Leonard Arthur McPherson (born
Balmain, New South Wales
Balmain is a suburb in the Inner West of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Balmain is located west of the Sydney central business district, in the Local government in Australia, local government area of the Inner West Council.
It is locate ...
19 May 1921; died
Cessnock, New South Wales
Cessnock is a city in the Hunter Region of New South Wales, Australia, about by road west of Newcastle, New South Wales, Newcastle. It is the administrative centre of the City of Cessnock Local government in Australia, LGA and was named after a ...
, 28 August 1996) was one of the most notorious and powerful Australian career criminals of the late 20th century. McPherson is believed to have controlled most of Sydney's
organised crime
Organized crime (or organised crime) is a category of transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals to engage in illegal activity, most commonly for profit. While organized crime is generally th ...
activity for several decades, alongside his contemporary
Abe Saffron
Abraham Gilbert Saffron (6 October 1919 – 15 September 2006) was an Australian hotelier, nightclub owner and property developer who was one of the major figures in organised crime in Australia in the latter half of the 20th century.
For sev ...
(who was dubbed "Mr Sin") and associate, bookmaker
George Freeman.
Reputation
Universally feared by adversaries and often referred to as Sydney's "Mr Big" of organised crime, McPherson built up an extensive network of criminal activities that included robbery, theft and extortion rackets, illegal gambling, "
sly-grog shop
A sly-grog shop (or shanty) is an Australian term for an unlicensed hotel, liquor-store or other vendor, sometimes with the added suggestion of selling poor-quality alcoholic beverages. From the time of the First World War to the 1950s Australia ...
s" (illegal alcohol outlets), prostitution and
drug dealing
The illegal drug trade or drug trafficking is a global black market dedicated to the cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of prohibited drugs. Most jurisdictions prohibit trade, except under license, of many types of drugs throug ...
, and his influence is also believed to have extended to
South East Asia
Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical south-eastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of mainland ...
and the United States
McPherson's well-earned reputation for extreme brutality is exemplified by an incident recounted in Tony Reeves' 2005 biography. McPherson had been estranged from his mother for many years, but on her 70th birthday, he unexpectedly turned up at her flat, carrying a live rabbit. He demanded to know why he had not been invited to her birthday party, and when she admitted that it was because of his criminal activities, the furious McPherson tore the rabbit's head off, threw the still-twitching body at her feet and stormed off. Reeves also states that McPherson savagely brutalised his first wife on numerous occasions—on one occasion, when he accused her of having an affair, he tied one of her legs to a tree and the other to the back of his car, started the car, took up the slack on the ropes and threatened to tear her in half.
McPherson was featured as a character in the Australian crime drama series ''
Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities'' and ''
Underbelly: The Golden Mile'', in which he was played by actor
John McNeill.
Youth and early criminal career, 1930s–1940s
McPherson was born in the inner-Sydney suburb of
Balmain in 1921, the tenth child of metalworker, William McPherson, and his wife, Nellie. He had some schooling at
Birchgrove Primary School, but did not go on to secondary school.
McPherson's first brush with the law came at the age of 11 when he was convicted of stealing and placed on a 12-month good behaviour bond. Eighteen months later, on 13 June 1934, he faced court on another stealing offence and his bond was extended for a further year. On 18 June he was convicted on two charges of stealing and committed to the
Mount Penang Juvenile Justice Centre
The Mount Penang Juvenile Justice Centre is a heritage-listed former juvenile detention centre, now a parkland and redevelopment precinct known as Mount Penang Parklands. It is situated on the Pacific Highway at Somersby, Central Coast, New ...
. According to Reeves, McPherson was frequently bashed and sexually assaulted during this first term of incarceration, a common experience for juvenile detainees at this time.
During
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
McPherson's father found him a position as a driller at the dockyard where he worked, enabling Lenny to avoid conscription, because dock workers were a protected occupation. During this period he racked up a string of traffic fines for minor infringements including speeding, illegal parking and driving an unlicensed vehicle.
In 1940 McPherson married 16-old Dawn Joy Allan at
Rozelle
Rozelle is a suburb in the inner west of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. It is located 4 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the Inner West Council.
Location
Rozelle si ...
.
McPherson's first criminal convictions as an adult were in 1946. In January he was convicted and fined for
possession of stolen goods
Possession of stolen goods is a crime in which an individual has bought, been given, or acquired stolen goods.
