The bush copper and the missing hitchhiker

WAS a celebrated police officer – a friend of disgraced ex-commissioner Terry Lewis and former premier Joh Bjelke Petersen – somehow involved in the disappearance of a hitchhiker 33 years ago?

The family believe a sketch of the last person seen with their missing brother, reportedly Merv Stevenson (pictured), was never properly acted upon by detectives.

HE’S the last of the Untouchables. Some might call him the Queensland Police Force’s modern day version of famed cattle duffer Captain Starlight.

Others linked him to police corruption, the Mr Bigs of the Calabrian mafia, vast outback cannabis plantations, stock theft, and ten suspect suicides of which he reportedly got financial benefit.

He rose to the rank of Superintendent and was close to the infamous “Godfather” Tony Murphy, disgraced ex-Police Commissioner Terry Lewis and former Premier Joh Bjelke Peterson in the crooked old days of the “Rat Pack”.

Maverick MP Bob Katter stood up in federal Parliament in 2006 and told of the spectre of corruption and dark deeds that hung over the policeman as a ringleader of the so-called “crooked creek cattle company”.

“In North Queensland, some 18 people gave evidence about it. Of those 18, six were dead within two or three years and the remaining 12 were put up on trumped up charges of one type or another,” Mr Katter said.

But none of it ever stuck.

Now, 14 years after his death, the late Townsville Police Superintendent Mervyn Henry Stevenson is back in the frame.

The family of missing hitchhiker Tony Jones insist the decorated officer is central to an upcoming inquest into the 33-year-old murder mystery.

Tony Jones, 20, was hitchhiking between Townsville and Mount Isa in November 1982 as part of a six-month working holiday when he vanished without a trace.

Missing man Tony Jones, 20, was hitchhiking between Townsville and Mount Isa in November 1982 as part of a six-month working holiday.

Tony Jones’ brothers Mark, Brian and Tim Jones searched for the body of their missing brother.

No body was ever found but the first coronial inquest in 2002 found Jones was a “victim of homicide”. There is a $250,000 reward for information to help solve the case.

His family have lobbied ever since for a new inquest citing a slew of neglected leads. They say police botched the initial case and believe a sketch of the last person seen with their missing brother, reportedly Merv Stevenson, was never properly acted upon by detectives.

Last year — in what homicide detectives said was a major breakthrough — police uncovered fresh leads in the Hughenden district but no charges were laid.

The cold case investigation is now before the State Coroner to hold a second inquest, at a date yet to be set.

In a 34-year career, Stevenson’s first police commendation out of a total of 10 was for single-handedly tracking on horseback and capturing 12 Aborigines on the run after the murder of a native policeman in Cape York in 1950.

“It’s a stitch-up,’’ Merv’s son Paul Stevenson, of Townsville, told The Courier Mail.

“I wish the family all the best in their quest to uncover the mystery of Tony Jones’s disappearance.

“But they’re trying to make Dad out to be the Aussie Al Capone.

“You think about it, ten murders, embezzlement, mafia drug links, cattle duffing, you name it, not even Terry Lewis or Tony Murphy would have got away with that.

“Not even in the most corrupt police system in the world would anyone have got away with that.’’

His Dad did not feature in the Fitzgerald inquiry and was a legendary figure in the police force and the epitome of the old school bush policeman who is honoured in the Roma Street police museum in Brisbane, he said.

He believes an identikit drawn up ten years after the Tony Jones disappearance in 1982 by a private investigator for the family that puts his Dad in the Rising Sun Hotel drinking with the hitchhiker the night before he vanished was “trumped up”.

“It’s been investigated and reinvestigated. Dad did drink there, but there is no chance he was even remotely involved in the disappearance, they’re just digging up old bones and raking over my Dad’s reputation,’’ Mr Stevenson said.

“Ironically I know both the blokes who the police now believe did murder Tony Jones and all will be revealed at the upcoming inquest.

“I repeat I for one can’t wait for the inquest to clear Dad publicly after all this slander and also see the Jones family have closure.”

It was in the deep north that “Ringer Stevo” made his name. As the last of the corned beef and damper coppers, his skills as a horseman, cattleman and bushman made him a tough adversary and dogged man hunter.

A skilled horseman and tracker, Mervyn Henry Stevenson was a tough adversary and dogged man hunter.

In a 34-year career in the police service, his first police commendation out of a total of 10 was for single-handedly tracking on horseback and capturing 12 Aborigines on the run after the murder of a native policeman in Cape York in 1950.

