Two drums of super-grade petrol and liquid floor polish were tipped on their sides at the ground floor entrance to the club and ignited.

A huge fireball shot up the stairs and into the club before flames burned its synthetic carpet, filling the place with carbon monoxide. Medical experts later deduced that club patrons had about one minute of consciousness to escape.

CHAPTER 1: The gangsters wife

CHAPTER 3: The night a family vanished

CHAPTER 4: The murder of Mrs X and her children

CHAPTER 5: Return to Dorchester Street

“From the moment that petrol was ignited the nightclub was turned into a hell-hole,” one police officer commented.

Had the deadly firebombing been a part of John Andrew Stuart’s warnings about a Sydney gangster takeover? He had been warning the owners of the club, the Little brothers, that the Whiskey was going to be hit.

Former Sydney detective Roger Rogerson – who was jailed for life in 2016 for the murder of Jamie Gao – was flown up to help in the investigation. He knew John Andrew Stuart as a “lunatic”.

“Stuart kept saying it was Sydney criminals, the Mr Bigs – Lennie McPherson, George Freeman; he was dropping a lot of names,” said Rogerson.

“And there was a journalist (Brian Bolton) up there writing up stories about Sydney crims taking over the Valley. It was all bullshit he was getting from Stuart. It was a way of setting up an alibi. It was all crap.”

One of the first suspects brought in for questioning was none other than Billy McCulkin. He was interrogated for several hours before being released.

By 10am that day he was in the bar of the Treasury Hotel at the corner of George and Elizabeth streets in the CBD where he talked with his friend (and future wife) Estelle Long.

“I was living and working at the Treasury Hotel and when I got into the bar at opening time (10am) Billy was already there,” Long later recalled to police.

“He looked terrible, kind of panicky and I asked him what was wrong. He told me he’d been picked up by the police about the Whiskey Au Go Go fire. I didn’t know what had happened

and he told me about the fire and all the people who had died.

“He said he had been there at the police station all night and that they gave him a hard time. Billy didn’t tell me what he told the police but he seemed very worried by this.”

Stuart also went in to headquarters with a solicitor, and was similarly subjected to intense questioning. Stuart would also be let go without charge.

The formal inquest into the fire actually opened on the same day of the fire itself – Thursday, March 8 – before coroner D.R.Birch, and would continue to hear evidence on Friday.

Less than 36 hours after the fire, Barbara fled Dorchester St with her children. She took the girls to separate friends and she went to stay that Saturday night with her friend from the milk bar, Ellen Gilbert.

“…after the burning of the Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub in the Valley, Mrs McCulkin phoned me and asked me could she come to my place and stay the night with me,” Gilbert would later tell police.

“She … arrived at my home conveyed there by her husband, Billy McCulkin and another person. After she arrived at my home she said she did not want to stay at home as she was very upset and she said something about the police and her house being bugged.

“I formed the opinion that Mrs McCulkin was very frightened and concerned for the safety of herself and her children and she had deliberately split them up.”

Why had Barbara McCulkin taken such drastic action? Did she have information concerning the culprits behind the firebombing? What had she overheard at 6 Dorchester St?

Whatever it was, it was enough to flee her husband and her home.

Late the following evening, Billy McCulkin rang Gilbert’s house.

“…she received a telephone call and she told me that she was relieved, and she said her husband had called and that John Stuart had been arrested for the Whiskey Au Go Go fire,” Gilbert later recalled to police.

“She borrowed some money from me for a cab and then left. Mrs McCulkin informed me that John Andrew Stuart was a friend and that he had stayed with her and her husband at their home on occasions.”

On Monday, March 12, with Stuart and his British-born mate James Finch safely in custody, the inquest abruptly ended.

“Yes, gentlemen, well, it’s quite clear that my function at this stage is to adjourn the inquest…to a date and time to be fixed…,” said Coroner Birch. (The inquest into the mass deaths at the Whiskey was never resumed.)

