Underbelly (31 page)

In the Saffron years where there was smoke there was fire and where there was fire there was Abe.

In the early 1970s fire regulations were not that strict and Abe seemed to be a victim of heat-related ‘bad luck' more than most.

Lightning might not strike twice but ‘torches' do.

In one case, his right hand man, James ‘Big Jim' McCartney Anderson, was badly burned when Saffron's Staccato Club in Darlinghurst Road was set on fire. In another fire, an Adelaide club owned by a Saffron shelf company was also badly damaged.

A man was jailed for conspiracy to defraud an insurance company but Saffron was never charged. Six of Saffron's many properties, including gay bars, massage parlours and
discos, were to catch fire between 1980 and 1982. All appeared to be deliberately lit.

Later, Anderson, who would become a star police witness against Saffron, alleged that in one case an insurance claim was made for ‘sound equipment and lighting equipment that had been removed long beforehand.'

Saffron was the subject of interest in a coronial inquest into four fires and while the coroner found there was a good case against him on the grounds that the circumstances in each case were overwhelmingly similar, the Attorney General's department disagreed and once again Abe walked away, playing the part of the maligned businessman.

If there was one single event that changed the public perception of Saffron from colourful rogue to callous reptile it was a fire at Sydney's Luna Park.

In fact, Saffron gave reptiles a bad name. Snakes just eat rats. Abe employed them.

On 9 June 1979, the ghost train at the loved fun park was engulfed in flames, killing six children and the father of one of them.

It was widely held that Saffron had long wanted to own the property and had business interests in the fading beauty. One of his companies provided amusement machines to Luna Park and two company directors who leased the park were distant relatives to the gap-toothed crime boss.

The police investigation into the fires concentrated on the poor electrical standards and, some argued, energetically pushed the theory that the fire was just a terrible accident. But the inquest came back with an open finding – and pointedly rejected the electrical fault theory.

The fire started around 10.15pm, shortly before closing time, and took hold because of an inadequate fire hose system. Most felt that if the fire were deliberately lit, whoever organised it didn't want to cause death but to suggest that the owners were incompetent and should lose control of the complex.

‘It was started with petrol. Whoever did it didn't know there was one (more) train to go through,' a source close to Saffron said.

Killed were John Godson and his two boys, Damien and Craig, along with four Waverley College students: Jonathon Billings, Richard Carroll, Michael Johnson, and Seamus Rahilly. Another young student was pulled to safety by staff.

Saffron always maintained he was not involved in the fire but in the absence of other evidence, the denial meant little. Abe was always economical with the truth. He spent his entire career denying he was any more than a misunderstood entrepreneur.

In May 2007 Saffron's niece, Anne Buckingham, implicated him in the fire but would not, or could not, provide facts to back up her assertions.

She dropped her bombshell in an interview with the
Sydney Morning Herald
, saying:

‘The fire at Luna Park – very strange, that fire.' Then added: ‘I don't think people were meant to be killed.'

While stopping short of saying her uncle organised the fire, she said she believed he wanted to buy the park and that he liked to collect things. She later tried to distance
herself from her comments, but the controversy was well and truly reignited.

The National Crime Authority investigated Saffron and reviewed the arson investigations.

It found: ‘Luna Park, it was alleged, had been coveted by Saffron for over 20 years and the fire in the ghost train had been lit as a trigger to evict the incumbent tenants and gain control of the park lease for himself.'

The Costigan Commission had conducted its own inquiry into other fires linked to the Saffron empire.

A New South Wales policeman gave evidence to the commission that one figure ‘received a payment of money … so that nobody could be found guilty of the committing of arson.'

But the fires had long gone cold, as had any leads in the cases. Yet again, Saffron would walk away as a suspect but nothing more.

IF one man built Kings Cross it was Abraham Gilbert Saffron. He promoted his nightclubs as glamorous, risqué, and with an ‘international' flavour. They even served French onion soup. In fact, the food at Saffron clubs was notoriously bad but no one was there for the roast chicken. (In one club the chicken was just rubbery old rooster with feathers – that was Les Girls. But we digress).

