In February this year I was on the phone to the former wife of a 1980s “poofter basher”. His name was among a list of more than 20 linked to the so-called Bondi Boys, whose teenage members were suspected, although never convicted, of bashing and even murdering gay men on the cliffs between their beach suburb and neighbouring Tamarama.
“He’d do the same again today,” the mother of the basher’s children assured me.
At Blackfella Films we were casting a wide net for potential subjects to appear in the documentary, which aired on Sunday night on SBS.
We wanted to gain some insight into what motivated the gay bashers. What was going on in their young minds?
We had interviewed the family and friends of men who had died. We had recorded the brave testimony of bashing victims such as David McMahon, the one who got away. He recalled the pack of kids who surrounded him in December 1989, girls cheering on the boys as they punched and kicked him and dragged him to a cliff where their ringleader said words to the effect: “Let’s throw him off where we threw the other dude.”
“We all know the boys got up to stuff... but nobody’s going to tell you.”
The other dude may well have been John Russell. In 2005, the then deputy state coroner Jacqueline Milledge found that Russell, a gay barman, was thrown to his death from a Bondi cliff less than a month before the sickening assault on McMahon.
Three nights before the McMahon attack, and only metres away, three youths demanded to know if Alan Boxsell was gay. They proceeded to bash him with a skateboard, breaking six of his ribs. Both McMahon and Boxsell identified a Bondi Boy, Sean Cushman, but he was never charged and he told the Milledge inquest that he was never involved in gay bashing. Milledge found there was not enough evidence to lay charges against anyone in connection with the deaths of three gay men, Russell, Ross Warren and Gilles Mattaini.
Boxsell, however, also identified teenager David McAuliffe, who was charged and who, along with his brother and a third boy, went on seven months later to murder another gay man, Kritchikorn Rattanajurathaporn, on the same headland.
While researching for the documentary, I contacted known and suspected bashers. I dealt with two of the killers who had been convicted as teenagers of their crimes. I believe they were sincerely ashamed and deeply sorry.
Most of these crimes, however, remain unsolved. Many of the people involved, or who were on the periphery of the gangs, have been keeping their secrets for decades.
So I reached out to the Bondi Boys and their hangers-on, including some of the girls. Now in their 40s, none would contribute to the documentary, even if their identities were to be disguised.
“We all know the boys got up to stuff,” one of the women said, “but nobody’s going to tell you.”
Sometimes it was necessary to seek the old Bondi Boys through an intermediary, a relative or friend of the one-time basher. Or, in the case of my most disturbing phone call, the mother of his children.
This man had not been a person of interest in any of the murders. But in 2001 he had spoken more frankly than most of the old Bondi crew to police officers from Operation Taradale, led by then homicide detective Steve Page. They were re-investigating the death of Russell and the disappearance of Warren, a Wollongong newsreader.
The old Bondi Boy told them he had bashed gays at North Bondi but never at Marks Park, the cliff-side gay beat that separates Bondi and Tamarama. This is where Warren vanished in July 1989 and where Russell’s body was found at the base of a cliff less than four months later.
The confessed basher wasn’t returning my messages, so I asked his former partner to assure him that he could remain anonymous. We only wanted his honest recollections.
“He won’t talk to you,” she said, “but I can tell you what he thinks.”
What he thinks must come with a language and violent content warning. If you are not prepared to be distressed, stop reading, but I believe it is instructive.
The mother of his children told me: “If a bloke walks into a public dunny and sticks his c--- through a hole in the wall to get it sucked, he’s gunna get bashed.”
Taken aback, I drew breath before persevering. If I could hear that from him…
“He’ll never talk, mate, but I’ll tell you what he thinks. If you walk into a dunny and there’s a bloke chockers up another bloke, they’re gunna get bashed.”
Stunned, I made another attempt. That was then, I suggested, and this is now. People change with the times. Perhaps he felt differently today…
“No, not then,” she answered. “Now! He’d do the same again today.”
So there it was.
