The Beat: A True Account of the Bondi Gay Murders (30 page)

• • •

Possibly not the best way to end the week but that was okay, they had enough information to collate and assimilate for the moment. And there would be more to come, of that the police were certain. Not least of all because they’d already lined up interviews with Ron Morgan and Alex Mihailovic for Monday, 17 December, three days hence.

iv

On the Monday morning Detective Dagg travelled to the Entrance Police Station with Detective Fountain. The day was bright and warm, the traffic light. They made good time, talked about the case, discussed the possibility that Morgan might not show. He did. And by 11.10 the interview was under way.

Following the usual routine, the detectives ran through their introduction, explaining Morgan’s rights, confirming that he was under no pressure to speak to them, ensuring he’d been offered no inducement, hadn’t been threatened in any way. They explained that they were investigating the cases of Warren, Russell and McMahon and started their questioning proper.

Could he remember back to 1989? they wondered.

‘No, not at all, to be quite honest.’

He wasn’t going to make this easy, wasn’t going to do their work for them. ‘Okay,’ Dagg said. ‘Were you, around that time, were you around the Bondi area?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘The only time I believe I went to Bondi would’ve been to the beach during the day. That’s about it.’

The detectives remained placid, unemotional. ‘I’m just going to, to try to get your memory back there,’ Dagg said. ‘I’ve just got a couple of pages from the
Daily Telegraph
. This is Friday, 21July 1989 and this one’s Saturday, 22July 1989, 23 November 1989 and 24 November 1989 and 21 December 1989.’ He paused a second arranging the copies of the newspapers on the table. ‘These photocopies aren’t real good,’ he resumed, ‘but if you just look through them it might sort of draw you back to around that time. Does that help you at all, or …?’

Morgan glanced over the sheets of paper in front of him. The Sioux City aircraft crash, killing 115 people … the Australian soldier accused of selling secrets to the Soviets … the Drury shooting … Kylie Minogue ‘too sexy’ for TV … more on the Drury case, including the implication of Roger Rogerson … the US invasion of Panama … Did any of it help?

‘One name does,’ he said. ‘Rogerson. I think everyone knows who he is.’

Was he taking the piss? Was he just saying it because the story involved a corrupt police officer? It didn’t matter.

‘Yeah,’ Dagg continued. ‘So, that’s the time period we’re trying to sort of think about. I understand it’s pretty hard. It’s like, it’s 12-odd years ago. Sometimes quite hard to go back, to think back that long.’

‘It is.’ Noncommittal, blank.

‘So, you’ve said you’ve never been down to the Bondi area, Bondi Beach or –’

‘To the beach.’

‘Yeah? And how often would you go down there?’

‘In summer we’d, yeah, pretty much go all the time.’

‘Okay,’ Dagg said, reaching for a manila folder and pulling out a number of photographs. ‘The area that we’re looking at, the disappearance and attempted murder of those persons I’ve spoken to you about, is a place called Marks Park. I’m just going to show you a couple of photographs of that area and to give you a rough idea of the location of it. This here’s Bondi Beach.’ Finger pointing, tapping a spot at the centre of Campbell Parade. ‘And that’s the northern end up on Bondi Beach and I think there’s Icebergs just there. And there’s a walkway … there. And this is Marks Park. Does that ring a bell? That park or that walkway or …?’

‘Yeah. The beach and the Icebergs do for sure.’

‘Yeah, okay. Have you ever been around this –’

‘Yeah. Gone for walks with girlfriends in the past around there and stuff. Yeah, sure. I think everybody has.’

Dagg was pointing again. ‘This area here’s Marks Park,’ he was saying. ‘And this is renowned, what they call a gay beat area where gay men go to meet during the night. Or day. At different times. Did you know anything about that park?’

‘No, not that park. No.’

‘Did you know it was a gay beat area?’

‘No.’

Dagg moved his finger across the photograph, stopping at various locations: this is where Warren’s car was found … his keys found in the rock shelf, here … Did Morgan know anything about that? Did he recall anything at all –?

No. No, he knew nothing.

