Chapter 8

Mr Clark Meets Miss Soich, LL.B., and Gets Off

Auckland, Wellington, 1978

ON THE face of it there was a great deal for the Queensland Police and the Narcotics Bureau to investigate: the whispered conversations overheard by the undercover policemen at the very least confirmed the part of the Wilson interviews where it was claimed that Clark was at the very heart of a very big drug organisation. When Clark’s fingerprint identification showed up on the national computer, there was a notation that he had skipped bail in New Zealand in 1976. The police in Auckland were automatically informed.

The New Zealand police sent over the same officer who had arrested Clark in 1975 to bring him home, Detective Sergeant Tony Hill, the man whom Clark had hired a private detective to nail, unsuccessfully. On 16 June Clark was extradited, which meant the shelving of the charges relating to an unlicensed pistol and the money suspected of being stolen. The question of why the Queensland Police allowed Clark’s extradition while they had in their possession an allegation of a recent murder and further evidence from their own undercover men pointing to a massive Australian drug operation has been raised several times. A copy of the Wilson tapes had been sent to the Federal Narcotics Bureau, which of course had an officer present during most of the interrogations. It was lack of follow through by the Bureau that was one of the main factors influencing Justice Williams, the Royal Commissioner, in his savage criticism of the Bureau the next year, which led in turn to a federal government’s decision to disband it.

In April 1980 an Assistant Commissioner of the Victorian police, Mr R. Hall, was questioned in court on his view of the Queensland Police decision to allow extradition to proceed. Mr Hall had been one of a number of senior detectives who in 1979 had investigated the Bureau and the allegations made in the Wilson tapes. Mr Hall was being cross-examined on this particular occasion by Mr Kevin Murray Q.C.

Question: May I return to my description to you of the information which was available to police officers and narcotics officers not later than 12 June. Do you understand the preliminary fact that I am putting to you?

Answer: Yes.

Question: They held Clark in custody?

Answer: Yes.

Question: They had two people giving evidence that Clark to them confessed to murder?

Answer: Yes.

Question: They had a description of the deceased?

Answer: Yes.

Question: From which the deceased’s identity would probably have been ascertained?

Answer: Probably, yes.

Question: They certainly had material which demanded further investigation through Clark of the matter, had they not?

A little later Murray put to Assistant Commissioner Hall:

Question: If one of your men had those circumstances, and failed to take some action about Clark, you would arrest him and charge him, would you not?

Answer: No. I’d probably remove him from the C.I.B. and get somebody to do the job properly.

Question: Because it shrieked for action by the Narcotics Bureau, did it not?

Answer: It…?

Question: Shrieked for action by the Narcotics Bureau.

Answer: It shrieked for action both by the Narcotics Bureau…

Question: And the police?

Answer: Yes.

Murray pressed Hall later:

Question: What investigators were immediately assembled as a team to look into these remarkable tapes by the Bureau?

Answer: By the [Narcotics] Bureau, none.

Question: And, of course, the only explanation for that is corruption, is it not, Mr Hall? Incompetence and corruption?

Answer: Incompetence, perhaps…

Question: But not corruption?

Answer: No. But I know the reason why nothing was done, or Mr Bates’ [Director of Narcotics Bureau] explanation of the reason why nothing was done.

Question: I just want the facts. Did they do nothing in Brisbane?

Answer: The Narcotics Bureau?

Question: Yes.

Answer: Not that I know.

Question: Did the Brisbane police do anything?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Did they interrogate Clark?

Answer: No.

Question: I do not believe it, did they?

Answer: Not over the murder or the alleged murder.

By July 1979, Karen Marie Soich had nowhere to go. Even though, at 23, and a graduate in law from Auckland University, she was working in the Auckland office of Peter Williams, barrister and solicitor (New Zealand has a joint profession), unquestionably at the head of the New Zealand criminal bar.