In many jurisdictions, if an individual has accepted possession of goods (or property) and knew they were stolen, then the individua ...
—a conviction that was upheld on appeal—and a month later, on 15 February, he was found guilty of receiving stolen goods and sentenced to 12 months' hard labour at
Long Bay Gaol
The Long Bay Correctional Complex, commonly called Long Bay, is a correctional facility comprising a heritage-listed maximum and minimum security prison for males and females and a hospital to treat prisoners, psychiatric cases and remandees, loc ...
. Soon after, he was convicted on another similar charge and sentenced to 18 months, to be served concurrently.
In June 1946 McPherson was briefly transferred to a low-security
prison farm
A prison farm (also known as a penal farm) is a large correctional facility where penal labor convicts are forced to work on a farm legally and illegally (in the wide sense of a productive unit), usually for manual labor, largely in the open air ...
at
Glen Innes in northern NSW, but six weeks later he was transferred to the maximum security
Grafton Gaol because of his "unsatisfactory" behaviour. His wife appealed for him to be transferred back to Sydney to serve out his term at Long Bay. Notably, Tom (Thomas) Sheehan, ALP State Member for Cook, also wrote to the Corrective Services Minister on McPherson's behalf, even though McPherson's current home at
Gladesville
Gladesville is a suburb in the Lower North Shore of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Gladesville is located 10 kilometres north-west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Ryde a ...
was not in Sheehan's electorate.
Both requests were initially denied, but a few months later McPherson was transferred back to Long Bay to serve out the rest of his sentence. He was paroled on 24 December 1946, having served only 10 months of his 18-month sentence. McPherson had difficulty re-adjusting to life outside prison. He began drinking heavily and soon fell into a pattern of alcohol-fuelled verbal and physical abuse against his long-suffering wife Joy. His marriage quickly deteriorated, and McPherson took up with other women.
During the 1940s he had associated with the
Surry Hills
Surry Hills is an inner-city suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Surry Hills is immediately south-east of the Sydney central business district in the local government area of the City of Sydney. Surry Hills is surroun ...
based underworld figure,
William 'Joey' Hollebone
William Joseph Hollebone (1 January 1917 – 28 September 1960), known informally as 'Joey' Hollebone, was a notorious and violent member of the criminal underworld, based in the inter-city suburbs of Sydney, Australia. Hollebone began serving a ...
, but they later fell out. Hollebone committed many underworld murders in Sydney and was a close associate of the notorious hitman,
John 'Chow' Hayes
John Frederick "Chow" Hayes (7 September 19117 May 1993) was an Australian criminal who became known as Australia's first gangster.
Early life
Hayes was born in the Sydney suburb of Paddington, New South Wales on 7 September 1911, the illegitima ...
. After Hollebone was arrested for a robbery, he accused McPherson of tipping off the police to his whereabouts and in revenge Hollebone's gang brutally pack-raped McPherson's mistress, who was pregnant to him. Hollebone died in 1960.
According to Tony Reeves, McPherson had frequently "fizzed" (informed) on fellow inmates while in prison to gain small privileges and ingratiate himself with prison officers. This habit continued after his release, as McPherson began cultivating selected police officers by informing against rivals or those who offended or annoyed him. One contemporary recalled that the young McPherson was widely known at the time as "Lenny The Pig" and "Lenny the Squealer".
On 24 June 1947 McPherson faced a minor charge of using indecent language and was fined £2.
1950s
By the time of his 30th birthday in 1951, McPherson had developed a fascination with the notorious American gangster
Al Capone
Alphonse Gabriel Capone (; January 17, 1899 – January 25, 1947), sometimes known by the nickname "Scarface", was an American gangster and businessman who attained notoriety during the Prohibition era as the co-founder and boss of the ...
, reading everything he could find about Capone and trying to emulate him—although, clearly, he had no interest in adopting the Mafia code of silence, ''
omerta'' and soon developed a close relationship with police, selectively acting as an informant in cases where this suited his purposes.
He made a trip to the United States in August 1951, using a forged passport and travelling under his brother's name; Tony Reeves states that it was on this visit that McPherson made his first contacts with members of the
Chicago Outfit
The Chicago Outfit (also known as the Outfit, the Chicago Mafia, the Chicago Mob, the Chicago crime family, the South Side Gang or The Organization) is an Italian-American organized crime syndicate or crime family based in Chicago, Illinois, tha ...
