On Wednesday 9 Feb 2022, William Anthony Stokes appeared before the inquest into the deaths at the 1973 Whiskey Au-Go-Go nightclub fire. The inquest into the 8 March 1973 fire which killed 15 people was reopened after the conviction of Vincent O’Dempsey and Garry Dubois for the murder of Barbara McCulkin and her two daughters 44 years ago. Barbara knew too much. But so did Bill Stokes. He had direct knowledge of corrupt police and the Whiskey firebombers. This made Stokes a key witness at the inquest before Queensland State Coroner Terry Ryan.
I first met Bill outside the the inquest where he described to me in convincing detail that he had seen a non-verbal signal from Tom Hamilton that he was involved in setting the Whiskey alight. This happened the morning following the fire in the company of others responsible, O’Dempsey and Du Bois. Bill Stokes served 16 years in Boggo Road for the murder of Tom Hamilton, a crime he says he did not commit. This is disputed by Tom Hamilton’s sister Carolyn Scully who gave evidence at Stokes’ trial in 1978 and again on the second last day of the Whiskey inquest before Mr Ryan. “Tom Hamilton’s body was never found”, Carolyn Scully told me on 2 Nov 2022.
Coroner Terry Ryan is due to hand down his findings in early 2023.
On 25 September 2022, Bill Stokes, the last credible witness to the Whiskey bombing passed away.
There was a cross-over of political and corrupt police in Queensland at that time. Corrupt police were present at demonstrations against the Bjelke-Petersen government and threw themselves into the arrests of march organisers and leaders.
At the same rally on 4 March 1978 another Detective, John Frederickh Johnston, arrested and assaulted Ciaron O’Reilly. O’Reilly was brought before Magistrate William Joseph McKay who supported the corrupt police and found the young student guilty of assaulting the huge policeman despite impeccable witnesses for the defence. Here is Ciaron O’Reilly’s version of the events that took place that day:
“I was 17, and in my first week of university. It was to be a day when I was, like many Brisbane students of the ’60’s/’70’s/’80’s, incited by a great Dan O’Neill speech to break the draconian anti-civil liberties laws that denied basic democratic rights of free expression in Queensland.
I linked arms with Jim Dowling (who I didn’t know and was to spend much of the rest of my life linked to in Catholic worker and resistance) and John Roberts (who I had met in the police cells the previous October) and on Dan’s impassioned advice strode out into the streets surrounding King George Square.
I was promptly bashed by Detective John Frederich Johnstone of the consorting squad after I had screamed objections to him felling John Roberts. Johnstone was later to break my brother Sean’s nose in an unfortunate (for Sean, not for me) case of mistaken identity at a similar march in the August of that year. Johnstone was later charged and convicted, along with another corrupt copper, of extortion and sentenced to 3 years.
Bill Stokes was the publisher of Port News, once affiliated with the Waterside Workers Federation in Brisbane before a falling out over controversy caused by his publishing, in the February 1975 edition of Port News, an account of the firebombing of the Whiskey Au Go Go Nightclub – where he claimed the crime was carried out by a group of criminals known as the “Clock Work Orange Gang” – a reference to the novel by Anthony Burgess.
Stokes wrote and published at least two other books. Westbrook was his account of time he spent in Westbrook Boys Detention Centre in the late 50’s, early 60’s. Westbrook was a notoriously sadistic place. His main passion and subject of a second book was the famous racehorse Bernborough.
We publish the full statement of William Stokes below. There are a number of typos and grammatical errors in the text which we have left unchanged.
Vale William Anthony Stokes(15/8/43-25/9/22)
Ian Curr
Editor WBT
8 Oct 2022
Statement of William Stokes
To whom it may concern
I William Stokes, hereby state. In 1973 nightclub entrepreneur and known homosexual John Hannay, after embezzling the funds from the Whiskey Au-Go-Go and having the financial records burnt in a fire at Alice’s Restaurant and then passing the liquor licence and liabilities on to others, bribed detectives – probably Basil Hicks/Ron Redmond/Pat Glancy, to organize the burning of the nightclub for insurance purposes to compensate those left holding the bankruptcy tag.
From there the detectives instructed Vince O’Dempsy and Billy McCulkin to find someone to commit the offence. Consequently they instructed Tom Hamilton, Gary Dubois, Peter Hall and Keith Meredith to firstly firebomb the Torino nightclub ll days before the Whiskey Au-Go-Go . To divert any suspicion away from nightclub management, and to create a false trail away from the gang recruited by McCulkin and O’Dempsy, known criminal John Stuart supplied Basil Hicks and reporter Brian Bolton with false statements alleging that unknown Sydney criminals wanted to start up an extortion racket in Brisbane by firebombing the Torino and Whiskey Au-Go-Go nightclubs.
John Andrew Stuart (right) in custody of Qld unnamed police officer (probably at Boggo Road Jail).
Jim Finch joined in on this enterprise for the Whiskey firebombing.
At about the same time that Finch was preparing to fly to Brisbane, the Commonwealth Police (today’s Australian Federal Police) notified the Queensland State Police that they had information to advise that the Whiskey Au-Go-Go was going to be firebombed whilst patrons were inside. The Queensland State Police ignored this official police correspondence.
Once the Whiskey firebombing resulted in 15 people being killed, a different situation took place. To avert the Coroner’s Inquiry, Stuart and Finch were quickly arrested and convicted under an avalanche of perjured testimony from other detectives, a prison superintendent and a prisoner.
Mrs McCulkin, who was concerned by what she knew about her husband and his associates’ involvement in these crimes, was then abducted with her two young daughters and murdered by O’Dempsy and Dubois. These murders were covered up by the newly appointed Police Inspector, Basil Hicks, and possibly detective Glancy who was a known acquaintance of Billy McCulkin.
In 1978, a few months before he was found dead, face down on a pillow in a caged prison cell, Stuart advised reporter Brian Bolton that in 1973 detectives Basil Hicks and Ron Redmond had recruited him to work undercover using the codename ‘Emu’. Stuart said that for payment Hicks and Redmond directed him to take a job as an orderly at the hospital, feign a slight injury, and then they would arrange for him to receive workers’ compensation payments from the State Government Insurance Office under the name of Trauts money that Stuart used to pay for the airline flight of Finch from London a week before the Whiskey firebombing. Stuart also used this money to rent a flat for himself and Finch under the name of Trauts, (Stuart spelled backwards).
Redmond, incidentally, was the detective who picked up a coded message said to be written by Stuart and smuggled out of jail two weeks after his arrest on the firebombing.
At the 1980 Coroner’s Court Inquiry into the McCulkin family, with Inspector Basil Hicks in charge of the investigation, O’Dempsy refused to answer any questions while Dubois sat in Boggo Road jail safely away from being quizzed or identified in a courtroom. Queensland Newspapers wrongly reported that Dubois’ absence from the courtroom was due to him having absconded on $10,000 bail over an earlier marijuana offence. Nevertheless at the conclusion of the 1980 Inquiry the coroner issued warrants for O’Dempsy and Dubois to be charged with murdering the McCulkin family – a finding that was overruled by the Public Prosecutor, Anglo Vasta, who was elevated to the bench before being removed following the evidence later admitted at the Fitzgerald Inquiry that revealed he had maintained an ‘unhealthy relationship’ with senior detectives.
Decades later it was reported on the Internet, and recently verified by homicide detective, Peter Roddick, that the coroner had also stated that *** ****** should also be charged with murdering the McCulkin family, but he too, like O’Dempsy and Dubois, was never made to stand trial.
Sincerely,
Wiliam Stokes
undated