George Freeman: Race Fixer and Owner of a Criminal Empire | Australian Crime Stories

and then what's your name again darling sarah nelson sir lovely name how are we doing todd's out mr night george ah well there's like downstairs he wants to talk to you how about you what [ __ ] [ __ ] now he wants to talk to you has he got a name muller he's full of beans but i reckon we can handle him yeah i know him to jackie muller don't tell him to get [ __ ] [Applause] you leave my daughter alone you filthy bastard hello jackie how you going old son that's just right right mr muller is he's easier to pay his respects aren't you jackie respects he'll be the day you bludger if i hear you even whispering again to my daughter i'll kill you freeman won't hear that boys jackie muller's threatening to kill me come here now for starters she's not your daughter she's your stepdaughter she's just a kid for him and leave her alone i didn't lay a finger on her jackie well maybe one finger but she didn't seem to mind at the time again i'll kick you now take this [ __ ] knuckle downstairs give them a tap on the way out you're a dead man freeman now [ __ ] off [Music] [Music] this is for you freeman [Music] meet george freeman race fixer casino king organized crime boss and cold-hearted executioner tonight we uncover the facts behind the fiction and meet the real george freeman the king of sydney born in tough inner city sydney george david freeman fought his way up from the slums to become head of a multi-million dollar organised crime syndicate freeman lived the life of a hollywood gangster paying off police and politicians to cover his back and consistently denying any involvement in crime despite a life lived on the wrong side of the law tonight through dramatized scenes expert analysis and first-hand accounts we reveal the self-styled lucky gambler to be a cold calculating killer whose reign over sydney's underworld was only ended by his death george freeman was a crime lord he ran sp he was a racketeer and he did whatever was necessary to get a quid he wanted to be a crook that was his ambition he ended up becoming a gangster which took him much beyond most of his peers freeman was a person who people looked up to they respected he was like a godfather of organised crime in sydney he sent me a message once and it's like something out of the godfather he actually sent someone to throw petrol over our pet cat instead of the light he was a man that had considerable influence on the sydney scene i think that they were far better organised than what the american mafia was and they just got rid of anyone that threatened their scene that was george freeman was an ambitious man writing in his autobiography of his plan to be not just any crook but the crook the biggest the man with the power and influence freeman certainly achieved his dream by the time of his death he was the national crime authority's number one target and despite being investigated for bribery corruption illegal gambling tax evasion and murder he managed to avoid any major charges as well as freeman's activities and organized crime he was also a gambler with a reputed 98 success rate thanks no doubt to his involvement in race fixing horse doping and standing over jockeys he always knew the odds in every situation but on the evening of anzac day in 1979 freeman was caught by surprise his nemesis from the press legendary investigative journalist bob bottom takes up the story the night george freeman uh got shot i got a call since the police were told i was told because george freeman had appeared in a sunday paper just a week or two before vowing that i died before he died so police went to the hospital to try and talk to george but let me tell you one of the first things they did they sent out two police to guard my house in case where any word was given for under george's threat rumors quickly spread through the underworld that muller had shot freeman to warn him away from his stepdaughter lena hurley jackie muller um and this is just according to the story around at the time had told george to keep away from my stepdaughter you leave my daughter alone you filthy bastard anyway george continued to see her because he was that sort of guy you know who do you think you are telling me not to see someone i want to see now take this [ __ ] knuckle downstairs give them a tap on the way you're out dead man freeman jack made up his mind that uh george has done something pretty bad and uh and chris confronted him this is for you freeman unfortunately for the shooter he didn't kill freeman and freeman knew who he was muller would have realized he was in trouble his problem was i guess is there any anything i can do to resolve this matter and the answer was no just wait until your time comes he had six weeks to wait it let's be a lot [ __ ] smarter to get rid of george freeman and according to the story that i was told um mueller was in his home at randwick he was induced to come out and he was shot in the driveway of his home allegedly by stan smith virtually no evidence to tie george freeman up with that shooting but there's every likelihood that he was responsible for it it's amazing that exactly six weeks later borah jackie muller lay god dead his soul forensic psychologist david mutton believes freeman would have been driven to kill jackie muller by more than