Lenny McPherson as informer

Geoff Schuberg: We went out and searched Lenny McPherson’s place and um, we, we weren’t real sure what we expected to find. He had a huge safe in the place which he willingly opened up for us. But when we got there, he ah, he met us at the front door.

He lived out at Gladesville in Prince Edward Park Road. He had .. fascinating guy – he had bullet proof glass even on his wire screen door at the front. It was wire there, but there was bullet proof glass behind it, so, it really wasn’t a fly screen as such.

But he, he .. we went in, and everything was fine. I told him why we were there I said we were searching for any documentation or whatever that might be of assistance to the National Crime Authority. We had a proper warrant and everything else. He was quite co-operative. When we met him at the door, he was actually on the telephone at the time, he said ‘I’ll just hang up’ he went to this call and all I heard him say was ‘yep, yeah, I’ve got visitors, yeah, right’ hung up. And I thought ‘he’s just told someone that the coppers are here’. He was talking to Freeman actually, then Freeman’s rung Chris Murphy, and while we were at the premises, Chris Murphy has arrived. And he come in like a Bondi Tram - a hundred mile an hour. ‘Your not to talk to my client unless I’m present’ you know, ‘don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t touch this, don’t do that’ and I had a go at him. I, I virtually told him to ‘F**k off, and keep out of our way’. And ah, as soon as I did it I thought ‘oh, you silly bugger, he’s obviously got a tape recorder on him and he’ll probably make a complaint about the way that I’ve spoken to him’. And I thought ‘I don’t really need that sort of thing’.

But McPherson turned around to him and he said ‘Listen Chris’ he said ‘Go up the back yard and sit down’ he said ‘they’re not causing me any aggravation’ and he said ‘just keep your nose out of it, I’ll talk to you when I’m finished’. And Murphy, like a little kid, had to sort of go up and sit down and keep out of it. So that was Lenny. And, and he .. I think he appreciated the way we treated him and handled the thing on that particular night, we seized a lot of stuff which they went through at the National Crime Authority, there was really nothing there that was going to tie him in with anything.

But, at the time, he was petrified about the fact that his life was under threat from [name hidden]. And he got back to me and he said ‘look, I’ve got a few things that I want to talk to you about’.

He was, he was really in fear of [Same hidden name], he thought [Same hidden name] was going to kill him. And he got back to me and he said ‘look, I’d like to have a talk to you’ so, the deal at the National Crime Authority, where everything was sort of done by the book, was that I had to register him as an informant.

Don Stewart knew that, a lot of other people didn’t and during the time that McPherson was an informant of mine, ah, people had made allegations about an improper association I was having with Lenny McPherson. And Stewart stood by me a hundred per cent. He even spoke to politicians because they’d fed it to politicians and, and Don Stewart even spoke to them and said ‘just keep your noses out of it. I know what Schuberg’s doing every minute of the day, and he’s certainly not doing anything improper’.

But I saw McPherson fairly regularly and he, he did give us a lot of good information, there’s no doubt about that. But would never involve himself in anything. He would never go so far as to say ‘well, I actually did this or did that’. He talked a lot about people like not so much Ray Kelly, but Fred Krahe4. And the fact that Krahe was continually trying to blame him for every crime that was ever committed in Sydney. And, and there’s no doubt that the guy had so much information ah, to give, and that’s what I wanted from him. I wanted to get him into a position where, we could offer him something to get him to sit down and tell all.

And unfortunately ah, it just never happened. He did give us a lot. Um, he’d feed little bits and pieces to us, and I used to see him fairly regularly. If anything happened, ah, I could go and talk to him and he would find out things for me which we could use. Ah, so he was, he was quite valuable to the National Crime Authority.

like before Lenny McPherson died, he confided in me that he had given Flannery5 3 guns. And he didn’t know what Flannery wanted the guns for, but after Flannery got the guns, Michael Drury was shot in the kitchen of his home over on the north side, and Flannery returned two of those guns to McPherson. And, shortly after that, Flannery disappeared.

My take on that is, Flannery, like Stewart John Regan6 years ago, was an uncontrollable criminal, and ah, there was just a cleansing process that took place. He just disappeared off the face of the earth. His wife blamed police for involvement in it. I don’t think that’s true. I think ah, the people involved in organised crime in Sydney just saw him as a wild card, and he disappeared – where, I’ve got no idea.