 (13:38):
She had come with.
Speaker 11 (13:39):
Me on this journey to find the truth about her
famous relative, the good, the bad, and the ugly. As
she said, when we started out all those years ago,
now standing where fifteen people had perished and possibly on
Reagan's orders, gotten way more than she'd bargain for. I
(14:04):
get the sense from you that you're resigned to the hard,
cold fact that it's a very strong possibility Reagan was
behind it.
Speaker 7 (14:14):
Oh, I got no doubts, like where I used to
hold out a little hope that what was told through
the family couldn't be true.
Speaker 11 (14:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 9 (14:22):
No, did you think at the time, if you can
remember that, you didn't think it could be true, because
even just theoretically, the idea of fifteen people dead at
a single moment is too big to comprehend.
Speaker 7 (14:37):
I think when I was little, I didn't probably put
it all together, even when I was in the police,
when you fed the same narrative over and over like.
It wasn't until I started to really have a good
look and then I think, but if he really was
involved in the whiskey and he's killed fifteen people, why
the hell wasn't he interviewed charged at the inquest.
Speaker 11 (14:59):
It wasn't a until I spoke to Helen Reagan, Johnny
and Marg's oldest daughter, that I learned a startling fact,
yet another shocking surprise in the Endless Whisky saga, and
something that potentially had huge implications. Who knew that Marg's brother,
(15:19):
Jimmy was good friends with James Finch, the convicted whisky
killer and the man who attempted to murder Reagan in
Sydney in nineteen sixty five. Jimmy was so close to
Finch that he even stayed with him in the UK
after Finch was released from prison and deported in nineteen
(15:39):
eighty eight. I confirmed this friendship with another member of
the family. So what did this mean? Reagan's de facto
brother in law, if we could call him, that was
close mates with a man found guilty of the whisky atrocity.
It raised a multitude of questions. In the following exchange,
(16:02):
Helen mentions James Stewart, but she really means James Finch.
Speaker 9 (16:09):
Was the whiskey of Go Go. Ever mentioned in relation
to your dad at any point?
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Yeah, I heard it.
Speaker 15 (16:14):
I read about it. My uncle, my Lum's brother Jimmy
is very close to James Stewart, and he obviously went
back to the UK and he just shot my father
something like that. And I remember really a sage to
like Uncle need Bunny James Stewart, you know, my uncle
being my uncle told him and said, you know my niece,
she wants to kill you. I know that my father's
(16:36):
name is low Up. But again nothing was proven. I mean,
I think everyone knows it. James Stewart, my uncle, Jill
need mom's brothers in Lacey, James Stewart, he said.
Speaker 12 (16:46):
He did it.
Speaker 11 (16:47):
During the height of the Fitzgerald Inquiry into police corruption
in Queensland in nineteen eighty eight, a lobby group called
the Friends of Finch advocated for his release, claiming he'd
been verbaled or fitted up with a false statement by
crooked cops like Roger Rogerson when he was first arrested
(17:08):
after the fire in nineteen seventy three. That claim may
have a grain of truth to it, though Finch himself
would later confess to his involvement in the whisky. Still,
the Save Finch campaign made headlines, and in an attempt
to shore up Finch's innocence, a private detective agency, Walter
(17:31):
Cromwell Investigations, was hired to dig into the origins of
the fire. If it wasn't Finch, then who was it.
Its findings were explosive. I came across an old, yellowed
copy of the Cromwell report years ago. Initially I couldn't
make much sense of it. I wasn't able to understand
(17:54):
the bigger picture. But the more I talked to people
over the years about the whisky and the whole Southern
criminal's takeover theory that psychopath John Andrew Stewart was crowing
about at the time, the Cromwell finding started to come
into greater focus. The seven page report itself was a
(18:16):
combination of typewritten text and handwriting, presumably from the hand
of the investigator, Walter Cromwell himself. The report was stamped
private and confidential. The introduction ominously says.
Speaker 16 (18:38):
Before embarking onto the summary, it is imperative that the reader,
your good self understands that once the enclosed becomes common
knowledge to others, my life becomes at high risk.
Speaker 11 (18:51):
The Cromwell Report concludes that the convicted perpetrators of the crime,
John Andrew Stewart and James Finch, were arrested and tried
on the orders of Sidney and Melbourne organized crime families.
Speaker 16 (19:08):
It has been gleaned that the Whiskier Go Go was
firebombed on the eighth of March nineteen seventy three by
John Stuart Reagan and John Arthur Clark. It has been
further established that Reagan and Clark undertook their instructions from
Lenny McPherson and Abe Saffron.
Speaker 11 (19:26):
So Lennie and Abe were setting up their new extortion
takeover of Brisbane and they ordered Reagan and his close
criminal associate John Ratty Clark to organize the firebombing. Attached
to the Cromwell Report were statements from confidential informants. One
(19:46):
was a former employee of the Pussy Galore strip club
in King's Cross who had befriended a man called David
from another strip club. The employee told Cromwell.
Speaker 17 (20:00):
David had told me that he had known Johnny Reagan
and Johnny Clark for many years before they'd gotten too big.
David told me that early in nineteen seventy three, Reagan
had offered him a job to do. Reagan had wanted
him to go to Brisbane and organized with him Reagan
and a couple of extra guys so they could do
a burnout on one of the clubs. Reagan had sent
Johnny Clark to Melbourne to pick up some money from Lenny,
(20:21):
as he also had an interest in the stated matter.
David told me that he had declined Reagan's offer because
he only had just recently gotten out of jail and
that he didn't want any trouble with the police, even
though Reagan had promised police protection through Lennie McPherson.
Speaker 11 (20:37):
The informant said that after the Whiskey Fire, David had
bumped into Reagan in the Sweetheart's Coffee Lounge in King's Cross.
Reagan was allegedly with Ratty Clark and a corrupt police
officer called Jimmy. I personally began to wonder if police
officer Jimmy wasn't in fact Reagan's brothero law. The report
(21:02):
went on.
Speaker 16 (21:04):
David said that he had heard them talking about the
Whiskey fire and that Jimmy has asked if there were
any problems with the job. Reagan plainly said there hadn't
been any major problems. David said that Reagan had boasted
freely about the fire to just about anyone in the
cross because it made him the man in town.
Speaker 11 (21:24):
While the boasting doesn't sound like Reagan, a meticulously cautious criminal,
the informant says that Ratty Clark and Reagan seconded the
Clockwork Orange Gang and went ahead with the job on
their own terms, defying Abe Saffron's instructions and snubbing McPherson. This,
(21:46):
on the other hand, has the ring of truth. As
we know Reagan was associated with the Brisbane Clockwork Gang
through local killer and hitman vince O Dempsey, and such
a rash move was in keeping with Reagan's manic and
impetuous nature. Remember the hyperactive Reagan of those secret tapes
(22:12):
of his Cottay.
Speaker 18 (22:13):
Couldn't get somebody who put a nice sound on the day.
Hey you and you sound out more. That's what's going on.
Speaker 9 (22:20):
Under the lab.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Nothing to do with anybody. Ah well, just go out.
Speaker 18 (22:23):
He's gone, so I come out to see you. Don't
find out why I came image. It couldn't go on it.
Speaker 11 (22:31):
The informant provided valuable information on the details behind this
attempted organized crime takeover of Brisbane.
Speaker 16 (22:41):
McPherson had wanted seventy five percent of any monies that
Reagan was to make of the Brisbane standover racket. McPherson
was known to share fifty five percent of the collect
moneies with Saffron as he was the one with the
Queensland Police contacts. After sharing the fifty five percent with Saffron,
the remaining twenty percent went to Queensland Police contacts.
Speaker 11 (23:06):
If the Cromwell report is even remotely true, Reagan, with
his Whiskey Go Go caper had crossed a very serious
and potentially fatal line. Nobody double crossed Lenny McPherson and
Abe Saffron and lived to tell the tale. The story
(23:32):
passed down through the Reagan family was that shotgun Johnny
made a surprise visit to his hometown of Young in
southwestern New South Wales after the Whisky tragedy. Kelly's dad, Lindsay,
was working as a stock and station agent in town
at the time. He never knew he had a famous
(23:53):
gangster first cousin. He didn't even know his poor old
uncle Alf even had a Then Lindsey got the shock
of his life when a dark stranger entered the stock agency.
Speaker 5 (24:10):
And the week after Whisky a Go Go went up,
I was in the office, which was right next door
to the Australian Hotel, and this gentleman walked in. I
knew who he was without even asking him, because it
was like looking in the mirror. He walked in and
he said to me, where's Alf? And I said next door?
(24:34):
And he turned on his heel and walked out. Now
that is the only time I've ever seen John Reagan.
That is the only words I've ever spoken to him.
That lasted possibly fifteen seconds.
Speaker 7 (24:46):
Do you know what he spoke to Alf about.
Speaker 5 (24:49):
I think he just came up, I don't know, to
spend a bit of time with Uncle Elf. I know
he took him out because Uncle Elf told Dad took
him out in the car. They went out somewhere. The
rabbit ran across the road and Alf said something about,
oh I.
Speaker 12 (25:03):
Wish to John.
Speaker 5 (25:05):
Paul gone out of his pocket and said, he shit
this afore old uncle El's Will.
Speaker 12 (25:10):
He fight it?
Speaker 11 (25:12):
If Lindsay's memory is accurate, and there's no reason to
think it isn't, then Reagan was seeking out his long
lost father Alf after many years away from young It
was the week after the Whiskey Fire and Reagan was armed.
Perhaps Reagan had just decided it was a good time
to go and see his dad, to get back to
(25:34):
his roots. Or perhaps it was an opportune moment to
be out of Brisbane and Sydney. I needed to discuss
the whole episode with Kelly.
Speaker 9 (25:46):
There's a lot of things starting to come together, right.
Maybe Reagan had a much bigger role in the Whiskey
than anyone's ever anticipated.
Speaker 7 (25:55):
Well, maybe the family was right. Maybe yeah, it's I've
always been adamant that he was involved in the Whiskey
Go Goo.