Barbara wasn’t the only one worried in the aftermath of the Whiskey. So too were members of the Clockwork Orange Gang.

Peter Hall later said at the trial of Garry Dubois that having done the job at Torinos, he and his mates were concerned that police might link them to the Whiskey.

“I recall a few weeks after we did the Torinos the Whiskey Au Go Go fire happened,” Hall would later confess.

“It made us all panic because people were killed and we were concerned that we would be implicated. We were out doing break and enters that night, the four of us in two cars. I was with Keithy (Meredith). I am sure none of us were involved. I am also sure because I would have found out about it. Obviously when we found out about it the next day we realised they might look at the Torinos. I am aware that it has been suggested that Tom Hamilton was involved in the Whiskey Au Go Go fire but I don’t believe that it’s true.”

Stuart and Finch were both arrested by that Sunday night and were slated to appear in court the following morning.

Both men were interviewed by police who later produced unsigned records of interview. They alleged that Finch had confessed to the crime.

In the magistrates court on Monday, March 12, Stuart caused pandemonium. He shouted his innocence and had to be restrained by six police officers. He had to be dragged and pushed into the dock. At one point, Detective Pat Glancy had Stuart in a headlock.

Both were charged with multiple counts of murder and arson.

“I’ve got nothing to do with this,” Stuart shouted. “The police told us they had to arrest someone. I didn’t commit that crime.”

Finch said: “I had nothing to do with it.”

Debate would rage for decades about whether or not other senior Queensland police had “bricked” or verballed the pair. Evidence would eventually emerge that both Stuart and Finch were brutally bashed during questioning.

At their committal hearing in the Holland Park Magistrates Court in June, 1973, Stuart’s brother Dan said Stuart had told him of his plan to extort $100 a week from various nightclubs.

Stuart was incensed: “You are lying! You are lying! You are lying for a reward, Dan.” (A $50,000 reward for information leading to a conviction was issued.)

The committal was subsequently interrupted when Finch swallowed metal fragments and was admitted to hospital. Stuart also swallowed twisted paper clips and was hospitalised.

A week after the trial opened on September 10, Stuart was once again in hospital having metal pieces removed from his stomach.

Justice Lucas tired of Stuart’s antics. He ordered the trial to go ahead in the defendant’s absence. He said Stuart would be provided transcripts of each day’s proceedings.

There was no scientific evidence to link Stuart and Finch to the mass murder. In lieu of that, the prosecution went to town on Stuart’s bizarre alibi about a Sydney underworld takeover of Brisbane clubs.

A cavalcade of gangsters were called as witnesses.

Lennie “Mr Big” McPherson denied Stuart’s claim that he and Stuart had arranged to meet on the Gold Coast in September, 1972, where McPherson had a holiday house.

McPherson admitted he knew a man named (the gunman and serial killer John) Regan.

Underworld figure James “Paddles” Anderson and Regan also made a star appearance. Regan was described in court as a “company manager’. He testified he had no interest in Brisbane nightclubs.

As for Finch, he denied ever lighting the fire. He said on the morning of the deadly blaze he was home in bed.

On October 22, both Finch and Stuart were found guilty on a joint charge of having murdered Jennifer Denise Davie, one of the Whiskey victims. The jury took just two hours to return its verdicts.

Stuart was brought to court from hospital manacled and under heavy police guard to be sentenced.

He spat in the face of Chief Crown Prosecutor L.G. Martin, QC, saying: “You’ll never wash that off – you’ll have it on your face until the day you die.”

Justice Lucas sentenced the pair to life imprisonment.

Officially, the saga of the Whiskey Au Go Go was over.

But it was just the beginning of Barbara McCulkin’s problems.

Barbara and Billy had reached the point of no return in their marriage. And there was the baggage she carried from what she learned about his and his friends’ criminal enterprises. Particularly the fires at the beginning of the year.