Born in 1956 in the North Island resort town of Whangarei, Karen Soich was the only child of her mother, Phyllis’ second marriage and her father, Ivan Tony’s first marriage. Her father was descended from Yugoslav migrants, a small minority seen as outsiders and called ‘Dalmies’, who at that time were not really considered Kiwis. However, Tony Soich had successfully struggled against all that. He had built up a prosperous structural steel works. As a child Karen was heavily spoiled, and her parents preferred to keep her at home rather than send her away to a private school. She went to suburban Kamo High School. From an early age she was a keen rider and in the competitive world of the Kamo Pony Club she made plenty of enemies. Those who knew her recall how if another girl turned up with a new piece of equipment, Karen would top her next week with even more expensive equipment. Consequently, she was the best rigged-out rider in the club. While she didn’t get along with other children much at school or at the pony club, Karen accepted that and concentrated her charm on the adults.

When Karen left home to go to Auckland University her parents gave her a red MG. Meanwhile, she continued to ride, reaching the New Zealand championships. At university her career was steady but academically unimpressive. On graduation she went into Peter Williams’ office.

She settled into the routine work of preparing briefs, talking to and instructing solicitors, and interviewing clients. She ran a lot of messages out to Mount Eden prison. Williams’ status was such that he was able to park inside rather than in the outside parking lot used by other solicitors and barristers, and it was soon noticed that Karen also drove her red MG through the main gates. The prisoners’ feelings towards their assistant advocate were not unmixed. Karen’s insensitivity was not limited to prisoners. Williams presided over a Friday luncheon club at the Big I, an Auckland restaurant, attended by a number of other legal men who specialised in criminal work. Admitted as the first and only woman, Karen started to dominate the table. She would pat people on the head, adjust their ties and so on. The luncheon club drifted apart.

So, at 23, what was Karen Soich’s future? The law alternatives were extremely limited. A solicitor’s office would mean being submerged in unglamorous work: conveyancing, wills, compensation, and general litigation. At the bar in Auckland there is not enough family law work, that ghetto to which women barristers are often confined. [This was the case in Australia and New Zealand at the time.] As for criminal work, Karen, as an attractive brunette with ringlets and big brown eyes, was not the best possible jury advocate. So when in time she had to stop being a kind of superior messenger for Peter Williams, Karen had indeed nowhere to go. A generation, even a decade before, the answer would have been simple: a good marriage to somebody well off. But by 1979 that prospect was less sure, even if any prospective husband could be reckoned as challenging as the adventurous world of criminal law.

But into Karen’s world came a far more interesting and exciting man than the stuffy lawyers of the Big I luncheon club. Terry Clark now had enough money to afford the best, and the best at the New Zealand Criminal Bar was Peter Williams, high though his fees were (they had to be, to help maintain his ocean-racing cruising yacht). Inevitably Karen met the new client.

Clark’s arrest disrupted not only the Australian but also the English side of the operation. Kay Reynolds left in May to do her first run. At the Singapore Hyatt she was contacted by ‘Lee’ [alias, name unknown], her six-foot American pickup who also brought news of the Australian panic. Even so, she was sent on to the UK, flying KLM to Amsterdam where she transferred to Manchester, arriving on 1 July. Kay travelled on to London where she was booked into the plush Curzon Hotel for four days. Andy Maher turned up for the heroin – a worried man, according to Kay – and then never came back, forcing her to switch twice to cheaper hotels as she ran out of money before Johnstone’s girlfriend Bronwyn, finally caught up with her. Clark would never have so bungled one of his couriers. By August Kay arrived back in Singapore and was sent on by the Organisation with two false-bottomed suitcases to Fiji. Kay was told that it had cost $600 each to have the cases fitted with false bottoms in Hong Kong. Kay was paid $2,000 in advance for the Fiji trip, and another $2,000 on arrival. Fiji was a transhipment point for the New Zealand heroin trade. Kay’s brief holiday in Fiji was broken by Allison Dine’s summons back to Sydney.

Allison had heard of the Brisbane fiasco while she was still in New Zealand after delivering her June heroin consignment, strapped to her waist with plaster, to Fulcher. Returning to Sydney, she received a message to go on to Singapore to reassure that end of the Organisation. There she saw ‘Chinese Jack’, vocal and bitter about Johnstone for stripping too much money off the top while not paying his workers; and Lee, the American, so incensed with Johnstone that he was leaving the Organisation. Allison then doubled back to New Zealand to visit Terry in Mount Eden prison, Auckland. Suitably distraught she held her love letter – in fact it was a report on her Singapore visit and the current state of business – up to the glass screen in the visitor’s room. With the last of the 1977 stocks almost gone, the courier operation had to be rationalised and regularised.