Speaker 9 (26:01):
I'm just wondering what they knew which may have been
lost in the midst of time to be so confident
about that.
Speaker 7 (26:08):
I'm thinking when John came down and walked into that
office where he's never gone in to see Dad or
Pop before. Ever, He's in such a hurry he wants
to find Uncle Alf quickly. Has he told Alf? He's
told Pop?
Speaker 9 (26:23):
Well, he'd have to explain his sudden appearance in young Yes,
doesn't necessarily mean he has to tell the truth.
Speaker 7 (26:31):
Or has he told the truth to his father?
Speaker 9 (26:33):
And Alf on the pieces leaked it out at some point.
Speaker 7 (26:36):
Well, and now Uncle Alf was very badly drunk for
a long time after he left.
Speaker 9 (26:41):
Like a big binge, big binge. Yeah, he loved his father,
didn't he very much?
Speaker 12 (26:46):
So, so we.
Speaker 9 (26:47):
Can imagine that he may have been the only person
on earth that he could tell the truth to.
Speaker 7 (26:52):
He may well have. Yeah, And I know he's scared
Uncle Alf, like I told you at the time when
he had the gun and he went on a bender. Again,
John must have been in an all sort of hurry
to come in and speak to Dad. He's never done
that before. He's never walked in to find Uncle Alf
before in there and he's walked in and ask Dad's
told him he's gone. Has he told Uncle Alf? And
(27:16):
has Uncle Alf Toldplop he's dead set? Would have told PLoP.
Speaker 11 (27:20):
Remember this was a died in the wool Country family.
Pop was the patriarch. There were few secrets in such
a small town, and Johnny Reagan's sudden appearance after being
absent for many years would have caused a stir in young.
Speaker 9 (27:39):
So let's just theorize here for a second. I mean,
not speculation, but let's just theorize. Say you're Reagan, You've
been in Brisbane, You're doing some business. A hasty decision
is made to potentially eliminate competition on the club scene,
and someone else is going to get some money out
of it for an insurance job. Yep, you hire your
(28:01):
underlings to do it. And that's exactly what our source
said in the documents earlier that mcculkin i, Dempsey and
others or members of the Clockwork Orange Gang were occasionally
tapped on the shoulder to do odd jobs for Reagan.
Say you do this job, No one anticipates fifteen people
perish in the fire. Yep, suddenly you potentially up for
(28:22):
fifteen counts of murder. Where would you run to at
a time of the greatest moment of fear in your
criminal career? You'd go to someone you trust, and you'd
go home, wouldn't you.
Speaker 7 (28:34):
You'd go home.
Speaker 11 (28:35):
In May nineteen seventy four, a little over a year
after the mass murder, and a few months after Whiskey witnessed,
Barbara mcculchin and her two young daughters went missing in Brisbane,
Reagan was back in Sydney, the usual frenetic puppet master
to dozens of his money making scams. He was now
(28:58):
father to three children with marg his son JP, Helen,
and the youngest Claire, who was eighteen months old. She
was named after Reagan's mother, The Colonel Reagan, though was
hardly the picture of a faithful and demure suburban father,
(29:21):
He was still playing the field and had become attached
to a young woman called Helen Scott Huey, a young
croupier at the Golden Club in Haymarket in Inner Sydney,
reputed to be the biggest illegal casino in the city.
Scott Huey had a three year old child, Carlos, to
(29:44):
another man. On the evening of Tuesday May twenty one,
nineteen seventy four, Reagan and Helen went out for dinner
before returning to her flat in Oxford Street, Paddington.
Speaker 9 (30:00):
Watch some TV.
Speaker 11 (30:02):
Reagan said he'd stay and look after Carlos, and by
the time Helen left for her early morning shift at
the casino, Reagan and the child were fast asleep in bed.
At about two am on Wednesday, May twenty two, Reagan
supposedly awoke, bundled little Carlos into his car, and drove
(30:25):
the short distance to Taylor Square on Oxford Street to
his favorite newspaper stand, one of the few in the
city that carried the first editions fresh off the press
of that day's newspapers. Reagan was a news junkie, and
like most crooks with a healthy ego, he probably had
(30:47):
half an eye on seeing if his name was mentioned
by the press.
Speaker 19 (30:55):
I'm here in Taylor Square in Sydney, the Oxford Street.
We're at Intersex with Burke Street, and this is the
exact spot where Johnny Reagan, as was his custom, came
up here, parked his car down the side here where
the Oxford Bar is now, and popped out in the
(31:20):
early morning to get that day's edition of the newspapers,
leaving little Carlos Scott Huey the toddler in the car.
Reagan claims it when he got back Carlos was not
in the car and had effectively disappeared. So it was
right on this spot all those years ago where this
(31:43):
alleged kidnapping of Carlos occurred.
Speaker 9 (31:46):
Did Reagan murder that boy? I don't know.
Speaker 19 (31:52):
We've been trying to find out, Kelly and I. It's
been one of the focuses of our investigation into Reagan,
obviously given it involved.
Speaker 9 (32:00):
An innocent toddler.
Speaker 11 (32:06):
There has been speculation that Reagan dropped into a nearby
illegal casino run by bookmaker Moe Reynolds and picked up
some of his protection money before buying his newspapers. Reagan
claimed that the little boy was nowhere to be found
by the time he got back to the vehicle. The
(32:30):
disappearance certainly fitted the supposed modus operandi of someone known
as Nano, the Magician, the man who could make people vanish.
But the glaring question was why Why would Reagan bring
attention to himself by murdering a child? Why would he
(32:54):
then put himself through the inherent complications of such a
grotesque act. Did that famous inner tiger emerge and suddenly snap?
Did the child annoy Reagan and then was accidentally killed
in an act of punishment that went too far. You'll
(33:18):
remember former drug squad detective Michael Drury, the honest police
officer who survived an assassination attempt by corrupt cop Roger Rogerson.
Mick remembers the case of Carlos Scott Huey and said
it was the talk of the police across Sydney soon
after it happened.
Speaker 20 (33:39):
It was in a period of less than a week
after the disappearance of the child that the word was out,
in particular with police from Darlinghurst, that the child had
been murdered and Stuart John Reagan was the offer, but
(34:02):
they didn't know what happened to the body. For him
to walk up there to get a newspaper and come
back to the car, it just does not ring true.
It does not ring true. If there was any truth
in the rumor that the child was kidnapped, and he
was genuine, whether it be Stuart John Reagan or not,
(34:23):
I would expect him not to leave that location, but
to walk fifty meters at the very most across the
road to Darlinghurth's police station and in a fit of
great depression call upon the police to investigate the so
(34:43):
called disappearance, kidnapping of this child from his car, and
I believe I'm correct in saying that never took place.
Hence I find that exceedingly concerning.
Speaker 8 (35:00):
Well, it's interesting he was the talk of the police.
Speaker 20 (35:02):
Oh yes, yes, not only the uniform police, but the detectives.
Speaker 12 (35:06):
A darlingers at the time.
Speaker 20 (35:09):
I don't know who investigated the disappearance of the child,
but yes, I clearly remember.
Speaker 21 (35:14):
From your experience, what would have been the attitude of
his fellow criminals to a person who had allegedly murdered
an innocent child.
Speaker 20 (35:26):
Look, even amongst criminals, that type of behavior, it was
absolutely unacceptable. There are certain things you can do which
to the average person like yourself and myself, would give
us gray hair, But that type of behavior was just
(35:47):
totally unacceptable.
Speaker 11 (35:50):
The Sydney Morning Herald reported on page one a few
days later that a five thousand dollars reward had been
posted for Carlos's safe return.
Speaker 22 (36:01):
Police said last night that it had been offered by
a close friend of the boy's mother, missus Helen Scott Huey.
Speaker 11 (36:08):
That friend was none other than Reagan himself. His de
facto wife, marg recalls that terrible time, she wondered if
Carlos's disappearance hadn't been a case of mistaken identity.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
When I heard that Carlos and I met, Carlos was
gone and John had gone to get his normal newspaper
in Dulness Oxford Street, which he would go over night
to get that newspaper at that same stem.
Speaker 8 (36:41):
Why would he do that?
Speaker 1 (36:42):
It's always done it. He was a great friend to
reading the newspapers and see what's going on in the world.
He always did that.
Speaker 8 (36:50):
I mean that was early hours of the morning. Did
he sleep much.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
I don't think he ever sick, really, but I can't
only remember that man relacable. And so when that happened
and Carlos went missing, I immediately thought that they thought
that was his son, my son, and they were taken
(37:14):
him for some sort of revenge. I really thought that
they thought Carlos was my son.
Speaker 8 (37:22):
How did you meet Carlos?
Speaker 1 (37:23):
He had seen the other woman Helen's got you, and
he had the child with him one.
Speaker 8 (37:28):
Day, brought him home to your home in the car.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Probably I can't remember where I factly met him. So
in the end I knew he was having a relationship
with Alan Scott, You and she knew.
Speaker 11 (37:40):
I knew Mark then and now doesn't believe Reagan was
responsible for Carlos's disappearance.
Speaker 8 (37:49):
You don't believe he armed Carlos.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
No, I do not. Why because I've seen him with
kids and I don't believe him. I've seen him with
his own daughters. I've seen him with my son. No,
I do not. And you knew Helen Scott, Yes, I did.
Speaker 8 (38:05):
She didn't believe that either.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
No, she didn't. When Carlos went missing and I got
closer to Helen got even though she was having a
relationship with John, didn't. She had no one to talk
to her about this. She never believed that John did it.
She told you that, yes she did.
Speaker 8 (38:23):
Did she have any idea who might have done it?
Speaker 1 (38:26):
She never said if she did have any idea.
Speaker 8 (38:31):
I didn't think it was John.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
She never thought it.
Speaker 8 (38:33):
Was John, and you both shared that same view.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Same view. But that doesn't mean that she didn't think
it but didn't want to say it, because I remember
I was the one that's been around longer than the
rest of it. I don't know. I didn't feel that
with her. I don't think she ever went into any
investigation about what happened to Carlos.