. However, his faked passport was detected and he and an accomplice, Martin Goode, were charged with forging and uttering. Although the maximum penalty was 10 years' jail, McPherson and Goode were fined only £100 and placed on a three-year good behaviour bond.
Just five months later, McPherson was again before the courts, charged with consorting with known criminals, but he again escaped imprisonment—his conviction was recorded but no sentence was imposed. McPherson was less fortunate with his next offence: in late 1953 he and an accomplice were arrested while trying to break into an office in central Sydney; in November he was found guilty of
breaking and entering
Burglary, also called breaking and entering and sometimes housebreaking, is the act of entering a building or other areas without permission, with the intention of committing a criminal offence. Usually that offence is theft, robbery or murder ...
with intent to steal and being in possession of housebreaking implements (including explosives) and sentenced to three and a half years in prison.
His term was marked by a number of notable incidents: he was disciplined for attempting to pass a clandestine letter out of the gaol, he was charged with having contraband in his possession, and in mid-1955, while still serving his burglary sentence, he was found guilty on three charges of possessing an unlicensed pistol and sentenced to 12 months on each charge, to be served concurrently with his other term.
McPherson was paroled in October 1955. He needed legitimate employment to satisfy his parole conditions, and it was at this time that he established his infamous "motel". Built by McPherson with his brother, it was, in fact, a group of tiny rooms built on the roof of a private
car park
A parking lot (American English) or car park (British English), also known as a car lot, is a cleared area intended for parking vehicles. The term usually refers to an area dedicated only for parking, with a durable or semi-durable surfac ...
in Balmain, which McPherson had created as a
safe house
A safe house (also spelled safehouse) is, in a generic sense, a secret place for sanctuary or suitable to hide people from the law, hostile actors or actions, or from retribution, threats or perceived danger. It may also be a metaphor.
Histori ...
for criminal associates who needed to lie low. McPherson placed himself on the payroll at a salary of £20 per week, and for the next 20 years he was able to cover his criminal activities by claiming that the motel was his only source of income.
Rise to power in the 1960s
From the end of the 1950s, McPherson worked assiduously to secure and increase his power and influence and by the late 1960s he had established an extensive network of organised crime operations which were allegedly supported and protected by corrupt police and public officials. He gained pre-eminence in the tough Sydney underworld through the systematic intimidation and assassination of criminal rivals, and by cultivating relationships with corrupt police officers such as
Detective Inspector
Inspector, also police inspector or inspector of police, is a police rank. The rank or position varies in seniority depending on the organization that uses it.
Australia
In Australian police forces, the rank of inspector is generally the ne ...
Ray "Gunner" Kelly
Ray "Gunner" Kelly, MBE, (3 February 1906 – 11 August 1977) was an Australian police officer who was a detective inspector with NSW Police, he became famous during his career owing to his high-profile cases and results, but who was later alleg ...
and the notorious Detective Seargent
Fred Krahe
Frederick Claude Krahe (6 November 1919 – 6 December 1981) was an Australian New South Wales police officer and detective.
Allegations of murder and corruption
Among the many rumours and allegations about him, Krahe is alleged to have murder ...
. These relationships quickly developed into a mutually beneficial arrangements—corrupt police exploited McPherson as an informant and 'enforcer', while they in turn were used by him to neutralise enemies and to protect his organisation.
Tony Reeves cites the 1959 killing of criminal Joseph Hackett as a pivotal event in McPherson's criminal career. He argues that the case was "fixed" by corrupt police and prison guards, who conspired with McPherson and enabled him to avoid prosecution. From this point on, McPherson's influence over police, prison guards, lawyers, magistrates and politicians allowed him to literally get away with murder on numerous occasions.
Murder of Joseph Hackett, 1959
The bullet-riddled body of Joseph George Hackett was found in a laneway in the
Inner West
The Inner West of Sydney is an area directly west of the Sydney central business district, New South Wales, Australia. The suburbs that make up the Inner West are predominantly located along the southern shore of Port Jackson (Parramatta River) ...
suburb of
Leichhardt Leichhardt may refer to:
* Division of Leichhardt, electoral District for the Australian House of Representatives
* Leichhardt Highway, a highway of Queensland, Australia
* Leichhardt Way, an Australian road route
* Leichhardt, New South Wales, inn ...
late at night on 27 July 1959. McPherson and his longtime bodyguard, "Snowy" Rayner (alias Lewis William Hunt) were charged with the murder, but according to Tony Reeves, before they could face a trial the case was dropped on the orders of the
Attorney General of New South Wales
The Attorney General of New South Wales, in formal contexts also Attorney-General or Attorney General for New South Wales and usually known simply as the Attorney General, is a minister in the Government of New South Wales who has responsibil ...
