Jacks and Jokers (55 page)

As for Tilley’s payments to Jack Herbert, who she knew as ‘Tom’, the money was always on time and delivered in the same way. ‘Payments to Jack were in old folded up paper bags,’ she says. ‘Plain old brown paper bags. Or occasionally a plastic bag that couldn’t be seen through. It was all packed in there.’

Guns and Handcuffs

By March 1982 Detective Lorelle Saunders was still in an on-again, off-again relationship with Allan Lobegeiger. He’d since been promoted to Regional Superintendent of the South East Police Region and was now based on the Gold Coast.

On Sunday 7 March, Saunders and her friend Roy Coomer went out to the Belmont Pistol Club, then had dinner at Toni’s restaurant in Logan Road, Mount Gravatt, south of the CBD. They left the restaurant around 9 p.m. and returned to Coomer’s car. They discovered it had been broken into and some pretty dangerous hardware had been stolen from the vehicle – Coomer’s four handguns and an Armalite rifle.

Saunders made a formal complaint to police then phoned Lobegeiger on his property in Gatton, almost 90 kilometres west of Brisbane in the Lockyer Valley.

‘Allan, I’ve been out to dinner and the car I’m in has been broken into and a stack of guns [have] gone,’ she told him.

‘Oh, Jesus,’ he said. ‘Shit, what were you doing at dinner with guns in a car?’

‘I didn’t know they were there,’ she replied. ‘I knew there was a rifle but not all the other stuff.’

‘What about yours?’

‘No.’

‘Who were you at dinner with?’ he asked.

‘Just a friend.’

‘That other bastard. You’re the one caught out this time, eh?’

‘Be serious. I’m worried.’

Both Saunders and Lobegeiger had been receiving a number of threatening phone calls. She had detected late night prowlers near her home and somebody had emptied a large quantity of dog excrement into her swimming pool. In addition, some shrubs in her garden had suddenly died.

Similarly, Lobegeiger had suffered damage to his house in Cleveland, and the police station at Miami on the Gold Coast had been mysteriously damaged.

She wondered if there was a connection between the caller and the gun theft.

Shortly after, Saunders contacted a drug informant, Douglas Mervyn Dodd, and asked him if he could keep his ear to the ground in relation to the stolen weapons.

On 25 March, Saunders was told that her informant, Dodd, had been arrested with a .22 revolver. Its serial number matched one of Coomer’s missing guns.

She phoned Lobegeiger about Dodd. He had already heard the news. ‘Don’t tell the department anything about it or our relationship if they talk to you,’ he warned. ‘Trust me and my judgement. There’s something going on. Just keep a note of any dealings you have with Dodd …’

The following day Lobegeiger phoned and told her that Dodd was alleging that she had arranged for him to steal Coomer’s guns. She agreed to be interviewed over the matter.

Later, Lobegeiger told Saunders he suspected the whole thing was a set-up organised by Tony Murphy. He and Murphy had clashed when they were both working up in Cairns over ‘police pay-offs’. Murphy was building a block of units in Cairns with Lobegeiger’s ill-gotten gains, Lobegeiger alleged. Murphy was also against Lobegeiger’s activities on the Gold Coast as he had been raiding premises and arresting ‘protected’ people. He believed Murphy might have been trying to get to him through Saunders.

Saunders herself had done enough over the years, however, to raise the ire of Murphy – her visit with Basil Hicks to interview Katherine James being one of them.

Then on Sunday 25 April, Saunders was questioning a suspect at the city watchhouse in relation to a number of criminal charges. Later, back in the Task Force offices, she saw the Sunday newspapers.

She noticed a story by Brian Bolton – Murphy’s old mate – that claimed a Queensland policewoman had plotted to murder a senior police officer. It claimed that detectives had uncovered a plot by a criminal and the policewoman to ambush the officer, murder him and dump his body in bushland on the outskirts of Brisbane.

‘There were headlines in the [
Sunday
]
Sun
alleging very serious matters were being investigated against a female officer,’ Saunders said. ‘This was the [only] knowledge I had of any such investigation. I subsequently contacted my solicitor.’