Speaker 8 (38:56):
What it was her child? Why wouldn't anyone do that?
Speaker 1 (38:59):
I don't know or didn't shet okay, ye understand that
did Johnny ever mentioned that situation to you?
Speaker 8 (39:08):
Carlos, of course I wouldn't have a child or of course.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
And him I do believe I do.
Speaker 8 (39:18):
And was he angry about being accused of that?
Speaker 1 (39:23):
Certainly? Certainly? But then I don't know the connection we
had with talents got Louis. Was she in the same
situation I was in? Not wanting to voice her obledion
because if someone comes to you and says that John
sink your son, you don't go wow. I don't know
(39:43):
if she did what she did? Not cannot tell you.
Was it she investigating her son's disappearance?
Speaker 8 (39:50):
And John didn't offer any other explanation as to who
might have snatched.
Speaker 12 (39:54):
The child, Not to me.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
He may have to who, Not to me.
Speaker 8 (40:01):
He didn't say he thought he was being set up.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
He would say I didn't do this. I never would
do this kind of thing. I would never to this time,
I'm seventy four years of age. I believed that he
did not have anything to do with Carlos So how.
Speaker 8 (40:16):
Can we explained Carlos's disappearance? Why was that child taste?
And for what purpose? You thought it might have been JP?
I thought it was JP.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
Either that or an accident happened with the mother and
the child or with John and the child. I don't
know what happens happened. You see it all the time
in the news today. You know, just his head on
the wall. Oh, we didn't do it. I don't know
what happened to that child. And you know what, it's
just like someone who told him don't bother to investigate.
(40:52):
If someone told me not to investigate the death of
any of my children or my family, I'll be there
opening the doors. So I can't understand that this is
her son, her son. He was a beautiful looking boy,
and just nothing was opened about it. Why I have
to question that? Why because she hadn't awarness two gene
(41:15):
reason that told you Chap. I don't know.
Speaker 11 (41:18):
It's natural for marg the mother of three of Reagan's children,
to not want to believe that he was capable of
murdering a three year old boy. That was an act that,
as Michael Drewy said, was absolutely unacceptable for many unimaginable. Interestingly,
(41:40):
Carlos's disappearance and presumed murder momentarily drew marg and Helen
Scott Huey close together. But for marg that friendship raised
as many questions as it answered.
Speaker 8 (41:57):
Did you stay in touch with her for long?
Speaker 13 (41:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 9 (41:59):
I did.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
I did start in touch with her for a few months,
and then she just wait, it's after she disappeared.
Speaker 8 (42:08):
Really she wasn't around. Did you got query or us
feedba wears Helen. Of course he did.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
I don't know where she went. We weren't enemies. I
wasn't her enemy. The sorrow I felt for that woman
was so immense. That that woman had just lost her child, well,
her child disappeared. Where is he is? Anyone bothered to
(42:36):
find out where this kid is?
Speaker 11 (42:39):
Margan Reagan's daughter Helen, had fond memories of Helen Scott Huey.
They were little Helen and big Helen. Big Helen stayed
in their lives after Carlos vanished, and even after Reagan
himself was murdered.
Speaker 15 (42:57):
She was a big chart of our lives.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
We hadn't heard from her. She lived in Enfield with
her mother.
Speaker 15 (43:06):
She's got a green cherry chitch you know when my
dad trust away, she was always around. You know, we
all hang out together. She was my mum's friend and
probably my mum's taught person when she was going through
what she went through.
Speaker 9 (43:20):
I mean, if your dad had murdered her child, why
would she hang around?
Speaker 1 (43:25):
I mean, this is a thing.
Speaker 15 (43:27):
My father was set up. I just say that happening.
Speaker 12 (43:30):
You know.
Speaker 11 (43:32):
I spoke to one source, let's call him Joe, who
lived near Helen, Scott Huey and her son at the
time and remembered the chaos when Carlos disappeared. Joe had
been around the block and while not a criminal, was
acquainted with some members of the underworld.
Speaker 12 (43:51):
Oh well, gone after killing a little kid.
Speaker 9 (43:55):
Do you remember that? I mean I do remember that
little kid?
Speaker 1 (43:59):
That was That.
Speaker 12 (44:00):
Was Helen's Helen. What's that, Scott Huey.
Speaker 9 (44:02):
That was Carlos.
Speaker 12 (44:04):
Yeah, yeah, little Carlos. Yeah, he definitely.
Speaker 9 (44:08):
Yeah. I mean once you once you labeled the child killer.
Speaker 12 (44:14):
She used to live close to where Knoxas Street. Is
that right?
Speaker 9 (44:18):
Did you ever ever run into it?
Speaker 4 (44:20):
No?
Speaker 1 (44:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 12 (44:21):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (44:21):
Yeah?
Speaker 12 (44:22):
What was she like? She's a bit of a knock.
She's quite a nice girl. You know, I always liked her.
Speaker 11 (44:28):
When Carlos finished, Joe witnessed the boy's mother in absolute distress.
Speaker 12 (44:35):
She was screaming, and that killer. Everyone hated him for
what he did.
Speaker 9 (44:41):
And it's mainly the kid, isn't it.
Speaker 12 (44:44):
Well? I mean, now I could get murdering three your
old kid, cause he screw on his mother and she
wasn't really happy the way he was treating the kids.
It's one of the last things you could ever do,
in my opinion, Blake, and he got what.
Speaker 9 (44:59):
He des Did you ever actually meet him?
Speaker 12 (45:02):
Funny enough, he used to go to a friend of
mine's place all the time, and he was mixed up
in the two up on the casino at Darlinghurst. The
Forbes Club and the region used to go and see
him all the time, and they were giving him money
to keep him where they wanted him, you know, when
the time was right.
Speaker 9 (45:19):
And Helen Scott Huey was a dealer at the Golden Club.
I've read that a few times.
Speaker 12 (45:23):
Yes, I think she was. She was quite a nice girl.
I was there when that all took place. You know,
Johnny Reagan and took that little boy and took his life,
absolutely ruined Helen's life.
Speaker 9 (45:39):
You saw Helen at that terrible moment of distress.
Speaker 12 (45:41):
She should have thinned, and she was screaming, what I
just said? What the that's wrong with your girl? That
she just said he killed my son? I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 9 (45:52):
She was a mother in genuine grief, as you.
Speaker 12 (45:54):
Saw, genuine grief, I mean genuine grief. And I the
best I could.
Speaker 9 (46:01):
You know, Well, how can you console someone like that?
I mean, you lose a child.
Speaker 12 (46:05):
It's just well you can't. You can't. You know, she
didn't know, but I let a couple of people know
that I bumped into him. I think with all their
connections in that way, I knew that it was true.
And you know, when the police said he had to go,
he had to go.
Speaker 9 (46:22):
And did you get a feeling I'm not asking you
directly if you heard it from anyone, but did you
get a sense from when Carlos went missing to the
day Reagan was shot dead that something was going to
happen to him?
Speaker 12 (46:34):
Oh? Definitely. Hey, imagine if someone murdered your little son
at say six year old or four year old, how
would you feel. Imagine if someone raped your little daughter
at six?
Speaker 9 (46:47):
Oh my god, these people are that evil, So Reagan
was a dead man walking.
Speaker 12 (46:54):
Fuck it even today. If you did that, I reckon,
there'd be a dead man walking.
Speaker 11 (47:01):
You'll remember Fred Froggy Cray, the corrupt and alcoholic former
detective who was forced into retirement following brothel Madame Shirley
Brifman's whistle blowing on national television. Cray, a lover of Brifman's,
was retired medically unfit from the New South Wales Police
(47:22):
after the Brifman allegations aired. For a time, Cray was
suspected of having murdered Brifman. To make ends meet. In retirement,
Cray opened Epitome Investigations, a private eye firm based in
Byrell Street, Waverley in Sydney's East. At the time Carlos disappeared,
(47:45):
Cray's Epitome Investigations had somehow scored a contract with Sydney's
popular The Sun daily newspaper. He was an ex ace
detective with a thousand contacts who had his finger on
the pulse of the Sydney Underworld. Part of Cray's job
as advisor to the Sun, then owned by John Fairfax,
(48:08):
was to issue regular tip offs, alerts and bulletins about
potential news stories that the tabloids should be following, all
typed neatly on a Pitame investigation's letterhead. Kelly and I
have found a cachet of epitome documents in the Fairfax
Archives held in the State Library of New South Wales,
(48:31):
and several of those cray memos could easily lay claim
to contributing to the strength of the argument that Reagan
was now the worst of the worst, a child killer.
Less than a week after Carlos disappeared, Craye wrote to
The Sun under the subheading Stuart John Reagan.
Speaker 22 (48:54):
There appears no doubt that he has murdered Carlos Scott
Hughey and would have no fears of the fire five
thousand dollars reward being collected. If the police get even
the smallest amount of evidence, they would have to charge him.
I feel that any newspaper which keeps on the back
of the police department as to results of investigation of
the disappearance of this child would be doing a public service,
(49:17):
as there is no doubt that Reagan is a psychopathic killer.
