Author: William Stokes

Publisher: Interactive Publications

Published: 2021-03

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 1922332526

In 1973 the firebombing of the Whiskey Au-Go-Go nightclub grabbed the headlines in Brisbane unlike any other disaster beforehand. 15 people were killed amid the inferno, the worst mass-murder ever in Australia. Rumours were rife. Detectives were forewarned, but was the firebombing part of an implausible notion to embark on an extortion racket? Or was it a scheme for insurance purposes? Perhaps it was the act of a disgruntled customer, a former employee, or someone owed money? Politicians from all sides of Parliament demanded quick answers. Unbeknown to but a few, early in the morning after the fire, Billy McCulkin was the first person interviewed by detectives while his wife and young daughters fled from their Highgate Hill house; and they only returned to their house after the arrests of John Stuart and Jim Finch. Later, Mrs McCulkin confided to her co-worker, as well as a neighbour, and her brother that she feared for her safety because she knew her husband and his associates were involved in both the Torino and Whiskey Au-Go-Go nightclub fires. During the months of anxiety for Mrs McCulkin, the courtroom appearances of Stuart and Finch heard repeated outbursts from them asserting that detectives had concocted a false verbal confession. The subsequent wire-swallowing protests by Stuart and Finch were extraordinary. Finch even whacked off a piece of his finger, but the self-mutilating efforts from both achieved nothing. The trial, being the longest and costliest staged in Queensland, proceeded without Stuart, or any legal representative for him, while he lay handcuffed to a hospital bed - a first for any Australian court when a life imprisonment term is mandatory. Not long after the Whiskey murder trial, and the fifth reported wire-swallowing protest from Stuart, Mrs Barbara McCulkin and her two daughters disappeared, murdered by Vince O’Dempsey and Gary Dubois, though they were not then brought to stand trial because the case was far too riddled with the standard 1970s police corruption. Interwoven around the Waterside Workers Union journal, Port News, as its publisher William Stokes’ account of his acquaintanceship with everyone concerned - including the bizarre Clockwork Orange gang and a nympho wife who believed she was demoniacally possessed - leads to a harrowing tale. Expect the unexpected.