I don’t believe he is typical, or certainly not of the few former “poofter bashers” I have managed to speak to.
There is the man, now in his mid-40s, who recalls entering the fray outside the Bondi Pavilion in the early 1980s, where two men had dared to hold hands while walking. Someone cried “poofs” and a mob of kids joined a frenzy of violence. “I think I put a boot in,” my contact remembers. “But that was the only one I ever did. I went home and bawled my eyes out.”
He was 12 years old.
He can’t really explain why he joined in. “We thought fags were disgusting.” Some of them confused homosexuality with paedophilia. “But we were just wild. One in, all in.”
Who among them will have the courage to speak up now?
A little over three years ago, I called one of the members of the so-called Alexandria Eight. In the summer school holidays of 1990, they found a phone number on the wall of the toilets in Alexandria Park. It was a gay beat and it was adjacent to Cleveland Street High School, where most of the eight teenagers went to school. One of the boys called the number and lured Richard Johnson to the toilets, where the gang bashed and stomped him to death.
Those boy killers have long served their time. The one I contacted in 2013 was by then a father of four. He told me his eldest was then 16, the age he was when he committed his crime. He expressed deep regret. At some point, he said, he would have to sit his kids down and explain what he did.
I emailed him this year to see if he might contribute to the documentary. He politely declined. I tried again. He replied: “I can appreciate your persistence in getting me involved and understand the impact it could bring to the documentary. However please understand that it's difficult for me to have to revisit these memories that deeply affect me and ultimately bring me down.
“I see and hear things every day that remind me of what I did, and I convince myself every day that I’m a good man. If you have children I’m sure you'd understand the importance of being a positive figure in their lives. I’m a father of four, my oldest is 18 and my youngest is five, so they thankfully consume my life and keep me grounded, they protect me from my demons.”
About the same time, I contacted one of the Tamarama Three, the killers of Kritchikorn Rattanajurathaporn at Bondi in 1990. He had long ago completed his prison term for that murder, but he was back in jail. By now he was coming to the end of a long sentence for an assault on his partner.
Scott Johnson, the 27-year-old American who was found at the base of a cliff at North Head in December 1988. Source: Supplied
He wanted to be interviewed on camera but prison authorities would not allow it, so we settled for a letter.
“I am writing this from prison,” it began. “In 1990, I murdered a gay man and seriously assaulted his companion.”
Revoiced to powerful effect in the documentary, his words provide some insight into the kind of mindset that might turn a child into a hateful killer. It is not an excuse or anywhere near an adequate explanation, but it is an insight.
He describes his “dread, fear, anger, confusion” on that night in Marks Park, but more so his “false pride, teenage bravado and a desire to make others feel as miserable and lonely as I did as a kid”.
Gay people were an “easy target for an angry, maladjusted young boy”.
One of his closest friends now is gay. “He’s a good bloke.” The friend does not recognise the person he once was.
To his victim’s family: “I’m sorry I took your son’s life that night. If I wasn’t there, then he would not have died. I denied him the opportunity to a full and happy life. I caused immeasurable pain and loss in your family. For this, I am sorry.”
This boy killer was willing to be named, to stand up as a man and wear his shame. It was a directorial choice to preserve his anonymity. He was but one of many, many gay bashers.
My journalistic instinct would have been to identify him, but I understood that editorial choice. Why should he alone answer for all of them?
All of them. Not only the killers but the thugs who roamed in packs and bashed and maimed for sport, and the boys and girls on the sidelines who never laid a punch but know who did.
Who among them will have the courage to speak up now?
In December, a third inquest will begin into the death of American Scott Johnson, whose naked body was found at the base of North Head in December 1988. His family is convinced he was thrown, chased or frightened of that cliff top, yet another gay beat. Police are still inclined to believe it was suicide. The State Coroner wants the truth, whatever it is.
So do Ted and Peter Russell, father and brother of John. So does Kay Warren, mother of Ross.
Who will give them the truth?
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