She was tired of Billy’s endless philandering. (He was seeing another women, Estelle Long, at this time, and was about to move into her flat in Juliette St, Annerley, just south of the Brisbane CBD.)

Barbara was ready to get on with her life. She was booked in for surgery to remove stretch marks around her breasts and stomach.

She wanted to meet someone else and secure some stability for herself and her girls. And to do that, she wanted to look shipshape.

She was also considering leaving the snack bar and getting a new job – perhaps in one of the big department stores like Myer.

It was a beginning, of sorts.

Barbara McCulkin couldn’t know she and her girls had just a few months to live.

BEFORE THE DELUGE

The rain seemed to go on forever in the spring of 1973.

Billy McCulkin was enjoying his first regular employment in years, working as a dogman on the construction of a high-rise office block at 444 Queen St.

The site was just around the corner from the notorious National Hotel, owned by Jack, Rolly and Max Roberts.

The National (along with the Belfast) was the drinking hole of choice for corrupt police, and had been at the epicentre of a royal commission into allegations that a prostitution racket was being run out of the establishment with the blessing of senior police, including commissioner Frank Bischof.

Billy, naturally, spent a lot of time drinking there with his mates after work. He was also a regular patron of the Federal Hotel, where his girlfriend Estelle Long worked.

They had begun a relationship earlier in 1973 but late in that year things had started getting serious.

He decided to move into Long’s flat in Annerley. But his new mistress laid down some ground rules.

She was aware he’d been involved in various crimes in the past. Long told him she wanted him to “get away from that” and she didn’t want his old friends hanging around the flat, just as they had done at 6 Dorchester St, Highgate Hill.

“The reason for me leaving the family home was because I could not get on with my wife and she could not get on with me,” Billy would reveal in a police statement.

Detective Basil Hicks remembered: “…well I don’t think she was sort of overjoyed (at him leaving) but I don’t think she was ready to burst into tears, you know, it was just sort of accepted, I think.”

With McCulkin gone, Vince O’Dempsey began showing interest in Barbara McCulkin. He would sometimes drop her off to work at the Milky Way snack bar in his distinctive 1972-model orange and black-striped Valiant Charger.

Sometimes he’d pick her up after work and drive her back to Dorchester St.

It was during these meetings that O’Dempsey told Barbara of her husband Billy’s numerous affairs, including details of his relationship with Estelle Long.

Barbara in turn told her workmate Ellen Gilbert that O’Dempsey had taken her to his flat in Nethercote Court at 66 Elizabeth St, Rosalie, but “nothing happened”.

He would often take her on “drives” in his Charger. She said she had no great affection for O’Dempsey and told Gilbert she had heard a story that he had on occasion tied up his girlfriend, Dianne Pritchard, in the place they were living and went out.

Barbara had no personal safety issues with O’Dempsey. She knew that her husband Billy had trusted Vince and, to a degree, so did she. It was Billy she was more afraid of.

In fact she had relayed her concerns to her neighbour Peter Nisbet, who lived with friends in the house next door at 4 Dorchester St. Nisbet’s bedroom was in the front right-hand corner of the house and overlooked the McCulkin’s yard and kitchen at the front of the house. The houses were physically close.

When Billy McCulkin was still living in the home, Nisbet couldn’t help but notice that he was physically violent to his wife.

Billy would later admit to “hitting” his wife.

“I didn’t assault her, no,” he would tell a coronial inquest.

“I didn’t run at her with a baseball bat or anything like that. Perhaps we had an argument and she might have struck me and I might have struck her.”

After Billy moved in with Long, Nisbet observed Vince O’Dempsey’s distinctive car parked often in front of the McCulkin property. He deduced that O’Dempsey “had more than a passing interest” in Barbara McCulkin.

Barbara liked Nisbet. They would talk over the fence when he mowed the lawn.

Towards the end of 1973 she confided in Nisbet that she was frightened of Billy and wanted to get away from him.