‘If we go up around to this area,’ Dagg said. ‘Just to the stairs that come down here, from that block … There’s a set of stairs down there, that flow down that path, and Mr Russell’s body was found at the, near the base of the cliffs there. And we believe he was thrown from that cliff. Is there anything you can tell me about that?’

‘No.’ Nothing more. Just the single word denial.

Undaunted, Dagg continued as though he expected nothing else. ‘And Mr McMahon was assaulted in this area here,’ he said, his finger now a little further along the walkway. ‘On that ledge there. And then he was dragged some 200 metres up around the cliff to the point where I just showed you where, near to where Mr Russell’s body was found. He was thrown, they tried to throw him from that cliff. Can you recall anything about that?’

‘No.’

‘Okay.’ The predicted answer. ‘I’ll just show you a photograph now. That’s a photograph of Mr Ross Warren. He was a news presenter in Wollongong. Have you ever seen this person before?’

‘No, I can’t say that I have, to be honest.’

Nor could he tell the police anything about Warren’s disappearance and he couldn’t recall seeing the newsreader on TV or of having read about him in the newspapers. He’d never even heard anyone talking about the disappearance, he said. It was the same with John Russell and David McMahon. He looked at the photographs, knew nothing, had heard nothing, had seen nothing. He couldn’t even remember where he was during that period, he said, it was too long ago.

Dagg nodded understandingly. ‘The time you used to go down to Bondi Beach,’ he said equably, ‘and the persons or friends you’d meet – at any time did you speak of – or anyone speak of, say, attacking homosexual men there?’ Asking in a tone that you’d expect if he was asking about the weather:
and was it warm when you went to Bondi?

‘No,’ Morgan said. ‘Definitely not. We’d just talk about what was on the beach.’ Then seeming to turn to Detective Fountain. ‘Which was women.’

‘No-one came up to you and said, you know, let’s try and roll someone, or I just rolled someone, or –’

‘You hear people pass comments like that all the time,’ Morgan said. ‘I robbed this bloke or that bloke. You just didn’t take no notice of it, to be quite honest. I never did.’

What about gay-bashing, Dagg asked? Did Morgan ever hear about gay-bashing?

‘Sure. Yeah.’

‘Okay. Back in those times, d’you recall anyone … going out specifically to bash gays?’

‘Well,’ Morgan said, ‘you’d have to be lying to say that you didn’t. I mean, you lived in the area – not the Bondi area, but. Just in, near the city.’ He stopped, maybe not sure where he was taking this, not sure if he’d said too much. After a moment he carried on. ‘A bit of it went on there, too,’ he said, meaning, the city. ‘So, yeah, just like I said, you’d hear people passing comments, y’know? Like, meet up with your set group of mates, and then you’d hear other people, y’know, “yeah, we did this today”. Like I said, I just pass it with a grain of salt. Just didn’t take no notice.’

‘The reason I’m sort of asking,’ Dagg explained, ‘is that Mr Warren, Mr Russell and Mr McMahon were all gay men.’

‘Yeah, I understand that,’ Morgan conceded.

‘And they all frequented this Marks Park area, which is a, like I said before, is a gay beat area. So I’m trying, we’re trying to establish that … if you can assist us regarding anyone that you might know who was into gay-bashing, or did that kind of thing. Especially around Bondi and the Marks Park area?

No, he didn’t know anyone, he said. Couldn’t remember anyone.

What about the graffiti artists around at that time? Had Morgan heard of the tags used in Bondi back then? PTK, for instance?

‘PTK? Yeah,’ he mused, ‘I think I’ve seen it written on the side of buses and on trains and stuff.’ He’d seen it but he didn’t know what it stood for: it was just a tag.

‘If I told you that we believe it may mean ‘People That Kill’, have you heard that term before?’

No, but he’d heard of PSK, knew it stood for Park Side Killers. It was written everywhere, he said, buses, trains, bus stops. Everywhere.

‘Do you know anyone who was a member of that gang?’ Dagg asked, his tone unchanged, even and flat.

‘No, not now,’ Morgan answered. ‘No.’