Some clubs catered for film stars, politicians, senior police and gunmen. Abe didn't care who he ripped off. He instructed staff that when patrons were drunk on mixed drinks to just rub the rim of the glasses with spirits rather
than provide a full nip in the mix – the Saffron version of a finger of scotch.

People liked the naughty feel. It seemed like a touch of Las Vegas where ‘glamour' and girls were mixed with graft and gunnies.

Saffron opened the first of his many clubs – The Roosevelt – in 1947. It was later described as ‘the city's most notorious and disreputable nightclub' and closed on court orders. He built Australia's first strip club – at Kings Cross, naturally – and promoted tours by stars such as Frank Sinatra and Tina Turner.

If you had a weakness for a good time or bad girls (or boys) Saffron could find you whatever you wanted – at a price. And that price could take a lifetime to repay. Because among Saffron's many business methods was one he found the most satisfying.

Abe had a prodigious and eclectic sexual appetite and he encouraged the worst in his clients and friends. He had one ‘official' wife, Doreen, whom he had married in a synagogue, but he went home only three times a week. The other nights were shared amongst many mistresses and casual partners, mostly not of his faith.

While the arrangement may have saved on washing up at home it was not conducive to marital harmony. Doreen Saffron was so humiliated and depressed that she tried to commit suicide more than once.

Saffron was purported to be a sadomasochist who enjoyed inflicting and receiving pain. In one court case, it was alleged a ‘completely depraved' Saffron had whipped a girl's naked buttocks at a private fetishist party. Abe later
said the incident had been a ‘joke' and the whip was a feather duster. No wonder he never suffered from hay fever.

He was also a notorious exhibitionist – building ‘orgy rooms' where people could watch him do what he did best. As with everything he did, there was an angle: the two-way mirrors and peepholes in the rooms helped him build a form of insurance as lucrative as the fire policies he routinely cashed after each unexplained blaze.

Saffron took to photographing his more prominent clients with their pants down. Media barons, barristers, judges and state ministers were snapped in orgies with prostitutes, young boys and schoolgirls. Even in fast and loose Sydney such photos could be career-ending. No wonder that for decades Saffron was virtually untouchable.

Longtime Sydney journalist and Saffron watcher, Tony Reeves, in his book,
Mr Sin
, says that when Abe didn't have the appropriate picture he would organise fakes, once trying to compromise the state Attorney General by producing a photo of the politician horizontal with a notorious prostitute. Luckily for the prominent MP he had a prominent birthmark on his bottom. The lookalike used in the picture didn't have a birthmark – proving that on at least one occasion arse can beat lack of class.

One controversial police tape caught Saffron talking to his solicitor, Morgan Ryan, about High Court Judge Lionel Murphy and discussing how to arrange girls for Murphy.

According to Reeves, prostitute turned photographer Shirley Bega saw the dirt file as her way out of the Saffron sewer. He says the story – often repeated but never proved – was that she was shot dead by her estranged husband
after she stole some of the photos. A corrupt detective, who kept the evidence for his own profit and protection, covered up the murder.

Certainly, it is still said that one prosecutor didn't try too hard in a Saffron-related case for fear his reputation as a family man would be slightly sullied if the pictures of him playing leapfrog with a schoolboy were made public.

Saffron, a belts and braces man, had another form of protection besides blackmail. Over the years, he paid millions of dollars in bribes. He paid off police from street coppers to the commissioners – and politicians all the way to longtime New South Wales Premier Sir Robert Askin, who was as rotten as a pork chop.

James Anderson would make a statement: ‘In my capacity as manager for and partner of Saffron, I had first-hand knowledge of corruption of police to allow a blind eye approach to liquor law violations and other practices.'