just revenge he has to show the rest of the world that he is not as vulnerable as that attack might have suggested so he has to be able to exact very swift justice to show the world that he is reasonably invulnerable that he is very powerful the fact of the matter is that any sane man who knows how to work the numbers knows that he has to make himself safe and the easiest way to make himself safe is to send two messages at once to the person who's done the deed you ain't going to do it again because you're dead and everybody else is thinking about it think again and he would have made sure this alibi was watertight but everyone would have known that jackie muller was a dead man as soon as george survived the shooting pretty lucky miss do you think they meant kenny i think they meant to kill me well i'll show you me i'll show you the clothes i shot in see what you think in an interview for abc tv freeman showed off his bloody clothes from the shooting georgia being personally affronted by the fact that someone could one get to him this way and two almost kill him the new pants at night the fact that he survived also perhaps suggests an immortality so it's actually quite a powerful symbolic message in two fashions one i've survived and one you won't just six weeks after shooting freeman muller was executed with three shots to the head freeman was conveniently in noosa and always denied any involvement in the murder however a message had been sent loud and clear to the rest of the underworld don't mess with george freeman [Music] freeman was born on january the 23rd 1935 in the inner city sydney suburb of annandale as freeman would later write the family lived in poverty and he and his siblings slept on mats in the hall life was hard and got even tougher when his father william abandoned the family when freeman was just four years old freeman described the hardships of his early childhood in his autobiography there were just two tiny bedrooms kitchen and laundry oh you know tony at the back no hot water at all except what mum brought up on the stove annandale was a great place to live but it was full of knockabouts ex-soldiers wharfies best p bookmakers it was typical in a city living but it produced people like darcy dugan and a variety of criminals who went on to be at the top level of their chosen occupation but it was a hard area freeman was born in annandale and grew up in a deprived childhood he had it was a very big family and his father deserted them at a very early age the mother remarried a few years later but the stepfather died as well causing the firmly greater financial hardship but it was that early childhood the the suffering and pain and being without guidance that more or less dominated george's life afterwards psychologists agree the loss of two father figures in quick succession and a childhood scarred by poverty would have had a significant impact on the young freeman when you've got a woman who has suffered two significant losses what's she likely to be as a mother probably fairly depressed fairly withdrawn again showing a lack of oversight to his care so he's grown up without much in the way of male role models he's grown up also with a sense of unpredictability in his life you know these were difficult times firstly the the economic conditions the depression only just finished and then you got more or less rolled up into world war ii there would have been problems with finances and problems of being able to get the basic resources the basic needs met he found a little niche starting off in crime and maybe he thought that crime was to actually help his mother freeman's attempt to support his family quickly got him into trouble at age just 12 he landed his first conviction for theft by 16 freeman was incarcerated for breaking and entering and spent two years in the brutal tamworth and gosford boys homes both institutions were famed for their violence and cruelty george turned to a life of crime pretty early and as a consequence he finished up in boys homes including mount penang on the on the central coast of new south wales a terribly brutal place anyway and it didn't pull any punches with george he was physically and sexually abused there it's a very brutal environment back in those days it was seen as quite okay for the older boys to harm these younger kids in all sorts of ways sexual physical the lot they were dickensian houses of horror those those boys homes he writes in his own book that it was just a joke that anyone could come out of there not full of hate and violence and he certainly did small in stature and an asthmatic freeman must have struck a timid figure for he was quickly nicknamed mouse and suffered sexual abuse and physical violence during the two years he was incarcerated i guess although the implications of that that emotional numbing again when you've been sexually abused as a male or a female he carries with him and he seems to have made a decision i'm never going to be put into that position again he's learning that you've got to look after number one he's learning that authority can be quite cruel george had a streak of violence in him he had that capacity to strike back he wouldn't just walk away he'd learnt that in boys homes and being beaten by police and waters and so forth status basically so as so often happens he turned that back on the world once