#Gangland movie starring scott glenn series

A close friend of leading identity Richard Reilly, Edser had convictions for consorting and receiving liquor.

#Gangland movie starring scott glenn series

Then comes a long series of blanks-which forty years later even Neville cannot fill-until Number 18: Hollywood is ‘Hollywood’ George Edser, a flamboyant horse owner and punter whose activities on the track had him warned off in 1961. Testa was killed in 1981 when a car bomb blew up his Lincoln Continental at the Oakland Park Country Club, Florida.Īlternatively, The Yank could have been Bernie Houghton, who ran a series of bars in Kings Cross and was closely linked to the Nugan Hand Bank. At Number 10, The Yank may have been the visiting Chicago mafioso Joe Testa, who arrived with an introduction to Ronnie Lee and then linked up with McPherson and Freeman in a series of failed fraudulent companies. It was he who seized Reilly’s diaries and black books after his death, and tried to suppress the confidential telephone numbers and addresses of criminals, police and politicians within them. Norm at Number 7 may well be the New South Wales Police Commissioner Norm Allan, who, at best, turned a blind eye to all sorts of illegal activities. Beyond that, identification becomes more difficult. Number 8 was Reilly’s offsider, Ronald Joseph Sylvester Lee, a baccarat organiser and also a friend of Kelly. He could reasonably have expected to be far higher in the credits. He was shot dead in his Maserati in June 1967. At Number 9 is Dick, Richard Gabriel Reilly, standover man and club bouncer from the 1930s, and partner of the crooked detective Ray Kelly in abortion rackets after the war. At Number 6 was Eric Farrell, or O’Farrell, who ran nightclubs such as the Forbes and the Ziegfeld, where Chow Hayes killed the boxer Bobby Lee. Number 5 was Joe Taylor, the two-up king who gave the drug dealer Dr Nick Paltos-another seminal figure in Australian organised crime-his start in life. Number 4 was the club owner and then ‘King of the Cross’, Abe ‘Mr Sin’ Saffron, whose slimy hand stretched over prostitution, drug dealing, sly-grogging, gambling and possibly murder and arson, as well as extortion, for half a century. There is no doubt, however, that he was an associate of the top men in the city.

He caused a mini-riot by showering the crowd with banknotes after his horse Eskimo Prince won the Golden Slipper Stakes in 1964. Galea is generally noted for his gambling as opposed to his criminal activities- outside illegal gaming and bribing the police, that is. Number 3 was the gambler Perce Galea, who in his early days worked for the old-time Razor Wars man Siddy Kelly in his baccarat schools.

Steele bought numerous copies of the magazine and happily distributed them. Shortly after the Oz article appeared, McPherson organised anĪttempted execution of his rival, Jackie ‘Iron Man’ Steele, who had offended him by saying first, that McPherson was a fizz (a dobber), which was undoubtedly true, and second, that he, Steele, was the Number 1 in Sydney, which wasn’t. ‘You are a flag and should be obeyed,’ fawned the Lebanese-born fixer Frank Hakim, who idolised him.

Such behaviour requires the highest form of recognition. He decapitated a white rabbit and threw its body on the floor of his mother’s flat in front of her because he had not been invited to her seventieth birthday party. Number 2 was Lennie McPherson, certainly a man to be reckoned with. Delicately, and probably sensibly, Oz did not mention George Freeman, who was undoubtedly the prince of the city at the time. 20 Kate & Tilly (retired) * partners Nearly fifty years later some of the names are difficult to identify. Preface In the October 1965 issue of the satirical magazine Oz, Richard Neville published a semi-serious top twenty of Sydney-based criminals of the time. For Patricia Rose and Alec Masel and Dock Bateson with love.Ĭontents Preface 1 Founding Fathers 2 The Rip Roaring Twenties 3 The Game, Gambling and Cocaine 4 Some Grey and Other Fleeting Shadows 5 The War Years, 1940–1945 6 After the War Was Over s 8 War in the 1980s 9 Sex and the Sydney Citizen 10 The Best That Money Can Buy 11 Bikers 12 The Drug Trade 13 Kings of the Cross Notes Selected Bibliography