Speaker 11 (49:21):
No trace of Carlos has ever been found, as far
as we can tell, no inquest has ever been held
into his presumed murder. As from motive, the only one
offered was that the child somehow annoyed or aggravated Reagan
enough for him to cold bloodedly kill the boy. It
(49:47):
may have happened that way, but unsolved crimes, especially those
that drift into years and then decades, tend to spawn
theories upon theories, and over time they can become so
incredible that they defy logic. What if, as marg suggested,
(50:10):
Carlos wasn't the target but Reagan's own young son, JP,
and that this was a case of mistaken identity that
would suggest that somebody else had pre planned the kidnapping,
monitored Reagan's movements, and struck at the precise moment Reagan
(50:32):
had a child in his car in the early hours
of the morning, necessitating Reagan having to step away from
the car in order to carry out the abduction. That
sounds far too complex and heavily reliant on dumb good
luck to ever work. And why target Reagan's own only
(50:56):
son to blackmail him revenge for Reagan's many transgressions in
the underworld and for him getting too big for his boots. Again,
too messy and complicated. But what if just what if
(51:17):
the child was vanished in order to brand Reagan as
that most hated of creatures, that most universally despised of monsters,
a child killer? And what if that mantle of child
killer hanging around Reagan's neck effectively gave the green light
(51:40):
to Reagan's own extermination. As it turned out, one of
Reagan's criminal and business associates at the time actually had
form in murdering children. That man was Vincent o'dempsey from
Queen's Land, currently serving life in prison for the murder
(52:04):
of mother Barbara mculchin and her two daughters, Vicki thirteen
and Leanne eleven, in nineteen seventy four. Barbara just may
have known too much about the real perpetrators behind the
Whiskey Go Go fire bombing. The bodies of Barbara and
the girls have never been found. In the months after
(52:27):
the Mculkin murders, Vince went on the run with his
partner Diane Pritchard, and for a while they stayed with
one of Vince's criminal associates in Hawk's Nest north of Newcastle. Vince,
as we've already explored, worked occasionally for Paddles Anderson in
Sydney and knew Reagan well. They'd bought some land together
(52:51):
in Vince's hometown of Warwick, southwest of Brisbane. Vince emulated Reagan.
He didn't drink or smoke like Reagan. He was obsessed
with the latest technology like Reagan. He had a growing
reputation as a gun for hire, and he had a
simple maxim that he lived by business is business. If
(53:15):
a job needed to be done, he got it done.
I spoke to the associate and he recalled Vince and
Diane getting into an argument. After the blow up, Diana
alleged to the associate that Vince told her he had
killed a small child. We have changed the associate's voice
(53:36):
for his protection. He theorized about Carlos's death.
Speaker 14 (53:43):
Why would the child have been killed? Would be a boy?
Speaker 9 (53:47):
Well, let's just say, theoretically, say Reagan killed the child?
What was in it for him?
Speaker 14 (53:52):
What Diane said that time? I looked at her as
if she was better, bught you poor slid through? Well,
I thought she was talking about his kids, his kids,
that I read that article of Penny, so the drop
would be completely wrong. He killed some kid with stuff
of choer and he got a boy the ankles and
(54:14):
spashts aid into the wall, stuffy, and that's something he'd do.
Speaker 12 (54:19):
He had the contolishing that he had to do.
Speaker 14 (54:23):
There's a lot of people I had that have killed
a lot of people who got a lot like as
m secret that cool people, but it's not a conpolishing.
Speaker 12 (54:33):
Did's have to do it?
Speaker 11 (54:40):
Who killed Carlos? Where was his mother? Helen Scott Huey?
She had vanished from the lives of the Reagans sometime
in the late nineteen seventies and seemingly off the face
of the earth. Where is that little boy? If he
was alive today, he it would be fifty four years old.
(55:02):
And who went looking for him? We understand Helen Scott
Huey's family made earnest attempts to locate the child, But
how can a toddler simply evaporate into thin air? Those
questions took me full circle, all the way back to
my first ever meeting with Kelly Slater, reagan second cousin.
Speaker 4 (55:29):
Honestly, I don't know exactly what we'll find. I know
we'll find that he probably killed people. Will we find
did he kill that little boy? That's something I'd really
like to Carlos yep, And I'm resigned to the fact
that if he did, but I'm hopeful of it. Given't
the whiskey gago, What was his involvement in that? Was
he a psychopath? Like they said? Is the stories that
(55:51):
they tell about him truth?
Speaker 11 (55:55):
Stuart John Reagan was probably the last of the old
time gangsters. He was ruthless, He was violent. He was
always armed and on the lookout for danger. He wore
a bullet proof vest when he needed to. He almost
always was accompanied by a bodyguard. Everyone we spoke to
(56:19):
bar Nunn, who knew Reagan, said he could instill fear
by just walking into a room, and you never ever
wanted to get on his wrong side. In the end,
no matter what his strengths, he was a marked man.
Precisely four months after Carlos disappeared, and after a pleasant
(56:44):
Sunday out with his oldest daughter Helen at Sydney's Watson's Bay, Reagan, unarmed,
casually walked down a Marrickville street on his way to
a pre arranged meeting and straight into the sights of
four thirty eight caliber pistols. In the final episode of
(57:09):
The Gangster's.
Speaker 15 (57:09):
Ghost People Check reminding me your father was a gangster.
Speaker 1 (57:14):
That's me.
Speaker 12 (57:15):
He was like he ow the Father.
Speaker 2 (57:30):
The Gangster's Ghost is a production of The Australian. It's
written and presented by senior writer Matthew Condon and edited
by multimedia editor Leat Sammergloom. Our executive producer is Me
Editorial director Claire Harvey. Special thanks to Lara Kamenos, Erica Rutliche,
Kristin Amiot, Jasper Leiku, Stephanie Coombs, Sean Callanan, Lachland, Clear,
(57:50):
Ryan Osland, Amanda win Williams, Christine Kellett, Tarn Blackhurst, Magdalena Zadak,
Giselle Boetti, Genevieve Brammel, Lauren Bruce, Sus Rolf and Kenny Carlson.
We can only do journalism like this with the support
of our subscribers, who hear episodes first and get full
access to photos, video, news stories and features plus all
(58:11):
Australia's best journalism twenty four to seven. Join us at
Gangstersghost dot com dot au
Before we begin.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
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 A.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Um, that's very fuss right, no one evens.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
No, I've been said, no, Okay.
Speaker 5 (00:44):
That's a look.
Speaker 6 (00:46):
This is the flower. The drums will rolled under here.
Speaker 5 (00:51):
And it was card.
Speaker 7 (00:54):
You would think if you drum roll the drums under there.
Speaker 6 (00:58):
Would which while there was cladding and ship on the walls.
Speaker 8 (01:06):
Wow, I'm so excited. That's empty. Oh my god, it's open.
Oh my god.
Speaker 9 (01:22):
Hello, Hello, Hi.
Speaker 10 (01:31):
Hello.
Speaker 11 (01:36):
We didn't need to say anything. Kelly Slater Reagan and
I just knew, without having to admit it, that all
roads would lead back.
Speaker 12 (01:46):
To this place.
Speaker 11 (01:50):
After years of research, dozens of interviews, hundreds of documents,
and countless hours spent on the phone mulling over the
short and furious life of Kelly's second cousin, the gangster
Stuart John Reagan, we were always going to end up here,
(02:11):
in this two story building at the corner of Saint
Paul's Terrace and Amelia Street in Fortitude Valley in Brisbane,
inside what used to be the old Whiskey Go Go nightclub,
the exact space where fifteen people lost their lives and
(02:33):
a clutch of criminals, possibly including Kelly's cousin Stuart John
Reagan literally got away with murder.
Speaker 9 (02:43):
Oh my god, that is so incredible.
Speaker 6 (02:49):
So you couldn't tell their windows curtains and they were
riveted shut.
Speaker 8 (02:55):
Oh my lord, so I guess for the air conditioning
which assisted in sucking the smoke up from the recycling one.
Speaker 11 (03:08):
And it was humbling to be inside the old Whiskey,
knowing what had happened half a century ago, and two
drums of fuel were lit in the downstairs foyer. The
flames ignited the carpet and walls of the stairwell and
sent thick, black smoke into the upstairs club. Many of
(03:31):
the fifty or so patrons tried to get out the
back exit, but it was locked. Others clambered through windows
at the back of the kitchen or at the rear
of the band's dressing room. The dead were not burned.
They all perished from smoke inhalation.
Speaker 9 (03:52):
Yes, so the bar was.
Speaker 8 (03:53):
Along here.
Speaker 6 (03:57):
And this was the most hence area for the fire
because it was burning up the walls and the carpet
and windows were blown out here.
Speaker 7 (04:08):
Oh really yeah, so that would have been with the impact.
Speaker 6 (04:10):
Yeah, but the rest was smoke funneling into here and
they were dead within two to three minutes.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
Carbon monoxide yeah, yeah, from the carpets.
Speaker 12 (04:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 11 (04:21):
And after years of following Reagan's trail, we now know
that he was in Brisbane on the night of the
Whiskey tragedy, and not after, as the story has always
been told, that he was observed in Blinker's nightclub with
some sort of injury. That gangster's paddles Anderson and Lenny
(04:42):
McPherson and even Reagan himself had been in and out
of the Whiskey in the days leading up to the
fire bombing. And after our brief, unexpected tour of the Whiskey,
we stood outside on the street and tried to take
it all in for a while. We studied the brass
(05:03):
plaque memorial to the victims embedded in the footpath outside
the old club, and unbelievable, we.
Speaker 9 (05:17):
Got to go in there.
Speaker 7 (05:21):
I just didn't stand here.
Speaker 11 (05:36):
I'm journalist Matthew Condon and This is the Gangster's Ghost
a podcast from The Australian. My co pilot on the
Gangster's Ghost, Kelly Slater. Reagan always suspected and dreaded that
we'd find a link between her second cousin and the
Whiskey Ego Go nightclub massacre in Brisbane in nineteen seventy three.
(06:02):
What she wanted to understand once and for all, however,
was whether he actually murdered Carlos Scott Huey, a three
year old toddler, just months before Reagan's own assassination in Sydney.
This is Episode nine, Carlos. For fifty years, the horror
(06:39):
story of what happened at the Whiskey Goog on March eight,
nineteen seventy three has never changed. Two rogue criminals, John
Andrew Stewart and James Finch decided to burn the club
as part of some twisted extortion racket over clubs and
pubs in Brisbane. Finch, Billy Kulkan and Clockwork Orange Gang
(07:02):
member Tommy Hamilton drove to the club. Finch rolled out
two barrels of fuel into the foyer at two eight
am and through the match Stewart was in a nearby club,
though he supposedly masterminded the attack. The theory was that
(07:23):
the whiskey had been part of a so called Southern
takeover of the Brisbane vice scene, a warning shot to
locals that the city was under new criminal management. The
fire was meant to be a scare tactic. No one
(07:43):
foresaw that the deadly smoke from the foyer flames would
quickly overwhelm the club and within minutes leave fifteen people dead.