,
Reg Downing
Robert Reginald Downing, (6 November 1904 – 9 September 1994) was an Australian lawyer, textile worker, union organiser and politician. He was a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council for the Labor Party for 31 years from 1940 t ...
.
Hackett was led into an ambush by Hilton Mervyn Clayton, another of McPherson's criminal associates. Clayton was arrested only hours after the shooting—although police never revealed how he was picked up so quickly—and after a 14-hour interrogation he allegedly made a "verbal" admission identifying McPherson and Rayner as the killers. Police also located at least two other material witnesses whose evidence could have incriminated McPherson and Rayner. (
"Verballing" was a technique resorted to by the New South Wales Police Force in the late 1960s and '70s. A policeman or detective would write a "confession" out and produce it in court unsigned by the defendant.)
Acting on Clayton's admission, detectives Fred Krahe and Les Chowne picked up McPherson and Rayner the next day and questioned them both at length. Significantly, during this first interview, Det. Krahe reportedly revealed to McPherson that it was Clayton who had informed on them. McPherson at first claimed that he had been visiting his mother in hospital when the murder took place, but neither man's alibi stood up, and they were both charged with murder and remanded to Long Bay Gaol.
McPherson had good reason to fear that he would not be allowed out on bail, so during the hours he spent on remand at Long Bay, he allegedly dictated a letter, and then used his influence with a corrupt prison officer known as "The Major" to have it smuggled out of prison and delivered to a trusted associate, Christopher George Campbell. Although not written in McPherson's own hand—Reeves suggests it was transcribed by Rayner—the letter was signed "Lenny" and the contents were highly incriminating. Campbell in fact kept the letter—in 1968 he sold it to journalists from ''
The Australian
''The Australian'', with its Saturday edition, ''The Weekend Australian'', is a broadsheet newspaper published by News Corp Australia since 14 July 1964.Bruns, Axel. "3.1. The active audience: Transforming journalism from gatekeeping to gatew ...
'' who were researching a (never-completed) investigation into organised crime.
News Limited
News Corp Australia is an Australian media conglomerate and wholly owned subsidiary of the American News Corp. One of Australia's largest media conglomerates, News Corp Australia employs more than 8,000 staff nationwide and approximately 3,0 ...
executives then took possession of it and kept its existence secret for many years, until a copy was leaked to Tony Reeves by an anonymous contact.
The letter bluntly states that Hackett had been killed "because he had a big mouth" and that McPherson and Rayner had "surrendered" to a person referred to as "Verbal"—which, Reeves argues, meant that McPherson had made a deal with Det. Ray Kelly (whose nickname was "Verbal"). It outlines their scheme to avoid prosecution, states that Clayton had already been "seen" by some of Lenny's men and that he would never testify against them, describes the plan to fabricate alibis, details the bribing of two other witnesses by offering them £1500 to leave the country, and gives instructions for Campbell to deposit £400 in the account of solicitor Phil Roach—a well-known criminal lawyer who, Reeves claims, regularly acted as an intermediary between criminals like McPherson and corrupt police such as Krahe and Kelly.
When the pair faced court later that day, Rayner was remanded in custody. Remarkably though, in spite of the seriousness of the charge against McPherson, and his extensive criminal record, magistrate Roy Harvey released him on £1,000 bail and ordered him to report to police three times a week until the Coroner's case began.
The hearing opened on 21 September 1959, but by this time the two "gigs" (witnesses) referred to in Lenny's letter had left the country. Clayton—who had not been seen since the day after the murder—could not be found, so the case was adjourned and McPherson and Rayner were released on bail. Overnight, Clayton was located by DS Fred Krahe, but when the hearing reopened, Clayton recanted on his earlier statement, flatly denying that McPherson and Rayner were the men he had seen on the night Hackett was killed.
Nevertheless, the coroner found that there was a case to answer and McPherson and Rayner were committed to stand trial in November 1959. Bail was refused at this stage, but at a hearing two days later Justice Brereton released both men on £1,000 bail. Before the trial could go ahead, however, the matter was "no-billed" by state Attorney General Reg Downing. In his account of the case, investigative journalist Tony Reeves reported that, years later, an anonymous barrister who claimed to have been privy to "secretive arrangements" between lawyers, police and politicians at the time, had told him that McPherson had "donated" over $10,000 to Downing to assist in his decision.
