Of course the cops knew of it.
They organised it.
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Police officers were warned that a Brisbane nightclub would be firebombed in February 1973, but detectives tasked with guarding the venue did not show up to protect it, an inquest report has revealed.
Less than a fortnight before 15 people were tragically killed in the Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub inferno, police were warned that the nearby Torinos nightclub would be burnt down on the weekend of February 24 and 25.
But according to a report tendered to the Brisbane Coroners Court, detectives tasked with watching the venue simply did not show up and the club was burnt to the ground as predicted.
The damning revelations are among dozens of pages that were redacted from a report prepared by Detective Sergeant Virginia Gray who is leading the modern-day investigation into the Whiskey Au Go Go blaze.
The senior police officer says she was ordered by her superior to slash 27 pages from her coronial report, including criticism of the 1973 police investigation which included claims that investigators failed to act on information implicating offenders.
The attacks on Torinos and the Whiskey nightclubs were among a series of arsons committed in that time amid allegations of an interstate extortion racket.
Det Gray said on February 22, 1973, a police intelligence officer received a “credible” report claiming well-known underworld figure Billy McCulkin had been tasked with burning down the nightclub.
“As a result of this report detectives were tasked to watch the premises however did not do so and the premises was burnt down as predicted,” Det Gray wrote in her report.
“It is unknown which officers were tasked to watch Torinos that weekend however they did not do so.
“Investigations at the time failed to identify the offenders.”
Editor’s note
I have met and spoken with 2 of the Torinos arsonists, and know the others by gday and sight from when I was a kid.
They grew up opposite Downfall Creek at Geebung from me, in the Housing Commission ghetto at Wavell Heights. My wife’s former dog trainer and my my mate Matt’s present (and eternal) one Johnny Catton’s grandma lived two doors down from one of them in Beor Street, although Mrs Squair – the mother of jockey turned trainer Barry, and his brother my mate Bernie, Johnny’s uncle – had no idea what their neighbours were up to.
The QLD Police did. They paid them to burn down the nightclub. The blokes who did it lived less than 100m from my childhood home of 47 Innes Street, Geebung when they did it, right next to the Svenson’s house on the other side of the train tracks. They got the gelignite from the hire place on the corner of Robinson and Newman Roads at Geebung, on the exact same site that later became Windscreens O’Brien, where my sister was the sales manager.
Det Gray wrote that Billy McCulkin’s wife Barbara, who was abducted and murdered along with her daughters the following year, told a friend she “knew about what had occurred in the Torinos arson before Whiskey Au Go Go”.
A later trial of her killer heard the motive for her murder was likely to stop her from revealing what she knew about the fires.
The report also includes evidence from McCulkin’s second wife recalling a conversation with him in which he stated “it was a great fire”, referring to the Torinos blaze.
McCulkin was never charged with either arson attack.
The inquest into the Whiskey Au Go Go fire resumes in the Brisbane Coroners Court today and is expected to run for three weeks.