“On occasions Mrs McCulkin spoke about John Andrew Stuart and the Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub fire as well as the Torino nightclub fire,” Nisbet later said in a statement to police. “She stated that she was in a position to put her husband away in jail for offences which he had committed of which she knew about.”

He also told a coroner’s court in 1980: “…the context in which Bill is mentioned in it (the fires of early 1973) is that, you know, that he’d given her a hard time at certain stages and, you know, she wanted to get away and if she could, you know, it’d be a way out, by putting him up the creek.”

Nisbet said Barbara seemed to think Stuart wasn’t involved in torching the Whiskey and that “he’d been set up for it”.

Nisbet later elaborated in another statement to police: “I can recall one conversation with Barbara where we spoke for an hour to an hour and a half. Barbara told me that her husband was associated with criminals and she had enough on Billy to put him away for years with what she knew.

“In the same conversation Barbara told me that her husband Billy McCulkin had something to do with the Whiskey Au Go Go fire and that if the cops had asked him the right questions they would have found out more people were involved in the Whiskey Au Go Go fire.

“Barbara indicated that Finch and Stuart were not the primary movers of the Whiskey and that they were just collateral damage or an easy get for the cops. She seemed to think Stuart was set up for the Whiskey Au Go Go fire.”

Across town, Vince O’Dempsey and his partner Dianne Pritchard (aka Cheryl Evans) opened their own massage parlour in an arcade at 518 Lutwyche Rd, Lutwyche. It was called the Polonia Health Studio.

Within a few weeks the parlour was visited by Crime Intelligence Unit detective Basil Hicks.

“Part of my duties (at the CIU) was to investigate any organisation behind prostitution in massage parlours,” Hicks later said in a police statement.

“I remember late in the year 1973, in either late October or early November, visiting the Polonia massage parlour in the arcade at 518 Lutwyche Rd.

“I can remember seeing a woman there named Dianne Pritchard. She said that she was living with a man named Vince O’Dempsey. Vince O’Dempsey was known to me as a convicted criminal. I can remember seeing him in the back room of the massage parlour. I did not speak to him.”

Hicks also interviewed Margaret Ward. Hicks then passed on the information that Pritchard and Ward were acting as prostitutes to the then highly corrupt Queensland Police Licensing Branch.

Both Pritchard and Ward were issued summons’ on prostitution charges. They were due to appear in court on November 16.

Ward was just a country girl from outside Gympie. When she moved to Brisbane to find work she was not aware of big city vice and that massage parlours did not necessarily offer legitimate massages. She was trapped before she even realised her mistake and was living out of the Vogue Private Hotel in South Brisbane.

Ward was terrified about her court appearance and extremely worried that her parents would discover she was being prosecuted for prostitution.

On November 15, the day before her court hearing, Ward, with Pritchard and O’Dempsey, saw solicitor Pat Nolan in the city about the imminent case. Ward was going to have to give evidence against Pritchard and, in turn, O’Dempsey.

The next day, Ward failed to appear in court and was convicted in her absence. All of her clothes and belongings remained untouched in her room at the Vogue Private Hotel.

On Saturday, November 24, Ward was reported as a missing person by her stepmother. (She has not been seen since and no one has ever been charged in relation to her disappearance.)

Barbara McCulkin was admitted to St Andrew’s Hospital on Wickham Tce, on Friday, December 7, 1973, for cosmetic surgery to the stomach and to removed stretch marks from her stomach and her breasts. She finished up at the Milky Way café the week before.

Workmate Ellen Gilbert said: “Mrs McCulkin informed me that her husband was extremely jealous of her and she further informed me that she had particularly severe stretch marks in the abdomen area and had informed that she was very conscious of these stretch marks and would not have an affair with another man owing to her appearance and had arranged to have the operation to remove the stretch marks and so begin a new life for herself as her husband had deserted her.”

While in hospital, Vicki and Leanne McCulkin were looked after by one of Barbara’s friends.

