Authors: Matthew Condon
Saunders was dismissed from the Queensland Police Force in 1995, after police alleged she gave three false statements before the inquiry looking into her case.
Visitors
As the second anniversary of Lewis’s imprisonment approached, it gave him pause to think, not only about his life but the impact of his incarceration on his wife Hazel and their five children. On Saturday 24 July, Lewis wrote in his diary that he found Sunday morning the most depressing day of the week because although he was visited by his family for two hours, he’d then have to face another week before he could see them again. He also believed that his imprisonment had a powerful, irreversible adverse impact on the lives of his children.
Lewis says: ‘Apart from my work [in prison], if I could call it that, I had very, very little contact with anybody else. And then … they did agree, thank goodness, that when Hazel or the family came in to see me they could see me in the store.’
‘I had [police officer] David Jefferies come to see me, [police officer] Don Braithwaite come to see me, [Queensland newspaper executive] Ron Richards came to see me … oh yeah, I had quite a few. Some in their own time, some on duty, some in uniform, you know …’
It was around this time that Lewis began to question his faith. ‘Oh, I didn’t lean over backwards towards it,’ Lewis ponders. ‘While I was in prison at Wacol they used to have a Mass every week … but I must confess … I’ve never been much impressed with religion ever since.’
For Lewis, gaol time led to the conclusion that there was no God. ‘I just can’t get my head around it,’ he says. ‘You know, if you kick the bucket you go somewhere, you’re there forever. Where are they going to put them all? They talk about a loving and forgiving God. Well it just doesn’t quite add up. I hope I’m wrong, but no, I’ve never been interested in going to Church since. And in fact … all of my family have given it up, the lot of them.’
Lewis lamented the loss of all of the money he had saved after so many decades of hard work. He dreamed of former commissioner Ray Whitrod and a nerve-gas apocalypse where ‘all my family died, but I survived’.
Tony Murphy telephoned to inform him about former police officer Pat Glancy having an operation, and Lewis’s former personal assistant, Assistant Commissioner Greg Early, also called to fill him in on news from the police force. For the rest of the time Lewis literally counted the days. ‘Well I did count it by the day in the back of my diaries,’ he says, ‘and it just didn’t seem as if it was ever going to end really.’
As spring arrived, Lewis recorded that he had lost interest ‘in most things’. He dreamed of Prince Charles, of Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, of a crocodile on a bed with one of his children, of cutting off the heads of murderers with a shovel, spying in Nazi Germany, and of a tiger pulling his body apart.
He had an upcoming visit from Tony Murphy to look forward to, but the question of his innocence still nagged at him. He was worried about the perceived pressure from prison officials for him to offer an admission of guilt before his parole would be considered. How could he offer that when he was not guilty?
Lewis also began preparing an application for Special Circumstances Parole consideration. On Sunday 7 November, he telephoned his trial lawyer, John Jerrard, QC, and told him the application would have to concentrate on Hazel’s health, as well as his and possibly [daughter] Laureen’s, before focusing on prison conditions and potential risk.
Three days later, Graeme Parker called. He told Lewis he only vaguely remembered the Fitzgerald Inquiry because he had been so ill at the time.
Then, on Monday 29 November, Tony Murphy visited his old friend. Lewis recorded in his diary that they discussed police gossip and a sighting of Jack and Peggy Herbert on the Gold Coast.
While Lewis may have been consumed by his own troubles, he was not the only person who faced gaol time following the Fitzgerald Inquiry. Geraldo Bellino was a fellow inmate at Wacol, having been imprisoned for seven years in 1991. Vittorio Conte, having served his sentence, had been released from prison and was living in a halfway house for ex-prisoners in South Brisbane. He would go on to publish a book on gambling called
Vic Conte’s Casino Buster
.
And there were also a number of police whose lives, like Lewis’s, had veered off-track. Harry Burgess was working in a metal factory on Brisbane’s southside, while Graeme Parker had supposedly turned to God and had become a travelling salesman.
As for Lewis, he stewed with anger in the storeroom at Wacol. ‘I was so angry at the people who I firmly believed had conspired to put me where I was,’ he says.
