Authors: Matthew Condon
Just days before the article in the
Sunday Mail
, the commissioner ‘saw Det. B[rian] Marlin re: appln for CIB, Mackay’. The next day, Lewis toddled over to the Executive Building and saw an official ‘re detail needed in submissions for Imperial and Aust[ralia]n Awards’. And two days after the newspaper story, Lewis was in discussion with Liberal parliamentarian Terry White regarding a particular police officer being ‘very outspoken in favour of ALP and Mr Whitrod, against Govt’.
Lewis had been Commissioner for more than six-and-a-half years, and still Whitrod rankled him. Either that, or the former honest commissioner had become simply a byword for everything that stood against the Bjelke-Petersen regime.
Whatever the source of the rancour, it soon dissipated. On the Wednesday after the Murphy tirade was published, Lewis was off with his wife Hazel to inspect a property owned by a Mr Zendler for sale on Waterworks Road, and a few weeks later, after an afternoon at Doomben races with Judge Eric Pratt, the couple went to see another house for sale in Aspley.
Despite the Lewises’ interest in property hunting, other news kept the city in thrall. Agro, the ‘hairy little police helper’ and star of Channel Seven’s
Super Saturday Show
, co-starring police officer Dave Moore, was formally being promoted ahead of many other more qualified members of the Queensland Police Force. The picture story featured prominently, also in the
Sunday Mail
.
‘After only three years’ service, Agro is being promoted to sergeant, and the Police Commissioner, Mr Lewis, gave Agro a couple of hints by showing him the examination papers!’ the newspaper said. ‘Mr Lewis met Agro … at police headquarters in Brisbane to celebrate Agro’s third birthday.’
In the cute and cuddly photograph accompanying the story were Agro in his police hat, flanked by Commissioner Lewis in suit and striped tie, and Constable Moore, his left hand clutching Agro’s elbow. Both men are grinning broadly.
Night of Knives
In the winter of 1983, popular St Joseph’s College Nudgee student Peter James Walsh went out on the town with friends to celebrate. His and other Nudgee Rugby teams had had some recent victories, and it was time to fly the college flag in the bars and clubs of the city. Walsh, 17, was in his senior year at school, and was one of a long line of Walsh boys who had gone to Nudgee. One of eight children, Walsh’s father, the well-known solicitor Peter ‘Pappy’ Walsh, was also an Old Boy of the college.
The Walsh’s was a strict Catholic household. Pappy went to Mass every day, and he parented with a firm hand. Young Peter had been named after his father because Walsh Senior had been gravely ill at the time he was born. To everyone’s relief, Pappy pulled through.
Peter Walsh Junior also had a nickname. He was called ‘Father’, or Father Walsh. His mates reckoned that any Irish Catholic family with eight children should have at least one priest among its siblings.
It was Saturday 30 July, and dozens of the revellers drifted from bar to bar. At around 10 p.m. the group of 60 or more drank at the St Paul’s Town Inn in Leichhardt Street, Spring Hill, before heading down into St Paul’s Terrace to Bonaparte’s Hotel, towards Fortitude Valley. By the early hours of the morning Walsh and a mate, Chris Herbert, had run out of money, and were wandering around the pub finishing off other people’s drinks.
Walsh then left Bonaparte’s around 2.30 a.m. with a mate, caught a taxi and was dropped off at Gympie Road, about 150 metres from the family home in Fifth Avenue, Kedron. Stupefied by this stage, he ran across Gympie Road and plunged headfirst through the plate-glass window of a nearby motor mower shop. He cut his hands on the glass. He then staggered home, retrieved knives from the kitchen, and went to the house of close neighbour Stephanie Ryan.
Ryan, 32, was a quiet, book-loving teacher. She was the daughter of the former Queensland Solicitor-General, Bill Ryan. Stephanie had known Peter Walsh since he was a baby. There was a gate between their back fences. She had helped the boy with his homework, on occasion, and now and then Peter would mow Stephanie’s lawn.
It was one of Peter Walsh’s daily chores to buy a fresh loaf of bread every morning on waking. He would often cut through the Ryans’ backyard to Sixth Avenue then across to the corner store on Eighth Avenue and Leckie Road.
