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George, the Team Player

In 1990 George David Freeman’s heart failed after he ran out of puff. Freeman’s lungs were always odds-on to be what would take him off, if—as proved to be the case—the men who wanted to kill him didn’t. Jackie Muller came very close.

On Anzac Day 1979 Freeman ate at the home of his doctor and mate Dr Nick Paltos, a heavy gambler and, with Danny Chubb and Graham ‘Croc’ Palmer, an importer of not-very-good Lebanese hashish by the tonne in the 1980s. After dinner, travelling solo, Freeman swung by an illegal casino for a little while, but decided on an early night. Punter, SP bookie, commission agent for other punters, he had had a busy day; there’s a lot of race meetings on Anzac Days. He drove through the gates of Dallas, his spacious well-treed Yowie Bay mansion, and pulled up before the front door. Punch, a Labrador named after NSW politician Leon Punch, and Bottom, a Lab named after journalist Bob Bottom, both men pains in Freeman’s arse, men who publicly linked his name to criminality and corruption, didn’t greet him with their usual excitement, but he didn’t notice that then. Later, he guessed Muller must have given the dogs a kicking to subdue them. Freeman poked at the lock with his key. A .22 bullet smacked into his mandible. He said he let out a yell, turned, sprinted in a zigzag pattern 100 metres and over a 2-metre fence to his neighbour’s house in one long adrenalin-fuelled blood-soaked rush of fear.

Thus (he said) he did not see the shooter and told the cops who asked him who did it, ‘I don’t know.’ In his neck, up into his mouth, grazing the optic nerve while still going up, the bullet left George’s head from the corner of his eye like a teardrop. Pain relief, antibiotics and a five-day spell in hospital under observation, had him seeing things OK again. He had learned to use his one good eye. There was no brain or other nerve damage, and, after some rural living, away from media pests and police asking stupid questions, he was right as rain.

John Marcus Muller was shot three times in the head at close range in his much humbler driveway six weeks later. Muller died. Freeman declined to answer police questions about the matter, but it was established he was in Noosa Queensland at the time.

After a man called Chris Flannery disappeared six years later, a Melbourne hit team had two goes at killing Freeman. But he had a suspect for putting the Melbourne hit team on him: Chris’s widow, Kathleen Flannery, for revenge.

Both times, the hit team was thwarted. First by the vagaries of foot traffic (people everywhere), and then by the unexpected (a child in Freeman’s car). In the second go, Freeman saw the shooters hooded up in the last seconds. Driving at them in his Merc, he survived without a shot being fired when they fled. A group of men the would-be assassins feared might be Freeman’s goons minding Freeman’s back, were in fact police doing surveillance on Freeman, police who had no idea they were at a planned execution site, saw no hooded men, and were understandably scratching their heads at Freeman’s inexplicable road jockeying. The Melbourne team was well informed: they knew their quarry attended Dr Nick Paltos’ medical clinic once a week, the site of their laying in wait, on the right day, at the right time. Dr Paltos dulled George’s chronic pain with morphine shots. Freeman was almost certainly addicted to pethidine and morphine, but living the life of a chronic asthmatic on aspirin or herbal tea is a poor life. Freeman was a man who made a lot of phone calls before he went out at night to see men about a dog or a horse, and keep his finger on the pulse. Weekends often saw him with travel commitments, to Flemington, Doomben, Morphettville, Devonport… wherever a fair bet, a book, a sting, a bloke to see, or a race to fix took him.

He is suspected of murders, Muller’s for one. The general consensus is that Michael ‘Mikel’ Hurley asked Freeman to look after the welfare of his wife Lena, Muller’s stepdaughter, while Mikel served up to 4 years in prison. George and Lena had a fling-length affair, and in some versions, she became addicted to heroin and worked in a knocking shop in which George had some interest and Mickel got a fright when he went into the place ‘for an empty’ and found her there, or she simply, independently, went off to run the shop. The first story is told by Neddy Smith, who wrote Mikel off as a gutless bugger and clearly does not like him; the second is the view of Clive Small, an ex-NSW detective.

No-one believed Freeman when he said he used to be an SP bookie, but had given it up. He had a hand in the racket until two years before his death, when he said he ‘retired’. He protested he was just ‘a professional punter’ (requiring him to pay income tax on his wins) and a commission agent, charged with getting the best odds for other punters, that’s all. Most people were skeptical, Justice Don Stewart as royal commissioner for one. The waterfront mansion Dallas, the big Hilton wedding breakfast, and the affluence that clearly surrounded him suggested black money, not luck at the track. A crime boss doesn’t have to be wealthy, but it helps. There was a widespread feeling, as crime student Professor Alfred McCoy, Punch and Bottom (the Parliamentarian and his advisor-journalist, not the canines), and others said very loudly, that the ‘colorful racing identity’ was very influential. Gaming racketeers didn’t spin a wheel or deal a card or open a substantial book without Freeman’s say so, not without paying tribute in some form, usually banknotes. Police watched ‘parcels’ carried by illegal casino employees loaded into the boot of his car, for example.