According to police statements, Billy McCulkin asked Estelle Long to help pay for Barbara’s operation.

“I’m not sure why but Billy said it was an operation Barbara ‘had to have’ and so I assisted with the money,” said Long.

“I don’t remember the amount but I remember it was a fair bit.” (It was a ruse by Billy. Barbara would go on to claim the cost of the surgery from Medibank.)

Barbara was discharged from hospital around December 14, 1973. Billy collected her from the hospital and took her home to Dorchester St. He later claimed he had visited her every day in hospital and brought her flowers and chocolates.

Billy was giving his wife and children a lot of attention after the operation.

“I knew that Billy was going back and visiting Barbara and the children and that he spent a lot of time at the house when Barbara was first out of hospital,” Long said in a statement.

“I recall that at the time Billy knew that O’Dempsey was showing interest in Barbara, there was reference to O’Dempsey taking her for drives and Billy was aware of his interest in her.”

Around this time, Nisbet, the neighbour, was awoken at around 2 o’clock one morning by lights in the McCulkin’s kitchen shining on his bedroom window.

His first thought was that Billy McCulkin had turned up at the house to give Barbara “a hard time”.

“…so I went over to check to see if she was OK and Mr O’Dempsey was there then, on that occasion, and I was…I spoke mainly to Barbara and she said, ‘This is Vic O’Dempsey’ or ‘Vince O’Dempsey’…and I said, ‘Good day’ and went home again,” Nisbet later said.

“That was it. She was OK. There was another fellow there as well.”

Billy McCulkin was no longer living at the house but he visited often, and O’Dempsey’s regular presence ensured that a criminal milieu still orbited 6 Dorchester St.

Garry “Shorty” Dubois was occasionally there; Tommy “Clockwork Orange” Hamilton; Keith “Jimmy” Meredith; and Peter “The Three” Hall.

Still, the life of the family rolled on, and Barbara began making preparations for the New Year. Schoolbooks were bought for the girls.

And despite the wet summer – southeast Queensland was saturated from constant rain, not helped by Tropical Cyclone Wanda pushing monsoonal troughs south – the McCulkin girls made the most of their holiday, playing with the Gayton girls who lived across the road at 7 Dorchester St. Janet, 13, went to Yeronga High School with Vicki McCulkin, and Juneen, who was about to turn 10 on January 16, 1974, was good friends with Leanne McCulkin.

Barbara continued taking her children and the Gayton sisters to the Red Hill Skate Arena on Enoggera Tce most Saturday nights. She continued to put out food for the stray cats of Dorchester St.

She was still recovering from her surgery and had to wear special medical brassieres. Barbara was due to meet her surgeon, Dr Everingham, in his offices at Morris Towers on Wickham Tce in Brisbane’s Spring Hill at 11.30am on Friday, January 25, for a check-up.

Meanwhile, Billy was still splitting his life between Estelle Long at Annerley and his family in Highgate Hill. While he had a job for once he was still drinking most of it away. There was no evidence he was giving Barbara any regular cash to upkeep the house and feed the children, though he claimed he paid the rent on the Dorchester St house.

Billy spent most of Tuesday, January 15, with his wife at Dorchester St. They discussed the state of their marriage.

It was decided that Billy McCulkin would leave Dorchester St and the marriage for good, and he packed most of his belongings in a suitcase.

The next day, McCulkin by chance saw Barbara on a council bus in the city. It was about 11am and the bus was travelling down Queen St towards Fortitude Valley.

“She waved to me and I waved back to her, and I mouthed out to her, ‘I might come over tonight’,” Billy McCulkin later told police.

“…she nodded her head and the bus took off and that’s the last I ever seen her.”

CHAPTER 1: The gangsters wife

CHAPTER 3: The night a family vanished

CHAPTER 4: The murder of Mrs X and her children

CHAPTER 5: Return to Dorchester Street