Commissioner Lewis made no notation about such a major story in his diary, nor did he speak to anyone on the telephone about it. On 28 April, however, he did phone ‘Sir Robert Sparkes re P/W L. Saunders’.

It was curious timing to be talking with Sparkes about Saunders, because the very next day on Thursday 29 April, Saunders was at home on sick leave and had gone out to the chemist. When she got back, she was confronted by Detective Inspectors Webb and Flannigan and two other officers. She phoned her solicitor and he told her to come to his office immediately.

She was then arrested by Webb. ‘I had no knowledge of the charges until arrested,’ she said.

The charges were that she had attempted to procure Douglas Mervyn Dodd to steal money; that on unknown dates she attempted to procure Douglas Mervyn Dodd to conspire with another to kill Allan Lobegeiger; and that on 7 March, at Brisbane, she stole a .357 Magnum Smith and Wesson revolver, a .22 Smith and Wesson revolver, a .44 Magnum Smith and Wesson revolver, and an Armalite semi-automatic rifle and a quantity of ammunition, the property of Roy Alfred Coomer.

‘On my arrest I handed my locker keys to Brian Webb.’

Bail was refused on the orders of Tony Murphy, who had recently been promoted to Assistant Comissioner (Crime).

Extraordinarily, Commissioner Lewis made not a single notation about the arrest of Saunders in his diaries. The first female detective in Queensland Police Force history is arrested for attempting to plot and murder a high-ranking police officer, and it didn’t warrant inclusion.

What Lewis did was head out to Fig Tree Pocket ‘re function for Emperor of Japan’s Birthday’.

To Put the Record Straight

In the fallout from the
Nationwide
fiasco, corruption-buster Kevin Hooper sharpened his knives for the debate in parliament on the Police Complaints Tribunal Bill.

However optimistic Hinze might have been about setting up some form of watchdog to oversee his force, the debate gave the member for Archerfield a fresh opportunity to hammer the Bjelke-Petersen government over years of corruption allegations against the police, and specifically Commissioner Terry Lewis and his Assistant Commissioner Tony Murphy.

On Thursday 1 April 1982, a frustrated Hooper went to town. Police Commissioner Lewis, perhaps acting on a tip-off, was in the House for the debate. Hooper brought attention to a recent survey that revealed the New South Wales force had the lowest credibility rating of all forces in the Commonwealth, but was followed closely by the Queensland force, with a credibility rating only 0.07 per cent higher. He poked a stick at the Commisoner of Police and directly asked about the activities of the Internal Investigations Section, claiming they were focused on anticipating attacks that might be levelled against corrupt senior officers and intimidating potential witnesses rather than protecting honest officers. He claimed that this was being done ‘in conjunction with the trumping up of evidence that could be vital in protecting some senior officers who are well aware of the amount of evidence against them’.

He challenged the Police Commissioner by saying ‘if he denies it that will vindicate my argument that he does not know what is happening in his own department’.

Hooper dodged and weaved interjections.

‘To put the record straight, who are the criminals in the Police Force who are being protected?’ Hooper went on. ‘They include none other than the Commissioner himself [Mr Terence Murray Lewis], and his Assistant Commissioner [Tony Murphy]. Both officers have had meteoric rises. As boys, they were banished to the bush by a former honest police commissioner for their conduct, but have risen to stardom under this National Party-controlled Government.

‘This parliament is well aware of Mr Lewis’s conduct.’

Hooper branded Lewis one of the most ‘silent’ Police Commissioners in memory. Not even Police Minister Hinze, rising to a point of order, could protect Lewis.

‘Parliament is well aware of Mr Lewis’s conduct in the [Ted] Lyons [drink driving] fiasco,’ the member for Archerfield continued. ‘It has been well documented by me, I might add, that the Commissioner has never bothered to publicly refute the allegations. He dare not!

‘He may yet have to explain under oath his actions that night. If he and Sir Edward Lyons think that that disgraceful performance is gone and forgotten, they are sadly mistaken. I have not forgotten and neither have the people of Queensland. The day of reckoning will arrive.’