Attempted murder of John Unwin, 1960
In 1960 McPherson and Rayner were charged with the
attempted murder
Attempted murder is a crime of attempt in various jurisdictions.
Canada
Section 239 of the ''Criminal Code'' makes attempted murder punishable by a maximum of life imprisonment. If a gun is used, the minimum sentence is four, five or seven ye ...
of
SP bookmaker
A bookmaker, bookie, or turf accountant is an organization or a person that accepts and pays off bets on sporting and other events at agreed-upon odds.
History
The first bookmaker, Ogden, stood at Newmarket in 1795.
Range of events
Bookma ...
John Joseph Unwin. The vehicular ambush took place on a busy central Sydney street at mid-evening, and several shots were fired between the two cars as they repeatedly rammed each other, but Unwin managed to return fire, wounding Rayner in the arm, and he escaped without injury. The charges against McPherson were quietly dropped some time later, in part because Unwin refused to cooperate with police.
End of first marriage
By the early 1960s McPherson's marriage to Dawn Joy had become a sham, and he is known to have had numerous lovers and several children by other women. The end of the marriage was precipitated by a particularly violent attack on his wife in October 1960. After coming home from a drinking binge and discovering that his dinner was not ready, a drunken McPherson savagely pistol-whipped his wife, repeatedly threatened to kill her, and fired shots into the food still cooking on the stove.
Joy was rescued from the house by her father, and she initially agreed with his advice that she should charge her husband with attempted murder. However, at a "conciliation" meeting—arranged and attended by Det. Ray Kelly—she was coerced into dropping the idea. Joy never returned to live with Lenny after the incident, and she subsequently divorced him, signed over her share of their Gladesville home to him, remarried and left Sydney.
In May 1962 McPherson was arrested by two junior detectives for consorting with known criminals, a charge which carried a potential sentence of six months in prison. However, the detectives received a radio order to release McPherson before their car had even arrived at the station, and the two officers involved subsequently stated that the order had come from corrupt detective
Ray "Gunner" Kelly
Ray "Gunner" Kelly, MBE, (3 February 1906 – 11 August 1977) was an Australian police officer who was a detective inspector with NSW Police, he became famous during his career owing to his high-profile cases and results, but who was later alleg ...
.
Murder of Robert Walker, 1963
On 9 July 1963 McPherson (then 42) married for the second time to Marlene Carrol Gilligan, 22. That evening, McPherson allegedly slipped away from his own wedding reception at Balmain and carried out the brutal murder of a rival criminal, Robert James "Pretty Boy" Walker, at
Randwick, in Sydney's east. Walker had already earned McPherson's displeasure by bragging of being "the toughest man in Sydney" but he was marked for death after he attacked one of McPherson's trusted minders, the notorious Sydney criminal Stan "The Man" Smith (aka Raymond Arthur Owens) – described by Reeves as "a psychotic gunman and drug addict".
[Reeves, 2005, p.78]
Walker had bashed Smith for assaulting a prostitute at a
Woolloomooloo
Woolloomooloo ( ) is a harbourside, inner-city eastern suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Woolloomooloo is 1.5 kilometres east of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Sydney. It is in a low ...
hotel; some days later, Smith and several confederates went to Walker's house in
Paddington
Paddington is an area within the City of Westminster, in Central London. First a medieval parish then a metropolitan borough, it was integrated with Westminster and Greater London in 1965. Three important landmarks of the district are Paddi ...
to 'sort him out', but Walker drove them off by firing a salvo of rifle shots through his front door, and one shot wounded Smith in the chest. Walker was charged and he went to ground after the shooting, but he made the mistake of hiding out at the Randwick house of the prostitute Smith had assaulted.
On the evening of the McPherson's wedding reception, at around 6pm, Smith received a call from the prostitute. Smith alerted McPherson, who told his new bride that he had urgent business, and the two men left the reception. They drove to the suburb of Kingsford, changed clothes, picked up a stolen car and drove it to the house where Walker was hiding. They waited until Walker left the woman's house at about 6:15pm, then followed him as he walked down Randwick's main street, Alison Road, on his way to a local pub. Drawing up alongside, McPherson opened fire on Walker at close range with an
Owen submachine gun
The Owen gun, known officially as the Owen machine carbine, was an Australian submachine gun designed by Evelyn Owen in 1938. The Owen was the only entirely Australian-designed and constructed service submachine gun of World War II and was used ...