Some crime bosses don’t have money, but it does help in staying alive and staying in black businesses. It might not buy you love, but it can buy influence, lawyers, political friends, police, guns, and more and more money. Bob Bottom called him ‘The Boss’. Crims called him ‘The Little Fella’, to match Lennie McPherson’s ‘The Big Fella’, the two being long-term mates and a contrast in sizes. When crims and police talked of ‘The Team’, they meant George, Lennie, Stan ‘The Man’ Smith and the associates and hangers-on they currently favored or employed. The whiff of the potential for violence lay behind any suggestions these men made.

We do not have the space to discuss whether or not he was involved in the killings of Tony Eustace or Chris Flannery, but a role for him in either or both can’t be ruled out. When standover man Richard Reilly, the baccarat king, was shot and mortally wounded, dying at the wheel of his Maserati back in 1967 Freeman’s name was on a (somewhat longish) list of suspects too, but his complicity is unlikely. He was never charged with anyone’s murder.

He faced charges in the Children’s Court and in his twenties. He published his autobiography in his fifties, and wrote of these charges, saying he ‘robbed choko [the fruit of the desperately hungry] vines and factories, fruit trees and jewelery stores,’ was guilty of ‘driving without a licence, stolen cars…’ His father all-but abandoned his mother, her second husband died young, and George grew up hard up in an inner-west Sydney slum, Annandale, and a lot of his juvenile crime was survival stuff. He hit court at 12 for stealing knives, pens, shirts, a tin of biscuits, fare evasion, swearing, b&e, m.v. … His mother called him ‘a good finder’ when he stole wood to fuel the family’s stove. George admired his mother, for her guts: taking in ironing to pay the rent. For, somehow or other, money scrapped up with love: always having 30 shillings on the three days of the year when a maximum of 30 shillings was allowed to be given to boys in juvie. For how she visited or wrote regularly. He was contemptuous of his aloof, somewhat pompous, stingy tradesman father.

Darcy Dugan was George’s hero in the ‘hood. George wanted to be ‘a crook. Not just any crook, but the crook, the BIGGEST—the man with money, power, influence. Working for a living never crossed my mind.’

He called Tamworth Boys’ Home, ‘the toughest, most damaging institution I ever saw the inside of’, quite a statement for a man who had seen the inside of Grafton Tracts, where NSW’s ‘Intractable’ crims were sent to endure the most vicious cruelty the system could manage under the power of that State. As a young adult in Paramatta Gaol he met Darcy Dugan. But Dugan was no hero. He was an ‘imbecile’ in his usual institutional environment, another ‘loser’ along with the crims who constituted his ‘family’. He met Lennie McPherson there, and did an unofficial Advanced Oxy-acetylene Cutting Theory course with him.

He was again sent inside after getting pinched over a safe cut open in the back of an H G Palmer Electrical Goods store. In Long Bay, he met the founder of the chain, H G Palmer himself, doing two years over the theft of £2 million of shareholders’ funds. George had plenty of time to think after Palmer got out after doing six months. One question was: Why am I doing three years hard labour for stealing £8000?

By the mid-1960s he was 30, married to Marcia Bedford since her divorce, with two children, and doing very well working for illicit bookies, gamers and punters. His last thieving conviction occurred when he was travelling with pro shoplifters in Perth in 1968. He saw ‘an open Jack and Jill’ [cash drawer, till] and the way he told it, swept up $258, a spur-of-the-moment opportunistic move. But he admitted to having been a busy shoplifter at earlier times, and the guys he got to raise distraction had lifted merchandise from shops all over the globe.

The only legal hassles he faced after that involved: travelling on a false passport (hassles in the US including a deportation order, and in Australia, fined $200; refused entry into the UK and sent out of there too); tax demands (he found $23,000 and paid up); a charge of assault on Frank Hing (either a property developer with a major interest in the Goulburn Club, or a 14K Triad boss intent on taking over Chinatown and King Cross illegal gaming establishments, depending on who is talking), charges which failed to proceed in 1983; and illegal betting charges, fined $500 in 1983 and $5000, the maximum, in 1985.

That list is it, the total for the two decades the Little Fella was a gaming czar at the height of his power. That he did not hit more blues, and not more major ones, is said to be due to his excellent relationships with corrupt cops (some named in Justice Stewart’s inquiry), legal figures, politicians, racing figures, other czars (like Joe Taylor, two-up king, vice’s Abe Saffron, gaming’s Perc Galea, entertainment entrepreneur Ronnie Lee, and so on…) and men who knew men of power and influence, the basis of his survival.

This criminal had the luxury of being free to defend his reputation, and he did. He appeared on TV interviews—though the lie detector test was pure showmanship. So were his no-risk challenges to parliamentarians to ‘say that outside the House’ and face defamation action, a time-waster and money black hole which no sane politician would take on. But he did more or less volunteer to enter the witness box and be cross examined to make reply to his accusers. He wrote and self-published his autobiography, albeit on his ‘retirement’, four years before he died. It is routine for adult asthmatics to recognise how very few very old sufferers there are among their number. He found out his arch enemy Bob Bottom had been had up for unlawful carnal knowledge as a young guy (Bob married the girl later) in Broken Hill, and for an old theft. He threatened the writer with public exposure, so Bottom beat him to publication, cheerfully admitting youthful indiscretions. Another bugbear bastard was Professor Alfred McCoy. McCoy’s work on crime’s grip on Sydney had Freeman down as the ‘Mr Big’ of the 1970s and 1980s.