He said there were weekly payments to police varying from $600 to $750 per club and larger payments of $5000 to senior officers. He said Saffron met the then Commissioner, former Olympic rower Mervyn Wood, on a P&O cruise ship ‘for a conference on a new scale of bribe payments after Wood became Commissioner.'

Anderson revealed that Saffron's clubs worked with two sets of tills for ‘black' and legitimate money and claimed millions went undeclared. This would come back to haunt Abe much later.

Anderson also alleged Saffron was involved in drugs although he couldn't prove it. Saffron routinely denied he was connected with drug trafficking but it was clear many of his prostitutes were users and dealers. And it is hard to
believe that a man who spent a lifetime doing anything for money would stop short of selling the illicit powders that were rampant in the sex industry he dominated.

‘Saffron is smart, always in the background, not dirtying his hands, but grabbing the dirty money,' Anderson said.

In October 1976 Saffron went public – claiming he was not involved in drugs and that the allegations against him were ‘vile'.

Costigan was unimpressed and made a damning finding: ‘Despite his protests of innocence, he is involved in drug trafficking. He imports. He distributes. He employs men who use violence to maintain his control and authority. His organization is a myriad of corporations. He uses people as agents and nominees, and shields himself from the criminal activity so that if it is detected, he will escape. Should this fail; he corrupts law enforcement officers to protect himself and his organization. The profits derived from these activities are protected from tax and if they were legitimate, making use of the latest fraudulent device as readily as the legitimate.'

ABRAHAM Gilbert Saffron was born just after World War I ended. His first years were spent with his family in a small flat above his father's drapery shop in inner-suburban Sydney.

By the time he turned eight, young Abe had already learned that vice paid more than tailoring: he made his pocket money selling cigarettes to his father's poker-playing friends. He left school at fifteen and joined the family business, Saffron & Son, in Pitt Street. His family wanted him to be a doctor. The closest he ever got was playing
doctors and nurses with some of his broadminded prostitutes.

In 1938, Saffron was charged over a minor starting price bookmaking offence. In those days he lacked the police contacts to have the charge fixed – but he was a quick learner.

Two years later, in 1940, Saffron was convicted of receiving stolen car radios and received a suspended sentence. This apparent lenient treatment might have been connected with the fact that he almost immediately joined the army … wartime courts encouraged young lawbreakers to avoid jail with a sudden display of patriotism. Regardless of the reasons why he joined up, young Saffron soon decided the army wasn't for him and transferred to the merchant navy, which had less front-line action than Tobruk or the Kokoda Trail.

It might have been a shrewd decision, for he survived the war when many of his contemporaries didn't. And he learned first hand there was more money in servicing servicemen than serving the nation.

In the Vietnam years, he was able to set up strip and vice businesses to cater for American and Australian soldiers on leave. He knew what had been known for thousands of years: sex sells.

In 1976, he was named in the South Australian Parliament as ‘one of the principal characters in organised crime in Australia'. The South Australian Attorney-General, Peter Duncan, told Parliament some of Saffron's employees were linked to the disappearance and suspected murder of Sydney newspaper publisher Juanita Neilsen, who had led a crusade to clean up Kings Cross.

The Costigan Royal Commission into organised crime
subsequently subjected Saffron to intense investigations. The Commission gave him the code name Gomorrah – a none-too-subtle reference to his professional and personal obsession with sex.

A later hearing of the Licensing Commission was told he was known as ‘Mr Sin', involved in pornography, connected with massage parlours and the underworld.

Despite an Australia-wide reputation as a crime boss, he was able to visit senior police in their Sydney offices as if he were a respected business figure making a donation to the Police Boys Club. His donations were always done in secret to the Old Boys Club. And they were cash.

In fact, in 1978, while under investigation for multiple offences he managed to have his fingerprints and photographs expunged from police records. Other official legal documents that should have been archived mysteriously disappeared. Nothing seemed out of reach of his corrupt network of police and public servants.

It was the start of an obsession to try to re-write his personal history that lasted until his death.