Whiskey Au Go Go Inquest: Court hears cops botched investigation into Torino’s restaurant fire

Police botched an investigation into an arson attack at a Fortitude Valley restaurant less than two weeks before the Whiskey Au Go Go was firebombed, an inquest has heard.

Police botched an investigation into an arson attack at a Fortitude Valley restaurant less than two weeks before the Whiskey Au Go Go fire, despite being given prior warning of how and when it would occur.

Detectives then failed to investigate “reliable and genuine” information about who may have been responsible for the blaze at Torino’s restaurant on February 25, 1973, an inquest has heard.

Retired police officer Donald Alfred Russell told the Brisbane Coroners Court on Friday that when he was working as a Brisbane detective in 1973 he was told by a source there would be a break and enter and arson at Torino’s restaurant.

His source was David Stanley Tresize, a customs officer working for the Australian Customs Department in Brisbane.

Former customs officer David Tresize leaves Brisbane Coroner's Court after giving evidence. He provided police prior warning about an arson attack at Torino's restaurant in Fortitude Valley less than two weeks before the Whiskey Au Go Go fire. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Sarah Marshall

“He told me that they had this info that Torino’s restaurant, nightclub was going to be set alight the following weekend,” Mr Russell said.

“He told me that Billy McCulkin was going to set fire to Torino’s restaurant the following weekend, he didn’t know what night it was …

“He convinced me that it was real and I believed everything that he said. I had no reason to disbelieve him. I don’t know the name of his source but I dare say that he did have some contact.”

In the days leading up to the fire at Torino’s, Mr Russell warned higher ranking officers, including Detective Inspector Mervyn Chalmers.

In a report provided to police, Mr Russell wrote: “I’ve received a confidential information that there is a break, enter and steal and arson to be committed on the Torino nightclub, Ann St, Fortitude Valley on either the night of Saturday 24, February 1973 or the night of Sunday 25, February 1973”.

Mr Russell said in the report that the fire would most likely occur on the Sunday, which it did.

“My informant is a most reliable person and he is confident that his information is genuine,” he wrote.

“My informant states that this is a grudge matter”.

But on the night of the fire, police officers at the local station were waiting for the club owner to drop off a key.

“Mr Chalmers told me they were down at the Fortitude Valley Police Station waiting for the owners to show up with a key. And that was on the second night,” he said.

Mr Tresize told the inquiry he was shocked that “nothing had been done” by police to prevent the Torino’s fire after he had disclosed the information to Mr Russell.

“I was absolutely stunned when nothing happened as a result of it,” Mr Tresize said.

“I took him at his word, he told me that he would do it.”

Kim Carroll, who lost his mother Decima to the Whiskey Au Go Go fire less than two weeks after the Torino’s fire, leaves the Coroner's Court in Brisbane. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Sarah Marshall

Mr Tresize said that prior to the fire, one of his informants provided information that nightclub owner Geraldo Bellino had engaged people including Mr McCulkin and Vincent O’Dempsey to firebomb Torino’s.

When Mr Russell approached an investigating officer at the scene of the blaze to tell him he had information that the Bellinos may have been responsible, his concerns were swept aside.

“I felt that the information had been verified so I suggested as softly as I said to him that [the] Bellinos could be responsible because that was the info I had from the start, that Bellinos had paid $500 to Billy McCulkin,” Mr Russell said.

“He said, ‘you’re not suggesting that Jerry and Tony Bellino are not responsible for this? They’re good people’. He was obviously very keen on Gerry and Tony Bellino as people.

“He obviously wasn’t going to consider [the] Bellinos as suspects.”

The evidence came on Friday at a reopened inquest into the deadly 1973 firebombing of the Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley.

Inspector L Bardwell of CIB Forensic Science inside bombed Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub.

An inquest was launched the day of the fire which killed 15 people but was abandoned after three days when James Finch and John Stuart were arrested. They were found guilty of the murder of the fire’s youngest victim at a Supreme Court trial later that same year.

The modern day inquest is seeking to determine whether more people than Finch and Stuart were involved in the attack and whether the police investigation was adequate.

The inquest continues.