, hitting him six times and killing him instantly; several shots also struck a parked car and a nearby fence.
Although police were on the scene almost immediately, McPherson and Smith made a clean getaway. They dumped the stolen vehicle, and retrieved their own car. After hiding the machine-gun at an associate's welding business, Smith and McPherson changed back into their own clothes, dumped the clothes they had worn during the shooting into the
Parramatta River
The Parramatta River is an intermediate tide-dominated, drowned valley estuary located in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. With an average depth of , the Parramatta River is the main tributary of Sydney Harbour, a branch of Port Jackson. Seco ...
and returned to the wedding reception in Balmain. According to Tony Reeves, the entire operation took just over half an hour.
The case caused a sensation because of the brazen nature of the killing and the fact that it was the first underworld murder in Sydney involving the use of a machine-gun. However the investigation was led by Ray Kelly, who (according to Reeves) pointed the finger of suspicion away from McPherson and directed it at Raymond 'Ducky' O'Connor, another prominent Sydney criminal and a longstanding enemy of McPherson's. The inquest opened in December 1963, and when it resumed in February 1964 O'Connor was called to give evidence. The inquest ended with the coroner finding that he was unable to recommend any prosecution.
Some months later, in 1965, journalists Ron Saw and Frank Brown wrote an article about the case, published in the new satirical magazine ''
Oz'' in which they alleged that a loose association of prominent Sydney criminals had clubbed together to have Walker killed because of his attempts to establish himself as a
standover man.
Murder of 'Greyhound' Charlie Bourke, 1964
Only days after the conclusion of the inquest into Walker's murder, McPherson allegedly executed another rival. McPherson had reportedly clashed with standover man and greyhound trainer Charles Bourke over the provision of 'protection' for a new illegal
baccarat
Baccarat or baccara (; ) is a card game played at casinos. It is a comparing card game played between two hands, the "player" and the "banker". Each baccarat coup (round of play) has three possible outcomes: "player" (player has the higher score ...
club in the city, and Bourke had also begun to encroach on the protection rackets McPherson was running on illegal gaming houses in the
Newtown area.
McPherson's reprisal was brutal. Bourke was gunned down on the front lawn of his Randwick home in the early hours of the morning of 10 February 1964. Forensic investigations determined that the killer had hidden in nearby bushes and had fired 10 rifle shots into Bourke from a distance, reloaded, then approached the dying man and fired a further 10 shots into him at close range. No-one was ever charged over the killing, but Tony Reeves asserts that sources who had been close to Det. Ray Kelly assured him that there was no doubt that McPherson was the killer, and that Kelly had ensured that McPherson would not fall under suspicion.
Murder of Jacky Steele, 1965
The next rival eliminated by McPherson was murderer, safecracker and standover man Robert Lawrence "Jacky" Steele, whose shooting and subsequent death became one of the most celebrated criminal cases of the period. On the evening of 26 November 1965 Steele was fired upon by four men who approached him in a car, while he was walking down a quiet street in the affluent suburb of
Woollahra
Woollahra is a suburb in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Woollahra is located 5 kilometres east of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the Municipality of Woollahra. W ...
in Sydney's inner east.
He received multiple gunshot wounds—including a shotgun blast that ripped a five-inch hole in his abdomen—but he survived the initial attack and he was able to stagger 200 metres back to his home and drag himself up three flights of stairs to his flat before collapsing. Steele was still conscious when he arrived at
St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney
St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney is a leading tertiary referral hospital and research facility located in Darlinghurst, Sydney. Though funded and integrated into the New South Wales state public health system, it is operated by St Vincent's Heal ...
, where surgeons removed more than 40 shotgun pellets and bullet fragments from his body.
The wounded Steele survived in hospital for almost a month before finally dying from complications arising from his injuries. In that time he briefly became a media star, and reporters interviewed him in his hospital bed, although one newspaper photographer discovered that Steele, wary of another attempt on his life, was keeping a loaded shotgun at the ready under the sheets.
Steele told a ''
Sunday Mirror
The ''Sunday Mirror'' is the Sunday sister paper of the ''Daily Mirror''. It began life in 1915 as the ''Sunday Pictorial'' and was renamed the ''Sunday Mirror'' in 1963. In 2016 it had an average weekly circulation of 620,861, dropping marke ...