That wasn't part of the plan. In the end, Finch
and Stewart were found guilty of the crime and sentenced
to life in prison. Nobody believed the story that big
(08:08):
bad gangsters from Sydney wanted to take control of Brisbane.
It was a fantasy cooked up by John Andrew Stewart.
What wasn't a fantasy was the deadly fire. I spoke
to Donna Phillips, who was a waitress working in the
club that night and miraculously survived the inferno.
Speaker 13 (08:31):
Just normal night's work until the event itself. Until eight
to ten minutes past two, when I'd come back from
the front desk. I'd been put on the front reception
by the owners. You know, if the fire was tin
(08:55):
passed and I was, I'd had enough time to leave
the front reception, come down to the bar, where Dessimer
Carroll was one of my co workers, and I got
a drink. I don't know whether it was orange juice
or water, but it would have been ten minutes so
I would have finished to come down, had to drink.
Speaker 11 (09:15):
Donna, a part time model, had made a lot of
good friends at the whiskey, including young mother Decima and
a barman called Peter Marcus.
Speaker 13 (09:26):
And about ten past I've seen fire. I didn't hear anything,
but I saw the fire burst through the front door
and then catch a light across the curtains. Naturally, because
my line of sight also took in Peter Marcas. And
I still to this day say that I saw part
(09:49):
of his shirt catch fire, and watched him run around
the back of the bar, which was facing Amelia Street,
and then turn right and then rung down the bar
on the side of Saint Paul's Terrace to the end
of the bar, and I've seen him kneel down, and
I don't know what he was doing, you know, he
(10:11):
seemed purposeful, and he did something in the shelf area
under the barroom and then just fell forward.
Speaker 8 (10:21):
In line with the door.
Speaker 13 (10:23):
The fire has burst through that doorway, caught the curtains,
as I mentioned before, and then when I didn't see
it burn further than close to Peter on the ground,
Peter Marcus. But at that stage and then the lights
(10:44):
were starting to appear as though they were going out, and.
Speaker 8 (10:47):
The smoke was below them. Pad it was black, It
was dark.
Speaker 13 (10:54):
It was dark, Yes, it was dark.
Speaker 8 (10:56):
Yeah, And moving into the club.
Speaker 13 (10:58):
Yes, well for me, as I remember it, it was
cooling up over the ceiling and running forwards that way.
And then because I seemed to be frozen in that moment,
my story is that two men passed in front of me,
went to the sliding door opened from one of them
to and something like, what are you coming now? And
(11:22):
you know, it's kind of well, okay, I've better got
to go now if I go, and off down the stairs.
Speaker 11 (11:33):
Against all odds, Donna made it out of the club.
Her friends, Decima and Peter were not so lucky. Another
survivor was police officer hunt and Nickel, who was enjoying
a night out with friends.
Speaker 10 (11:50):
I honestly and totally on one hundred Temple as I
believe that night I was going to die, and I
just before I got the window and the fresh air
came in, I was on the point of collapse. I
remember thinking, God, Mom and Dad's going me dirty. I
died this way and then the fresh air hit me.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
But you resign.
Speaker 10 (12:09):
I had resigned to the fact that I was dying.
And I saw a white light. You did, I did
see a white light. Sounds stupid, mind taking over, and
I was on point of collapse. I don't know, but
I honestly and totally utterly believe I was on the
point of dying.
Speaker 8 (12:25):
And then some fingers of fresh air came in.
Speaker 10 (12:28):
Yeah, wafted it in through that window. That somebody that
that hopper window. Uh, this fresh air came in. I
breathe that in fresh air. I'll tell you that it
has a sweet taste, a very sweet taste. You can
say what you like. Hair has a sweet taste. I
breathe a few lungs of that.
Speaker 14 (12:47):
End.
Speaker 10 (12:47):
At best, I couldn't have to revive me pushed out
white people. I couldn't get out myself. It was touch
and goes. I was on the point. Give me another
ihreagon five to ten seconds. I was gone. Somebody open
that window. Fresh air came in against the smoke. And
when you saw how thick pungent that smoke was, how
(13:08):
that air got in, I don't know. Bo's enough to
revolve us that got out.
Speaker 11 (13:17):
Visiting the site of the whisky tragedy. Being inside the
scene of the mass murder had a big impact on Kelly.
Ever since she was a child, Kelly had linked her
second cousin, Johnny Reagan with the Whiskey Go Go firebombing
through stories repeated by the Reagan family.
Speaker 9 (13:38):
She had come with.
Speaker 11 (13:39):
Me on this journey to find the truth about her
famous relative, the good, the bad, and the ugly. As
she said, when we started out all those years ago,
now standing where fifteen people had perished and possibly on
Reagan's orders, gotten way more than she'd bargain for. I
(14:04):
get the sense from you that you're resigned to the hard,
cold fact that it's a very strong possibility Reagan was
behind it.
Speaker 7 (14:14):
Oh, I got no doubts, like where I used to
hold out a little hope that what was told through
the family couldn't be true.
Speaker 11 (14:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 9 (14:22):
No, did you think at the time, if you can
remember that, you didn't think it could be true, because
even just theoretically, the idea of fifteen people dead at
a single moment is too big to comprehend.
Speaker 7 (14:37):
I think when I was little, I didn't probably put
it all together, even when I was in the police,
when you fed the same narrative over and over like.
It wasn't until I started to really have a good
look and then I think, but if he really was
involved in the whiskey and he's killed fifteen people, why
the hell wasn't he interviewed charged at the inquest.
Speaker 11 (14:59):
It wasn't a until I spoke to Helen Reagan, Johnny
and Marg's oldest daughter, that I learned a startling fact,
yet another shocking surprise in the Endless Whisky saga, and
something that potentially had huge implications. Who knew that Marg's brother,
(15:19):
Jimmy was good friends with James Finch, the convicted whisky
killer and the man who attempted to murder Reagan in
Sydney in nineteen sixty five. Jimmy was so close to
Finch that he even stayed with him in the UK
after Finch was released from prison and deported in nineteen
(15:39):
eighty eight. I confirmed this friendship with another member of
the family. So what did this mean? Reagan's de facto
brother in law, if we could call him, that was
close mates with a man found guilty of the whisky atrocity.
It raised a multitude of questions. In the following exchange,
(16:02):
Helen mentions James Stewart, but she really means James Finch.
Speaker 9 (16:09):
Was the whiskey of Go Go. Ever mentioned in relation
to your dad at any point?
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Yeah, I heard it.
Speaker 15 (16:14):
I read about it. My uncle, my Lum's brother Jimmy
is very close to James Stewart, and he obviously went
back to the UK and he just shot my father
something like that. And I remember really a sage to
like Uncle need Bunny James Stewart, you know, my uncle
being my uncle told him and said, you know my niece,
she wants to kill you. I know that my father's
(16:36):
name is low Up. But again nothing was proven. I mean,
I think everyone knows it. James Stewart, my uncle, Jill
need mom's brothers in Lacey, James Stewart, he said.
Speaker 12 (16:46):
He did it.
Speaker 11 (16:47):
During the height of the Fitzgerald Inquiry into police corruption
in Queensland in nineteen eighty eight, a lobby group called
the Friends of Finch advocated for his release, claiming he'd
been verbaled or fitted up with a false statement by
crooked cops like Roger Rogerson when he was first arrested
(17:08):
after the fire in nineteen seventy three. That claim may
have a grain of truth to it, though Finch himself
would later confess to his involvement in the whisky. Still,
the Save Finch campaign made headlines, and in an attempt
to shore up Finch's innocence, a private detective agency, Walter
(17:31):
Cromwell Investigations, was hired to dig into the origins of
the fire. If it wasn't Finch, then who was it.
Its findings were explosive. I came across an old, yellowed
copy of the Cromwell report years ago. Initially I couldn't
make much sense of it. I wasn't able to understand
(17:54):
the bigger picture. But the more I talked to people
over the years about the whisky and the whole Southern
criminal's takeover theory that psychopath John Andrew Stewart was crowing
about at the time, the Cromwell finding started to come
into greater focus. The seven page report itself was a
(18:16):
combination of typewritten text and handwriting, presumably from the hand
of the investigator, Walter Cromwell himself. The report was stamped
private and confidential. The introduction ominously says.
Speaker 16 (18:38):
Before embarking onto the summary, it is imperative that the reader,
your good self understands that once the enclosed becomes common
knowledge to others, my life becomes at high risk.
Speaker 11 (18:51):
The Cromwell Report concludes that the convicted perpetrators of the crime,
John Andrew Stewart and James Finch, were arrested and tried
on the orders of Sidney and Melbourne organized crime families.
Speaker 16 (19:08):
It has been gleaned that the Whiskier Go Go was
firebombed on the eighth of March nineteen seventy three by
John Stuart Reagan and John Arthur Clark. It has been
further established that Reagan and Clark undertook their instructions from
Lenny McPherson and Abe Saffron.
Speaker 11 (19:26):
So Lennie and Abe were setting up their new extortion
takeover of Brisbane and they ordered Reagan and his close
criminal associate John Ratty Clark to organize the firebombing. Attached
to the Cromwell Report were statements from confidential informants. One
(19:46):
was a former employee of the Pussy Galore strip club
in King's Cross who had befriended a man called David
from another strip club. The employee told Cromwell.
Speaker 17 (20:00):
David had told me that he had known Johnny Reagan
and Johnny Clark for many years before they'd gotten too big.
David told me that early in nineteen seventy three, Reagan
had offered him a job to do. Reagan had wanted
him to go to Brisbane and organized with him Reagan
and a couple of extra guys so they could do
a burnout on one of the clubs. Reagan had sent
Johnny Clark to Melbourne to pick up some money from Lenny,
(20:21):
as he also had an interest in the stated matter.
