Queensland. Commission of Inquiry into Possible Illegal - All Fall Down

PRAISE FOR THR EE CROOKED KINGS

A powerful treatment of an inelegant past that still smoulders. WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN

Three Crooked Kings delivers its promised explosive true story... a fabulous tale of graft, extortion, sex, drugs and mayhem. Condons deft touch makes [this book] immediate, engaging and riveting. THE NEWTOWN REVIEW OF BOOKS

Three Crooked Kings paints a compellingly dark picture. SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

Hailed as the most explosive book of 2013 a riveting epic and unrelenting tour-de-force which will shock a nation. And its all true. Compelling stuff. THE CHRONICLE

PRAISE FOR JACKS AND JOKERS

... highly readable, well-researched and multi-layered expose of police and political malfeasance in the Sunshine State. SATURDAY AGE

Jacks and Jokers sprawls and appals in equal measure. Condons true crime series is not just a compelling read: it is compulsory. AUSTRALIAN BOOK REVIEW

Praise is being lauded on Brisbane journalist and author Matthew Condon who is backing up his bestselling chronicle of Queenslands underbelly. COURIER-MAIL

Meticulously researched. WALKLEY MAGAZINE

An important work of history. OVERLAND

A fantastic fusion of Frank Moorhouse and Peter Corris, Jacks and Jokers is crime writing at its best. NEWTOWN REVIEW OF BOOKS

Matthew Condon is a prize-winning Australian novelist and journalist. He is currently on staff with the Courier-Mails Qweekend magazine. He began his journalism career with the Gold Coast Bulletin in 1984 and subsequently worked for leading newspapers and journals including the Sydney Morning Herald, the Sun-Herald and Melbournes Sunday Age . He is also the author of ten books of fiction, most recently The Trout Opera (Random House, 2007) and the non-fiction books Brisbane (New South Books, 2010), as well as Three Crooked Kings (UQP, 2013) and Jacks and Jokers (UQP, 2014) - the first two books in his best-selling trilogy about Queensland crime and corruption.

For my wife, Katie Kate, and our children - Finnigan, Bridie Rose and Oliver George

AS HE SAT ALONE in a parked car, surrounded by splendid Queensland rainforest, a hose running from the vehicle exhaust pipe and into the cabin, did Sydney James Brifman think back to the day, as a young boy, when he found his mothers dead body?

Just nine-years-old on that Saturday morning 4 March 1972 young Syd had gone into the small room off the foyer of the flat in Bonney Avenue, Clayfield, in Brisbanes inner north-east, looking for his mother, prostitute and brothel madam Shirley Margaret Brifman. Sydney and his older sister, Mary Anne, 15, knew their mother liked to sleep in. As a lady of the night she kept odd hours. And if the Brifman kids there was also sisters Sonia and Helen made a racket, or had the morning television cartoons on too loud, she often called out from bed asking them to keep the noise down.

On this morning there was nothing but silence. So Syd, and then Mary Anne, went into the room. Upon entering, Syd witnessed his mothers corpse, swathed in a summer nightie and propped up in bed, a hand extended and held in a claw. He ran out of there like the roadrunner with that speed, recalls his sister Mary Anne.

Less than a year earlier, Shirley, 35, had gone on national television and blown the whistle on corrupt police in Queensland and New South Wales whom she had been paying off for over a decade. A few short weeks before her death she was to testify in a perjury trial against legendary Queensland detective and hard man Tony Murphy. The evening before her body was discovered, shed received a visitor who had passed her a small vial of drugs. Brifman was warned commit suicide or say goodbye to your children. The visitor left after midnight.

Sydney, the youngest of the Brifman kids, had been born at six months and one week in 1963, courtesy of a botched abortion attempt. Shirley had travelled to the New South Wales capital especially to secure the termination, but it all went horribly wrong. Miraculously, after several blood transfusions, the boy survived. He was named after the city of his birth.

As Sydney was recuperating in hospital, Brisbanes own detective Murphy was gathering evidence to destroy the credibility of witnesses due to appear before the National Hotel royal commission into police misconduct. On this occasion, Murphy took the time to write a letter to Brifman, his long-standing informant, who was due to appear before the commission as its star witness. Over the years the two had become close. Shirley, the former country girl from Atherton in Far North Queensland, would send the detectives children Christmas cards with money inside.

As baby Syd fought through his first few weeks of life, Murphy typed a letter on plain paper at his office in the Woolloongabba CIB. Dear Marg, he wrote, using one of Shirleys many prostitute aliases, Your welcome letter to hand the other day. As always I had no hesitation in accepting the information in it as being good mail.

Before signing off he added: As I want to get this letter in the first mail, Ill close now hoping the young Briffman (sic) boy is picking up fast and will soon be out of hospital. Det. Tony Murphy.

Sydney Brifman was the quiet boy. The good and sweet child who nobody had a bad word to say about. But nine years later, as quick as the roadrunner, Sydneys mother was dead. He wasnt to know that in just a few short years the Brifman curse would strike again.

Within a couple of years of Shirleys sudden death, Sonia Brifman met a young man, got married and fell pregnant. About a month after the birth of her son, Sonia was visiting her big sister Mary Anne, who also had a young son and daughter. It was a special time for the Brifman sisters, sharing early motherhood.

It was early morning and we were sitting in the kitchen, recalls Mary Anne. Sonia went to reach out to grab the Kelloggs Corn Flakes box and she dropped it. She doubled over in pain.

I asked her if she was okay. She was in agony for two or three minutes, then it stopped. It was the same scenario the next morning. She couldnt stop crying. She was in agony.

Thinking her sister may be suffering from complications following her recent birth, Mary Anne rushed her to hospital. They said she was suffering from a gut obstruction. That a bit of scar tissue had lodged in the bowel and become infected. I went and saw her in hospital a few days later. I caught a glimpse of her and I had to step out of the ward to get my equilibrium. She was dying.

Sonia Margaret Brifman developed peritonitis and died in extreme agony ten days later. It was just four years after her mothers death. She was 18 years old.

Syd, not yet a teenager, had already lost two of the women in his family. After finishing school he was taken into the care of relatives in the city and started work at a fruit shop. He lifted crates night and day and seriously damaged his back. The injury would plague him for the rest of his life, although he later went on to marry and have two children. Despite his notorious family history, he lived his life on the straight and narrow and taught his son and daughter the difference between right and wrong. He gave them values. He worked when he could between bouts of recuperation for his bad back, but money was always tight.

When he split from his wife in his late thirties, Syd suffered depression. The torment of his injuries continued unabated. He struggled on, but life had less meaning. In 2002, he drove his car into rainforest near Noosa, a fabled holiday spot for the rich and famous on Queenslands Sunshine Coast, and gassed himself. He was wearing a gold signet ring given to him by his father. It was his treasure. He never took it off.