Helping Hands
Despite his lingering depression, and dreams of attempting suicide only to be revived by doctors, Terry Lewis approached his second Christmas in prison with grim determination. On Christmas Eve he dreamed of ‘planning torture for some persons; killing some people by chopping them up with a huge blade – like meat for stew’.
He was also worried about his wife Hazel. Lewis had always been a stickler for the small, personal ceremonies of life – birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas – and he may have felt his separation from his wife and family more deeply during the festive seasons. Once, he and Hazel would have enjoyed a whirlwind of Christmas parties, drinks, dinners and cocktails, pressing the flesh with dignitaries and old friends. Now, Lewis had only Reader’s Digest condensed books for company.
He recorded in his diary that he was conscious of Hazel’s feelings in relation to their lack of finance and the loss of their home up on Garfield Drive. Lewis also worried over their ‘uncertain future’. The only thing that kept him going, he wrote, was a desire to see ‘certain people punished someday for their lies’.
On Christmas Day he had ‘turkey roll, ham and salad’ for lunch. ‘Present of soap for Hazel, shaving cream and aftershave for me for Christmas,’ he noted. ‘Washed shower curtain. Bed at 10.30pm.’
In the first week of the New Year, Tony Murphy again visited, this time with some encouraging news. ‘Visit by A. Murphy re approach by Mr D[es]. Sturgess, QC, regarding my trial being fatally flawed from the very opening address,’ Lewis wrote.
Not long after, he received a follow-up call from Tony Murphy ‘re: him speaking to Des, whom I will note as D.Q.C. in the future. Not a word to be said to anyone, I will not even mention to Hazel.’ It lifted Lewis’s spirit to know that a lawyer of the eminence of Sturgess, the former director of prosecutions, would be willing to revise Lewis’s trial. ‘He wants a copy of the opening and for me to read through the transcript and note where I protested about the evidence being allowed and not relevant.’
That same day, ‘Jerry [sic] Bellino called at door of Main Store, said “hello” and “when are you coming up to the Work Scheme?” I replied, “I have no idea”.’
On 8 January 1994, the Managing Editor of Queensland Newspapers, Ron Richards, popped in to see Lewis. ‘Discussed my being railroaded by Gunn; Fitzgerald; some media persons and Herbert,’ Lewis wrote in his diary.
On the night before Australia Day, Lewis was visited in his dreams by ‘Mr F. Bischof’.
By March, with little or no action in relation to the trial being re-examined by Sturgess, Lewis again fell into an aggravated state, worried that his lack of patience had led to ‘a deterioration in manners’.
Murphy again visited Lewis on 11 March and they discussed a defamation writ Murphy had out against the
Sunday Sun
newspaper. According to Lewis’s diary, Murphy assured him that if the writ was successful, he would contribute some money towards Lewis’s legal assistance. Lewis was delighted. A leading lawyer believed his trial was flawed, and an old mate was prepared to help out.
However, just 48 hours later, his mood slipped. He wrote: ‘Another part [of my mind] says that you have to continue until you complete a true presentation by way of a TV series and/or newspaper articles and a book of the manner in which the Fitzgerald Inquiry came into being through the ambitions of Gunn and Ahern; how it was conducted by Fitzgerald and his close group of money hungry prostitutes of the legal profession by way of manipulation of the government, the media and many of the witnesses through conspiracy, perjury and censorship of media, particularly for example, Dempster, ABC; Dickie,
Courier-Mail
; and Whitton,
Sun
newspapers.
‘This has to be done in an endeavour to show my innocence, primarily for the sake of my family who have suffered so much, as well as for the history of the Queensland Police Force and for the citizens of Queensland generally.’
A week later, Lewis received a message via his family from Murphy. ‘He [Murphy] phoned … at 7am this morning and said that his legal advisor, Evatt, a QC from Sydney, has told him that he will not win his action unless he forgets his loyalty to me and puts and [sic] blame from him onto me. He is to say that I must have misled him over the years. He is not to criticise the High Court decision against me otherwise he will be “pissing against the wind”. He is to say that his visits to me were purely “compassionate visits”.