he re-emerged freeman emerged an angry young man no doubt haunted by what he'd experienced he also appeared determined to leave his past as a victim behind him and he would never again tolerate being called mouse [Music] for you mate that one was for you smiles bastard oh that's straight out of the middle this is getting too easy boys so who wants to be my next victim what about you framing yeah i'll have a crack you're out go to buggery framing i hit it you did not give me the bat no way go back and bowl the ball mouse what'd you call me mouse that's what they call her in a reform school wasn't it hey [ __ ] mouse stick it up your ass mate oh you'd know all about that wouldn't you framing is that why they called your mouse big boys worried you were gonna run up the leg of their trousers [Applause] stop it call me that again and see what happens [Music] just try and see what happens i grew up young street ananda which is the same street that george freeman was from even in those days george was a little fellow but with an extreme propensity for violence in fact my brother told me a story that they supply street cricket no way i hit it and so freeman had already done a bit of time at mount penang and what have you go back and bowl the ball mouse what'd you call me mouse that's what they call her in reform school wasn't it he attacked this other kid who was bigger and fatter than he was and then proceeded to drive his head into the gutter to the point that the other kid stopped him because they feared that he would have killed him even back then he was just a vicious little turd you know psychologists believe freeman's treatment in the boys homes was what drove him to behave so violently if he did experience the sexual violence in mount penang then we might suggest that he could be suffering from something called post-traumatic stress disorder we know though that people who do have this disorder tend to cut loose in many ways and they can overreact in many regards combine that with an environment where aggression and violence and lack of control is the currency then you can see fairly explosive mix there the other thing about it is that their size probably does matter because you're going to fight harder the bigger they are because you have to win that's what a lot of those boys homes did in those days they taught you how to survive call me that again see what happens any views just try and see what happens freeman rapidly gained a fearsome reputation for his violent behaviour freeman's vicious streak more than made up for his small stature and he quickly became a sought-after bodyguard who provided protection for well-heeled gamblers illegal bookmakers and casino operators however freeman was a failure as a crook and repeatedly got caught less than a year after being released from gosford boys home he did his first stint in an adult prison and spent his twenties in and out of jail serving time at long bay bathurst burma parramatta and grafton jails for various petty offences george's early career gave no indication really what he would become because frankly as a criminal he was inept he had a string of firearm offences against him he couldn't burgle a house without being caught everything he tried as a criminal was a disaster he had this continual record of violence and lack of success and in fact uh even in the late 60s he was still a very unsuccessful criminal in that he was working at the abattoirs as a meat cutter so he certainly hadn't hit great heights by then he wasn't what you would call in the creme de la creme of criminals he was a bit of a loser and decided obviously to take another path and got into sp bookmaking and i must say he became quite successful at it even freeman recognised that something had to change writing years later i had to start getting more successful to be honest i was less than a successful crook my only reward had been jail and plenty of it the change freeman needed came in the form of established sydney hard man lenny mcpherson the two men met in long bay jail and quickly became firm friends macpherson was i think about 10 years older than freeman and so they would have when they met in jail macpherson would have again been seen as somewhat a more experienced father figure freeman himself would have been looking for some help and certainly macpherson was a more experienced person and would have provided that opportunity for the broadening of the careers they were very similar the whole evolution was very similar they profited very similarly when they got in the top of the underworld rather than go out robbing people and whatnot and he he believed lenny helped set him up freeman's new friend lenny mcpherson was an ambitious criminal aligned with enforcer stan smith and sydney's first true godfather frederick paddles anderson macpherson was trying to build his own criminal organization that mirrored the american mafia spotting freeman's natural talent as a gambler macpherson made his move [Applause] you [ __ ] beauty that's four in a row george you are on fire son ah it always looks a good thing why does a bloke who knows so much about the nags keep getting pinched for shoplifting and doing burgs and [ __ ] hmm ah just trying to turn a quid lane you can turn more than a quid on the ggs mate oh yeah i'll go right there i'm talking about the sp you deal you'll make a