Clark appointed Allison as head of the couriers for the Organisation. In a letter smuggled out Terry laid down certain ground rules, a sort of executive minute:

• In Singapore ‘Chinese Jack’ was to pay all couriers, hotel bills, and meals in cash.

• The couriers should never bring anything out of Singapore to identify any of the hotels they used.

• In Sydney or Brisbane they should go only to a hotel whose account had previously been settled in cash.

• Stephen Muhary should handle the pickup from the hotel and this should be done immediately after the courier’s arrival. He would be responsible for burying the heroin in the bush caches.

• The couriers should take Valium an hour before landing.

More letters from Clark were smuggled out by Karen Soich. She passed them on to Angelique Muhary, who secreted them in her bra to cross the Tasman.

To her new post, Allison brought her own refinement. ‘I never used a lady or a man as a courier’, she later said, ‘who was scruffy in appearance, or had the look of a hippy.’ The actual heroin itself was compressed and packed into the false case bottoms covered in cloth. Each courier could carry two suitcases, and each case could hold up to 7.5 kg – though it was usually 2.5 kg. The courier would have to spend at least 10 days in Singapore or Bangkok. In theory no courier should be used more than twice. Travel would be regularly by economy class, but Allison, riding shotgun, would be up the front in first class. At disembarkation she would dawdle to watch the courier get through customs. In Brisbane there was a special arrangement with a corrupt customs officer which enabled her to direct the courier to the lane where there would be no search. In case of a delay and a possible arrest at disembarkation, the shotgun rider’s job was to contact the lawyers.

Arrangements were worked out for the swap-over bags in Singapore. As Allison described it later:

The system for swap-over of the bags was simple but worked well. Either [Chinese] Jack or a person that I knew by the name of Frank would arrange with Kay or whatever courier to be ready at a certain time to leave the room. When Jack arrived she would by then have rung the front desk and have the exact amount she owed on the bill. Kay would tell Jack how much it was and he would give her the money and she would go down with the bags and the porter to pay the bill whilst Jack left by another lift and was waiting for her outside in his car. On checking out the courier would have her bags put into his car and Jack would drop her at the shopping centre after making arrangements to meet her back there in an hour or two.

When Jack returned, he would by then have changed all of Kay’s belongings from her own suitcase into the false-bottomed suitcases containing heroin. Jack would then take Kay to another different hotel and she would check in and stay there until she was due to fly back to Australia. When Kay moved into the new hotel about a day or two before she departed for Australia, I would go around and check her bags and make sure they were packed correctly with the dirty washing at the back near the false bottom. The suitcases would be washed all over with a damp face cloth to remove all traces of fingerprints. Once this was done and the flight confirmed, she was ready to go on her way. Either Jack or myself gave each courier two 5 mg of Valium so they would not show signs of nervousness.

As the courier was checking her bags in at the Singapore airport, Jack would hover in the background, to see everything went all right. They usually had to pay excess baggage, sometimes even up to S$200 due to the weight of the suitcase and the heaps of clothes that had to fill such large bags. Bags had to be full to look good. Jack would go out and buy some easily breakable toys to put amongst the clothes and they would normally break or he would break one before he put it into the bag, the reason for this being, once returning and being searched by the customs officials in Australia, the broken toys would take the attention of customs officials and make the courier feel more relaxed having something to talk about with ‘oh no, it’s broken’ or something like that. The customs officer would always feel sorry and would let the courier through without further ado.

Some couriers in the early days had strapped the heroin bags to their waist with plaster, but by the time Allison started overseeing the Singapore–Australian run, Jack had fixed on a particular brand of tartan suitcase. At first the false bottoms adaptation was carried out in Singapore and Hong Kong, but Maher found an old school friend in Lancashire who could do the job more competently. Towards the end, Jack also experimented with false fibreglass bottoms to foil any dog searchers.

Allison’s ability as an organiser blossomed and her social life gained in breadth.

