Sex, money and murder: Who killed Shirley Finn?

Updated

When Perth brothel madam Shirley Finn was shot dead in 1975, the spotlight of suspicion soon fell on high-ranking police and politicians. As an inquest in to the murder draws to a close, Shirley's daughter is hoping for answers as the memories of witnesses fade.

In a makeshift office around the corner from Perth's coroner's court, Shirley Finn's daughter Bridget Shewring and journalist Juliet Wills are in the midst of a heated discussion about that day's inquest evidence.

Wills has launched a defence of a key witness and just as tempers begin to fray, the women collapse into exhausted laughter.

"I know what you're thinking," Wills says. "You're saying, 'Juliet, you're making excuses for people'."

Shewring replies: "And you're thinking, "why are you so angry all the time'."

The two know each other well and, despite the occasional clash, have developed a special friendship after spending more than a decade investigating one of Australia's most notorious cold cases.

"We've been on a phenomenal journey together," Wills tells ABC's Australian Story.

"But there are times we have shouted at each other, we've been so frustrated."

"Frustration" is a word that comes up often during conversations about the case.

Shewring still rues the many missed opportunities to thoroughly reinvestigate her mother's murder.

"We spent years begging for an inquiry," she says.

"By the time it started in 2017 so many people were dead and memories were fading."

The fact the inquest was ordered at all is largely due to the relentless determination of the two women.

Shewring recalls the moment that cemented her resolve.

"In 2011 my brother Shane was dying and one of the last things he said to me was, 'Bridget, you can't give up'."

She promised him she wouldn't.

Gangland-style execution

Shewring was only 13 years old when she received the news that her 33-year-old mother had been brutally murdered.

"I was in class and the headmistress came in and said, 'I don't know how you're going to live through this, Bridget'," she says.

Her mother, a well-known brothel madam, had been shot in a gangland-style execution — four bullet holes to the head at close range.

Finn was found in the front seat of her distinctive Dodge on the outskirts of the Royal Perth Golf Club.

Her death came two days before a tax hearing at which she had threatened to expose the illicit dealings of police, politicians and business identities unless she was given help with a tax debt that she was struggling to pay.

The murder shocked the people of Perth and within weeks the spotlight of suspicion fell on police and politicians.

Wills became intrigued by the Shirley Finn case in 2002 when she was a reporter at Channel 7. Her investigations took her into the very darkest corners of Perth society.

"I spent years immersed in Perth's underbelly, talking to club owners, brothel madams, businesspeople and former police," she recalls.

"And I was shocked by the scale of corruption in this story."

The allegations came thick and fast: Finn was laundering money for top politicians, she was having an affair with then-police minister Ray O'Connor, she threatened to "take him down" unless he helped her with her tax debt.

"There was no end to the allegations, but the person whose name was most often linked to the murder was former head of the vice-squad Bernie Johnson," Wills says.

According to a number of witnesses, Finn was paying Johnson under the semi-official "containment policy", which allowed police to nominate which brothels could operate.

And according to others, she was starting to resent the payments, especially when faced with a crippling tax debt.

Wills first made contact with Shewring in 2003 and they began working on the case.

Within two years, they gathered extensive material and sent it to the coroner, but their request for an inquest was rejected.

It wasn't until they unearthed a crucial witness, former patrol officer Brian Eddy, that an inquest was granted.

He told them he had seen Finn in the police canteen a night or two before her murder and that when he told his superiors, his life was threatened.

In his first public interview, Eddy tells Australian Story about the terrifying threats.

"Four blokes hop out of this car, I knew they were detectives, and one of them had a gun," he says.

"The older fella says to me: 'You want to see your kids again, you shut your mouth. You didn't see anything.'"

'You'll end up like Shirley Finn'

By the time the inquest started in 2017, Wills and Shewring had a list of police officers and politicians they suspected were involved in Finn's murder, but no clear theory about what happened on the night.

As the inquest progressed, and numerous suspects were named, the events of that night became more confused as numerous suspects were named.

Notorious hitman and convicted murderer Neddy Smith, currently serving two life terms in a New South Wales jail, was alleged to have been flown in to carry out the murder.

But when the information was passed on to then-head of CIB Don Hancock, the reporting officer was told to "leave it alone".

Apparently, the Smith lead was never pursued.

"The mountain of evidence that came out during the 18-month hearing was overwhelming, so many different stories, different names," Shewring says.

Despite the contradictory evidence, the spotlight of suspicion would constantly swing back towards a cohort of allegedly corrupt police officers, who were said to be part of a powerful clique known as the "Purple Circle".

And the man said to be heading The Circle was Johnson, the vice-squad chief.

Although several former colleagues described him as an astute and honest detective, the majority of witnesses painted a chilling portrait of a man who was violent, corrupt and utterly ruthless.

Former police officer Michael Regan said Johnson made notorious NSW detective Roger Rogerson "look like a boy scout".

Former brothel madam and inquest witness Linda Watson told Australian Story how he had threatened her when she refused to help him take down an honest cop.

"Bernie Johnson came to my house, he bent down to the ear and he looked in my eyes and he said: 'If you don't help me take him down you'll end up like Shirley Finn.'"

Multiple witnesses placed Johnson with Finn on the night of the murder.

But Wills and Shewring's hopes of questioning the man most often linked to the murder were crushed when he was excused from attending the inquest on the basis of dementia.

"It was a devastating blow," Wills says.

Johnson had always denied any involvement in the murder and died before the inquest ended.

Missing evidence could 'expose a lot of people'

In the final phases of the inquest, police were quizzed about the original 1975 police investigation, in particular their handling of the crime scene and other evidence.

"They apparently never examined the boot of the Dodge," Shewring says.

"It's a murder investigation — that's just crazy."

A former police officer told the inquest he was surprised to see "people trampling all over the crime scene".

On the final day of the inquest the court heard that critical photos from Shirley's house had gone missing.

Former police officer Colynn Rowe, who attended the house the day after the murder, says he was disturbed by what he found.

"On the coffee table was a stack of two photo albums and I saw [photos of] Ray O'Connor with Shirley at the back near the pool and I also recognised senior police officers," Rowe says.

"It was a little bit of a shock to see them in there.

"What are they doing there really? They're at a party, they're not there doing work."

Shewring says the photos were damning.

"Ray O'Connor said he never knew my mother, those photo albums would have exposed a lot of people," she says.

The coroner now has the unenviable task of trawling through close to a million pages of complex, often contradictory evidence.

Meanwhile, Shewring is hoping to move on to the next phase of her life.

"Every room in my house has a Shirley Finn file in it, my back shed is bulging with paperwork," she says as she feeds another file into a paper shredder.

Wills, who now works as an estate agent, is looking forward to a time when she isn't juggling two full-time jobs.

"I would be at an open house inspection showing anxious buyers around and the phone would ring and I would have some police informant relaying some crucial piece of information, it was truly bizarre," she says.

Whether either woman can ever truly walk away from a case that has dominated their lives for so many years remains to be seen.

"I can leave it alone but it won't leave me alone," Shewring says.

"Maybe those people who do know something will one day come out and tell the truth. I can only hope."

Watch Australian Story's Getting Away with Murder on iview or Youtube.

Topics: murder-and-manslaughter, crime, human-interest, perth-6000

First posted