In the early hours of 31 July however, the usually well-mannered, polite and moral Peter Walsh, taking the knives from his mother’s kitchen, knocked on Stephanie Ryan’s door. He asked his kindly neighbour if he could stay the night at her house as he’d lost his house keys and didn’t want to wake up his parents.
Stephanie agreed and let him in. She was standing at the linen closet, getting clean sheets to make up a bed for the teenager, when he viciously stabbed her in the back.
Walsh, crazed, repeatedly stabbed her in a struggle that ranged throughout the house. She would go on to lose over a litre of blood. She later reported that Walsh had ground her face into the carpet, leaving a shoe print on her skin.
‘I was shocked,’ she later said. ‘I was disbelieving. There was no reason for it. I knew the boy. He kept saying he would kill me. He spoke in a firm voice. I think he had control of the situation. That was what frightened me.’ She said Walsh had ‘a watery haze over his eyes’.
Walsh’s actions were inexplicable. He had absolutely no history of violence or substance abuse. And he had a long-held affection for Stephanie Ryan.
She pleaded with him, telling him she wouldn’t tell his parents what had happened. She feared she might bleed to death.
Meanwhile, dog squad officer Sergeant John Casey was on patrol around 2.30 a.m. when he received a call to attend Sixth Avenue as a woman was reportedly screaming. When he arrived at the house he heard loud, frantic screams. He called for the door to be opened and heard a woman’s voice: ‘Help, I am bleeding to death.’
The officer kicked down the door to be faced with Ryan, covered in blood, and a man running from him. Casey then heard the sound of glass breaking. Again, Walsh had crashed through a window, this time upstairs in Ryan’s home, and made his way back to his house.
Casey’s dog tracked Walsh to the family home in Fifth Avenue. The police officer spoke to Pappy Walsh. Peter had made it to his bedroom and was in his bed when the police arrived. Soon after, at the kitchen table, he was observed sitting in a daze, reading a newspaper held upside down. He had a towel wrapped around one of his injured hands.
Pappy Walsh called on an old friend – senior barrister Des Sturgess – for legal help. Over decades, Sturgess had risen to the top of the Queensland legal fraternity, and had earned a reputation as a fine criminal barrister. During a colourful career in Brisbane, he was the first defence pick for many police and for major criminal trials, and had represented police such as Glen Patrick Hallahan – member of the so-called Rat Pack – charged with corruption in the 1970s. He at various times gave legal counsel to the likes of former Licensing Branch officer Jack Herbert, along with Commissioner Lewis and retired assistant commissioner Tony Murphy.
After taking a call from Pappy Walsh, Sturgess, with solicitor Pat Nolan, arrived after dawn at Fifth Avenue. Walsh was reportedly instructed not to answer any questions.
Peter James Walsh, Nudgee schoolboy, was charged with attempted murder and burglary. The local scandal would take a year to get to court. When it did, it would feature a surprise witness for the defence who was extremely familiar with the world of drugs and underage drinking, and was enmeshed in the Queensland police culture with friends in high places.
Transfer
Greg Deveney continued to do his best cleaning up Gold Coast vice, but the odds, and his honesty, were against him. His partner, Murray Verrell, had been sent a message to see a Surfers Paradise madam by the name of Gay Buckingham. He and Deveney paid her a visit.
Buckingham asked Deveney what he was doing there. ‘I wanted to talk to Murray alone,’ she said.
‘Why?’ Deveney asked.
‘I don’t believe I can trust you anymore.’
‘Why is that, Gay?’
‘You’re on the take,’ she said. ‘You’re copping money.’
‘Gay, you know me,’ he said in his own defence. ‘I don’t – I’m not involved in that sort of activity.’
Buckingham told him another detective had informed her that Deveney was not only taking kickbacks but he was indulging in free sex with prostitutes in her brothels.
Deveney asked who her informant was. She said it was Detective Senior Constable Pat Shine of the Gold Coast CIB. He later said: ‘Well, it took us a while to settle Gay down and for her to build her confidence to talk to me, but she explained that she had been paying this particular detective money over a period of time and that it had reached the stage where she had not any funds available to pay for her electricity.’ Deveney learned that Buckingham had been forced to use candles for lighting. She also hooked up an extension cord from her mother’s house next door to keep the refrigerator going.
