Crime Immemorial

Shirley Finn was, in 1975, a notorious figure in Perth, Western Australia. Though she had come from a respectable middle class family and seemingly had a bright future ahead of her, an ill-advised sexual encounter with an older boy at the age of fourteen saw her spirited off to a strict Catholic reform school, where she was forced to work in a laundry for eight months.

After her release, she abandoned her interrupted education and went to work in a Perth dress shop. There, she met Air Force mechanic Des Finn, who was twenty-two years old and would eventually become her husband. The pair moved to Melbourne for two years and had two sons, then moved back to Perth and had a daughter.

But when Shirley was twenty-one, her husband was injured and rendered unable to work, and Shirley had to think of some way to bring in money to feed their three children. She first got a gig as a stripper and body painter with a traveling carnival, eventually expanding her services to include acting as an escort.

After her lucrative business was raided by police, she took up an association with a Sydney brothel owner named Dorothea Flatman, who along with another madam named Stella Strong, were given permission to operate their brothels under the protection of the Vice Squad. Shirley Finn subsequently opened her own brothel under this same arrangement, paying a fee to Vice Squad officials to keep the establishments open and prevent other brothels from operating in the area.

Not surprisingly, however, all was not so rosy in the seedy underbelly of Perth’s barely-legal prostitution racket. Shirley allegedly owed the princely sum of one-hundred-fifty-thousand dollars in taxes and fees that she was either unable or unwilling to cough up. According to her girlfriend Rose Black, Shirley was attempting to get out from under the debt by threatening to expose the illegal activities of various politicians, police officials, and prominent government authorities at a tax hearing she was scheduled to appear at on June 25th, 1975.

Two days before the hearing, though, someone apparently decided to take extreme measures to prevent her from talking.

On the rainy morning of June 23rd, the body of thirty-two-year-old Shirley Finn was discovered by a police officer riding his motorcycle down Kwinana Freeway. She was slumped over the steering wheel of her distinctive white Dodge Phoenix, which had been parked near the ninth fairway of the Royal Perth Golf Club. She was clad in a fancy evening gown, and was laden with expensive diamond jewelry that had not been touched, suggesting that the motive had not been robbery. She had been shot in the head four times, three times in the back of the skull and once in the side, a style of execution known as “the bowling ball.”

Due to Shirley’s well-known involvement in state-sanctioned prostitution and the salacious information she likely knew about countless high-profile individuals, there was a significant number of people who had reason to want Shirley Finn dead. It should be noted too that accusations of police cover-ups were rampant from the very beginning of the investigation.

The crime went unsolved in 1975, but was reopened in 1985, when an unnamed “senior police officer” was investigated for the murder. Nothing definitive emerged from that inquiry, however, and though the case was reviewed two more times subsequently—in 2005 and 2014—it wasn’t until 2017 when a wide-ranging coronial inquest was undertaken, at which several key figures gave intriguing testimony.

In fact, friends and associates of the victim later came forward to claim that Shirley herself had expressed a fear that the incoming Commissioner of Police Owen Leitch and his cronies had it in for her, and other reports alleged that she had been spotted at the police canteen two days before she was murdered, but that the officer who had seen her—Brian Eddy—had been threatened to keep quiet about it. Two other officers testified that they had seen someone else tearing out the page of the visitor’s book on which Shirley’s name was written.

Other police officers were suspected of involvement as well, such as corrupt cop Roger Rogerson—later imprisoned for murder, bribery, and drug trafficking—and detective Don Hancock, who one witness claimed had been seen getting into Shirley’s vehicle the night she was murdered. Another police officer named Chris Ferris stated that a Detective Arthur Simms had admitted to him that he had been the gunman.

Shirley Finn was also alleged to have been involved in a relationship with then police minister Ray O’Connor, who eventually went on to become the premier of Western Australia.

Rumors also swirled about infamous Australian organized crime figures Abe Saffron and hit man Neddy Smith, who some sources claim had been paid five-thousand dollars to kill Shirley Finn.

Shirley’s girlfriend Rose Black wasn’t spared scrutiny either, as two witnesses placed her at the golf course the night Shirley died, and she was allegedly unable to explain some type O blood stains that had been found on her clothing. Both she and Shirley Finn had type O blood.

But Vice Squad chief Bernard Johnson, under whose management Shirley and the other two madams had been operating their brothels, was heavily believed to have been the mastermind behind the murder. According to police officer Brian Eddy, Shirley had been in Johnson’s company at the police canteen two days before her death. Two separate witnesses stated at the 2017 inquest that they had seen Johnson acquiring a rifle from the police armory, and then later taking it on a boat and throwing it overboard. And according to Rose Black, Shirley Finn had been going to meet someone she called “The Bear” on the night she was killed; other witnesses involved in the case assert that Bernard Johnson’s nickname was “BJ the Bear.”

Taking all the witness testimony into account, most recent researchers into the case believe that the most likely scenario was that Bernard Johnson perhaps took out a contract on Shirley Finn, which was carried out by one of his associates. This accusation was strengthened by the testimony of another brothel madam named Linda Watson, who later claimed that Bernard Johnson had once threatened her that she would “end up like Shirley Finn” if she did not cooperate.

Though Bernard Johnson was still alive when the 2017 inquest commenced, he was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and was determined to be unfit to give testimony in the case. He died in April 2018, while the inquest was in a recess.

The scandalous murder of brothel madam Shirley Finn is still a notable unsolved mystery in Australia, and has been the subject of numerous books and documentaries. At this late date and considering the prominence of many of the individuals involved, however, it is unlikely that justice in the case will ever be served.