How ruthless mum shaped her deadly gangster son

Decades after Clare Regan’s death, her family remains convinced she played a major role in shaping the gangster life of her only son, Johnny | PODCAST SERIES

Clare ‘The Colonel’ Regan (face covered) at the funeral of her murdered gangster son, John Stewart Regan, in 1974. Picture: Victor Colin Sumner/Fairfax Media

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She may have been six feet under in Sydney’s Rookwood Cemetery for the past 37 years, but few who met her have forgotten Clare Regan – the mother of gangster Stewart John Regan and better known simply as The Colonel.

The rigid military nickname, it turns out, was appropriate. And the memories of her remain not just unflattering but damning to this day.

Decades after her death, her family remains convinced she played a major role in shaping her only son, ‘Shotgun Johnny’ Regan – the subject of The Australian’s latest investigative podcast, The Gangster’s Ghost – into the violent, ruthless gangster he became.

Subscribers can listen to episodes 1 and 2 at gangstersghost.com.au.

That she actively encouraged his brutality, tried to control his life to the point of literally taking possession of her grandson from a young age, and revelled in Johnny Regan’s notoriety. And the gangster, in turn, through either fear or misplaced loyalty, worshipped her.

John Regan was born in rural Young, the cherry-growing town in southwestern NSW, and lived there until he was in his early teens. He was bright, enjoyed art and had a few friends he played with after school. It was the mid-1950s.

One mate, Brian English, told the podcast: “My brother, sister and I were there with him, playing around the area, just sort of mucking about as kids do. And Clare apparently had been calling for John to come home. And I can honestly say not one of us heard her.

“So he didn’t ignore her, but the next thing she came down the lane with a stockwhip. Literally a stockwhip. And she belted him home. She drove him home like he was a beast … so he had a tough, tough mother … a tough, tough lady.”

Clare Mary Rhall was born in the little town of Murrumburrah, 30km south of Young, in 1913, to a farming family.

In her mid-20s, she was racing greyhounds for the local race meet.

At some point she met Alfred Frederick Regan from Young. The Regans were one of the pioneering families of the region.

Stewart John Regan in the town of Young, NSW, aged about 10 years. Picture: Supplied

Alf, a shearer, would spend weeks at a time working away from home. Clare pulled beers behind the bar at the Australian Hotel in downtown Young.

The marriage was a disaster.

Alf, a chronic drinker, spent most of his time away from the marital home, even when he was in town. He was often found living in the family home around the corner from the small house he built for his family.

The larger Regan family wanted nothing to do with Clare.

As for The Colonel moniker, it was not given to her flippantly.

The brothers at the local Catholic school Johnny attended were terrified of her and steered clear. She forbade him to play school sport, and once, when he was accidentally struck by a cricket ball, staff were too frightened to take him home.

One day, little Johnny got into a fight and suffered a bloodied nose. Regan’s second cousin, Kelly Slater Regan, a co-host on The Gangster’s Ghost podcast and a Young local, confirmed the story with the gangster’s former schoolmates.

“She wipes his nose and says ‘Don’t come home until you bloody the other guy’s nose’,” Kelly said. “No hugs, no cuddles, no genuine affection or kindness. Now what sort of damage does that do to a little boy? It’s not exact­ly Motherhood 101 is it?”

Schoolmates also noticed John’s extremely “short fuse”.

“He used to take people on because he’d fly off the handle so quick,” said Michael Rule. “I said to him one day – you have the shortest fuse, Regan. ‘Shut up, Rule,’ he said. He used to go off like a bunger.

“He said ‘I’ve learned to control (my temper) … when you control the inner tiger, you have got a lot of control’.”

After just a couple of years marriage, Clare wanted out and sought a “prohibition order” against Alf from the NSW Supreme Court to keep him away from her and his child.

His drinking was out of control. Soon after, she petitioned for a divorce.

According to court documents, The Colonel alleged that Alf had struck her on multiple occasions and even assaulted her father.

The court found overwhelmingly in her favour.

GANGSTER'S GHOST PODCAST: Stewart John Regan in Sydney. Picture: Supplied

By the late 1950s, Clare dis­appeared from Young, along with her son, and settled into her sister Thelma’s home in Liverpool Street, Darlinghurst, in inner Sydney.

The Regans of Young always believed that in Sydney Clare had set up her own house of ill repute and gave her son a start in organised crime.

There is no evidence to suggest this, but there are countless stories of her man­ipulative and controlling nature, her suffocating obsession with her son and her taste for drama.

John himself never fully cut the apron strings. He lived on and off with his mother even when he’d supposedly started a life with Margaret Yates.

He conducted much of his illicit business from his mother’s house in Liverpool Street, and continued the arrangement when she and Aunt Thelma moved to Duke Street, Kensington.

John Regan’s earnings facilitated her needs first before his partner, Marg, and their children.

Marg gave birth to the couple’s first child – JP – in December 1967. Within two years, John made it clear his son would be raised by The Colonel. Marg was incredulous but powerless.

“Johnny told me Clare loved JP and just wanted to have the child,” Marg recalled. “She wanted to say – this is John Regan’s son. He will stay in my house. He’ll be brought up by me and whatever.

“I was warned not to go to any solicitors or anything because it (the return of the child to its mother) wouldn’t be happening.”

Soon after John’s death in 1974, The Colonel would invite her young granddaughters over to the Kensington house and display Regan’s ashes.

“She would sit us all on the couch and bring out the ashes and ask us to say hello to our father,” oldest daughter Helen Regan remembered.

“It was how I found out my father was murdered. She’d bring out all the old newspaper clippings and say your ­father did this, your father did that. He was murdered.

“Then, at the end, say goodbye to your father. To his ashes. That happened on multiple occasions.”

In the world of true crime, the graves of notorious gangsters become, to some, a site of pilgrimage. Every city in the world has its sprinkling of dead crooks and mobsters resting in its cemeteries and crematoriums.

To this day, nobody has been able to stand at the foot of Stewart John Regan’s grave, or stare at his memorial plaque, because nobody knew the final resting place of the notorious gangster.

That was for a very good reason. The urn that held John’s ashes was put in with his mother, Clare, when she died and was buried in 1988, at her request.

Regan is beneath the neat lawns of Rookwood Cemetery in Sydney, safe in his mother’s arms.

Subscribers to The Australian and registered users hear episodes of The Gangster’s Ghost first. Listen to episodes 1 and 2 now at gangstersghost.com.au.