The ex-stock squad officer and others spent 15 months in the rugged Carnarvon Ranges, gathering evidence on a crew of cattle thieves. They disguised themselves as prospectors and stockmen and one of their troop infiltrated the gang.

In his later years, the lawman had his own reputation as a cattle duffer.

He was a senior detective in the 70s and 80s when the Griffith-based “Ndrangheta” mafia operated large-scale marijuana plantations near Mareeba.

Police corruption was rife and for nearly 16 years the “grass castles” and criminal links including heroin shipments being run into the Gulf, in an estimated $60 billion empire of La Famiglia, was the best kept but dirtiest secret of “the Joke”, with police, judges and politicians alike on the take.

The officer in charge of police in North Queensland at the time of a series of murders and suspicious deaths was Rat Pack ringleader Tony Murphy.

Tony Murphy, centre, is congratulated by colleagues in 1972 after being discharged on perjury charges related to the National Hotel Royal Commission.

Detective Jack Connors was found with a single gunshot wound to the head in the carpark of the Mareeba RSL, in an apparent suicide, the same night he told fellow officers he was going to arrest a “Mr Big” of the drug trade that would shake the nation in 1978.

Dope growers Paul and Vita Clarke, part of the “Ocker Nostra” drug trade, were shot dead in bed with a 12-gauge shotgun and their bodies and house set alight in an unsolved murder in Julatten in 1981.

Detective Merv Stevenson was ordered to produce a top-level police dossier into the illegal drug trade in north Queensland that was reportedly taken to Canberra by drug squad officers — but it never saw the light of day.

Mervyn Henry Stevenson – a legendary figure in the police force – is honoured in the Roma Street police museum in Brisbane.

“I don’t think Merv was a killer, that’s not his form,’’ ex-CIB Detective Barry Maff, who worked with him in Charters Towers, said.

“Don’t underestimate old Stevo, he was a very astute, very cunning man, who “lifted” quite a few head of cattle in his day.

“But he was more of a fixer. It was more that a lot of what he did was to help corrupt cops get out of trouble. He could make things go away.

“He was held in high esteem by a lot of his peers. But his biggest trouble was his ego. That’s what brought him undone in the end.’’

Sir Terence (Terry) Lewis, former Queensland Police Commissioner was convicted by a jury of taking bribes totalling $600,000, and sentenced to 14 years jail. Picture: Eric Donnelly

Maverick MP Bob Katter stood up in federal Parliament in 2006 and told of the spectre of corruption and dark deeds that hung over policeman Merv Stevenson as a ringleader of the so-called “crooked creek cattle company”.

Police lead investigator Senior Sergeant John Mahoney has handed the latest report into the Tony Jones disappearance over to the Coroner ahead of a pre-inquest hearing in April.

He said there had been a “lot of rumour and innuendo” about the late Superintendent over the years.

“It’s no secret the family think Merv is a person of interest in the investigation,’’ Senior Sergeant Mahoney said.

“He has certainly been investigated, as has every other person of interest, and it is now up to the Coroner to decide if Merv will play a part in the inquest.

“We’re just trying to bring justice to the family.’’

Mark Jones, brother of the missing hitchhiker, told how his family had endured three decades of disappointment over the “cover-ups, stuff-ups and bungled handling” by Queensland Police in one of the north’s biggest murder mysteries.

Mark Jones, brother of missing backpacker Tony Jones, visited the Rising Sun Hotel in Townsville. The hotel, which has shifted one block, was the last place his brother was sighted before disappearing in 1982.

Tony Jones has been missing for 33 years.

“It is remarkable this notorious police officer may have had links, however tenuous, to our brother,’’ Mr Jones said.

“Witnesses say they saw the man in the identikit sketch, identified as Merv Stevenson, drinking with Tony in the bar the night before he vanished off the face off this earth.’’

It may be pure coincidence or something more sinister, he said.

“We now know of the depths of corruption in the old days of the Queensland Police. We know how police protected other police.

“Stevenson was idolised by some officers. He was the last of the true Untouchables.

“And I wouldn’t be surprised if there are still a few remnants of his old crew still in the police service.

“The public have a right to know he was thoroughly investigated.

“We hope this inquest will show how, if at all, things have changed in the culture of policing in Queensland.”

Brian Jones, the brother of missing man Tony Jones, sent then Attorney-General Cameron Dick a letter asking him to "walk in his shoes". The suggestion was a play on the Bligh government's "walk a day in my shoes" campaign.