Brisbane Magistrates Court is currently looking to put an end to one of Queensland’s most enduring murder mysteries, proceedings which inadvertently led to new information about an infamous Brisbane venue fire.
As ABC News reports, committal hearing witness Peter Hall was giving evidence at the trial of 68-year-old Gary Reginald Dubois and 76-year-old Vincent O’Dempsey for the murders for Barbara McCulkin, 34, and her young daughters.
During his testimony, Hall told the court that he, Dubois, and other associates were ordered by O’Dempsey to burn down former Brisbane nightclub Torino’s “for an insurance job” because “the nightclub wasn’t doing too well”.
The info follows a 2013 call from crime writer Tony Reeves to re-open an investigation into a string of nightclub fires that swept Brisbane throughout the early 1970s, including Torino’s, Alice’s Cafe, Chequers Nightclub, and Whiskey Au Go Go.
The notorious Whiskey Au Go Go blaze claimed 15 lives and saw two men, John Andrew Stuart and James Richard Finch, convicted. Stuart died in prison after a six-day hunger strike, while Finch was sent back to England where he confessed and later recanted.
Despite admitting to a part in the Torino’s fire, for which the men were allegedly paid $500 and was carried out only when the perpetrators were sure no one was inside, Hall insisted he and his associates were not involved in the Whiskey Au Go Go fire.
“[I was concerned] only on the basis if they found out we did the job at Torino so they may have thought we had something to do with that too,” Hall told the court, via The Chronicle. The hearing is ongoing and Hall is expected to be cross-examined tomorrow.