Wendy, Wayne Shrimpton’s sister, had been recruited to the Organisation and, despite Allison’s separation from Wayne, Wendy bore no ill feelings. She and Allison lunched together every day, usually at Eliza’s, a restaurant in Double Bay. At night she was swept into ‘Diamond’ Jimmy Shepherd’s set. His flat at Rushcutters Bay was only the working unit. He lived at Rose Bay and did a good deal of entertaining. At Tati’s for dinner it was tables for 10 and the best of wine. For transport Shepherd used hired limousines with uniformed drivers. Like Shepherd, the owner, Roberto Fionna, an Argentinian, was a keen gambler. To dine at Tati’s as a heroin wholesaler was to thumb your nose at fate: directly over the road was the Central Criminal Court, Sydney’s Old Bailey. All this social living took its toll, and Allison used to go to a Kings Cross doctor for Vitamin B injections. Clark, who also liked vitamin injections, had introduced her to him; among other things he tested the Organisations’ heroin. [Justice Stewart would note the doctor was kept also busy treating the sexually-transmitted diseases that afflicted the Organisation’s people a lot.]

For these four months Terry was in custody in New Zealand brooding over the Organisation and its operators, and particularly Shepherd. When he wrote to Allison he warned her that Jimmy Shepherd would try to get the upper hand in the Organisation. Clark resented Shepherd’s easygoing attitude as much as he did Johnstone’s smoothness with women. Meanwhile, to celebrate their successful runs, Allison and Wendy went to Fiji where Allison bought herself of block of land in the Soqulu development, near Maria’s, for A$17,000.

As a remand prisoner in Mount Eden, Clark was entitled to newspapers and on 16 August his sardonic sense of humour would have been aroused by a news story on the front page of the Auckland Star:

A two-year investigation aimed at smashing New Zealand’s biggest drug syndicate has come unstuck because two men refuse to testify against the ring’s Mr Big.

The syndicate leader – an Aucklander living in Asia, who is wanted by Australian Police, who say he is also that country’s biggest importer of drugs – is being investigated by America’s Drug Enforcement Agency.

The Star knows his name and address and has a dossier on him…

The ringleader whom we will call Mr Asia, the most powerful force in New Zealand’s growing drug market, continues to live in Asia, a free man.

The story was the product of a team of reporters under Pat Booth. Its identification of Martin Johnstone as the top man was in line with ‘Operation Tuna’ and New Zealand police thinking at the time. Clark was still only one name among many to them. However, as Clark sat in his cell only a couple of miles from the Auckland Star office, he’d have undoubtedly contemplated the fact that it was he who had paid the money for Kay Reynolds to fly to Fiji the previous month, as well as that of another courier. They had handed over four suitcases containing about 10 kg for shipment to New Zealand. Allison had matters in hand for a double courier run into Sydney next month which would bring in also more than 10 kg. He, Clark, was Mr Number One, whatever the Auckland Star said. Still, the story did underline what Clark already knew from his Narcotics Bureau’s sources, that Johnstone was becoming embarrassingly obvious. Meanwhile, the September runs went smoothly. Kay and her boyfriend brought in the four suitcases from Singapore, coming back through Brisbane, the easy entry point.

Clark’s trial opened in Wellington on 30 October. He was charged with the import of heroin in cigarette cartons. His barrister, Peter Williams, had successfully gained the transfer of the venue from Wellington on the grounds of possible prejudice. Reputedly paid NZ$56,000 for his brief, Williams performed as brilliantly as his reputation. He damaged Kairua’s credibility by asking her whether she would do anything against Clark because she so hated him: she agreed. But the crucial factor was the collapse of the scientific evidence. A scientist from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation’s laboratories originally gave evidence, backed by her superior, that at the committal proceedings the Crown had stretched the known facts too far when it suggested that her tests established that heroin was certainly in the cigarette carton.

The jury acquitted Clark, and Karen Soich embraced him in court. That night Dom Perignon, the most expensive champagne Wellington could provide, flowed in Clark’s hotel room. Less than five months ago all seemed lost. Now, he was a free man and the Organisation was flourishing. The whole bloody world was still opening up.

To celebrate, Clark bought a white Jaguar and on Saturday, two days after the acquittal, drove it into Wi Tako Prison during visiting hours with a big bowl of fruit for a friend. The warders who watched him knew all about the acquittal. Clark was making his point: he was a winner.