David told me that he had declined Reagan's offer because
he only had just recently gotten out of jail and
that he didn't want any trouble with the police, even
though Reagan had promised police protection through Lennie McPherson.
Speaker 11 (20:37):
The informant said that after the Whiskey Fire, David had
bumped into Reagan in the Sweetheart's Coffee Lounge in King's Cross.
Reagan was allegedly with Ratty Clark and a corrupt police
officer called Jimmy. I personally began to wonder if police
officer Jimmy wasn't in fact Reagan's brothero law. The report
(21:02):
went on.
Speaker 16 (21:04):
David said that he had heard them talking about the
Whiskey fire and that Jimmy has asked if there were
any problems with the job. Reagan plainly said there hadn't
been any major problems. David said that Reagan had boasted
freely about the fire to just about anyone in the
cross because it made him the man in town.
Speaker 11 (21:24):
While the boasting doesn't sound like Reagan, a meticulously cautious criminal,
the informant says that Ratty Clark and Reagan seconded the
Clockwork Orange Gang and went ahead with the job on
their own terms, defying Abe Saffron's instructions and snubbing McPherson. This,
(21:46):
on the other hand, has the ring of truth. As
we know Reagan was associated with the Brisbane Clockwork Gang
through local killer and hitman vince O Dempsey, and such
a rash move was in keeping with Reagan's manic and
impetuous nature. Remember the hyperactive Reagan of those secret tapes
(22:12):
of his Cottay.
Speaker 18 (22:13):
Couldn't get somebody who put a nice sound on the day.
Hey you and you sound out more. That's what's going on.
Speaker 9 (22:20):
Under the lab.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Nothing to do with anybody. Ah well, just go out.
Speaker 18 (22:23):
He's gone, so I come out to see you. Don't
find out why I came image. It couldn't go on it.
Speaker 11 (22:31):
The informant provided valuable information on the details behind this
attempted organized crime takeover of Brisbane.
Speaker 16 (22:41):
McPherson had wanted seventy five percent of any monies that
Reagan was to make of the Brisbane standover racket. McPherson
was known to share fifty five percent of the collect
moneies with Saffron as he was the one with the
Queensland Police contacts. After sharing the fifty five percent with Saffron,
the remaining twenty percent went to Queensland Police contacts.
Speaker 11 (23:06):
If the Cromwell report is even remotely true, Reagan, with
his Whiskey Go Go caper had crossed a very serious
and potentially fatal line. Nobody double crossed Lenny McPherson and
Abe Saffron and lived to tell the tale. The story
(23:32):
passed down through the Reagan family was that shotgun Johnny
made a surprise visit to his hometown of Young in
southwestern New South Wales after the Whisky tragedy. Kelly's dad, Lindsay,
was working as a stock and station agent in town
at the time. He never knew he had a famous
(23:53):
gangster first cousin. He didn't even know his poor old
uncle Alf even had a Then Lindsey got the shock
of his life when a dark stranger entered the stock agency.
Speaker 5 (24:10):
And the week after Whisky a Go Go went up,
I was in the office, which was right next door
to the Australian Hotel, and this gentleman walked in. I
knew who he was without even asking him, because it
was like looking in the mirror. He walked in and
he said to me, where's Alf? And I said next door?
(24:34):
And he turned on his heel and walked out. Now
that is the only time I've ever seen John Reagan.
That is the only words I've ever spoken to him.
That lasted possibly fifteen seconds.
Speaker 7 (24:46):
Do you know what he spoke to Alf about.
Speaker 5 (24:49):
I think he just came up, I don't know, to
spend a bit of time with Uncle Elf. I know
he took him out because Uncle Elf told Dad took
him out in the car. They went out somewhere. The
rabbit ran across the road and Alf said something about,
oh I.
Speaker 12 (25:03):
Wish to John.
Speaker 5 (25:05):
Paul gone out of his pocket and said, he shit
this afore old uncle El's Will.
Speaker 12 (25:10):
He fight it?
Speaker 11 (25:12):
If Lindsay's memory is accurate, and there's no reason to
think it isn't, then Reagan was seeking out his long
lost father Alf after many years away from young It
was the week after the Whiskey Fire and Reagan was armed.
Perhaps Reagan had just decided it was a good time
to go and see his dad, to get back to
(25:34):
his roots. Or perhaps it was an opportune moment to
be out of Brisbane and Sydney. I needed to discuss
the whole episode with Kelly.
Speaker 9 (25:46):
There's a lot of things starting to come together, right.
Maybe Reagan had a much bigger role in the Whiskey
than anyone's ever anticipated.
Speaker 7 (25:55):
Well, maybe the family was right. Maybe yeah, it's I've
always been adamant that he was involved in the Whiskey
Go Goo.
Speaker 9 (26:01):
I'm just wondering what they knew which may have been
lost in the midst of time to be so confident
about that.
Speaker 7 (26:08):
I'm thinking when John came down and walked into that
office where he's never gone in to see Dad or
Pop before. Ever, He's in such a hurry he wants
to find Uncle Alf quickly. Has he told Alf? He's
told Pop?
Speaker 9 (26:23):
Well, he'd have to explain his sudden appearance in young Yes,
doesn't necessarily mean he has to tell the truth.
Speaker 7 (26:31):
Or has he told the truth to his father?
Speaker 9 (26:33):
And Alf on the pieces leaked it out at some point.
Speaker 7 (26:36):
Well, and now Uncle Alf was very badly drunk for
a long time after he left.
Speaker 9 (26:41):
Like a big binge, big binge. Yeah, he loved his father,
didn't he very much?
Speaker 12 (26:46):
So, so we.
Speaker 9 (26:47):
Can imagine that he may have been the only person
on earth that he could tell the truth to.
Speaker 7 (26:52):
He may well have. Yeah, And I know he's scared
Uncle Alf, like I told you at the time when
he had the gun and he went on a bender. Again,
John must have been in an all sort of hurry
to come in and speak to Dad. He's never done
that before. He's never walked in to find Uncle Alf
before in there and he's walked in and ask Dad's
told him he's gone. Has he told Uncle Alf? And
(27:16):
has Uncle Alf Toldplop he's dead set? Would have told PLoP.
Speaker 11 (27:20):
Remember this was a died in the wool Country family.
Pop was the patriarch. There were few secrets in such
a small town, and Johnny Reagan's sudden appearance after being
absent for many years would have caused a stir in young.
Speaker 9 (27:39):
So let's just theorize here for a second. I mean,
not speculation, but let's just theorize. Say you're Reagan, You've
been in Brisbane, You're doing some business. A hasty decision
is made to potentially eliminate competition on the club scene,
and someone else is going to get some money out
of it for an insurance job. Yep, you hire your
(28:01):
underlings to do it. And that's exactly what our source
said in the documents earlier that mcculkin i, Dempsey and
others or members of the Clockwork Orange Gang were occasionally
tapped on the shoulder to do odd jobs for Reagan.
Say you do this job, No one anticipates fifteen people
perish in the fire. Yep, suddenly you potentially up for
(28:22):
fifteen counts of murder. Where would you run to at
a time of the greatest moment of fear in your
criminal career? You'd go to someone you trust, and you'd
go home, wouldn't you.
Speaker 7 (28:34):
You'd go home.
Speaker 11 (28:35):
In May nineteen seventy four, a little over a year
after the mass murder, and a few months after Whiskey witnessed,
Barbara mcculchin and her two young daughters went missing in Brisbane,
Reagan was back in Sydney, the usual frenetic puppet master
to dozens of his money making scams. He was now
(28:58):
father to three children with marg his son JP, Helen,
and the youngest Claire, who was eighteen months old. She
was named after Reagan's mother, The Colonel Reagan, though was
hardly the picture of a faithful and demure suburban father,
(29:21):
He was still playing the field and had become attached
to a young woman called Helen Scott Huey, a young
croupier at the Golden Club in Haymarket in Inner Sydney,
reputed to be the biggest illegal casino in the city.
Scott Huey had a three year old child, Carlos, to
(29:44):
another man. On the evening of Tuesday May twenty one,
nineteen seventy four, Reagan and Helen went out for dinner
before returning to her flat in Oxford Street, Paddington.
Speaker 9 (30:00):
Watch some TV.
Speaker 11 (30:02):
Reagan said he'd stay and look after Carlos, and by
the time Helen left for her early morning shift at
the casino, Reagan and the child were fast asleep in bed.
At about two am on Wednesday, May twenty two, Reagan
supposedly awoke, bundled little Carlos into his car, and drove
(30:25):
the short distance to Taylor Square on Oxford Street to
his favorite newspaper stand, one of the few in the
city that carried the first editions fresh off the press
of that day's newspapers. Reagan was a news junkie, and
like most crooks with a healthy ego, he probably had
(30:47):
half an eye on seeing if his name was mentioned
by the press.
Speaker 19 (30:55):
I'm here in Taylor Square in Sydney, the Oxford Street.
We're at Intersex with Burke Street, and this is the
exact spot where Johnny Reagan, as was his custom, came
up here, parked his car down the side here where
the Oxford Bar is now, and popped out in the
(31:20):
early morning to get that day's edition of the newspapers,
leaving little Carlos Scott Huey the toddler in the car.
Reagan claims it when he got back Carlos was not
in the car and had effectively disappeared. So it was
right on this spot all those years ago where this
(31:43):
alleged kidnapping of Carlos occurred.
Speaker 9 (31:46):
Did Reagan murder that boy? I don't know.
Speaker 19 (31:52):
We've been trying to find out, Kelly and I. It's
been one of the focuses of our investigation into Reagan,
obviously given it involved.
Speaker 9 (32:00):
An innocent toddler.
Speaker 11 (32:06):
There has been speculation that Reagan dropped into a nearby
illegal casino run by bookmaker Moe Reynolds and picked up
some of his protection money before buying his newspapers. Reagan
claimed that the little boy was nowhere to be found
by the time he got back to the vehicle. The
(32:30):
disappearance certainly fitted the supposed modus operandi of someone known
as Nano, the Magician, the man who could make people vanish.
