Authors: Matthew Condon
He added: ‘Antonio SERGI makes business trips to Queensland to visit his brother-in-law Antonio PALUMBO in Mareeba. In May 1981 SERGI was at Mareeba at the time of the CLARKE murders. Unsubstantiated information has, in the past, nominated the visits by SERGI resulting in transportation of Indian hemp to the southern area of Australia.’
Vassallo, working long hours in Canberra, had established a compelling portrait of the marihuana trade across the country, and the Mr Bigs who controlled it. A copy of the top secret report went to every state police commissioner in Australia.
The reaction to Alpha in Queensland was extraordinary. But not in the way anyone expected.
Slings and Arrows
On Monday 29 July, just as the Alpha report was set to be released, Commissioner Terry Lewis travelled down to Canberra for some meetings with staff of the Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence (ABCI). He checked into the Capital Motor Inn, and the next morning was in the ABCI offices in London Circuit for another meeting of the management committee to discuss computers and costs.
He then travelled out to the ‘AFP College, Weston’, for a briefing on outlaw motorcycle gangs and organised crime ‘involving La Cosa Nostra’. Later that night, he attended a cocktail function hosted by Jim Sturgis, ‘FBI rep in SW Pacific’.
After an early morning flight the next day, he was back at his desk in headquarters by 9 a.m. That morning, Lewis ‘advised snr officers re Canberra briefings’.
On Monday 5 August, Lewis telephoned Director of the ABCI Alan Watt ‘re presentation of “Alpha” project to Cabinet’. In short, Peter Vassallo was being summonsed to Queensland to give Cabinet, including Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen, a confidential briefing on his cannabis report.
While Glasson had been shocked by the briefing Vassallo gave in Perth earlier in the year, the Police Minister may have impressed on the Premier the importance of the Alpha report and Queensland’s role in a national drug industry.
Vassallo says the request to address Cabinet stemmed from Lewis’s call on the morning of 5 August. ‘Lewis rang up saying that the Premier had directed me to come up after I gave that briefing to the Police Ministers’ Council. He wanted to hear it too,’ recalls Vassallo. ‘Of course, there was no way in the world you would ask any questions. It was simply, “Yes, sir.”’
That done, Lewis had other things to focus his attention on for the rest of the month. He saw Sir Sydney Schubert ‘re Honours and awards’. He farewelled Detective Superintendent T.J. Wightman on retirement, who told him ‘I am the best Comm. he has worked under’ and ‘Force is free of any organised crime’.
He had a small telephone spat with Australian Federal Police head Major-General Ron Grey. ‘Phoned Comm. R. Grey re difference of opinion re arrest of J.K. Brook at Ringwood, our Snr Police say AFP not truthful, Mr Grey said his police “pissed off” with some of our Police.’
And of course he had another annual Ekka to attend and perform official duties, including inspecting the mounted police. He was present for the opening of the third session of the 44th state parliament, then stayed for afternoon tea. He recorded in his diary: ‘Premier said he would submit my name on Honours recommendation but I must maintain secrecy.’ Later, Lewis moved on to Police Minister Glasson’s parliamentary suite for drinks.
In five days’ time, however, ABCI analyst Sergeant Peter Vassallo was due to tell local politicians that Queensland, despite its claim to a unique separateness from the rest of Australia, was part of a national network of illicit drugs worth hundreds of millions of dollars. After years of repelling outside crime investigation authorities, why had Queensland suddenly rolled out the red carpet for an interloper like Vassallo, and one bearing grim news at that?
The Confidential Cabinet Briefing
On the second last weekend of August, 1985, Commissioner Lewis, accompanied by his wife Hazel, had a whistlestop tour of Townsville, and Quilpie in western Queensland, along with his Minister Bill Glasson. In Quilpie, Glasson opened the annual district show.
On Saturday 24 August, they returned to Brisbane in the government jet. Lewis then spent his day of rest reading ‘32 Journals, Reviews and Gazettes’. It was a normal end to the weekend.
The next morning, however, Lewis was in his office at 6.40 a.m. That was relatively early by his own exacting standards, and may have been for two reasons. The first, according to his diary, was that his son Tony had been ‘arrested U.I.L. [Under Influence Liquor], 4.02 a.m., .17%’.
