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Any theories anyone?
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Similar to the late Shirley Finn, there will always be questions with no answers...
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Good riddance Roger Rogerson. Suffer in hell. Didn't have any decency to admit to Shirley Finn's murder for the sake of her family.
Wed, 24 January 2024 2:00AM
Was Roger Rogerson behind the murder of brothel madam Shirley Finn?Was Roger Rogerson behind the murder of brothel madam Shirley Finn? Credit: The West Australian
Secrets and lies, death and corruption.
They followed Roger Rogerson — the rotten killer cop who died in a Sydney prison this week — for a lifetime.
But did he also bring them to Perth on June 23, 1975?
On that morning, a white Dodge Phoenix with a black vinyl roof was parked near the green fairways of Royal Perth Golf Club.
Inside, wearing a ballgown, was brothel madam Shirley Finn. It was her car. And she died in it — from the four bullets someone shot into her head.
She was 34 years-old, and had obviously been brutally and efficiently murdered.
By whom has been a question unanswered for nearly 50 years, despite numerous investigations, internal inquiries and eventually a public inquest.
It was in the last forum, in 2017, that Rogerson was officially linked to Ms Finn’s case, by various witnesses including former WA police officers.
Michael Regan, a uniformed officer in the 1960s, told how he was at times tasked to drive more senior detectives around and how he remembered Rogerson in his car, being dropped at the Raffles Hotel.
The pub was owned at the time by Abe Saffron, a Sydney crime boss known as ‘Mr Sin’.
Mr Regan also said he was certain Rogerson was close with head of the vice squad Bernie Johnson — who many said was at the top of a “purple circle” of corrupt WA detectives.
CIB detective Laurie Tyler told the coroner he too knew Johnson, knew of Saffron, and had been introduced to Rogerson in the WA Police canteen.
And Mr Tyler said around the time of Ms Finn’s murder, at the Raffles, he saw Saffron, Johnson and Rogerson enjoying each other’s company.
“I thought it was something to take note of,” Mr Tyler said.
And there was much more to note. Like the evidence of former WA fraud squad detective James Boland.
He told the Finn inquest about information he was given a month after the murder.
The information was that a hitman had been hired from the east coast to kill Ms Finn — for a $5000 bounty.
He said the assassin flew into Perth under an assumed name, invited Ms Finn out for a drink, lured her to Perth Airport and killed her on the way.
That alleged hitman was Neddy Smith — a man who was to become one of Rogerson’s most valuable informants
But Coroner Barry King, in delivering his reasons, revealed that no significant investigation was conducted by WA Police until 2015 — some 40 years later.
“At an early stage of the inquest, it demonstrated the possibility that police corruption existed in the CIB at the time of Ms Finn’s murder.”
Rogerson was eventually interviewed by WA Police in 2015, “but he said that he could not recall meeting Shirley Finn.”
Court in the Act: Roger Rogerson and the Shirley Finn secrets he takes to his grave
The West AustralianWed, 24 January 2024 2:00AM
Was Roger Rogerson behind the murder of brothel madam Shirley Finn?Was Roger Rogerson behind the murder of brothel madam Shirley Finn? Credit: The West Australian
Secrets and lies, death and corruption.
They followed Roger Rogerson — the rotten killer cop who died in a Sydney prison this week — for a lifetime.
But did he also bring them to Perth on June 23, 1975?
On that morning, a white Dodge Phoenix with a black vinyl roof was parked near the green fairways of Royal Perth Golf Club.
Inside, wearing a ballgown, was brothel madam Shirley Finn. It was her car. And she died in it — from the four bullets someone shot into her head.
She was 34 years-old, and had obviously been brutally and efficiently murdered.
By whom has been a question unanswered for nearly 50 years, despite numerous investigations, internal inquiries and eventually a public inquest.
It was in the last forum, in 2017, that Rogerson was officially linked to Ms Finn’s case, by various witnesses including former WA police officers.
Michael Regan, a uniformed officer in the 1960s, told how he was at times tasked to drive more senior detectives around and how he remembered Rogerson in his car, being dropped at the Raffles Hotel.