Hooper then went into the dark past and brought Tony Murphy along for the ride.

‘Mr Murphy is deeply indebted to the Queensland Police Union for its financial support when he was charged with perjury. That charge followed his conduct during the National Hotel royal commission. I might add that he was not convicted.’

Then the ghost of former prostitute and brothel madam, Shirley Margaret Brifman, dead of a drug overdose just weeks before Murphy was to answer perjury charges stemming from the National Hotel inquiry in the early 1960s, stalked the chamber.

‘The chief witness against Mr Murphy was Shirley Brifman who was not available owing to her timely death,’ said Hooper. ‘The anomalies in the police investigation – or should I say the lack of investigations – into the death of Brifman were well documented in 1972.

‘They would no doubt have been brought up in a royal commission into the Police Force. His protection of a former police commissioner [Frank Bischof] has also been well documented.

‘Who has been singing the praises of Murphy for many years? None other than the Police Minister, Mr Hinze! At page 1057 of “Hansard” dated 13 October 1971 he said – “Everybody knows that Hallahan and Murphy are highly respected police officers.”

‘High praise indeed. Unfortunately the praise was misplaced and Hallahan was subsequently kicked out of the Police Force because of his criminal activities.’

Hooper’s attack on the Rat Pack, while certainly not his first, was excoriating. Under parliamentary privilege, Hooper’s historical cry gathered an air of futility and desperation.

‘It is now April 1982,’ Hooper continued. ‘Almost 11 years later, and the same charges are being laid and there is still no investigation.

‘Murphy’s protection of gambling joints and massage parlours is legend in the Police Force. I suppose this will be denied, as the Minister assures us that they do not exist and are figments of my imagination. It is well known that the Minister was kicked out of the Golden Hands massage parlour for refusing to pay the fee.’

Hinze retorted with a bit of cryptic scuttlebutt: ‘What about the little girl in Malaya?’

‘I have never been to Malaya,’ Hooper replied.

He then branded the proposed Police Complaints Tribunal a ‘National Party kangaroo court’.

‘The criticism of the Police Force has been so long, so sustained and so well documented that only a royal commission can unearth the true facts.’ Hooper concluded: ‘For many years the Minister for Police and I have been great protagonists, but I make my next comment as a friend. This sordid episode is clearly his swan-song, so why doesn’t he go out gracefully by appointing a royal commission into the Queensland Police Force? Of course, a few of his mates sitting behind him will get a bit of a splash, but so what?’

Later in the debate, Police Minister Hinze rose to counter Kev Hooper. His attacks had the impact of a wet sponge.

‘The attitude of the honourable member for Archerfield should be placed on record. I cannot believe that even members of the ALP would want to support his actions. For so long the Police Force has had to take his criticisms.’

Hinze branded Hooper a political coward.

‘His hatred for the Police Force is well known,’ Hinze continued near the end of the debate. ‘He is bordering on complete hysteria. More so than anyone else in Queensland, he has been a vocal critic of the Police Force for many years.

‘One could reasonably assume that he would welcome the establishment of a police tribunal in which to air his complaints and give them some credence.’

In the end though, Hooper’s tirade hit the mark.

The following day, Lewis noted a phone call from Bob Gibbs, ALP member for Wolston: ‘re ALP members disassociating themselves from Mr Hooper’s remarks’. Former police union boss, Ron Edington, also phoned ‘with information to attack Mr K. Hooper’s family – I declined’.

That afternoon, unaware of the irony, Commissioner Lewis and his wife, Hazel, proceeded to the Police Academy at Oxley for the institution’s tenth anniversary. The celebrations included the unveiling of the R.W. Whitrod chapel, the ‘Harry Allsop Library’ [in honour of the first director of the Academy] and the ‘T.M. Lewis Pool’.

Dave and Bill and Paul

Constable Dave had become famous in Brisbane and beyond. He was also friends with another famous media personality – Bill Hurrey of the ABC.