'' reporter that his assailants were able to surprise him by driving up to him in a car that resembled an official police vehicle, and that they were all wearing hats of a style then much favoured by detectives. Tony Reeves speculates Steele may have been falsely told to expect a visit from police with whom he was connected, that McPherson may have used his corrupt police connections to gain the use of a real police vehicle and that the gunmen made eight rehearsal runs for the attack before carrying it out.
Like Charlie Bourke, Steele had incurred Lenny's wrath because he was trying to challenge McPherson's control over inner-city standover rackets, but McPherson's considerable ego also played a part. By Steele's own account, his fate was sealed by a feature in the satirical magazine ''
Oz'', entitled "The Oz Guide to Sydney's Underworld", and which was published shortly before the shooting.
Based on information supplied by two Sydney journalists, ''Oz'' editor
Richard Neville compiled a "Top 20" list of Sydney gangsters. The No. 1 spot was left empty but—in a reference to McPherson—the name "Len" was placed at No. 2, and "Len" was also described as a "fence and a fizz-gig" (police informant). The edition sold out in three days and a delighted Steele reportedly bought 20 copies, making great play of the fact that McPherson was not at No. 1 on the list of top criminals.
It may seem unlikely that a man of McPherson's reputation could be disturbed by an article in a satirical student magazine, but Neville has since revealed that, soon after the "Underworld Guide" was published, he received a visit at his Paddington home from McPherson himself. Lenny explained that had obtained Neville's address from a friend's son, who was at university with Neville. He claimed that he had come to assure himself that the ''Oz'' team were not part of a rival gang, and to insist that he was not a "fizz".
In a subsequent edition, ''Oz'' delved further into the case when it published the confidential minutes of a monthly meeting of Sydney detectives, held on 1 December. The leaked document revealed that Steele (then still alive in hospital) had named those he believed had carried out the shooting, and that Steele had privately told police that he was sure that McPherson was behind the shooting, and that it had been ordered because of Lenny's fury over the ''Oz'' article. The fact that the secret report had been obtained from an underworld source was described by ''Oz'' as a "devastating indictment of police".
The late 1960s and beyond
McPherson continued his rise to power through the late 1960s, masterminding the bloody and highly publicized Sydney "gang wars" of the period, during which he allegedly coordinated (and occasionally took part in) the systematic murder of several key rivals. This included the sensational 1967 car-bombing murder of
brothel
A brothel, bordello, ranch, or whorehouse is a place where people engage in sexual activity with prostitutes. However, for legal or cultural reasons, establishments often describe themselves as massage parlors, bars, strip clubs, body rub par ...
owner Joe Borg, and the killings of his old enemy Ducky O'Connor, and Stewart John Regan. By eliminating his rivals, McPherson became one of the most powerful criminals in Australia; by the end of the 1970s, with corrupt police, prison officers, lawyers and politicians on his payroll, he was able to conduct nearly all of his criminal activities with impunity.
According to biographer Tony Reeves, when it suited him, McPherson acted as an informant to
NSW police
The New South Wales Police Force (NSW Police Force; previously the New South Wales Police Service and New South Wales Police) is the primary law enforcement agency of the state of New South Wales, Australia. Divided into Police Area Commands (P ...
. In this role, he figured in one of Australia's biggest manhunts, the 1966 search for prison escapees
Ronald Ryan
Ronald Joseph Ryan (21 February 1925 – 3 February 1967) was the last person to be legally executed in Australia. Ryan was found guilty of shooting and killing warder George Hodson during an escape from Pentridge Prison, Victoria, in 1965. R ...
and Peter John Walker, who had fled to NSW after a daring escape from
Melbourne
Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...
's
Pentridge Prison
HM Prison Pentridge was an Australian prison that was first established in 1851 in Coburg, Victoria. The first prisoners arrived in 1851. The prison officially closed on 1 May 1997.
Pentridge was often referred to as the "Bluestone College", " ...
, during which prison guard George Hodson was killed. Ryan and Walker were eventually captured in the grounds of
Concord Repatriation General Hospital
Concord Repatriation General Hospital (abbreviated CRGH), commonly referred to as Concord Hospital, is a major hospital in Sydney, Australia, on Hospital Road in Concord. It is a teaching hospital of Sydney Medical School at the University of ...
in Sydney in a major operation led by Det.
