Andrew Rule: The secret world of double lives

Double lives are more common than most of us think. The happy facade of a nuclear family can surprisingly often conceal a shadowy world of lies and deception, writes Andrew Rule. LISTEN TO HIS LIFE AND CRIMES PODCAST HERE

Former prime minister Ben Chifley.

Our longtime newspaper colleague Shaun Carney has polished and published a million thoughtful words in his time, mostly about politics. Like many readers, I look to his calm judgments to help make sense of the way we’re governed.

But perhaps the most compelling thing Shaun has written is his bittersweet memoir, the ingeniously-named Press Escape, published a couple of years ago to much acclaim. At the heart of the book is the revelation that the author’s father led a double life for decades.

By the time young Shaun started high school, he realised that his father, Jim Carney, “kept” another woman who lived in a house a few blocks from their own in Frankston.

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There were other shocks in store for the youngster. It turned out Jim’s real surname was not Carney at all: that was the name he’d borrowed when he joined the Army as a youth, a subterfuge that came from concealing an illegitimate birth.

Discovering the double life meant the young Shaun understood why he had seen his father fighting another man in the street. And why a woman had hand-delivered a cryptic letter pressuring Jim to choose between his home and hers.

In the end, Jim Carney stayed home but Shaun didn’t: as soon as he could, he left to work at this newspaper’s forebear, The Herald, launching a brilliant career.

It must have seemed to him then that his family’s secret was one in a million. It wasn’t. Double lives are more common than most of us think. As the older, worldly-wise Carney knows well, Canberra is full of them. And not just in recent times.

Former prime minister Ben Chifley.

For instance, the much-loved Labor hero Ben Chifley was a former train driver who got lucky in more ways than one: he died in a hotel room with his secretary and mistress Phyllis Donnelly … and it emerged he’d also had a fling with Phyllis’s sister Nell. Would that be a triple life, Prime Minister?

The public almost expects this stuff from politicians (hello Bob and Blanche, Cheryl and Gareth, Gorton and Gotto and Billy “he died on the job” Snedden), but it’s the gangsters and colourful business identities who can afford second families on the side. For instance, a young Melbourne doctor (recently killed in a road accident) had to put up with the fact his property-developer father led a double life that makes Borce Ristevski look angelic. He had five children with his lawful wife, two more with a mistress, and still found time to scandalise a prominent private girls’ school by taking off with his daughter’s 17-year-old school friend. Good one, Dad.

Richard Pratt.

Shari-Lea Hitchcock. Picture: John Grainger

The existence of the mistress emerged when someone who knew the long-suffering first wife attended a house auction in Essendon and saw family snaps of the husband with the “other woman” and two children. It must have made Christmas dinner fairly lively that year.

In some families, of course, double lives are not secret, just secretive. As the admirable Jeanne Pratt said of her filthy-rich husband Richard’s long extramarital arrangement with the mother of his young daughter, she preferred to treat it in the “European way”. Meaning, by maintaining a dignified silence about Dick and his Sydney squeeze Shari-Lea Hitchcock. And their poor little rich girl, Paula.

One figure had more mistresses than Kerry Packer. One of them was a friendly advertising sales rep who was happy to be “number four” mistress until the chilling moment came when she told her Mafiosi sugar daddy she was pregnant.

Mr Big gave her the bleak message: terminate or else. The threat reduced the cheerful, fun-loving young woman to a blubbering, terrified mess. She then realised she could end up beneath a cheap headstone — or even without one. She quit her job and moved far into the country to avoid a man who valued his Doberman guard dogs far more than her and his unborn child.

Speaking of Dobermans, the boy born Olaf Dietrich in a German refugee camp in 1952 grew up to be like a bad example of the breed: Dietrich was sleek and handsome to look at but extremely dangerous when it suited him.

Hugo Rich (originally known as Olaf Dietrich).

He changed his name to Hugo Rich in 1990 after serving four years jail for smuggling heroin from Thailand. His criminal record vanished along with his old name but his criminal tendencies did not. It was the start of a double life.

He conned his way into working for a sharebroking firm, Vinton Smith Dougall, and was promoted rapidly, but not as rapidly as he spent money. He splashed out on a luxury apartment, flash car and designer suits. One day he left the office owing $33,000 and didn’t return.

He maintained all trappings of business success but behind the scenes was planning a string of armed robberies. Where basic bandits might make a crude balaclava from the sleeve of a jumper, Rich wore a silk ski mask.

After robbing an Armaguard van of $98,000, he went straight to a Collins St jewellers and bought a diamond ring for $17,000. The facade crumbled when armed robbery detectives grabbed him in a city hotel. Under pressure, he was just a foul-mouthed narcissist who abused judges from the dock.

A much nicer “villain” was the admired country doctor who lived in a Gippsland town and also ran a part-time practice in the Latrobe Valley.

It turns out that Doc had set up house on a horse property run by a younger woman who discreetly presented him with a baby son. Doc’s view was that he was an intelligent man and could afford to maintain two families, so why not improve the gene pool?

Doc’s handsome son — who had his mother’s surname — grew up to become friends, by chance, with Doc’s legitimate daughter. They were, after all, the same age. Fortunately, the friendship did not develop into a romance. If it had, of course, it would have inspired a reality TV show.

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