‘He is not to have any further contact with me whilst court action being undertaken. He said that if he won and got some money he would give me some to pursue the matter with D.Q.C.’
Murphy won his defamation case against the defunct
Sun
newspapers after they published in late 1988 stories that supposedly linked him to the Whiskey Au Go Go firebombing in 1973. In its apology, the
Sun
said Murphy ‘had absolutely nothing to do with the Whiskey Au Go Go murders either directly or indirectly’.
After the win, Murphy declared he would have a beer and perhaps go fishing. He phoned Lewis in prison to give him the news. A few days later he called to tell Lewis: ‘… D.Q.C. has been busy and has not yet read part of transcript; Heather Hallahan saw the two Herberts at Jupiter’s [sic] Casino recently, both very well dressed’.
Murphy visited again in April. ‘Saw D.Q.C., who has “flogged” … sections of [Crown lawyer in Lewis’s trial, Bob] Mulholland’s opening and he is prepared to speak to [another lawyer] for an opinion if we agree. Tony will have his son, solicitor, speak to his boss re handling matter and he will then contact [the other lawyer] and Tony will pay for that.’
For years, Murphy, like Lewis, remained bitter over the Fitzgerald Inquiry. Murphy’s family say he was ‘soured off’ and that the whole experience had unfairly tarnished an extraordinary career. ‘When he was getting all the bad publicity he was wondering what people were thinking of him, people who used to look up to him.’
It was ironic that Murphy had never been convicted for anything, they observed. ‘With everything that happened he was never … not once … the media didn’t like him. He sued them a few times,’ they said.
Even so, Murphy stood by his mates. ‘Dad was very loyal, even to Jack Herbert,’ the family says. ‘Even Dad sticking by him during his first court case [the Southport Betting Case]. He stuck by him and didn’t give him the cold shoulder.
‘You know, whether Dad knew Jack was up to mischief, being how he is, he was a man about town … he [Herbert] was the most polite, entertaining guy you’d ever meet. He knew how to work a room and make everybody feel good. He was a master of that sort of relationship.’
Murphy’s wife, Maureen, adds: ‘We didn’t have grand things … We never had flash cars and expensive trips around the world. We didn’t have any money.’
On the Move
In the early hours of Tuesday 14 June, Lewis dreamed of ‘a three year old boy slashing my hands with a Stanley knife’.
After a breakfast of tea, toast, honey, jam and cheese, he was told to pack his belongings. He was being transferred to the Moreton Correctional Centre. Throughout his life, Lewis had been a man who clung to routine. It gave him structure. It provided certainty. Without it, he lost his balance. His diaries revealed that even overseas trips in his role as commissioner – though itinerated – threw him off keel. He loathed the loneliness and pined for letters and phone calls from home throughout.
Now, he was being pulled out of his prison routine and it didn’t please him. At 12.20 p.m. he was escorted to his new digs. He recorded that the new environment was intimidating, and that he was on edge. He was taken to a ‘cottage’ with several rooms, where two inmates recommended he take ‘room 9’, which had a bar heater on the wall and was closer to the toilets. The facility had two showers, a kitchen, a lounge area and a laundry. There was ‘very, very old carpet’ on the floor.
Later in the afternoon, Lewis met eight or nine of his fellow inmates – young white offenders in their twenties and thirties. Dinner was brought to the cottage in a hot box at 4.30 p.m. Lewis was in bed by 10 p.m. but didn’t sleep for most of the night. He immediately disliked Moreton, citing that he had less freedom of movement, contact and conversation.
Working in the store, Lewis crossed paths with former Labor Opposition leader and fellow inmate Keith Wright, jailed for sex offences. Wright had been the ALP’s great hope in the early 1980s, and had come within a whisker of dethroning Joh Bjelke-Petersen and the National Party in the 1983 state election. In 1993, however, he was found guilty of raping a teenage girl. The court found that Wright had ‘systematically sexually abused’ the girl over a three-year period from age 13. He was imprisoned for eight years. In gaol, the erudite Wright taught prisoners literacy skills.