bomb oh no mate i'm just a punter look son you get on the sp the world will be your [ __ ] oyster you'll knock my words couldn't bear all the bad debts and hard luck stories you know i just want to bet and win you let me take care of the bad debts and the hard luck no one says they can't pay me no one unless they want to keep themselves in one piece thanks mate all right i need a big wedge to kick off i'd hate to not be able to pay some punch that gets lucky you know why the [ __ ] are you talking about wedge son okay there you go that'll cover your startup cost you tell me what else you need i don't want to be beholden you know i reckon i'm better off just puttering along on my own pigs ask you are i'll pay for your setup i'll put you in touch with the high rollers spa [Music] and you got a point there [Music] hit yourself to my star son you'll never look back well the story goes that lenny mcpherson told george that he wasn't the very best of criminals he was always getting caught and he should seek another career path and suggested to him that he was quite good in the horse racing game that he should take on sp bookman you can turn more than a quid on the ggs mate oh yeah i'll go right there i'm talking about the esp you deal you'll make a bomb and as it turned out it was extremely good advice not only was macpherson about 10 years older than him but you had this more imposing figure who had this appearance of toughness of character and had a much broader education so you can see freeman saying i can learn some stuff from this guy he's he's a couple of steps ahead of me and where i want to be in the world of gangsters i'll pay for your setup i'll put you in touch with the high rise spa [Music] psychologists agree that for freeman that lost both his father and stepfather as a child finding a mentor would have been a life-changing event it sounded like his criminality was fairly random and impulsive macpherson offered him a structure and almost a business model by which to focus his criminal impulses it would have been helpful to him to have had somebody take an interest in him particularly if the interests gave him some good advice but the kinds of male influences he would have got from older folk particularly having gone through mount penang would have been pretty negative this would have been something that was quite positive for him and might well have created met a psychological need for him freeman and macpherson joined up with feared hitman stan smith and became the team they rapidly began taking over sydney's lucrative underworld stan was the guy who gave freeman complete loyalty and a significant amount of grunt if you walk into a room and you're chained to a 15-foot gorilla who drags his knuckles behind you everyone notices you because the gorilla is chained and walking behind you so stan was a violent man he was violent for a particular point but freeman used him cleverly and stan knew how the relationship worked despite the growing power of the team freeman always denied they were anything more than friends wouldn't it be easier for you if you didn't associate with them then you wouldn't have this problem we don't associate together we know each other there's a little difference but if they did ring me up tomorrow night and said would you like to come for dinner i'll say certainly freeman's decision to join forces with macpherson and smith would prove to be life-changing within a few years he was running a syndicated sp operation that would eventually turn over millions of dollars a year he also moved into illegal casinos which quickly generated vast sums of cash when they should have set up shop front casinos they became great outlets for the so-called hoi polloi of sydney you'd find the barristers judges journalists and all sorts of people went there so george who'd go around and be looked upon like a king when he went in there he made all sorts of connections what you find though is that somewhere around that mid 60 point there was a change he still incurred a few arrests but they became less and less frequent and then from about 1970 his arrests were very few and far between by the early 60s freeman was riding high and he had found his queen marrying his wife marcia on the 5th of february 1963. he was also eagerly embracing his new found wealth compensating for the poverty of his earlier years george certainly spent a lot of his life trying to eradicate those ugly memories and deprivation of his childhood he he was a man who surrendered totally to consumerism he could break a recession single-handedly he spent so well he wore the white suits to give the impression of being obeyed being sophisticated and therefore divorcing himself even further from the life he'd lived as a child and as a would-be crim coming through the ranks he mixed with all sorts of people and had all sorts of connections and uh he was very typical typical of some of the gangsters that he admired and like some of them he even lived with for a while in america who had their mansions and whatnot and he emulated that lifestyle the team prided themselves on running a slick operation and saw themselves as providing services the community wanted they were careful strategists keeping a low profile and covered each other's backs politicians and police were paid off and the cash was rolling in the money that poured in