But the glaring question was why Why would Reagan bring
attention to himself by murdering a child? Why would he
(32:54):
then put himself through the inherent complications of such a
grotesque act. Did that famous inner tiger emerge and suddenly snap?
Did the child annoy Reagan and then was accidentally killed
in an act of punishment that went too far. You'll
(33:18):
remember former drug squad detective Michael Drury, the honest police
officer who survived an assassination attempt by corrupt cop Roger Rogerson.
Mick remembers the case of Carlos Scott Huey and said
it was the talk of the police across Sydney soon
after it happened.
Speaker 20 (33:39):
It was in a period of less than a week
after the disappearance of the child that the word was out,
in particular with police from Darlinghurst, that the child had
been murdered and Stuart John Reagan was the offer, but
(34:02):
they didn't know what happened to the body. For him
to walk up there to get a newspaper and come
back to the car, it just does not ring true.
It does not ring true. If there was any truth
in the rumor that the child was kidnapped, and he
was genuine, whether it be Stuart John Reagan or not,
(34:23):
I would expect him not to leave that location, but
to walk fifty meters at the very most across the
road to Darlinghurth's police station and in a fit of
great depression call upon the police to investigate the so
(34:43):
called disappearance, kidnapping of this child from his car, and
I believe I'm correct in saying that never took place.
Hence I find that exceedingly concerning.
Speaker 8 (35:00):
Well, it's interesting he was the talk of the police.
Speaker 20 (35:02):
Oh yes, yes, not only the uniform police, but the detectives.
Speaker 12 (35:06):
A darlingers at the time.
Speaker 20 (35:09):
I don't know who investigated the disappearance of the child,
but yes, I clearly remember.
Speaker 21 (35:14):
From your experience, what would have been the attitude of
his fellow criminals to a person who had allegedly murdered
an innocent child.
Speaker 20 (35:26):
Look, even amongst criminals, that type of behavior, it was
absolutely unacceptable. There are certain things you can do which
to the average person like yourself and myself, would give
us gray hair, But that type of behavior was just
(35:47):
totally unacceptable.
Speaker 11 (35:50):
The Sydney Morning Herald reported on page one a few
days later that a five thousand dollars reward had been
posted for Carlos's safe return.
Speaker 22 (36:01):
Police said last night that it had been offered by
a close friend of the boy's mother, missus Helen Scott Huey.
Speaker 11 (36:08):
That friend was none other than Reagan himself. His de
facto wife, marg recalls that terrible time, she wondered if
Carlos's disappearance hadn't been a case of mistaken identity.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
When I heard that Carlos and I met, Carlos was
gone and John had gone to get his normal newspaper
in Dulness Oxford Street, which he would go over night
to get that newspaper at that same stem.
Speaker 8 (36:41):
Why would he do that?
Speaker 1 (36:42):
It's always done it. He was a great friend to
reading the newspapers and see what's going on in the world.
He always did that.
Speaker 8 (36:50):
I mean that was early hours of the morning. Did
he sleep much.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
I don't think he ever sick, really, but I can't
only remember that man relacable. And so when that happened
and Carlos went missing, I immediately thought that they thought
that was his son, my son, and they were taken
(37:14):
him for some sort of revenge. I really thought that
they thought Carlos was my son.
Speaker 8 (37:22):
How did you meet Carlos?
Speaker 1 (37:23):
He had seen the other woman Helen's got you, and
he had the child with him one.
Speaker 8 (37:28):
Day, brought him home to your home in the car.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Probably I can't remember where I factly met him. So
in the end I knew he was having a relationship
with Alan Scott, You and she knew.
Speaker 11 (37:40):
I knew Mark then and now doesn't believe Reagan was
responsible for Carlos's disappearance.
Speaker 8 (37:49):
You don't believe he armed Carlos.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
No, I do not. Why because I've seen him with
kids and I don't believe him. I've seen him with
his own daughters. I've seen him with my son. No,
I do not. And you knew Helen Scott, Yes, I did.
Speaker 8 (38:05):
She didn't believe that either.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
No, she didn't. When Carlos went missing and I got
closer to Helen got even though she was having a
relationship with John, didn't. She had no one to talk
to her about this. She never believed that John did it.
She told you that, yes she did.
Speaker 8 (38:23):
Did she have any idea who might have done it?
Speaker 1 (38:26):
She never said if she did have any idea.
Speaker 8 (38:31):
I didn't think it was John.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
She never thought it.
Speaker 8 (38:33):
Was John, and you both shared that same view.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Same view. But that doesn't mean that she didn't think
it but didn't want to say it, because I remember
I was the one that's been around longer than the
rest of it. I don't know. I didn't feel that
with her. I don't think she ever went into any
investigation about what happened to Carlos.
Speaker 8 (38:56):
What it was her child? Why wouldn't anyone do that?
Speaker 1 (38:59):
I don't know or didn't shet okay, ye understand that
did Johnny ever mentioned that situation to you?
Speaker 8 (39:08):
Carlos, of course I wouldn't have a child or of course.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
And him I do believe I do.
Speaker 8 (39:18):
And was he angry about being accused of that?
Speaker 1 (39:23):
Certainly? Certainly? But then I don't know the connection we
had with talents got Louis. Was she in the same
situation I was in? Not wanting to voice her obledion
because if someone comes to you and says that John
sink your son, you don't go wow. I don't know
(39:43):
if she did what she did? Not cannot tell you.
Was it she investigating her son's disappearance?
Speaker 8 (39:50):
And John didn't offer any other explanation as to who
might have snatched.
Speaker 12 (39:54):
The child, Not to me.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
He may have to who, Not to me.
Speaker 8 (40:01):
He didn't say he thought he was being set up.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
He would say I didn't do this. I never would
do this kind of thing. I would never to this time,
I'm seventy four years of age. I believed that he
did not have anything to do with Carlos So how.
Speaker 8 (40:16):
Can we explained Carlos's disappearance? Why was that child taste?
And for what purpose? You thought it might have been JP?
I thought it was JP.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
Either that or an accident happened with the mother and
the child or with John and the child. I don't
know what happens happened. You see it all the time
in the news today. You know, just his head on
the wall. Oh, we didn't do it. I don't know
what happened to that child. And you know what, it's
just like someone who told him don't bother to investigate.
(40:52):
If someone told me not to investigate the death of
any of my children or my family, I'll be there
opening the doors. So I can't understand that this is
her son, her son. He was a beautiful looking boy,
and just nothing was opened about it. Why I have
to question that? Why because she hadn't awarness two gene
(41:15):
reason that told you Chap. I don't know.
Speaker 11 (41:18):
It's natural for marg the mother of three of Reagan's children,
to not want to believe that he was capable of
murdering a three year old boy. That was an act that,
as Michael Drewy said, was absolutely unacceptable for many unimaginable. Interestingly,
(41:40):
Carlos's disappearance and presumed murder momentarily drew marg and Helen
Scott Huey close together. But for marg that friendship raised
as many questions as it answered.
Speaker 8 (41:57):
Did you stay in touch with her for long?
Speaker 13 (41:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 9 (41:59):
I did.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
I did start in touch with her for a few months,
and then she just wait, it's after she disappeared.
Speaker 8 (42:08):
Really she wasn't around. Did you got query or us
feedba wears Helen. Of course he did.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
I don't know where she went. We weren't enemies. I
wasn't her enemy. The sorrow I felt for that woman
was so immense. That that woman had just lost her child, well,
her child disappeared. Where is he is? Anyone bothered to
(42:36):
find out where this kid is?
Speaker 11 (42:39):
Margan Reagan's daughter Helen, had fond memories of Helen Scott Huey.
They were little Helen and big Helen. Big Helen stayed
in their lives after Carlos vanished, and even after Reagan
himself was murdered.
Speaker 15 (42:57):
She was a big chart of our lives.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
We hadn't heard from her. She lived in Enfield with
her mother.
Speaker 15 (43:06):
She's got a green cherry chitch you know when my
dad trust away, she was always around. You know, we
all hang out together. She was my mum's friend and
probably my mum's taught person when she was going through
what she went through.
Speaker 9 (43:20):
I mean, if your dad had murdered her child, why
would she hang around?
Speaker 1 (43:25):
I mean, this is a thing.
Speaker 15 (43:27):
My father was set up. I just say that happening.
Speaker 12 (43:30):
You know.
Speaker 11 (43:32):
I spoke to one source, let's call him Joe, who
lived near Helen, Scott Huey and her son at the
time and remembered the chaos when Carlos disappeared. Joe had
been around the block and while not a criminal, was
acquainted with some members of the underworld.
Speaker 12 (43:51):
Oh well, gone after killing a little kid.
Speaker 9 (43:55):
Do you remember that? I mean I do remember that
little kid?
Speaker 1 (43:59):
That was That.
Speaker 12 (44:00):
Was Helen's Helen. What's that, Scott Huey.
Speaker 9 (44:02):
That was Carlos.
Speaker 12 (44:04):
Yeah, yeah, little Carlos. Yeah, he definitely.
Speaker 9 (44:08):
Yeah. I mean once you once you labeled the child killer.
Speaker 12 (44:14):
She used to live close to where Knoxas Street. Is
that right?
Speaker 9 (44:18):
Did you ever ever run into it?
Speaker 4 (44:20):
No?
Speaker 1 (44:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 12 (44:21):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (44:21):
Yeah?
Speaker 12 (44:22):
What was she like? She's a bit of a knock.
She's quite a nice girl. You know, I always liked her.
Speaker 11 (44:28):
When Carlos finished, Joe witnessed the boy's mother in absolute distress.
Speaker 12 (44:35):
She was screaming, and that killer. Everyone hated him for
what he did.
Speaker 9 (44:41):
And it's mainly the kid, isn't it.
Speaker 12 (44:44):
Well? I mean, now I could get murdering three your
old kid, cause he screw on his mother and she
wasn't really happy the way he was treating the kids.
It's one of the last things you could ever do,
in my opinion, Blake, and he got what.
