Andrew Rule: New twists in a deadly tale of Australian race fixing rorts

Australian racing was a dangerous and sometimes deadly industry in the 1970s and 80s when millions of drug dollars washed through racetracks, fouling all it touched.

Bad news travels fast. By sunrise on April 3, 38 years ago today, a rapidly-widening circle had heard what had happened to George Brown overnight.

Just after dawn, race form expert Arthur Harris rang a Sydney bookmaker he knew to tell him the staggering news that the quiet Randwick horse trainer had been murdered.

Harris was surprised when the bookie snapped “I know about it!”

By then, word had already spread a long way.

Bernie Stone, working night shift on a Bass Strait oil drilling barge, was in the mess room at 2am when he heard two shipmates in deep conversation about the murder, then barely three hours old.

One speaker was an international drilling expert, Henry Flinck. The other was a veteran seaman, a “bosun” in the then powerful maritime union. Professionally, they had little in common. But both were big punters.

Stone was fascinated because he realised the punters were talking about the horse trainer George Brown — the boy that Stone had gone to school with in rural Queensland in the 1950s. It sounded as if the boss driller and the bosun had some financial interest in the murdered trainer’s horses.

George Brown with one of his horses. Picture: Adam Head

One thing was clear: the offshore punters were well informed by Sydney racing insiders. A decade before mobile telephones, someone in the harbour city had sent an urgent “shore-to-ship” radio message after midnight to relay the news.

No wonder the pair were shocked. It was the worst scandal to hit Australian sport.

Late the previous evening, thugs had tortured George Brown, twisting his arms from their sockets and breaking his legs before fracturing his skull.

When police found Brown’s old Ford car burning near the freeway at Bulli Tops, south of Sydney, they didn’t realise at first that his charred body was inside.

Investigators thought the killers had used a blunt instrument like a baseball bat. They might have, too. But, much later, rumours surfaced that Brown had been held over a kerb while a car was driven over his legs.

This was not some Colombian cocaine cartel at war. It was the murder of a smalltime Australian horseman, a farm boy who’d grown up in rural Queensland before working in English stables then returning to Australia to train horses.

No one has been arrested for Brown’s murder.

A $1m reward was posted on the 35th anniversary of his death three years ago, angling to lure anyone who might know who controlled the race fixing racket that got Brown killed.

One thing was sure. Shocking though it was, the murder did not come out of a clear blue sky.

It fits squarely into a series of race fixing conspiracies that blighted Australian racing in the 1970s and 1980s, dangerous decades when millions of dirty drug dollars started washing through racetracks, fouling all it touched.

The burnt out Ford Falcon that Brown was found inside of at Bulli Tops on April 2, 1984.

Only a few people still living know the rorts that happened in the era that dragged racing into total disrepute in 1984 with the twin scandals of George Brown’s death and the Fine Cotton ring-in, five months apart.

Last week, someone linked to a fringe player of that time relayed a guarded message about a ring-in secretly pulled on December 7, 1983, four months before the aborted switch that prompted Brown’s murder.

The insider “mail” included newspaper clippings of fields and results of the Sydney mid-week meeting held that day.

It happened on a wet Wednesday at Canterbury racetrack in Sydney’s south-west. By the last race, the sky was black with thunder clouds, a convenient “smother” to mask what was happening in the yard.

The race was for three-year-olds that had never won in the metropolitan area. In the field was an unknown galloper named Rockyvale, which had run seventh at its only start. It was trained at Randwick by George Brown.

As city races go, the third Londonderry Handicap was about as humble as it got. Even in mediocre company, Rockyvale was bottom of the class, starting at 33-1 after being as long as 66-1.

The price shift meant some money had found its way to bookies at the track — but not too much, which kept Rockyvale’s starting price profitably long. Which suggests, in turn, that race fixers backing the horse to win big money would bet with illegal starting price bookies working by telephone off the course: people who kept no records, paid no tax and told no tales.

The rider booked for Rockyvale was a good claiming apprentice, who not only claimed 2.5kg below the horse’s alloted 54kg but wouldn’t draw unwanted attention. A useful rider on an apparently useless horse.