The other reason was the arrival of Peter Vassallo of the ABCI, in Brisbane to brief Bjelke-Petersen and his Cabinet on the growing menace of drugs, and the implications for Queensland.
Vassallo had arrived in Brisbane on the Sunday afternoon as Lewis was reading his gazettes. He was greeted at the airport by some Queensland police, and on the way to his hotel in Wickham Terrace, Vassallo’s hosts treated him to a meal and some beers at the Breakfast Creek Hotel. The cheery party then moved on to Brothers Rugby League Club at The Grange. Vassallo was alert to any dangers, despite the camaraderie.
‘Jimmy [Slade] told me to watch myself because the usual modus operandi [MO] was that I could be set up there with someone coming to my [hotel] room. Then that person, who is a druggie, alleges that I’ve made an offer to them and all that sort of stuff. He warned me about that. It was an MO for Queenslanders.’
Vassallo had with him a single piece of equipment that he used for all of his briefings – a large map. The top secret map had been loaded onto Vassallo’s flight from Canberra only after all passengers and luggage were on board. The loading was supervised by Vassallo and an Australian Federal Police officer.
There was a similar procedure on his arrival in Brisbane. ‘The plane would land at my destination, the AFP would come up the gangway, the doors would open, everyone would be told to sit in their seats, and my name would be called out,’ says Vassallo. ‘I would go to the front with the AFP copper and we’d go downstairs, round the side where the hold was, and … we had to supervise the opening of the hold – they weren’t allowed to open it until we were there. And then the first thing that came out would be this tube that would be given to me and I’d be escorted through the bloody bizzo into a car to wherever I had to go.’
The map was a tool vital to Vassallo’s presentation. It was also highly dangerous – Vassallo’s research was underpinned by a long list of interconnected murders across the country. Here, the dots were beginning to come together.
‘What was important for the briefing that I gave was to show the geographic distribution of where the marihuana plantations were,’ recalls Vassallo. ‘I had four PVC plastic overlays and the old trick of having, you know, you bring down one on top of the map to show something … then you bring over the next one which adds to the first, gives it more meaning. And finally the last one. The map would have been six foot long and about eight foot wide … a picture tells a thousand words …’
On the day of Vassallo’s presentation, Lewis recorded in his diary: ‘Saw Sgt. Peter Vassello [sic], ABCI re briefing for Cabinet.’
Vassallo was picked up at his hotel that morning and taken the short distance to Commissioner Lewis’s office at headquarters. The two men were, of course, familiar with each other, given that Vassallo had conducted the confidential briefing before Lewis a few months earlier in Perth at the ABCI management conference.
‘… so here I am thinking I’m going to the fucking lion’s den,’ Vassallo recalls. ‘Because at this stage I’m convinced that he’s a crook and there’s a whole bunch of crooks and I’ve got to play this game. And so I’ve gone up into his office.
‘He [Lewis] was very courteous, he was very professional. He said, “Look, have you met Sir Joh?”
‘I said I’d seen him many times on television.
‘He said, “He’s a nice man, don’t be overawed by him in any way.” He said, “He’ll listen, he may ask you some questions … just answer honestly.”
‘Lewis was definitely trying to put me at ease.’
Lewis and Vassallo then headed for Parliament House in George Street in Lewis’s official Commissioner’s vehicle. ‘I requested to make sure we go early enough for me to verify everything was set up correctly, which he acceded to,’ says Vassallo. ‘I went in to set up the room … and when I was satisfied … I waited outside for Joh to turn up.
‘Joh was introduced and he walked in and we followed in behind. When we walked in the door – Lewis, [Graeme] Parker, [and] a third, all in white shirts … here was a third senior police officer of a similar rank to Parker.’
Parker, former head of the Licensing Branch since 1982 had, exactly a week earlier, been promoted to Superintendent Third Class. Within five months he would be elevated to Assistant Commissioner.
Incredibly, Lewis and his trusted men were permitted to sit in on the confidential Cabinet meeting. ‘They stood on the wall facing the Cabinet table and I was to their right,’ recalls Vassallo. ‘So when I was giving my briefing, basically I positioned myself with my back to them … and I always focused on Joh Bjelke-Petersen. I never focused on anyone else. I’m briefing to one person, I’m convincing one person, that’s it.’
