5

The Bombing of Joe Borg

At around 11 am on the chilly morning of 28 May 1968, notorious brothel keeper and slum dwelling proprietor Joe Borg left his house in Brighton Boulevard in North Bondi, sat in his white Holden ute, closed the door and turned the key in the ignition. That was the last time anyone would be intimidated by the man they called the most hated bloke in Australia.

Beneath the seat of Joe Borg’s ute was 2.5 kilograms of gelignite that was triggered by the ignition switch. It blew him and his car to bits. Much kinder to animals than he was to his tenants and the prostitutes that used his whorehouses, Joe left his fortune to the RSPCA on the condition that they keep his pets – an Alsatian named Caesar, and his four cats, Shari, Rusty, Jedda and Suzy – in comfort until they died. The RSPCA gladly obliged.

Born in Malta in 1933, Joe Borg immigrated to Australia in 1952. By 1955 he had endeared himself to the local criminal milieu as a standover man and thug, and had chalked up a rap sheet as a gunman, thief and a pimp who would kill rather than part with any of his cash.

Joe hoarded his blood money away and by 1960 was the owner of many street-facing terrace houses in the notorious Darlinghurst district around Palmer Street that were known as ‘the Doors’ because the prostitutes solicited their trade from doorways that fronted directly onto the street.

By 1967 Borg controlled most of the prostitution in the Darlinghurst district from his complete row of terraces in Woods Lane and another 20 or more dwellings in and around Chapel Street, Liverpool Street, Liverpool Lane and Palmer Street.

With the low-class hookers cracking it in the rooms at the front and paying $20 per eight hour shift for the privilege, and his cheap rent tenants, lots of whom were his fellow Maltese immigrants, living in squalor at the back, Joe was raking in the cash to the tune of between $8000 and $10,000 per week.

With his operations bringing in such a huge amount of money, even after he had paid the police for protection, Joe was acutely aware that he was a prime target for his underworld rivals to move in and take over his organisation. But he was having none of it. Joe fiercely protected his turf, warning any would-be extortionists away at the point of a gun. He slept lightly with a loaded pistol under his pillow.

But when the killers came he didn’t see their faces and most likely never knew what happened. Joe Borg, slum tenements and brothels overlord, died on the way to hospital minus the lower part of his body.

Two months after Joe Borg’s death police charged two Maltese men, 29-year-old Paul Mifsud and 24-year-old Paul Attard, with his murder. Another man, 50-year-old Keith Keillor, who was declared an habitual criminal by the court in 1962 and better known around Kings Cross as ‘the Jitterbug Kid’, was charged with inciting the killing and supplying a document which outlined the murder plan and motive for the killing.

It seemed as though it wasn’t opposition brothel owners who had had Borg bumped off at all. The underworld Maltese community was dirty on Borg for the way that he exploited Maltese migrants and robbed all of the prostitutes who worked for him, many of whom were girlfriends of Sydney criminals. They had collectively agreed that Joe Borg had to go.

After an altercation in a Sydney nightclub with Borg, Mifsud and Attard had decided to take it upon themselves and see Joe Borg off with a car bomb. They didn’t fancy their chances of shooting him without getting themselves shot.

After much gathering of bomb parts it became common knowledge in the underworld that there was a plot to kill Sydney’s brothel king and most despised man. After acquiring the bomb parts and the hardest piece of all, the detonator, from a notorious Sydney criminal and standover man, Jackie Steele – who was also involved in the nightclub fracas with Borg – Mifsud and Attard put their plan into action.

When Joe Borg took his Alsatian for a walk the pair of assassins seized the opportunity and planted the makeshift bomb in Joe Borg’s car. They then fled, uncertain whether it would work or not. It did, and Joe Borg was all over the news as well as all over Brighton Boulevard.

It didn’t take long to round up Mifsud, Attard and Keillor. The dogs were barking that they had carried out the bombing; police informers were quick to let the corrupt detectives know that their meal-ticket was now on a slab in the city morgue.

Within days of Joe Borg’s death his establishments were closed by detectives who now leaned on the opposition brothel owners for a bigger slice of their action. Immediately the price of a girl’s shift went to $48, more than double the price that Joe Borg was charging. It was back to business as usual with everyone getting a buck.

But the truce didn’t last long. Within a month of Joe Borg’s death the fight was on for control of his brothels in the Doors district and reinstatement of the girls at the new exorbitant rate. But a series of shootings and the subsequent petrol bombings and burnings of Borg’s terraces saw to it that no one got the cash flow from his legacy.

Mifsud and Attard were found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. The Jitterbug Kid received seven years for his part in the conspiracy.