LUNA PARK'S iconic clown face, its mouth wide open to greet those seeking fun, should never have been worth killing for.
However, if a relative of the late crime boss Abe Saffron is to be believed, that is exactly what happened.
According to Anne Buckingham, the daughter of Saffron's sister Beryl, her uncle was behind the ghost train fire in which seven people perished.
"I don't think people were meant to die," she said.
On June 9, 1979, five year 7 boys from Waverley College, who had been friends from kindergarten, had gone to a Saturday night Mass before heading off to Luna Park.
Four of them, Jonathan Billings, Richard Charles Carroll, Michael David Johnson and Seamus Rahilly, died when flames engulfed the ghost train at 10.45pm. A fifth friend, Jason Holman, travelling in the car behind the others, was pulled out by an attendant.
Also killed in the fire was a truck driver from Warren, John Godson, and his two young sons, Damien and Craig. Jennifer Godson, who had gone to buy ice-creams, was waiting for the ride to finish when fire broke out.
"It was an act of terrorism," said the Sydney artist Martin Sharp, who has pursued the story for 28 years. "If you can get away with burning children in public on a Saturday night in an amusement park, you can get away with just about anything."
According to Sharp, the previous manager of Luna Park, Ted Hopkins, had told him of an approach by Saffron to buy Luna Park some years before the fire.
At the time of the fire the Sydney businessmen Nathan Spatt and Leon Fink had the lease on the park, but only on a weekly basis. They were desperate to obtain a long-term lease in order to carry out improvements.
Mr Fink said yesterday that the premier, Neville Wran, had carriage of the lease and that for at least two years he lobbied Mr Wran, and everyone close to him, including Labor Council boss John Ducker, Deputy Premier Jack Ferguson and Senator Jim McClelland. "To my horror," said Mr Fink, they made it clear the premier was not going to budge.
A later National Crime Authority inquiry, which was tabled in Parliament, reported that Mr Ducker had refused to help because Mr Fink did not donate enough to the party.
The depth of the premier's opposition, said Mr Fink, was revealed during an encounter at a function at the Wentworth Hotel that Mr Wran was attending with his then wife Jill. When Mr Fink approached to ask about the lease, he said Mr Wran retorted: "While my bum points to the ground, your partner will not get that lease."
Mr Fink explained that Mr Spatt had been overheard in a restaurant criticising Mr Wran over his use of a private plane belonging to Sir Peter Abeles in the midst of an airline strike.
As the inquiry by the National Crime Authority a decade later stated: "Luna Park, it was alleged, had been coveted by Saffron for over 20 years and the fire in the ghost train had been lit as a trigger to evict the incumbent tenants and gain control of the park lease for himself."
Certainly, in the wake of the fire, Mr Fink's lease was not renewed.
New tenders were called for the famous fun park. When the park reopened in August 1982, it was Harbourside Amusements Pty Ltd which had won the tender for the 30-year lease.
Initially the government rejected all six tenders, including one from the Fink company. Harbourside tendered during the second round and the park reopened after a reported $17 million refurbishment.
In 1985 the NSW MP John Hatton raised the spectre of Saffron being the beneficial owner of Luna Park. Harbourside officials responded saying claims that Saffron was the beneficial owner of the park's lease were "wild and totally unfounded rumours".
A subsequent Corporate Affairs Commission inquiry, the report of which was tabled in Parliament in 1987, found that Saffron controlled a trading trust called Arcadia Machines which supplied the pinball and amusement machines to the park.
In the end, the Corporate Affairs Commission report, as did later inquiries, concluded that although Saffron's cousins and nephew were involved in Harbourside, it could not find any evidence that Saffron had an actual or beneficial ownership of Luna Park.
In the two years following the Luna Park fire, there were seven other fires Saffron was believed to be associated with.
A NSW coroner, Neville Walsh, had recommended that Saffron and his associate, Todor "Tosha the Torch" Maksimovic, be charged with conspiracy to commit arson and fraud. However, no charges were ever laid.
In 1986 the police minister asked the NCA to investigate Saffron's alleged involvement in the fires, along with fraud, bribery and corruption of police officers, and the supply of prohibited drugs. The 17-month report, tabled in Parliament in 1989, revealed that a month after the ghost train fire, the Anglers' Club in Crows Nest was destroyed by fire. Saffron was rumoured to own the club along with solicitor Morgan Ryan.
Over the next two years fires damaged a further six premises in which Saffron or Maksimovic either owned or leased. They included The Wonder Centre, a Kings Cross brothel, The Peak Restaurant, a gay nightclub in Bondi Junction, an abandoned disco in Bondi and Saffron's nightclub, the Venus Room in Orwell Street, Kings Cross.
During the NCA's inquiries it was discovered that the chief suspect for the 1981 arson on Fonzies, a video parlour in Oxford Street, was Les Murphy, who was jailed for life over the murder of nurse Anita Cobby.
The day after the fire, Murphy, who was employed by Saffron at Fonzies, had suffered unexplained burns on his arms.
The NCA's report said Murphy "should have been the subject of further inquiries but police made none".
The investigators also found that an insurance clerk, Michael Thomson, had been involved in several of the insurance payouts.
Thomson, who was employed by Saffron's insurance brokers N.G. Delaneys, said he was not aware of Maksimovic's connection with Saffron or that Saffron was regarded by insurers as a bad risk. The NCA report concluded that Thomson's denial that he did not know of the association between Maksimovic and Saffron was not credible.
The report was also critical of the police investigation into the Luna Park fire. Two witnesses noticed bikies near or on the Ghost Train, just before the fire. "Unfortunately their assertions were not acted upon by police or followed up at the inquest," the report said.
Coming in for particular criticism was the inquiry chief, Detective Inspector Doug Knight.
Mr Knight, had earlier been severely criticised in the Moffitt royal commission for having a secret business relationship with Jack Rooklyn, an associate of Saffron, at the same time as he was investigating the pair's involvement in organised crime and clubs.
Commissioner Athol Moffitt accused Mr Knight of lying to the commission about his relationship with Rooklyn. He went on to note that "one instrument of organised crime was to corrupt officials".
It was a still, cool night on June 9, 1979. As a university student I was at a party in a small Lavender Bay terrace house overlooking Luna Park. From the balcony we could see the flames in the park below. Slipping through the hole in the fence at the top of the park's site, we headed down to see what happened.
Almost 30 years later, the tragedy of that night remains unresolved.