Whiskey Au Go Go inquest told Barbara McCulkin murdered to shut her up

A former Brisbane bar worker has told the inquest into the Whiskey Au Go Go tragedy that Barbara McCulkin’s husband said his wife was murdered because ‘she knew all about’ the nightclub bombing.

Billy McCulkin told a barmaid his wife Barbara was murdered after the Whiskey Au Go Go fire “to shut her up because she knew all about it”, a court has heard.

Former bar worker Margaret Rose Curran, now 64, said she had never heard of the Whiskey Au Go Go firebombing until a “quite sad and morbid” McCulkin told her about it while she was working at the Port Office Hotel in the 1980s.

“He told me that his family had been killed because of something that he had done, and that she (Barbara) knew all about it and that’s why she was killed, to shut her up,” Ms Curran said.

“He said it had something to do with the Whiskey Au Go Go and that his wife knew all about it and she had a big mouth and O’Dempsey shut her up because she knew all about it.”

Margaret Rose Curran. Picture: Steve Pohlner

Billy McCulkin. File picture

Ms Curran on Wednesday told an inquest into the fire that McCulkin told her Vincent O’Dempsey and another man were responsible for the murder of his family.

“He never said how he knew [these things] … he said when his wife was killed he went and saw O’Dempsey and the other fella, O’Dempsey denied that he killed him, and that other fella said yes he did kill him and he interfered with the children as well,” Ms Curran said.

“She should have just kept her mouth shut, he said.”

Counsel assisting the coroner Stephen Keim SC asked if McCulkin ever told her who was responsible for the Whiskey Au Go Go firebombing in March 1973.

“He said O’Dempsey organised it,” she said.

Ms Curran said McCulkin remained a regular for several years and his statements about the Whiskey Au Go Go and the murder of his family remained generally consistent.

“Pretty much so, not all the time,” she said.

The inquest also heard evidence from McCulkin’s ex-wife, Estelle Long, who married him after Barbara’s murder.

Ms Long said she distinctly remembered a conversation she had with McCulkin about the Torino’s nightclub fire, years after the blaze.

“I said to him I saw that fire and he smiled and said to me ‘that was a great fire’,” she said.

The inquest last week heard police failed to investigate detailed information that McCulkin was involved in the Torino’s nightclub arson attack less than two weeks before the Whiskey Au Go Go blaze.

It came after retired Brisbane journalist Robert Dutton gave evidence about a phone call he took from Vincent O’Dempsey’s girlfriend the day The Sun newspaper broke the story about James Finch confessing to the fire.

Mr Dutton said in October 1988, his colleague Dennis Watt wrote the first of a series of stories following an interview in which Finch claimed he and two others had started the blaze.

Mr Dutton said that day he received a call from O’Dempsey’s girlfriend Kerri-Anne Scully who said he was concerned that Finch was going to “set him up” by implicating him in the Whiskey fire.

The aftermath of the Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub firebombing in 1973.

“My recollection of what was said to me by Kerri-Anne Scully was that she was conveying to me in a conversation that morning that Vince O’Dempsey wanted me and Dennis both dead,” he said.

“And I said ‘really’, and ‘yes’ she said, ‘he’s had enough of you and Dennis and in particularly you for all of the stories you have been publishing about him’.”

“Ms Scully was telling me that O’Dempsey had expressed to her and she was conveying to me that O’Dempsey was fearing that Finch was going to set him up for the firebombing of the Whiskey Au Go Go back in 1973.”

The inquest continues.