Shirley Finn


Shirley June Finn, née Shewring, a Perth brothel keeper, nightclub operator and well-connected businesswoman and socialite, was shot dead at about midnight on 22–23 June 1975. Her body, dressed in an elaborate ball gown and expensive jewellery, was found at dawn in her car which was parked on a golf course next to a busy freeway. The murder is notable because of Finn's close relationship with Western Australia Police detectives who, in that era, controlled and regulated Perth's prostitution and gambling activities. The crime is unsolved. On 29 August 2017, after 42 years, a coronial inquest was commenced.

Early life and career

A wartime baby, Finn was the eldest child of a bomber pilot, and of necessity was brought up by her mother during her early years. After the war, the family lived in comfortable surroundings in the affluent riverside suburb of Mt Pleasant, where she became a teenager before the birth of her three younger siblings. Though successful at her schoolwork, she was sexually active by age 14, which caused her to be committed for eight months to a notoriously cruel Catholic Church welfare home.
Her biographer Juliet Wills recounts that Finn left school at 15 and found work at a city frock shop, where she met her husband-to-be Des Finn, a 22-year-old air-force mechanic. They married in Perth and went to live in Melbourne, where he continued with the RAAF and she worked as a sales assistant at Buckley & Nunn. Her sons Steven and Shane were born in 1959 and 1960 respectively. They transferred back to Perth, where daughter Bridget was born in 1961. .

Sex business

When her husband suffered a serious injury and subsequent mental instability, Shirley Finn was aged 21 and chose sex-oriented activities as a means of supporting her three children, including strip-dancing and body-painting. She also joined a witchcraft coven which conducted "black magic and sex" activities in Kings Park. From this she advanced to a career of topless dancing and body painting in association with a travelling fairground boxing troupe. In 1969 Finn was conducting a "body painting and escort business" which was raided by police, and she was charged and convicted with "keeping premises for the purpose of prostitution." As a result, the family was socially ostracised and the children had to leave the Catholic primary school.

Regulated prostitution

Finn became associated with King's Cross, Sydney, brothel operator Dorothea Flatman who transferred to Perth in 1968 and set up a number of brothels under the symbiotic protection of Australian vice overlord Abe Saffron and a policy of "containment" upheld by the W.A. Police. It seems that she, Stella Strong and Shirley Finn were among a privileged few allowed to operate in the prostitution business under the rigorous line management of Vice Squad chief Bernard Johnson.

Murder

Finn's body was found by a motorcycle traffic officer at about 8.30 a.m. on Monday 23 June 1975, in her parked Dodge DG Phoenix car near the 9th fairway of the Royal Perth Golf Club, South Perth. The location is clearly visible from the adjacent Kwinana Freeway, from which it was then separated only by a waist-high fence and an access road. Inside the car, Finn's body was slumped behind the wheel with four bullet holes in her head. She wore valuable diamond jewellery which had not been touched.

Location queries

It has been alleged by Finn's biographer Juliet Wills that the long-established police map of the crime scene is grossly erroneous, incorrectly locating the Dodge Phoenix near the 5th tee, more than 100 metres from the 9th green, near the golf clubhouse, where the body was found. If true, the allegation exposes a probability that evidence of important witnesses was ignored or discounted if it did not accord with the police map.

Rumours

At the time, various rumours regarding the murder attributed it to specific issues relating to prostitution and the way it was being handled by police and government in Perth, but no evidence of this was made public.

Purported investigations

The murder, and the implied connections with issues relating to policing of the sex industry, resulted in a Royal Commission being held. Continued interest in Finn's murder, and the apparent lack of evidence, led to periodic speculation as to the murderer's identity and has been the subject of numerous articles and television pieces and two books—Juliet Wills's 'Dirty Girl' and David Whish-Wilson's crime novel 'Line of Sight'. There is evidence that major Sydney underworld figures were in Perth at the time, including vice king Abe Saffron and corrupt police officer Roger Rogerson, yet no significant line of investigation was pursued by the police.
In 1985, according to then state premier Brian Burke, a "very senior police officer" was under investigation for murder, resulting in that officer's retirement and the matter then being deemed to have been "resolved". The West Australian newspaper reported Burke's belief that the subject killing was that of Shirley Finn.
On the thirtieth anniversary of the murder—23 June 2005—a cold-case review of the case was announced. An opinion was canvassed that no solution of the case was likely.
Over time, a range of interpretations as to who the murderer was have been speculated upon.
In 2014, another cold-case review was launched by WA Police. The following year, the Corruption and Crime Commission confirmed it had received new information about the murder. News reports said a former policeman had spoken about seeing Shirley Finn with detectives in the bar of the old central police station, in East Perth, on the night she was killed., no further information had been released by police about their cold-case review.
On 6 March 2017, the ABC Television documentary series Australian Story aired a story titled "Getting Away With Murder" which revealed that a coronial inquest would be conducted in 2017. The story also presented testimony from Shirley Finn's former driver, Leigh Beswick, that Finn had an extended relationship with then police minister Ray O'Connor.