The sources of George’s public grief were articles, broadcasts and mentions in every relevant inquiry, a few court cases, and in parliament mainly. Anything that ‘came out’ about George Freeman was news. He is on the money when he says he suffered being labeled guilty by association. The question always is: what were his associates and him doing? It is easy to assume a criminal subject and purpose, but assumption is never enough.

A Criminal Intelligence Unit report got tabled in Macquarie Street. This was leaked and provoked Questions in the House, grief for Premier Wran (who stood down until investigation of how it got there was complete) and grief for George Freeman.

George stayed with Joe Testa in Chicago. In 1981 in California Testa turned the ignition over in his Lincoln Continental and was blown to smithereens. This is meant to prove Testa was a mafia heavy, but as far as George knew, Testa was an apartment owner, financer, nightclub owner, benefactor of the Illinois and Chicago Police, and involved in insurance. All Testa ever did wrong that George could see was to burn down some properties he had insured. Meeting a man who owns a bock of apartments exclusively occupied by air hostesses is rare enough in a man’s life. Admiring the view of hosties in bikinis drinking by the pool, Joe was going be a good mate of George’s and who, he asks, can blame him for that? ‘Who is taboo, Joe?’ ‘My mother and my sister and they aren’t here, George.’ Any deal he was in that surfaced—a racehorse purchased by a friend of his from Las Vegas, a sale of real estate he held with Testa—saw accusations of organised crime, mafia infiltration and corruption made. ‘ On reflection, the only thing George never got the blame for was the [Newcastle] earthquake,’ a friend remarked.

George’s head turned white early and his tattoos were usually hidden under a good suit. The Little Fella, Mouse when he was in juvie, was short—5 foot 8½ inches [174 cm]—and slight of stature—’10 stone [63 kg] wringing wet’ he reckoned. When he was staying with Testa he got drunk on a liqueur and endured his first hangover; he was a teetotaler otherwise, just didn’t like booze. Even police who hated him would go as far as saying he was ‘hard, smart and charming’. A man with Lennie McPherson or Chris Flannery, his minder for a time, at his elbow does not need more physical menace perhaps, but he was businesslike, respectful, more likely to wear a smile on his lips than a snarl as a rule. He could walk easily among those of any rank, knew his knives and forks at table, dressed well and was always well groomed. He loved women and sex. He was proud that he could give his mum an easy life in her last 15 years. His second wife Georgina was an actress, model and orthopist (eye movement, disease and rehab worker).

He was famously photographed in the Members Stand at Randwick Racecourse with Murray Farquhar and Nick Paltos. The former was NSW’s Chief Stipendiary Magistrate, later arrested for perversion of justice and who died facing, of all things, piracy offences, and the latter was a drug runner. He was kicked off course, a special humiliation, by a detective that day. But that photo was reprinted every time Freeman appeared in the press.

SP bookmaking, brothels and illegal casinos provided cash flow, and race-fixing and betting stings cream, allegedly over $500,000 in one sting on the TAB, while he was protected by police and hired ‘heavies’. If police had not illegally taped phones, we would never have had these snapshots from the Days of the Life of George Freeman:

‘send Murray 280… living over Pagewood, in the phone book’ to Lyn Black, assistant working at his SP [illegal bookmaking] office

‘If he wants to hold, he can have a thousand. If I back a winner, there’s a bonus,’ proposition to be put to a trotting driver [race-fixing]

‘… oxygen masks… cortisone…’ to top trainers [horse doping]

‘Put the phones under Grant Construction Co…’ [false account, telecommunication fraud perhaps, but for an SP phone bank anyway]

Receives a warning made to Joe Taylor, two-up king and Kellet Club owner, to ‘watch phones’ to be passed on to Freeman [possible corrupt police or public official involved]

Tell Bruce Hardin his casino, The Palace, can keep operating as things are ‘sweet in town’ but a ‘new regime’ will come in and Bruce will be further advised then [illegal casino, possibly bribe public official]

‘When that fellow comes in at 10.30 tomorrow he is not to take any of [Freeman’s] money if he is going to employ any of those Japanese, Chinese or girls from Manila that Lennie brings in’ [illegal immigration? Prostitution?]

‘…gave him a BIG ONE at Christmas…’ [bribe presumably]

Whatever the political headaches he caused, the limits of the influence he wielded, the media fusses that he raised, the civic corruption he symbolized, 90 cents of his dollars came from Australia’s mug punters.

Recommended Sources

Freeman, George: George Freeman: an autobiography

Reeves, Tony: George Freeman: thief, race-fixer, standover man and underworld crim