not only from george's sp book making records but fixing races was another good earner for him but the money he picked up just weekly from illegal casinos for the protection some of them used to pay up to five thousand dollars a week if they ran and dealt only with what you'd call victimless crimes such as gambling the casinos and so on they believed no one was getting hurt the community wanted it and the politicians wouldn't pay too much attention and they could make good money without trouble and by and large they were right there is an argument that when the sp was rife when the game was right when the two up was rife sydney was a much safer and better town than it is now because everybody from politicians downward were getting a quid out of the illegal games freeman had become a big player and as such was keenly aware his activities were being monitored former assistant commissioner jeff shuberg spent many years following freeman's activities over a period of 10 to 15 years i monitored freeman's activities freeman macpherson and smith were like brothers in those days they communicated daily on the telephone one thing he told me he said at that stage he said i've got a bigger listening audience than bob rogers or john laws and i said what do you mean he said well you don't make a phone call unless everybody knows about it because they were tapping his phone when i first started looking at him he had a fairly extensive sp network and it was it was a big it was a big book he had a lot of people that that laid off with him that he laid off with and on some saturdays just amounted to in excess of a million dollars by 1974 gaming racketeers in sydney didn't spin a wheel or deal a card without paying freeman for the privilege and he was regularly collecting bags of cash from casinos all over town but as king of sydney freeman was also responsible for dispensing rough justice and in 1974 the activities of stuart john regan required his attention regan was a psychopathic killer that murdered his rivals and killed a young child in cold blood his bladed and fearless crime spree threatened the order freeman and the team had worked so hard to establish and killing a child was beyond the pale they hated him they feared him they reviled him because his violence was was pointless it was directionless it was it was overwhelming they viewed reagan as elise cannon in a perverse sort of way bringing discredit from the criminal element and he he just had to go if riggan had decided to start cleaning out his own room closet there's a good chance that freeman stan and macpherson all three of them may well have been targets for reagan's interest and to protect the rest of the organized crime group reagan had to be removed and it was left to the team to do that freeman and smith met with veteran crime boss paddles anderson and convinced him to set up and disarm the psychopathic killer battles that he had been in about five minutes no worries you picked to know them back a bit toei about this i'll give you the mail easy as pie mate just stand him under that light and i'll put him down don't you keep me waiting battles reckons he's got riga's gun off him and i don't trust that [ __ ] reagan felt like a time they'll have one of these kicks on there no mate paddles are shaking down a thousand punks you'll be clean money for old rope uh george mate hello johnny you're going to show me the ropes at last well you know you've been pissed from me long enough i reckon you deserve it ain't that the truth first thing i need to do is introduce you to stan hey hello johnny no you're next george five [Music] six seven and this one's for the kid you [ __ ] fish there's no doubt the demise of regan brought about a great sigh of relief not only amongst the police fraternity but i would think also the criminal fraternity and the public at large regan's death brought almost widespread joy in the criminal camps because when you've got a lunatic like that running around shooting and killing indiscriminately no one's safe look carefully and see what we've done to this bloke who thought he was going to be mr big and there he is dead in the gutter dead on the roadway with you know all these holes in him bleeding profusely regan was gunned down with at least two separate 38 caliber guns he was shot eight times taking a bullet for each of his eight murder victims seven and this one's for the kid you [ __ ] piece of [ __ ] freeman and smith were never charged with regan's assassination but years later freeman hinted at his involvement i received a very memorable phone call from george freeman among others but particularly one in 1979 and what i always remember about this call that george boasted to me we haven't had any underworld hit for five years since the killing of reagan hello johnny no and he told me that in the sense that hey you know we're almost basting we're pretty well organized you know and that's interesting there was a story floating of course that it was freeman that organised it that it was freeman that did the shooting and this rumor started of freeman jumping out from behind a tree juggling three guns and shooting him it cemented his reputation as the fastest man in the east and i think he quite enjoyed it psychologist stephen barron believes freeman's reputation would have been enhanced by his involvement in the assassination