Regan’s pivotal role in 1973 nightclub mass murder revealed after 50 years

For decades, Regan’s involvement in the Whiskey Au Go Go tragedy eluded investigators. Now, new witnesses have shed new light on this shocking crime.

The Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub in Amelia Street, Fortitude Valley.

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Notorious Sydney gangster Stewart John Regan may have been one of the principal architects behind the Whiskey Au Go Go firebombing in Brisbane in 1973, according to new eyewitnesses.

For decades, Regan’s involvement in the Whiskey horror eluded investigators.

But fresh information revealed in The Australian’s investigative podcast, The Gangster’s Ghost, suggests he was one of the primary figures behind what was then the worst mass killing in Australian history.

Regan himself was murdered by up to four shooters in a back lane in Marrickville, Sydney in September 1974. He was just 29.

But in the early 1970s he was causing mayhem in Brisbane where he was trying to expand his criminal empire, unconcerned about the Queensland capital’s own underworld heavies and, more significantly, the corrupt police who controlled crime north of the NSW border.

Regan was buying real estate, establishing a brothel network and laying the foundations for a southern takeover of Brisbane’s clubs, pubs and restaurants.

Now new witnesses and uncovered documents suggest that Regan – on the orders of Sydney mob bosses – was behind a string of arson attacks in Brisbane in early 1973 that culminated in the Whiskey firebombing on March 8 that year.

Inside Brisbane’s Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub following a devastating firebombing in 1973.

Two criminals – John Andrew Stuart and James Finch – were ultimately convicted of the Whiskey atrocity. Both claimed they were verballed by corrupt police, including now infamous Sydney detective Roger Rogerson, who had been seconded to assist Queensland police in the Whiskey investigation.

John Andrew Stuart following his arrest.

While Stuart and Finch were involved in the firebombing, they were minor players in a complex plot by interstate mobsters to take over Brisbane’s crime scene and share the ongoing spoils.

Stuart had tried to tell authorities that Sydney gangsters were behind the Whiskey. He was ignored.

Queensland police claimed that Regan contacted them immediately after the Whiskey attack and offered his services to help capture chief suspects Stuart and Finch.

Both men had previously tried to murder Regan in a daytime shootout in Sydney back in 1965.

James Finch.

Police said Regan flew into Brisbane the day after the fire and briefly hunted for the pair but returned home to Sydney when he learned that the two wanted outlaws had been captured.

Now, new witnesses have exposed this thesis as a lie.

Regan had, in fact, been in Brisbane all along, and had been sighted inside the Whiskey club prior to the fire along with mob identities Lennie McPherson and the “boss of bosses”, Frederick “Paddles” Anderson, Regan’s mentor.

And just hours before the fire Regan had attended the grand opening of his own Brisbane nightclub, Blinkers, in the heart of the city and just a couple of kilometres from the Whiskey in Fortitude Valley.

It is understood Regan was a silent partner in the club along with McPherson.

According to police records, Blinkers’ opening night was held on the evening of March 7, 1973 – just before the Whiskey went up at 2.08am on March 8.

Whiskey owner Brian Little and his manager, John Bell, attended the Blinkers party before returning to the Whiskey close to midnight, a couple of hours before the firebombing.

Whiskey Au Go Go manager John Bell (left) and owner Brian Little (second from left).

Long-time Brisbane lawyer Noel Barbi attended the Blinkers party and talked to Regan in the club.

“Regan was there and I’m sure that when I was sitting with him like that, he was either wounded or cut, or something had happened to him because … he had a slight cut or (was) bleeding or something,” Barbi told The Gangster’s Ghost. “I said, ‘What happened to you?’ He said, ‘I had a bit of a scuffle’ or something like that because he was a solid boy.

“There’d be no doubt in my mind that he was in Brisbane at the time of that Au Go Go business.”

A second eyewitness, a former Brisbane publican, also confirmed to The Gangster’s Ghost that Regan had been in town prior to the Whiskey attack and not in Sydney as was claimed.

The front page of The Courier-Mail newspaper on Friday, March 9, 1973.

Regan’s involvement in the Whiskey has remained shadowy for five decades. He was called as a witness at the Stuart-Finch trial in October 1973, presented himself as a legitimate businessman and was excused within minutes.

However, the Regan family had always believed he was somehow “a part of the Whiskey”.

When Regan was murdered in 1974 his secrets supposedly went with him. His killing remains an unsolved cold case.

Regan’s pivotal role in the firebombing, however, was outlined in a confidential 1988 report by private investigator Walter Cromwell.

Cromwell Investigations, in examining who was really behind the Whiskey attack, concluded: “It has been gleaned that the Whiskey Au Go Go was firebombed … by John Stewart Regan (sic) and John Arthur Clarke. It has further been established that Regan and Clarke undertook their instructions from Lenny McPherson and Abe Saffron.

“McPherson had wanted 75 per cent of any monies that Regan was to make of the Brisbane stand-over racket. McPherson was known to share 55 per cent of the collect monies with Saffron, as he was the one with the Queensland police contacts. After sharing the 55 per cent with Saffron the remaining 20 per cent went to Queensland police contacts.”

For the Whiskey job, Regan hired a handful of criminals including British-born Finch and Brisbane locals Billy McCulkin and Tommy Hamilton to firebomb the club. Finch later admitted to rolling two petrol drums into the downstairs foyer of the club on St Pauls Terrace and igniting the fuel.

Within minutes, 15 innocent people inside the club died of smoke inhalation.

The blaze at the firebombed Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub in Brisbane.

While Finch and Stuart were ultimately convicted of the crime – both protesting their innocence – authorities always believed there were others behind the mass murder.

The initial 1973 inquest into the fire lasted less than two days before it was adjourned. It was never resumed.

Within 12 months six people associated with the fire – McCulkin’s wife Barbara and daughters Vicki and Leanne, Regan’s accomplice John “Ratty Jack” Clarke, Regan and Tommy Hamilton – were all murdered.

In 2017, after Queensland criminals Vince O’Dempsey and Garry “Shorty” Dubois were found guilty of the 1974 murder of local mother Barbara McCulkin and her two daughters, Vicki, 13, and Leanne, 11, the Queensland government ordered a fresh inquest into the Whiskey tragedy.

The court had heard Barbara McCulkin was killed because of what she knew about the firebombing and who was really behind it, including husband Billy.

Stuart died in prison in 1979. Dubois was found dead in his prison cell a month before the new inquest in 2021.

And just prior to the second set of hearings for the inquest, James Finch, who had been deported back to the UK in 1988, also turned up dead, supposedly of Covid-19.

Queensland coroner Terry Ryan has yet to hand down his findings.

Subscribers get Episode 8 exclusively at gangstersghost.com.au. Or hear Episode 6 of The Gangster’s Ghost on Apple and Spotify now.