Ray "Machine Gun" Kelly. According to Reeves, McPherson was approached by Ryan and Walker, who sought his help to leave the country, but McPherson then arranged a bogus meeting with them at Concord and tipped off the police to their whereabouts. Ryan was subsequently convicted and hanged for the murder of Hodson, becoming the last man in Australia to be executed.
McPherson is also believed to have facilitated the establishment of close contact between key Australian organised crime figures and members of the
Chicago Outfit
The Chicago Outfit (also known as the Outfit, the Chicago Mafia, the Chicago Mob, the Chicago crime family, the South Side Gang or The Organization) is an Italian-American organized crime syndicate or crime family based in Chicago, Illinois, tha ...
, during the late 1960s. Australian gangsters involved included Ronny Lee,
George Freeman and
Stan Smith
Stanley Roger Smith (born December 14, 1946) is an American former professional tennis player. Smith is best known to non-tennis players as the namesake of a popular brand of tennis shoes. A world No. 1 player and two-time major singles cham ...
. Perhaps the most notorious of these meetings took place at Sydney, in 1969, during a visit by reputed US mafia
hitman
Contract killing is a form of murder or assassination in which one party hires another party to kill a targeted person or persons. It involves an illegal agreement which includes some form of payment, monetary or otherwise. Either party may be ...
Joseph "Dan" Testa,
[David Hickie (1985). ''The Prince and the Premier: The story of Perce Galea, Bob Askin and the others who gave organised crime its start in Australia'' (p. 238). NSW, Australia: Angus & Robertson Publishers.] and his associate Nick Giordano. On that occasion, McPherson took Testa and Giordano on a hunting excursion, on which a subsequent feature film
''Dirty Deeds'' (2002) was loosely based. The following year, McPherson visited Testa in Chicago.
McPherson is also thought to have been a significant figure in the development of the illegal
heroin
Heroin, also known as diacetylmorphine and diamorphine among other names, is a potent opioid mainly used as a recreational drug for its euphoric effects. Medical grade diamorphine is used as a pure hydrochloride salt. Various white and brow ...
trade in South-East Asia in the early 1970s.
During the
Moffitt Royal Commission
The Royal Commission of Inquiry in respect of certain matters relating to allegations of organised crime in clubs also known as the Moffitt Royal Commission (1973–74) was one of the first Australian Royal commissions to specifically invest ...
into organised crime, an informant alleged that Testa, as a representative of the Mafia, "was conspiring with McPherson and a poker machine company,
Bally Manufacturing
Bally Manufacturing, later renamed Bally Entertainment, was an American company that began as a pinball and slot machine manufacturer, and later expanded into casinos, video games, health clubs, and theme parks. It was acquired by Hilton Hotel ...
, to corner the New South Wales market." Testa was later killed in 1981 in a car bomb explosion in a car park near
Fort Lauderdale
A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''facere'' ...
, Florida, USA. McPherson was one of the witnesses called before the Commission, which ran from 1973–74.
In 1984 the
Gang Wars
is a 1989 2D beat 'em up arcade game developed by Alpha Denshi and published by SNK.
Plot
The setting takes place in New York City, following martial artists Mike and Jackie, who heard an evil gang led by the antagonist, Jaguar, are terrorizin ...
had started. There were three major gangs: McPherson's Team,
Neddy Smith
Arthur Stanley "Neddy" Smith (27 November 1944 – 8 September 2021) was an Australian criminal who was convicted of drug trafficking, theft, rape, armed robbery, and murder.
Smith served a life sentence since 1989 and was imprisoned in Lithgow ...
's gang which was backed by
Roger Rogerson
Roger Caleb Rogerson (born 3 January 1941) is a former detective sergeant of the New South Wales Police Force, and a convicted murderer.
During Rogerson's career, he was one of the most decorated officers in the police force, having received at l ...
and there was Barry McCann backed by other police. With a pile of dead bodies, it was back to business.
Death
He was eventually arrested, tried and jailed in the 1990s after ordering the bashing of a business rival. He died of a heart attack in
Cessnock Gaol on 28 August 1996, aged 75. He was buried on 3 September 1996 at the Field of Mars Cemetery,
North Ryde
North Ryde is a suburb located in the Northern Sydney region of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. North Ryde is located 15 kilometres north-west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City ...
, Sydney.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:McPherson, Lenny
Australian organised crime figures
1921 births
1996 deaths
20th-century Australian criminals
Australian people who died in prison custody
Organised crime in Sydney
Australian crime bosses