of regan he was a guy who was known as dapper george who would dress well present well knew how society worked who was seen as being a businessman rather than being a crook to do the dirty work on regan who was seen to be a saddest a torturer a psychopath an evil man would have given him a certain amount of grace by the mid-1970s freeman and the team were untouchable freeman's success in standing over jockeys and fixing horse races meant his sp booking operations were bringing in millions of dollars as freeman would later write the boom years of sydney gambling couldn't last forever but while they did the streets of sydney were paid with gold amazing for a bloke who had such a hard upbringing you know they all came up pretty in pretty tough times and they did it hard you got to take it out off to them they uh they got above themselves and and did well for themselves freeman is a bookmaker freeman makes his money by fixing races bribing jockeys making a lot of money for people by telling the people in positions of power i fixed the race put your money on number three at rose hill freeman's friends in high places kept his back covered and the entrenched corruption in the new south wales system meant he was essentially untouchable drive along general homes drive past the airport sitting on sometimes 90 miles now 100 miles an hour and i used to say to my colleagues we'd be better off locking george up for uh driving in a speed dangerous to the public than trying to get a brief on him with anything else because he was protected by crooked cops and if we ever gotten any gunning then someone was helping him out and they were feeding information to him about our activities by the 1980s freeman was living large in 1981 he married for the second time to georgina a much younger glamorous model the couple had three children and lived a picture-perfect life and a huge mansion but freeman hadn't reckoned on bob bottom a fearless investigative journalist determined to expose the cosy relationships between corrupt cops politicians and crims as a key player in sydney's underworld it wasn't long before freeman was under his spotlight my disclosures and some of the work i did behind the scenes made it difficult for him to deal with people he was trying to mix with politicians and people like that because once he came subject to the attention he did a lot of those people were starting to cut him off and he was very annoyed about that he blamed me for that george is probably one i feared the most i can tell you that lenny macpherson intervened a number of times in fact lenny stopped staying once too stan they picked him up and phone taps both state and federal fan taps in 1990 going to kidnap me despite all the threats made against him and his family bob bottom continued his work which finally started bringing freeman to the attention of police in 1983 jeff shuberg was part of the special gaming squad and made the momentous decision to raid freeman's mansion up until then freeman had been untouchable so i organized a couple trustworthy guys to go to his front gate throw some dog meat over for these dogs it wasn't the most serious offense in the world at the time you know starting price betting and he went to sutherland court and he was convicted he was pretty dirty about the whole thing but he just continued to operate this is what they used to do you couldn't close them down you couldn't stop them so i decided to knock him off again this time we thought well it's going to be difficult with the dogs because he'll be awake after that so i rang him up from a public phone box nearby and i said george jeff shubert get out and lock your dogs up straight away always shoot them he said don't shoot the dogs so i'm going to lock him up and he ran out the gate locked the dogs up guys went in when they walked into the room they'd been bedding but he had all this paper and it was designed when you put in a tray of water to disintegrate and they'd thrown all the bedding sheets into the trail water everything had gone there was one sheet in front of george's sort of seat um that still had bets on it my mate bob nicholson was able to grab it i had a bit of a struggle with george who tried to jam it in a coffee cup and get rid of it but we retrieved about three quarters of it put him before the court with the others he pleaded not guilty and we convicted him again outside the court freeman who calls himself a commission agent held an impromptu news conference where he claimed his arrest three weeks ago involved shotguns threats against his dogs and 24 police officers the numbers you know the shotguns i didn't like the response group was there with had shotguns the shooting dogs freeman was paying off the police was friends with sydney's elite and even survived bob bottom's prying eyes but in the early 1980s another problem surfaced which required his attention melbourne hitman christopher dale flannery a cold-hearted killer flannery's recklessness quickly upset the established order it's not something i readily admit to but flannery scared me anyone who wasn't scared by him didn't know the man flannery simply killed for money aware of flannery's grim reputation freeman and the team put him on their payroll but rent-a-kill could not so easily be controlled macpherson and freeman took flannery under their wing primarily as a means of