Authors: Matthew Condon
It was the beginning of Lewis’s relentless campaign to clear his name, which would preoccupy his thinking through his entire incarceration.
Declining Royalty
In September 1991, as Lewis got used to life behind bars, former premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen went on trial for perjury stemming from evidence he gave before the Fitzgerald Inquiry. The charge centred on Bjelke-Petersen’s evidence in relation to a $100,000 donation given to him personally by Singapore businessman Robert Sng.
Bjelke-Petersen had told Fitzgerald that the money had come from a Hong Kong businessman, whom he had never previously met. He also said the $100,000 in a brown envelope was actually given to his secretary. At the inquiry, the former premier was asked if he knew whether Sng was conducting business in Queensland at the time. ‘Not that I know of, no,’ Bjelke-Petersen had replied.
Bjelke-Petersen swore that he had first met Sng in September 1986, when in reality the two had actually been in contact 23 times between late 1985 and late 1986. Sng had even travelled out to Bethany to catch up with the then Premier and his wife, Lady Flo. Approval for the new hotel precinct on the site of the the old Port Office in Edward Street was announced by Bjelke-Petersen at a National Party conference on 17 July 1986. Final approval was given by the government in late November, two months after Sng supposedly made his generous donation in the premier’s office.
If found guilty, Bjelke-Petersen faced up to 14 years in prison. The trial was presided over by District Court Chairman, Judge Helman.
On 24 September, prosecutor Nicholas Cowdery told the court that it could expect to hear evidence ‘of some improper dealings, which are at the heart of official corruption’. He further alleged that Bjelke-Petersen had lied to the Fitzgerald commission in order to avoid a link between the cash donation and the Port Office development. He said the fact that the accused had been the Queensland Premier was important to the case.
The court heard that Sng made his donation to Bjelke-Petersen on 17 September and the money went into the account of a company controlled by Sir Edward Lyons called Kaldeal. The next day, Sng made an identical donation to National Party President Sir Robert Sparkes, that money going into Party accounts.
Robert Sng was called as a witness.
He said his company, Historic Holdings, had been facing the final hurdle of government approval and he felt he had to somehow show support for the National Party. Sng said a former solicitor of his had told him, as early as 1984, that if he was going into business in Queensland he needed to make a donation to the National Party, as it was normal practice.
Sng said he had met Sir Joh on several occasions and had once given the Premier an ‘inexpensive Rolex’ watch as a gift. He added that towards the end of 1987 he had received a call from Bjelke-Petersen’s secretary asking if he could find a job for her boss. He said he telephoned mining support service company Hastings Deering in Hong Kong, and then he and Bjelke-Petersen flew there together to see about the job. The former premier was soon employed by Hastings Deering in Brisbane.
In his final address, Cowdery told the jury that common sense would reject the notion that Bjelke-Petersen, in his later years, was a befuddled old man and didn’t know where he was or who he was talking to. He said the defence had produced witnesses who held up Sir Joh as a ‘figure of declining royalty’ who was pushed out for people to look at, then pulled back in. Cowdery told them that when Bjelke-Petersen gave evidence at the Fitzgerald Inquiry, he knew what he was saying.
The Crown attested that Bjelke-Petersen’s activities were such that he would never forget Sng unless dementia took hold. You don’t forget the man who gave you $100,000, or the man who gave you a job when you retired, or the man you flew to Hong Kong with to spend a week, Cowdery said.
Robert Greenwood, QC, for Bjelke-Petersen, told the court the ‘one miserable charge of perjury’ was only ‘supported by half-baked evidence of so-called corruption to do with a donation from our friend Mr Robert Sng’. He said with a flourish that the only thing between the jury and a guilty verdict would be the ‘last possible kick in the teeth’ that Queensland could deliver for the long-time premier. Greenwood said whether you like him or not, Bjelke-Petersen had done a lot of good for Queensland.
The trial lasted four weeks and the jury deliberated for five days. They could not reach a verdict. It was later revealed that the jury foreman, Luke Shaw, was associated with the Young National Party of Australia and for a few months had been secretary of the Brisbane Central branch. Shaw, 20, a commerce student at the Queensland University of Technology, said his political affiliations had not prejudiced his duty as a juror, which he had conducted ‘with all the respect, authority and seriousness due to it’.