Coronial inquest

The inquest scheduled to open on 11 September 2017 was in fact commenced on Tuesday 29 August to take evidence from former WA detective James Archibald Boland about an officially documented 1975 rumour that Sydney criminal Neddy Smith had flown to Perth "for an arranged meeting with and an unnamed police officer."
The public hearing was adjourned on 20 December 2017 and resumed on 23 July 2018. After a week, it was again adjourned for 6 months, "allowing new leads to be followed up and two scientific investigations to be completed". Coroner Barry King acknowledged limitations but had not given up hope. He urged persons with information to come forward.

Witnesses

Heard in 2017

James Archibald Boland said he had met a man known as Keith Alan Lewis who told him that Neddy Smith flew to Perth on 23 June and was "paid $5000 to kill her on behalf of her business partners." An official police document, known as "serial 393", was produced to support the witness's claim that "Mr Lewis had been willing to provide information about Smith in exchange for fraud charges against his boyfriend being downgraded." Following suggestions that Smith was aiming to take control of Perth brothels, Boland said he was ordered by former CIB boss Don Hancock not to have any further involvement in the inquiry.
Bridget Shewring, daughter of the deceased, claimed her 1975 statement was twisted or mishandled by detectives, and that her mother's partner Rose Black may not have revealed all she knows.
Phillip Hooper (13 September

Heard in 2018

Bernie Johnson was head of the Vice Squad at the time of the murder. He was the subject of a written submission by his doctor, Folo Bella, read to the inquest on 12 December 2017. Johnson had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and the doctor concluded "I am of the opinion he has no testamentary capability to give evidence or make any reasonable contribution to any legal proceedings." Johnson's death was reported in April 2018, while the inquest was in recess.
Trevor Lawrence and Gary Timms, who were police constables in 1975, gave evidence about their presence in the police canteen at the time a page was ripped out of the visitors' book. Both said they had not seen Ms Finn on the night when a drunken senior sergeant objected to the presence of two female teenagers who were associating with junior constables.
Bruce Scott, a former assistant police commissioner who retired in 1992, denied having ordered two junior officers to "get rid of" certain Finn-case exhibits. Counsel assisting the coroner, Toby Bishop, cited an unidentified officer who had made the allegation when interviewed by the Corruption and Crime Commission.

Heard in 2019

Craig Klauber, a CSIRO chemist, said that a workmate named Carolyn Langan, who had been a lover of the late Bernie Johnson, had confided in him in the late 1980s that Johnson had made a "bedtime confession" to having killed Shirley Finn. Ms Langan denied the confession had happened.
"Witness L" said she had been the partner of a vice-squad detective, Bob Nevin, who told her that he had shot Ms Finn in the head under an order from police headquarters to "get rid of the problem" on the night Ms Finn turned up asking to speak to the police commissioner about the tax she was paying on graft. Nevin resigned in 1981 after he was found to be co-owning a brothel with fellow officer Tony Wick.
Bob Maher a nightclub operator, said there were rumours connecting a violent bouncer and convicted murderer, Walter Coman, with Ms Finn's killing.
Closing the inquest in June 2019, the coroner announced that there had been "incompetence" in the police investigation and that there were "too many suspects", while vital evidence had "disappeared", including the murder weapon and the victim's luxury car. It had also been discovered that the police in 1975 had published a misleading crime-scene diagram which "places the crime scene at the opposite end of the golf course to where Ms Finn's car was actually found". The erroneous map was officially adopted for decades and possibly caused valid eyewitness evidence to be discounted by investigators.