trying to keep some control of him they were aware of his reputation they didn't want the problems he could cause in sydney and they figured by giving him some form of employment they might be able to control him the problem they had with him though was that he was ambitious and he wanted more he teamed up with neddy smith which was a major problem because both of them wanted to be the king of sydney flannery made enemies everywhere but the final straw came when he attempted to murder sydney drug squad detective michael drury in 1984. career criminals like freeman who relied on corrupt police for protection couldn't tolerate one of their associates shooting a cop just like regan before him flannery was becoming a problem the king couldn't afford to ignore flannery's as mad as a cut snake mate don't you [ __ ] give him a sniff don't worry mate he'll be looking at these brains before he even knows what's happened that doesn't stand this is still [ __ ] render kill right thanks george just don't keep me waiting in that bloody cupboard you know i don't like confined spaces you make sure you come out blasted don't worry mate he won't know what hit him just if you missed mate you'll be reaching for whatever he's got in a bloody little man bag of his no i'm betting it's not a [ __ ] anki [Music] g'day george g'day chris come in mate good to see you sorry i'm late [ __ ] car wouldn't start had to get a cab to the airport and air a car from there no worries mate have a seat [Music] hey you sure you don't want to drink i tell you what you're going to love this i bet i've been going on about it long enough but can i see it they make them in israel fires 1200 rounds a minute with this and your ass mate you're going to be [ __ ] invincible and we'll settle back and live like kings well you don't look like you're doing too bad george so where the [ __ ] is it it's just another room i'll grab g'day chris jesus christ stan i told you to watch the furniture it just [ __ ] dead before hit the ground did you have to use the entire clip just making sure nice gun flannery like regan was was an uncontrollable individual he came up from melbourne and he wanted to make a mark on the sydney scene i don't think he really cared what he got involved in or who he got involved with if you had him in your camp you couldn't trust him to sort of stay with you because he'd be just as likely to go to the opposition when flannery arrived at freeman's house for what he thought was going to be a talk about the future they could all plan together he found a much different reception g'day chris he was shot he was shot dead and he was the body was disposed off in the in the ocean there's no risk that his murder was or disposal was approved by lenny macpherson and stan smith in contrary with george freeman really it's a replica of the disposal of stuart john regan in the mid 70s he got out of hand and so they just got rid of him as they did with countless others over the years at the end of the day i think george freeman lenny mcpherson uh stan smith and others couldn't take the risk on this guy he would come at them one day he'd already shown that he was that he was his own man they you know again played their role of unofficial policemen the waste disposal unit you might call it even and it it did return the underworld to a a certain sense of stability that hadn't been there before during his period in sydney to say he had nothing to do with his death i had nothing is he dead well i don't know is he dead police seem to think he might be that well i don't know that psychologists agree that freeman would have had no hesitation in dispensing rough justice to flannery chris had become an embarrassment and the team had to resolve that difficulty i don't think george had any problems with it whatsoever what we do with people with threat we can either shoot them first off or we invite them into our world g'day george good day chris come in mate good to see you and when you invite someone into your world you can exert power and control and influence over them when the opportune time came all the time was right for him to be murdered not a problem joyous old days these men live on violence these make men make profit and violence these men see violence as being a very useful communication tool business strategy and an outcome which works for them chris flannery who's going to miss him cops weren't going to miss him as the 80s progressed freeman was arguably at the height of his power and influence however behind the facade of an urbane and successful player freeman was hiding a dark secret for several years he'd been fighting a losing battle with drug addiction according to the sydney morning herald freeman had such a chronic addiction to petherdine a powerful painkiller that he was listed as an approved patient to be prescribed drugs of dependence and in fact he was a registered addict he didn't like drugs but he fell in love with pathetic one of the drugs that can really make you feel good and he took it initially for his aspect problems and it just took a hold of him anyone who's um who had a painful operation or uh or bad breaks with a few of those myself and i've had a dose of pathogen and even a drop of morphine on the other gate on the jig i could get hooked on this very easily pathadine for me is is an obvious choice unlike george freeman is