‘Do you think you’d recognise those people again if you bumped into them?’

‘I’d imagine probably, because of my past. I’d imagine they’d remember me probably … But not if I bumped into them
’
cause, like I said, I’ve tried to put my bad past behind me and move on. And that’s what I’m trying to do.’

So, was this PSK just a tag? Or was it a gang?

Morgan hesitated. Yeah, he admitted, he was led to believe it was a gang. And, yeah, he thought there’d be a gang leader but he didn’t know who it would be.

Dagg produced the photo booklet, went through the routine: write the names, where you know them from. All that. Morgan looked at the pictures, identified those he’d been convicted with, one or two others from the area where he’d been living at the time, some he’d played footy with, cricket. School.

Any of them involved in gay-bashings, Dagg wanted to know? Any of them involved in any way with the cases under investigation?

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I don’t. Only the ones that, the only assault I know we were involved in, we were involved in. No-one else or … nothing else…’

Curious how he saw the brutal kicking to death of Richard Johnson as an ‘assault’ Dagg thought. ‘They haven’t mentioned to you – or anyone hasn’t mentioned to you that they were down at Bondi in 1989 and assaulted –’

‘No.’

Dagg stared hard at Morgan, looked hard into his eyes, waited a moment. ‘Did you kill Ross Warren?’ he asked.
Did you kill Ross Warren? Were you present …? John Russell …? Were you present …? David McMahon …? Is there anything else …?
No. No. No. No…

It was over. Fountain had nothing to say, no questions, there was nothing left…

But Detective Dagg wasn’t done, wasn’t ready to let it go.

‘I now propose to play you a tape,’ he said. ‘These tapes were captured from legally obtained listening devices and some … someone within them mentions your name. And you have also been captured on these bugs.’ Dagg went on to caution him again, warning him that anything he said could be used in evidence.

Morgan nodded: he understood.

Detective Fountain produced a typescript of the tape so Morgan could follow it on the written page in case the recording was unclear, in case Morgan claimed he hadn’t heard it properly.

The first track they played was the 1991 recording of Dean Howard and himself. The conversation concerned, in part, Morgan’s comments that he’d been wearing a brand new pair of ’boks from America, that he’d gotten blood all over them. What could he tell the detectives about that? Did he have any comment to make?

‘No, not at all,’ he said. ‘I don’t even remember that conversation to be honest.’ He wasn’t even sure that the voice on the tape was his, he said.

They played another track: a track on which he’d said
‘he should’ve went off the cliff that night, but he didn’t. We went down and put a cigarette butt on his head’. C
ould he tell them anything about that?

‘No, I can’t, actually,’ he said calmly, ‘’cause I don’t remember ever saying anything like that.’

‘Is there any reason why you should say that?’ Dagg wanted to know.

‘No reason at all I’d say something like that.’

‘Okay,’ Dagg continued easily. ‘When you said “he should’ve went off the cliff that night”, would you be true in saying that you have ever thrown anyone off a cliff?’

‘Never,’ he said, his voice flat. ‘Never thrown anyone off a cliff.’

‘And, so again, you can’t tell me in regards to why you would say that?’

‘’Cause I don’t remember having that conversation, Detective Dagg, to be honest.’

Noting the use of his name and rank, Dagg turned to his colleague. ‘Do you have any questions?’

Fountain looked up, his face a mask of indifference. ‘Ronald,’ he said. ‘Ron, just in regards to that transcript, do you agree that Voice 1 – or classified as Voice 1 – is your voice?’

‘No, I don’t agree,’ Morgan answered.

‘Who is Dickhead Alex?’ Dagg asked. ‘Who would that person be?’

There was no audible reply: Morgan sat mute. The detectives waited, fixing him with their stares. The only Alex he knew, he finally said, was Mihailovic, as he’d mentioned earlier, identified earlier. Alex from school. Sharkhead, they asked, eyebrows slightly raised. No, he said, Sharkhead wasn’t familiar, he didn’t know who Sharkhead was. Okay, then. What about David? He’d mentioned David on the tape.

There was a million Davids at the school, he said.