For decades, a group of crooked Queensland cops known as the Rat Pack ran a murky system of bribes and extortion. But they never dreamed that the sex workers they exploited would bring about their downfall.
Her voice — and those of many other sex workers who tried to stand up to the might of corruption in the Queensland police force over the decades — had been lost and her story forgotten.Sleepy Queensland was never the same after the Second World War. Under Commissioner Frank Bischof's protection, police corruption in the Sunshine State ran wild in the 1950s and 60s.
If any sex worker decided to work outside The Joke, they could expect to suffer the consequences. But initially, most of the sex workers complied. But working came at a price. One sex worker in particular — Shirley Brifman — became a favourite of the Rat Pack. She worked in brothels and the city's seedier hotels, including the National Hotel.
It didn't mean she left her Queensland friends behind. She became a spy of sorts for the Rat Pack, ingratiating herself with Sydney's underworld and corrupt police. She headed up the Rat Pack's new Sydney franchise, and acted as a conduit between the two cities. "Oh, his manner was impeccable," Dorothy explains in the new ABC podcast, Dig: Sirens are Coming. "[An] absolutely impeccable man, truly. You could fall for him just like that — very, very, very much so. I hung off every word he said."Dorothy first met Hallahan when he visited her in the Brisbane prison where she was serving a short stint for passing forged cheques. The dashing detective took an interest in her case and her prospects, and returned to visit several times.
"I was wondering what would happen to my children," she told a newspaper reporter at the time. "That's the first time I've ever been in jail and it was a real eye-opener for me." Shirley's daughter, Mary Anne Brifman, would later tell me: "She actually believed them to be her friends … My mother was a very important part of that team.Shirley Brifman put herself in danger by publicly speaking out against the Rat Pack.
Now, it was time to get Hallahan. And the CIU sought Dorothy's help to bring him down. They sat with Dorothy in her kitchen for hours and told her the full story of Hallahan and the depths of his suspected corruption. That her charming Glen had a reputation for extreme violence.She agreed, and an old-fashioned sting was put in place. Dorothy would meet Hallahan at a prearranged time at the park bench in New Farm Park and hand over her weekly kickback payment in cash.
"All I could think about is 'How am I going to get up off this [bench] and walk from here? There's no way in the world I'm going to be able to do it,'" she says. While Hallahan was being taken down in New Farm Park, Shirley was living not far away in a police safe house with her four children and husband, Sonny.She was a nervous wreck. She had been giving formal statements to police for months following her bombshell appearance on This Day Tonight, naming names and ratting out her police mates.
Graham says a few minutes later someone came to the flat and talked to Shirley for about 15 minutes. He could not tell if it was a man or a woman. The sting against Glen Hallahan had failed to stick any charges to the Rat Packer, and police had learned there was a real and tangible threat to Dorothy's life."Can you imagine? I mean, it was 24/7, and every eight hours there was a different person in my house … not outside my house, inside my house," Dorothy says.Dorothy didn't feel safe, but life had to go on, and she still had to make money.
Dorothy felt cornered, like she'd hit rock bottom. So she decided to make a run for it. She waited until one of her guards was in the bathroom, then stole his gun, put it in her bag and jumped out the window. Instead of taking her to the police station, the police called an ambulance. She was given sedatives and driven back to the safe house.
"Years later, when I started having this urine problem, I went to a specialist on the terrace and I did this special test and this doctor said to me: 'You've had a few abortions, haven't you? You are extremely scarred down there, and later on in life you're going to have a lot of urine infections and problems.'After leaving the safe house Dorothy worked for a while as a cook and in odd jobs.
Vogel thrived only after funnelling tens of thousands of dollars per month to the corrupt cops of the Licensing Branch. "She was a well-spoken woman," Fancourt says. "She conducted herself in a very stately manner. I actually got two statements out of her. Detective Keith Smith happened to be working his shift that day. And what appeared to be a missing persons case soon turned into a possible murder investigation, given her connection to the corrupt Licensing Branch and their underworld ties.
"In those days I had a great deal of respect for [Murphy]," says Smith. "That's how I came to make the stupid mistake of going in and telling him that there might have been police involvement in corruption in the massage parlours. The biggest mistake I ever made." However, the coroner did not find enough evidence to recommend charging Pavich with murder, and returned an open finding."Nothing more has ever happened to the inquiry," Smith says. "There was never any fresh evidence brought forward. It just died."After 45 years, it remains a cold case.
Crooked cops and politicians expected the inquiry to run out of gas in a few weeks. They were wrong. They could not have foreseen that one of the first witnesses — an educated woman who went under the pseudonym of Katherine James — had a story to tell that would blow the inquiry apart. James spent a fortune setting up her parlour — Xanadu, in South Brisbane — and paid corrupt police a huge sum for the green light to operate, then was double-crossed. The cops took the cash, but the parlour was never permitted to operate.
She knew their dirty system inside and out. She'd managed it for the underworld vice consortiums, and dealt personally with the main players in The Joke. She knew where the money trails led, and was brilliant with figures. Katherine James gave evidence to the Fitzgerald Inquiry wearing a disguise and hidden behind a screen.
"Katherine James gave direct evidence of wide scale misconduct and corruption, with specific names attached to specific allegations, and that was hugely significant. It was the first breach of the dam wall of silence."The corrupt police named by James fell like dominoes, grasping at indemnities from prosecution. In quick succession, the allegations before the inquiry reached the office of Commissioner Terry Lewis.
She was immediately placed in witness protection during the inquiry — Queensland didn't have a witness protection program until Katherine James — and has since lived her life in rural Queensland. She spent 14 months in witness protection after entrapping one of the most dangerous corrupt police officers in Queensland history, then saw the case fall over.
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