a drug which is not tainted by the street representations or generalizations or stereotypes of street drugs it is something that the wealthy can get hold of by virtue of going to their gp and george freeman would have had a ready open supply of pathadine pathodyne unfortunately has this drawback of being physically addictive you have a physical dependence upon it over time pathadine would have also helped freeman suppress the memories of abuse he suffered as a teenager i think one of the most important or the thing that we need to understand about any sort of addiction whether it's alcohol gambling drugs it is actually masking emotions george would have carried a lot of ghosts from his his childhood and certainly his middle years and i suspect his drug use was a way of managing that that personal trauma there is this there are good indications he was a good family man he certainly doted on his two boys he lived in a nice big house he provided for them well but his addiction became a bit of a problem for him on march the 20th 1990 the king of sydney george freeman finally succumbed to his chronic asthma exacerbated by his smoking and pathogen addiction [Music] go back and bowl the ball mouse what'd you call me mouse that's what they call her in reform school wasn't it hey [ __ ] mouse [Music] look son you get on the sp the world will be your [ __ ] oyster [Music] spa [Music] and this one's for the kid you [ __ ] picture [ __ ] [Music] g'day chris ah [Music] george george [Music] you'll have to depend on that to hear me [Applause] george george [Music] george freeman a so-called mr big of the underworld is dead unlike many of his associates the sydney racing identity died of natural causes at his home this morning he was 55. freeman suffered an asthma attack at his townhouse in sydney south this morning it brought on a fatal heart attack one of the most common reasons for overdose is because you in fact suppress respiration so if he has a asthma attack and he's using pathogen he's putting himself at risk when you look at the side effects of pathedine one of the major side effects of regular use you start feeling is if you're not getting enough air it may well be he took to pathadine because of his asthma or so he he saw but the pathogen had more of an effect on his respiration than the asthma did and i killed him george george i guess one irony in freeman's life and death is that while in life he opposed the involvement in the illegal drug trade not for moral reasons but simply a belief that he could survive better in a very profitable industry without becoming involved in drugs so it's somewhat ironic that he becomes addicted to pathogen late in his life uh i guess it's one of those things that twists of life i don't know about drugs i took a lie detector test once about it but see that's the problem with an addiction i mean you can be thoughtful you could be cautious you could be safe but once you develop an addiction and you're starting to stave off withdrawal you do stupid things because that's the nature of addiction i believe george when he told me that i was the only cop that he had ever given given any assistance to with a police investigation and he indicated that all he had ever done was pay cops for his own protection the whole of his life i regretted his early death because i always felt that at some stage he might have been prepared to sit down with me and tell me a little bit more about that sydney criminal milieu and hopefully tie up a few loose ends that had been sort of hanging around for years and never finalised george and lenny were the last of the old-time crooks and when george went and lenny went there was no identifiable figure that took their place in the sydney underworld you know you've got all these one-offs that no one knows very much about but they didn't have the prominence of mcpherson or freeman freeman died at just 55 never outliving his reputation and i wanted to be a top crook and to be known as a top crook i wanted a reputation today i'd do almost anything to lose it you are a baddie you you're accepted you're a baddie i accept i was a baddie sixth 60 up till 16 years ago i don't think i'm a baddie now a medical report before freeman's death had flagged a host of dangerous signs he was suffering intense abdominal and kidney pain struggling with severe stress and high blood pressure and was complicating his chronic asthma by smoking heavily according to his widow georgina freeman also regularly took valium to calm his nerves and as the postmortem noted his body was covered in scars and needle marks after years of pathedine dependency shakespeare wrote uneasy lies the head that wears the crown and so it proved for george freeman the king of sydney [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Australian Crime

Views: 123,298

Keywords: Australia, Australian Crime, Australian crime documentary, Australian crime series, Gangs & Mobs, Psychology of Crime, Stalkers, child crime, con artists, crime, crime documentary, crime series, disappearances, family crime, murder, police, serial killer, true crime, true crime documentary, true crime series, George Freeman, True Crime Central, murders documentary, crime documentary murders, crime documentary real stories

Id: coHK1qVZmRc

Length: 51min 30sec (3090 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 31 2022