Unsolved murder spurs writer to find answers

BY BARRY WARD

It’s been 33 years in the making, but a novel about the murder of Kings Cross newspaper identity Juanita Nielsen has finally been published.

As a Sydney journalist in the ’60s and ’70s, I already knew Juanita Nielsen, the newspaper publisher and grand-daughter of department store owner Mark Foy.

As I soon discovered, she was murdered to prevent certain details about organised crime and corruption in the city from coming to light.

Interestingly, the disclosures this week in the book by Alan Saffron, son of the late and notorious Abe, add another layer of intrigue to the case. I have always known, and can prove, that Juanita wasn’t murdered at The Carousel. In fact, she was killed at another Saffron joint in Roslyn Street, known then as The Lido Motel. What this proves is the link with the Saffron organisation. Abe must have known about the killing, which was probably masterminded by Jim Anderson, as Alan Saffron now confirms.

The killing is still officially unsolved, but that’s because the implications of police and political corruption are too far-reaching, which is also why my book has been ignored by Australian publishers. The story is simply too big, and they’re scared of it.

Within a few months of researching, my colleague Tony Reeves and I had gathered sufficient evidence to name the killers and prove that the investigating detectives knew about the murder ‘ probably before it happened ‘ and contrived a cover-up that became, and remains, the official version of events.

As if to confirm these claims, over the course of our four-year investigation we were beaten up, abducted, arrested and jailed on spurious charges.

The real life drama didn’t end there. We were under constant police surveillance, our phones were tapped and our allegations were ignored, by the politicians, police and by the Sydney media, whose crime reporters were in league with crooked cops.

But we refused to be deterred and, following Juanita’s lines of enquiry, we eventually unearthed the evidence that had brought about her death.

By this time we knew the finer details of the plot: who had ordered the killing, where it took place, who planned it and the fate of Juanita’s remains, which were never found.

Nor will they be found. Juanita’s body was destroyed within hours of her murder.

There were three killers. The leader was a former detective sergeant, a real thug and notorious criminal, who still had considerable influence at Police Headquarters, hence the cover-up that lies at the heart of the conspiracy.

The reason the book has taken so long to be published is because this is the third version. Tony and I wrote a factual account in the late ’70s but the lawyers freaked and consequently no publisher would touch it. So I re-wrote it as fiction, but was never happy with it. It simply didn’t work.

This latest version is what is known as ‘faction’, that is, fact written as fiction. I think it works well, although the final chapters are pure fiction. They have to be because the true story has no ending, the Nielsen conspiracy continues.

For us, the death threats were the final straw. At the outset, we were warned that ‘anybody poking his head into the Nielsen thing will get it blown off’. Another message advised us to ‘drop off or you’ll find your knee caps nailed to a tree in Centennial Park’.

Finally, the word came down through the criminal grapevine that a murder contract, a ‘hit’, had our names on it.

That’s when, for the safety of our loved ones, we both left Sydney. Tony Reeves moved to Brisbane, while I returned to the UK, where I finally achieved my publishing goal, not coincidentally on the 33rd anniversary of Juanita’s murder on Friday July 4, 1975.

I recently persuaded a member of the NSW Parliament to table a question in the House regarding the case. The present Minister for Police replied with the stock answer: ‘as the police investigation is continuing, any comment would jeopardise their enquiries.’

This is after 33 years. I guess that says everything about this conspiracy, and life in the Lucky Country.

‘ Barry Ward’s semi-fictionalised account of Juanita Nielsen’s unsolved murder, The Nelson Conspiracy, can be purchased and downloaded at www.lulu.com