Speaker 9 (44:59):
He des Did you ever actually meet him?
Speaker 12 (45:02):
Funny enough, he used to go to a friend of
mine's place all the time, and he was mixed up
in the two up on the casino at Darlinghurst. The
Forbes Club and the region used to go and see
him all the time, and they were giving him money
to keep him where they wanted him, you know, when
the time was right.
Speaker 9 (45:19):
And Helen Scott Huey was a dealer at the Golden Club.
I've read that a few times.
Speaker 12 (45:23):
Yes, I think she was. She was quite a nice girl.
I was there when that all took place. You know,
Johnny Reagan and took that little boy and took his life,
absolutely ruined Helen's life.
Speaker 9 (45:39):
You saw Helen at that terrible moment of distress.
Speaker 12 (45:41):
She should have thinned, and she was screaming, what I
just said? What the that's wrong with your girl? That
she just said he killed my son? I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 9 (45:52):
She was a mother in genuine grief, as you.
Speaker 12 (45:54):
Saw, genuine grief, I mean genuine grief. And I the
best I could.
Speaker 9 (46:01):
You know, Well, how can you console someone like that?
I mean, you lose a child.
Speaker 12 (46:05):
It's just well you can't. You can't. You know, she
didn't know, but I let a couple of people know
that I bumped into him. I think with all their
connections in that way, I knew that it was true.
And you know, when the police said he had to go,
he had to go.
Speaker 9 (46:22):
And did you get a feeling I'm not asking you
directly if you heard it from anyone, but did you
get a sense from when Carlos went missing to the
day Reagan was shot dead that something was going to
happen to him?
Speaker 12 (46:34):
Oh? Definitely. Hey, imagine if someone murdered your little son
at say six year old or four year old, how
would you feel. Imagine if someone raped your little daughter
at six?
Speaker 9 (46:47):
Oh my god, these people are that evil, So Reagan
was a dead man walking.
Speaker 12 (46:54):
Fuck it even today. If you did that, I reckon,
there'd be a dead man walking.
Speaker 11 (47:01):
You'll remember Fred Froggy Cray, the corrupt and alcoholic former
detective who was forced into retirement following brothel Madame Shirley
Brifman's whistle blowing on national television. Cray, a lover of Brifman's,
was retired medically unfit from the New South Wales Police
(47:22):
after the Brifman allegations aired. For a time, Cray was
suspected of having murdered Brifman. To make ends meet. In retirement,
Cray opened Epitome Investigations, a private eye firm based in
Byrell Street, Waverley in Sydney's East. At the time Carlos disappeared,
(47:45):
Cray's Epitome Investigations had somehow scored a contract with Sydney's
popular The Sun daily newspaper. He was an ex ace
detective with a thousand contacts who had his finger on
the pulse of the Sydney Underworld. Part of Cray's job
as advisor to the Sun, then owned by John Fairfax,
(48:08):
was to issue regular tip offs, alerts and bulletins about
potential news stories that the tabloids should be following, all
typed neatly on a Pitame investigation's letterhead. Kelly and I
have found a cachet of epitome documents in the Fairfax
Archives held in the State Library of New South Wales,
(48:31):
and several of those cray memos could easily lay claim
to contributing to the strength of the argument that Reagan
was now the worst of the worst, a child killer.
Less than a week after Carlos disappeared, Craye wrote to
The Sun under the subheading Stuart John Reagan.
Speaker 22 (48:54):
There appears no doubt that he has murdered Carlos Scott
Hughey and would have no fears of the fire five
thousand dollars reward being collected. If the police get even
the smallest amount of evidence, they would have to charge him.
I feel that any newspaper which keeps on the back
of the police department as to results of investigation of
the disappearance of this child would be doing a public service,
(49:17):
as there is no doubt that Reagan is a psychopathic killer.
Speaker 11 (49:21):
No trace of Carlos has ever been found, as far
as we can tell, no inquest has ever been held
into his presumed murder. As from motive, the only one
offered was that the child somehow annoyed or aggravated Reagan
enough for him to cold bloodedly kill the boy. It
(49:47):
may have happened that way, but unsolved crimes, especially those
that drift into years and then decades, tend to spawn
theories upon theories, and over time they can become so
incredible that they defy logic. What if, as marg suggested,
(50:10):
Carlos wasn't the target but Reagan's own young son, JP,
and that this was a case of mistaken identity that
would suggest that somebody else had pre planned the kidnapping,
monitored Reagan's movements, and struck at the precise moment Reagan
(50:32):
had a child in his car in the early hours
of the morning, necessitating Reagan having to step away from
the car in order to carry out the abduction. That
sounds far too complex and heavily reliant on dumb good
luck to ever work. And why target Reagan's own only
(50:56):
son to blackmail him revenge for Reagan's many transgressions in
the underworld and for him getting too big for his boots. Again,
too messy and complicated. But what if just what if
(51:17):
the child was vanished in order to brand Reagan as
that most hated of creatures, that most universally despised of monsters,
a child killer? And what if that mantle of child
killer hanging around Reagan's neck effectively gave the green light
(51:40):
to Reagan's own extermination. As it turned out, one of
Reagan's criminal and business associates at the time actually had
form in murdering children. That man was Vincent o'dempsey from
Queen's Land, currently serving life in prison for the murder
(52:04):
of mother Barbara mculchin and her two daughters, Vicki thirteen
and Leanne eleven, in nineteen seventy four. Barbara just may
have known too much about the real perpetrators behind the
Whiskey Go Go fire bombing. The bodies of Barbara and
the girls have never been found. In the months after
(52:27):
the Mculkin murders, Vince went on the run with his
partner Diane Pritchard, and for a while they stayed with
one of Vince's criminal associates in Hawk's Nest north of Newcastle. Vince,
as we've already explored, worked occasionally for Paddles Anderson in
Sydney and knew Reagan well. They'd bought some land together
(52:51):
in Vince's hometown of Warwick, southwest of Brisbane. Vince emulated Reagan.
He didn't drink or smoke like Reagan. He was obsessed
with the latest technology like Reagan. He had a growing
reputation as a gun for hire, and he had a
simple maxim that he lived by business is business. If
(53:15):
a job needed to be done, he got it done.
I spoke to the associate and he recalled Vince and
Diane getting into an argument. After the blow up, Diana
alleged to the associate that Vince told her he had
killed a small child. We have changed the associate's voice
(53:36):
for his protection. He theorized about Carlos's death.
Speaker 14 (53:43):
Why would the child have been killed? Would be a boy?
Speaker 9 (53:47):
Well, let's just say, theoretically, say Reagan killed the child?
What was in it for him?
Speaker 14 (53:52):
What Diane said that time? I looked at her as
if she was better, bught you poor slid through? Well,
I thought she was talking about his kids, his kids,
that I read that article of Penny, so the drop
would be completely wrong. He killed some kid with stuff
of choer and he got a boy the ankles and
(54:14):
spashts aid into the wall, stuffy, and that's something he'd do.
Speaker 12 (54:19):
He had the contolishing that he had to do.
Speaker 14 (54:23):
There's a lot of people I had that have killed
a lot of people who got a lot like as
m secret that cool people, but it's not a conpolishing.
Speaker 12 (54:33):
Did's have to do it?
Speaker 11 (54:40):
Who killed Carlos? Where was his mother? Helen Scott Huey?
She had vanished from the lives of the Reagans sometime
in the late nineteen seventies and seemingly off the face
of the earth. Where is that little boy? If he
was alive today, he it would be fifty four years old.
(55:02):
And who went looking for him? We understand Helen Scott
Huey's family made earnest attempts to locate the child, But
how can a toddler simply evaporate into thin air? Those
questions took me full circle, all the way back to
my first ever meeting with Kelly Slater, reagan second cousin.
Speaker 4 (55:29):
Honestly, I don't know exactly what we'll find. I know
we'll find that he probably killed people. Will we find
did he kill that little boy? That's something I'd really
like to Carlos yep, And I'm resigned to the fact
that if he did, but I'm hopeful of it. Given't
the whiskey gago, What was his involvement in that? Was
he a psychopath? Like they said? Is the stories that
(55:51):
they tell about him truth?
Speaker 11 (55:55):
Stuart John Reagan was probably the last of the old
time gangsters. He was ruthless, He was violent. He was
always armed and on the lookout for danger. He wore
a bullet proof vest when he needed to. He almost
always was accompanied by a bodyguard. Everyone we spoke to
(56:19):
bar Nunn, who knew Reagan, said he could instill fear
by just walking into a room, and you never ever
wanted to get on his wrong side. In the end,
no matter what his strengths, he was a marked man.
Precisely four months after Carlos disappeared, and after a pleasant
(56:44):
Sunday out with his oldest daughter Helen at Sydney's Watson's Bay, Reagan, unarmed,
casually walked down a Marrickville street on his way to
a pre arranged meeting and straight into the sights of
four thirty eight caliber pistols. In the final episode of
(57:09):
The Gangster's.
Speaker 15 (57:09):
Ghost People Check reminding me your father was a gangster.
Speaker 1 (57:14):
That's me.
Speaker 12 (57:15):
He was like he ow the Father.
Speaker 2 (57:30):
The Gangster's Ghost is a production of The Australian. It's
written and presented by senior writer Matthew Condon and edited
by multimedia editor Leat Sammergloom. Our executive producer is Me
Editorial director Claire Harvey. Special thanks to Lara Kamenos, Erica Rutliche,
Kristin Amiot, Jasper Leiku, Stephanie Coombs, Sean Callanan, Lachland, Clear,
(57:50):
Ryan Osland, Amanda win Williams, Christine Kellett, Tarn Blackhurst, Magdalena Zadak,
Giselle Boetti, Genevieve Brammel, Lauren Bruce, Sus Rolf and Kenny Carlson.
We can only do journalism like this with the support
of our subscribers, who hear episodes first and get full
access to photos, video, news stories and features plus all
(58:11):
Australia's best journalism twenty four to seven. Join us at
Gangstersghost dot com dot au
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