The briefing ended. Vassallo had displayed, on his large map, the names of the Bellinos as being associated with drug production in Queensland. He says there were no questions from Cabinet about the Bellinos. None of the government ministers had any queries, not even Police Minister Bill Glasson. Nor did Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen.
It was a deliberate strategy on Vassallo’s part. ‘I left the impression that there was really not much going on in Queensland,’ he says. ‘[It was] very sketchy information because I knew who was listening out on the left, they needed to hear that. They needed to understand that I wasn’t a threat. And that’s exactly what I was doing consciously. I wanted to fulfil the task that I was given in that a summons had been issued for my appearance. I appeared your worship, right? So I just told them things they needed … they wanted … to hear.’
After the briefing, Vassallo was taken back to headquarters where he was asked to conduct the briefing again, this time to senior police. Vassallo says he was taken to an auditorium where hundreds of officers were waiting. He had not been expecting to brief the top echelon of the Queensland Police Force. ‘I do recall seeing Parker and a whole row of white shirts, you know, the trumps at the front,’ recalls Vassallo. ‘And I remember … because I’d met Parker – he’d come to the bureau [ABCI] to be briefed – and I knew he, with a couple of others, was trying to change certain information that I’d put on the database [back in Canberra].
‘[I went] straight in to the auditorium where everyone has been summonsed and … I walk on stage, and it was an elevated stage, everyone is there … it did cause a buzz … the fact that here was a guy that was from out of town, at an agency that’s only been going two years and suddenly here they are talking about the fucking Bellino brothers. You know, these were untouchables. I didn’t appreciate that, I just didn’t realise and, of course, I didn’t give a fuck – that was all part of a test.’
Vassallo and his map were driven back to the airport. The officers escorting him stopped, as was the custom, for a drink on the way. He made an excuse that he had a lot of things to do and wouldn’t be imbibing. ‘[I] got on a plane and went home and I was glad to get home,’ he says. ‘The thing that worried me the most was now a lot of Queensland police officers, including some of the senior ones other than Lewis, could put a face to [my] name.
‘They’d heard the name but now they had a face.’
An Overdue Arrest
While Peter Vassallo was relieved to be back on home turf in Canberra after his Queensland adventure, the impact of his Project Alpha report and briefings had an immediate impact. In his report, Vassallo had gone into great detail about the shotgun murders of marihuana grower William (Paul) Clarke, 36, and his wife Grayvyda Marie Clarke, 35, in their home at Julatten, near Mareeba, on 24 May 1981. Both were blasted to death in their bed and their house had been torched.
Robert ‘Dave’ Berrick, a North Queensland hippie with a record of petty drug offences, knew Paul and Grayvyda well. Berrick had grown marihuana plantations with Clarke at Idlewild Station. Some of the crops were worth in excess of $1 million. Indeed, Berrick owned the property at Julatten where the Clarkes were murdered. Berrick says Clarke had a premonition of his own death. ‘He told me that he’d seen it, that he wasn’t going to live too long,’ Berrick remembers. ‘He sensed the danger. He knew what was coming. The big one. Paul told me he was dealing with the Mafia. I kept out of it.’
At the time of the murders Berrick had initially been a suspect. Detectives had flown to Sydney where Berrick was renting a small flat in Elizabeth Bay in the city’s inner-east. Berrick was taken to a local police station and interviewed. ‘They said I did it,’ recalls Berrick. ‘I told them – “I think you blokes did it”. They took me back up to North Queensland for a look around. I told them everything. After all, Paul and his wife had been murdered, there was not much point keeping secrets.’
Alpha painted a dark and dangerous picture of the drug trade in Queensland – something that would have been news to many of Premier Bjelke-Petersen’s members of Cabinet. How could this have been allowed to develop in God-fearing Queensland?
Vassallo wrote:
Invariably, violence is associated with any major organised crime group and the police investigation into the murder [of the Clarkes] has exposed a major organised crime network which has flourished in that area for over a decade. Companies have been incorporated to hide the movement and acquisition of the vast profits generated.