George Brown. Picture: Adam Head

Jean O'Leary, sister of George Brown. Picture: Adam Head

But as “the kid” was legged on, he must have realised the horse was not the humble Rockyvale. He was mounting a different class of horse altogether. It was almost certainly Brown’s best horse, Different Class, a quality four-year-old handicapper. If not, then the stable’s other good galloper, McGlinchey.

The riding instructions confirmed the fix was in. Whoever instructed the jockey must have known it wasn’t the real Rockyvale, whose only chance to get near the placegetters would be to hug the rail to save ground.

Instead, the innocent apprentice obediently rode the horse like “a good thing”, sweeping wide around the field, happy to cover extra ground to avoid being pocketed or checked. Only good horses can get away with wasting so much ground.

Despite the extravagant ride, the horse won comfortably — right in the middle of a cloudburst that meant everyone on course ran for shelter, distracted from the shock result.

No one who didn’t have to be in the rain was outside studying the dripping wet horses.

The brands should have been a giveaway — but only if someone checked them, and they didn’t.

Heavy rain and a bog track mask a bizarre result better than anything: everyone assumes the mud hinders good horses and lets an unknown “mudlark” steal the show.

Although Rockyvale’s price had come in from 66-1 to 33-1, there was no obvious plunge on course. Interestingly, it paid $25.70 on the TAB, suggesting more money was bet on it off course than on. The huge exotic bet dividends meant an informed punter could plunder the TAB pool anonymously.

The trifecta paid $9159 (the price of a new car) and the running double $1676.20, meaning that combinations featuring Rockyvale as winner would pay off hugely without drawing attention.

Paper clippings detailing George Brown’s murder. Picture: Adam Head

That the TAB price came up shorter than the starting price subtly signalled a concealed sting. The punting public had no legitimate reason to back Rockyvale at all … but someone did.

There is no way of proving who was behind the scam. The puzzled jockey didn’t know and, even if he did, would never talk about it.

It seemed like the perfect fraud.

But, four months later, George Brown’s murder exposed the dark side of racing’s cowboy era. It still scares racing people who knew him.

Around the time the $1m reward was announced three years ago, an anonymous caller reached out to a handful of retired jockeys and warned them not to speculate who was behind the Canterbury sting on that long-ago day.

Jean O’Leary still misses her little brother, the one she raised for six years after their mother died when Jean was barely 13 and George was a toddler.

When their returned soldier father died five years later, the orphans had to sell the Queensland cattle property he had bought in the 1940s after surviving the war.

Young George moved into the town of Miles on the western downs with an older sister and Jean went nursing.

Jean is old now and wracked with painful memories. The last time she saw George was when he came up to Brisbane with a slow filly named Risley, entered in a race at Doomben on March 31, 1984.

Risley had no hope, flattered even by the 14/1 price quoted against her that day.

Brown, always quiet, was very subdued. He mentioned there was “a bit of money” for Risley but said he didn’t fancy her chances. There was no legitimate reason that she was backed to 8/1 in Brisbane and Sydney — and, strangely, from 14/1 to 4/1 at Wollongong races, where certain Sydney bookmakers were fielding.

The only logical explanation for big punters to put so much money on the dud was because they had ordered Brown to switch her for a much better horse.

This was Different Class, the classy galloper that had run as Rockyvale at Canterbury.

The same galloper, insiders say, who landed a big plunge under his own name in Sydney after being the medium of a reverse ring-in at Kembla Grange some time between the Canterbury ring-in and the doomed trip to Doomben.

But Brown was more scared of being caught than of the race fixers, and didn’t do the switch.

The former Sydney rider Maurice Logue rode Risley and she finished nowhere.

Logue decided it was his last ride in Brisbane. Too many strange and dangerous things happened to an honest jockey in the moonlight state, so next day he packed his car to head south.

He was still on the road when he heard George Brown was dead.

Logue is now a grief counsellor in the racing industry.

Last week, he called Jean O’Leary to talk about her George. She wept for the little brother who fell among thieves.