(In 2005 Robert Sng broke a 14-year silence and told the
Courier-Mail
that he believed Bjelke-Petersen was only charged with perjury because he had a ‘rotten memory’. ‘He used to refer to me as Robin, Richard and some other names,’ he said. ‘He had a terrible memory for names.’)
Nightmares
In early 1993, Lewis began recording his dreams in his prison diary. They ranged from trips back into his past, to violent acts, to his fear for the safety of his family. On Thursday 29 April 1993, he awoke at 2.50 a.m. and then at 5.45 a.m., having dreamed of ‘those two master perjurers Jack and Peggy Herbert’.
On 4 May he recorded: ‘Dream/nightmare re: proposed reinstatement as Commissioner of Police.’
On 8 May he was stung by media comments made by lawyer Terry O’Gorman in relation to himself and the notorious saga of policewoman Lorelle Saunders, which was once again being played out in court as the disgruntled officer, the first female detective in the Queensland Police Force, alleged that she had been set-up by police and wrongly imprisoned. The Saunders case had caused enormous damage to Lewis, and still it refused to go away.
‘Terry O’Gorman’s comments on
7.30 Report
and CJC [Criminal Justice Commission] asking him if rumour was right that I wanted to give them a lengthy statement i.e. “roll over”; did I want to speak to them here about Saunders; or would I like a day out in town to speak with them. He agreed that my refusal on all three is correct as I have no information that would be useful for a “roll over” and nothing favourable about Lorelle Saunders.’
He wrote on Tuesday 25 May of suffering ‘plenty of nightmares. Not good start for day.’ He recorded that two inmates were assaulted overnight, one in his sleep. ‘Every day seems more depressing,’ wrote the former police commissioner.
Lewis would later reflect on his mindset in prison: ‘I was feeling more and more useless. I felt I’d been a fairly useful person all my life … and I think nearly everybody I had anything to do with felt I’d been pretty useful. But there were times you felt, you know, what’s the use? It would be better if you were dead.’
He says he contemplated suicide: ‘I realised what the consequences would be, and actually, you don’t even make any attempt to do anything but you think, shit, what a useless life it is, and looking at 14 years is just … you think, oh, I’ll probably be dead in that time anyhow … [suicide was] just a general thought. I think it must cross most people’s mind, you know, you’d be better off dead, but you don’t think, yeah, I’m going to go and get a gun or get a bit of rope and learn how to tie a knot with it.’
A few days later, on Saturday 29 May, Lewis’s depression had not lifted. As winter approached, he was telephoned by his old mate on the Gold Coast, former police officer John Meskell, and bumped into one-time brothel king Hector Hapeta. Tony Murphy also phoned to keep Lewis updated on the Saunders case.
Lewis had more dreams: about his wife Hazel enrolling him in medical studies; about his grandparents, the Hanlons; and about visiting the Juvenile Aid Bureau, where he spent more than a decade of his career. He wrote in his diary that the future seemed dismal.
On Sunday 20 June, he wrote that a cell mate’s brother had recently seen Jack Herbert at the Hilton Hotel in Cairns ‘with two males, apparently bodyguards, Herbert had hand-held telephone’.
His dreams, too, were physically troubling him. ‘Feel tremendous tension in head, maybe partly caused by dreams involving family members in dangerous, annoying or sorrowful situations,’ Lewis wrote.
Still, he continued on with his ambition to prove his innocence: ‘I need access to transcripts, newspapers, certain persons, etc., to compile my project regarding my innocence. There is also the most important aspect of trying to clear my name for the future of my wife, children and grandchildren.
‘While I have an intense dislike of Herbert and feel that he does not deserve to live, I do not want him dead, as there may be the possibility of him contracting some serious lingering disease that would cause him to tell the truth prior to his demise. He is certainly the grand master of merging truth and lies for his own criminal purposes.’