Deveney reported Shine, who was sent back down to uniform.
By mid-1983 Deveney was promoted and assigned to the Juvenile Aid Bureau (JAB) in Brisbane – the brainchild of corrupt former commissioner Frank Bischof, and run by Terry Lewis from its inception in 1963 to the mid-1970s when Ray Whitrod transferred Lewis out to Charleville in western Queensland. Before his new position took effect, however, Deveney worked with his replacement on the Gold Coast – Detective Senior Constable Tegwyn Roberts.
A week before moving to the JAB, Deveney, Verrell and another officer dropped in on a new brothel on the coast. It was a wet, windy day, and the three plain-clothes officers were welcomed inside. ‘The girl thought that we were three clients,’ Deveney later recalled. ‘We got into the room, the lounge room, and I introduced myself to her and the other two police officers and informed her that we were from the Consorters [Squad] and we wanted to interview all the girls who were on those premises.’
She replied: ‘The boss is upstairs waiting for you.’
Deveney proceeded up the stairs and into a room. A man was waiting there. The man shook Deveney’s hand then gave him a roll of bank notes. It was hundreds of dollars. ‘What’s this for?’ Deveney asked.
‘That’s from our conversation on the telephone this morning,’ the man replied.
Deveney was nonplussed. ‘Do you know who I am?’ he asked.
‘Teg Roberts,’ the man said.
‘Hang on,’ said Deveney, ‘I’ll get my mate to come up so he knows what this money is for.’
Deveney shouted out for Verrell to join him. ‘Look at this,’ Deveney said, showing Verrell the notes. ‘This bloke thinks I’m Teg. Come on.’The two detectives went back into the room. ‘This is Detective Verrell,’ Deveney said. ‘Would you mind just repeating to Murray why you have given me this money?’
The man repeated the story about the phone call earlier in the day.
‘Do you know who I am?’ Deveney repeated.
‘Teg Roberts.’
‘No,’ said Deveney. ‘My name is Detective Deveney. I am the officer in charge of the Consorting Squad on the Gold Coast.’
‘Teg Roberts told me he was in charge,’ the man retorted.
‘No, Detective Roberts is on the squad, and from next Monday he will be in charge of the Consorters but up until then, I am.’ He further informed the man that the Consorters were honest, did not take kickbacks, and didn’t accept free sex with prostitutes when he was in charge. Deveney returned the money, but he left the Gold Coast a nervous wreck.
While his integrity might have raised an eyebrow with Pat Glancy, Deveney’s reporting of fellow officer Pat Shine was a step too far for his Gold Coast colleagues. He was deemed ‘a dog’ – someone who dobbed on his mates. Other officers barked at him when he was in the office. The word ‘dog’ was crudely written across one of his folders. Dog shit was left on his desk. At home after a shift he would arm himself, fearing retribution. He stalked the shadows around his house when his own dog barked at night.
Deveney’s shift to Brisbane and the JAB didn’t end the matter. The same harassment, and his personal fears, continued. He was terrified he would be planted with drugs. He checked under his car whenever he went for a drive. He worried that his house would be torched. Eric Gregory Deveney had joined a long line of police men and women who paid for their honesty.
Although he couldn’t have foreseen it, he was facing another decade of torment before he opted out of the only career he had ever wanted.
Bikie Bandits Case
In the spring of 1981 police had arrested two heroin addicts who had launched a series of terrifying bank robberies across Brisbane. They became known as the Bikie Bandits, given they used a motorcycle as a getaway vehicle. Detectives made a number of coordinated raids throughout the city, with one suspect fleeing and leading police on a high-speed chase before being apprehended at gunpoint. The Bikie Bandits were Alfred Thompson, 21, unemployed, of Spring Hill, and Steve Kossaris, also 21 and unemployed, of Ashgrove. Following their arrest, they were taken to the watch-house and put in separate cells. That night, they made statements to police, but later told their legal representatives from the public defender’s office that detectives had given both of them heroin to inject before they made their admissions. ‘You both look pretty sick,’ a detective allegedly told the two heroin addicts. ‘I can give you something to fix you up.’