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George Freeman – King of the SP Bookies

Although he hated it with a passion, it was almost as if the term ‘colourful racing identity’ was created for George Freeman. There were many characters in the racing world of his era – Hollywood George Edser, Eddy ‘the Fireman’ Birchley, the Waterhouses, Terry Page, Tommy Smith and Perc Galea, to name but a few – but Freeman was one of the most colourful.

But while Freeman’s antics on the racecourse gave him the notorious headlines, it was his business as Australia’s largest ill-egal SP bookmaker off the course that gave him the reputation as being if not Mr Big, then certainly one of the Mr Big Enough’s of Sydney’s organised crime scene. Having said that, it must also be said that in the last 25 years of his life the most that the New South Wales police could convict George Freeman of was a couple of illegal betting charges which invoked small fines.

Born into a dirt-poor working-class family in the inner-western Sydney suburb of Annandale in 1934, George David Freeman was in trouble from the minute he was old enough to steal. By age 13, Freeman had a string of petty convictions for stealing a tin of biscuits, a car radio, fountain pens, money, and an electric fan, and evading a rail fare. He was in and out of juvenile institutions throughout most of his teenage years.

In 1954, aged 20, Freeman was sentenced to three years’ hard labour for breaking, entering and stealing. It was around this time that he began a lifelong friendship with another career criminal named Leonard Arthur McPherson. It was a very val-uable friendship, given that Lenny McPherson would eventually become the Mr Big of Sydney’s organised crime.

Although still a petty criminal in the early 1960s, with convict-ions for shoplifting, Freeman jumped into the big league in 1965 when he was introduced to Joe Testa, a suspected member of the Chicago Mafia who was visiting Sydney, allegedly examining the prospects for US Mafia infiltration. In 1968, on a false passport, Freeman went to the US and stayed in Chicago with Testa for six weeks and, at Testa’s expense, at the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas for three days.

By the early 1970s Freeman was allegedly heavily entrenched with the operations of the Chicago Mafia in Australia and had his fingers in many pies, including a chain of illegal off-course SP betting shops, illegal casinos and horse-race fixing rackets. It was alleged that Danny Stein, a card-carrying member of the Mafia, opened a bank account in Sydney in 1972 and gave George Freeman power of attorney. In September 1973, Freeman allegedly closed the account and transferred $56,300 to Stein in the USA.

On 16 July 1972, it was reported in the Sunday Telegraph under the headline ‘The Night the Mafia Came to Sydney’ that George Freeman had attended summit meetings of the heads of Sydney’s organised crime at the Double Bay home of one of Sydney’s leading organised crime figures. The article named the nine men in attendance, which included Sydney’s alleged Mr Big at the time, Frederick Charles ‘Paddles’ Anderson, and named Freeman and Lennie McPherson as ‘first among equals of Sydney’s Mr Big Enough’s’.

In 1974 in the lead up to the Moffitt Royal Commission into organised crime in Sydney, Justice Athol Moffitt declared Freeman a person of interest and the Crime Intelligence Unit began tapping his phones. The operation, codenamed Southern Comfort, picked up conversations between Freeman, a registrar at Sydney Hospital, Dr Nick Paltos (who would later go to jail on marijuana-smuggling charges) and high-ranking police officers. But what interested them even more were the conversations between George Freeman and Chief Stipendiary Magistrate Murray Farquhar, in which Freeman gave the highly respected jurist tips on the races, which turned out to be 98 per cent to 99 per cent successful.

Through the taps police confirmed what they already knew: that Freeman controlled illegal gambling in New South Wales and also had interests in illegal gambling casinos and horse-race fixing, and that he had improper relationships with police, including two inspectors and a superintendent. Never at any time throughout the operation was there a hint that George Freeman was involved, or ever had been, in vice rackets such as prostitution or had anything to do with drugs. For all his shortcomings it was recognised throughout his life that George Freeman was a gambler and that was that.

In July 1977, racecourse detective Frank Lynch spotted Freeman, who was deemed an undesirable, at Randwick Racecourse seated in the members’ enclosure with Dr Nick Paltos and magistrate Farquhar. Freeman was ejected from the course immediately. The following day a photograph of the trio seen watching the races together in the stands was published on the front page of a Sydney newspaper. The results for magistrate Farquhar were damning.

On 25 April 1979, as George Freeman got out of his car at the gates of his mansion on the waterfront in Sydney’s south, a man stepped from the bushes and shot him in the neck and face at point-blank range and fled. Bleeding profusely, Freeman was rushed to hospital and lived. Six weeks later an unidentified gunman shot 56-year-old John Marcus Muller dead with three bullets from a 9mm pistol as Muller arrived home to his Coogee residence just after midnight. Although Muller, who had a record of violence stretching right back to 1940, knew Freeman, who was in Noosa Heads at the time of the killing, police said had they no reason to believe that the deceased had anything to do with the attempt on Freeman’s life, despite rampant rumours to the contrary.

In January 1983, police distracted the Rottweiler dogs at Freeman’s fortified mansion, where he lived with his wife and three children, by throwing meat over the fence. Having gained entry, they charged him with SP betting and he was subsequently fined $500. In August 1984, Freeman, in company with two associates, was charged with having maliciously wounded a man at the Empress Coffee House in Kings Cross. Freeman accurately predicted that witnesses would not identify him and the case was dismissed in October 1984.

When Australia’s most notorious Melbourne hit man Christopher Dale Flannery, aka ‘Mr Rentakill’, shifted his operations to Sydney in mid-1984, Freeman denied that he had ever employed Flannery as a bodyguard. Flannery disappeared in May 1985 while allegedly on his way to an appointment with Freeman. Freeman’s house was searched, but nothing was found.

On 20 March 1990, George Freeman died in Sutherland Hospital from heart failure caused by a severe asthma attack, with his devoted family by his side. He was 56. In one of the biggest funerals for a ‘man of respect’ that Sydney has ever seen, Norman Erskine sang two of George’s favourite songs, ‘That’s What Friends Are For’ and ‘I’ll Be Loving You’. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

To a man, and woman, everyone there said that George Freeman was the most honest, honourable, lovable bloke that ever lived. A man who never welched on a bet and would never see a mate – or anyone for that matter – go without. A bloke who was terribly misunderstood.

If we are to use George Freeman as an example, it would seem as though there is honour among thieves after all.