Meanwhile, he had his own personal safety to consider. He says he was the target of several verbal threats. ‘I don’t know whether you’re supposed to know this or not, but … there’s always threats, they’ll get you … they’ll get you,’ recalls Lewis. ‘There was one big bloke, a prisoner, I don’t know why they picked on him … but they’d waited till he walked in a room, threw a bag over the top of him and four of them raped him … and they said [to me] … if we get you down there, we’ll rape you, we’ll do this, we’ll do everything.
‘Well it wouldn’t have achieved much, but I said … they’ll want to get in quick because … I’ll kill the first two that try. I mightn’t get the rest [but] whoever does do it won’t want to walk outside the prison because, I said, I still have a lot of friends out there.’
Memory Lane
Prisoner Lewis received a letter from the Criminal Justice Commission (CJC), dated 11 June 1993, in relation to an investigation it was conducting – more than 10 years after the event – into the case of policewoman Lorelle Saunders. The CJC investigation, headed by Judge Ronald H. Matthews, QC, was charged with examining the framing and imprisonment of Saunders in the early 1980s.
Saunders had been charged with serious offences in 1982, including attempting to procure murder, and had been in gaol on remand for more than ten months before the charges against her were thrown out. It was found a chief piece of evidence against her – a secret tape recording where she could be heard attempting to hire a hitman – had been fabricated.
Although there was no evidence implicating Lewis in any alleged set-up, the judge presiding over the case requested that Lewis respond to comments Saunders had made in relation to him. Lewis had already indicated, through his legal advisor John Jerrard, QC, that he would not appear before the inquiry as a witness.
Instead, Lewis was asked to answer a series of questions by statutory declaration. It would prove to be a trip down memory lane – the CJC providing him with a sequence of written preambles, and questions that followed.
Saunders alleged that Lewis and Murphy had, in the early 1970s, been critical of then Commissioner Ray Whitrod, and disagreed with the way he wished to treat juveniles. She said Lewis had ordered JAB (Juvenile Aid Bureau) officers to circumvent Whitrod’s directions. Lewis was also critical of Whitrod’s establishment of the elite Criminal Intelligence Unit. Was that true?
Lewis’s response was direct and to the point. ‘I was certainly critical of the Commissioner for his [juveniles] policy … I do not recall criticising him for the existence of the Criminal Intelligence Unit,’ Lewis responded. He said the scenario alleged by Saunders did not cause him to dislike her.
In another preamble, Saunders claimed that Lewis and Murphy had had a ‘major disagreement’ over arrangements for the JAB Christmas party. She said Murphy was angry with Lewis for holding it at the old National Hotel, scene of the contentious police corruption inquiry in 1963 and 1964. Was this true, and did he ever form the view that Sergeant Saunders thought he was corrupt?
Lewis was dismissive and could not recall an argument with Murphy over the venue. Furthermore, ‘I never formed the view that Sergeant Saunders thought I was corrupt.’
Saunders further alleged that she often sat outside the home of criminal and drug dealer Billy Phillips in Vulture Street, West End, and picked up people for various offences. She claimed that Lewis and Murphy were, at the time, very angry with her about this. Was he in any way improperly protecting Phillips?
Lewis flatly denied it. ‘I have not heard of this allegation being made against me previously,’ he wrote. ‘I had never heard of Sergeant Saunders’ alleged activities outside the house of Mr Phillips in Vulture Street.’
Saunders further claimed that the Police Administration considered her ‘highly dangerous due to her knowledge of certain corrupt officers’. Did he consider her highly dangerous, and did he act improperly in relation to this?
‘… I did not consider Sergeant Saunders was “highly dangerous” to myself or to my administration,’ Lewis responded.
‘I do not wish to be offensive,’ he added, ‘but the truth is that the existence of Sergeant Saunders was of no interest, let alone a threat, to me until her arrest. After that, my only interest was that she was a Police Officer.’
In the end, Justice Matthews would find that Saunders was not ‘set up’ by corrupt police, and that he couldn’t see any justification for awarding costs. ‘Considerable resources over the years have been committed in respect of the matter and to pursue further action at this time would serve no good purpose,’ Matthews said. ‘In my opinion it would certainly be in the interests of all parties to get on with their lives and try and put the matter behind them.’