The pub was owned at the time by Abe Saffron, a Sydney crime boss known as ‘Mr Sin’.
Mr Regan also said he was certain Rogerson was close with head of the vice squad Bernie Johnson — who many said was at the top of a “purple circle” of corrupt WA detectives.
CIB detective Laurie Tyler told the coroner he too knew Johnson, knew of Saffron, and had been introduced to Rogerson in the WA Police canteen.
And Mr Tyler said around the time of Ms Finn’s murder, at the Raffles, he saw Saffron, Johnson and Rogerson enjoying each other’s company.
“I thought it was something to take note of,” Mr Tyler said.
And there was much more to note. Like the evidence of former WA fraud squad detective James Boland.
He told the Finn inquest about information he was given a month after the murder.
The information was that a hitman had been hired from the east coast to kill Ms Finn — for a $5000 bounty.
He said the assassin flew into Perth under an assumed name, invited Ms Finn out for a drink, lured her to Perth Airport and killed her on the way.
That alleged hitman was Neddy Smith — a man who was to become one of Rogerson’s most valuable informants
But Coroner Barry King, in delivering his reasons, revealed that no significant investigation was conducted by WA Police until 2015 — some 40 years later.
“At an early stage of the inquest, it demonstrated the possibility that police corruption existed in the CIB at the time of Ms Finn’s murder.”
Rogerson was eventually interviewed by WA Police in 2015, “but he said that he could not recall meeting Shirley Finn.”
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Shirley Finn murder inquest hears of 'bedtime confession' by WA vice squad boss
Court hears Bernie Johnson confessed to Carolyn Langan over 1975 murder and later threatened her ‘with a shotgun to the face’
The then chief of Western Australia’s vice squad made a “bedtime confession” to his lover that he’d killed brothel madam Shirley Finn, an inquest into her 1975 execution-style murder has heard.
After hearings in 2017 and last year, the inquest resumed in the WA coroners court on Monday, when Craig Klauber said Carolyn Langan shared personal information with him as they became close friends working together at CSIRO in the late 1980s.
One morning, she rushed into his office and said Bernie Johnson had confessed to the murder.
“I think she was serious,” Klauber said.
He said he believed she told him so there would be a link to Johnson if something happened to her.
Later, Langan was visibly shaken and pale when she told him that Johnson had threatened her “with a shotgun to the face”.
“She was clearly very frightened,” Klauber said.
He said she’d also told him other things suggesting Johnson might have been “a bit shady”, including his friendship with former New South Wales detective and convicted murderer Roger Rogerson, and buried gold at his rural property in Gidgegannup.
Klauber said Johnson twice threatened him, once in a veiled way when he mentioned someone in hospital in a serious condition and a few weeks later when he said, “I don’t know what you’ve heard but whatever you think is wrong.”
Langan denies the claims by Klauber, who came forward after hearing her testimony last year, telling the court it disturbed him how much she left out.
Langan will give evidence again later this week and has described Klauber as a gossiper, but he insists he knows what he heard.
“Events are very, very clear in my mind,” he said.
Last year, Ross Harvie Stone said Langan, who was a boarder at his father’s farm for more than a decade, “knows too much” about the Finn case.
Klauber, a minerals research scientist, also told the court he knew another woman who was having an affair with Johnson, Joan Marzo, now named Joan Wilson.
The connection was established when she asked how to find buried gold, saying $300,000 worth of the precious metal was hidden on Johnson’s farm.
She spoke of corruption and drugs, and said she suspected Johnson was involved in Finn’s murder, Klauber claimed.
He also said she got him and her daughter Amanda to sit a few tables away in a restaurant when she handed over an envelope to a man named “Blood”, who he gathered was a policeman, in exchange for information on Johnson.
“It all seemed a bit bizarre and over the top,” Klauber said. “One wouldn’t even write this up as a script.”
But Wilson denied his claims, saying she only dated Johnson briefly.
Johnson had dementia before he died last year, so he did not give evidence.
Finn was shot four times in the head in her car near Royal Perth Golf Club either late on 21 June 1975 or early the following day.
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