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Thread: Eddie Trigg & The Disappearance of Sydney Journalist & Heiress Juanita Nielson

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    Eddie Trigg & The Disappearance of Sydney Journalist & Heiress Juanita Nielson

    From the age of 26 I played pool almost daily in the the pubs around Redfern & Surry Hills with a lovely old fella called Eddie Trigg. Every now & then another of the regulars would wait til Eddie was at the bar grabbing the next round, & they'd say with a wink "eh, y'know Eddie killed Juanita Nielson, dontcha?". The table would fall silent, then everyone would laugh.

    I thought they messing around. I was a toddler when she disappeared.

    A few years later I asked my Dad if he knew Eddie, Dad had been involved in various areas of the NSW courts & prisons system for decades. If you'd been locked up anywhere in NSW since the 1960's, he'd know exactly why.

    In response to my question I got & a long, slow questioning yessssss.

    Dad gave me some reading material. It was very enlightening.


    Eddie was in his 50's at least by the time I knew him, I never felt unsafe, but I think that might be because he adopted me like an entertaining pet. I was studying forensic anthropology at the time. I'm sure it gave him a kick asking about excavations.

    The story of his early adult years makes an entertaining read - drag clubs, transexual girlfriends, drugs, standover & extortion. That cheeky old guy front he put up was hiding an awful lot of criminal history

    R.I.P Eddie, innocent or guilty, you were one hell of a character & a part of Sydney history

    http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/trigg-take...302-2fczk.html




    Eddie Trigg died eight days ago. He was alone in his small, clean and tidy room at the Abbotts Hotel in Waterloo.

    According to police, there are no suspicious circumstances.

    His death, at 72, would be unremarkable but for the fact he was the last person to see the heiress and anti-development campaigner, Juanita Nielsen, alive.

    That was at the Carousel nightclub in Kings Cross on July 4, 1975. Indeed, Trigg may well be the person who killed her, acting on the wishes of his nightclub boss and a wealthy developer.


    With his lonely, alcoholic death, those secrets have been taken to the grave and the chances of the case being resolved, or of Nielsen's remains being found, are now negligible.

    Fairfax Media has been told the homicide squad's cold case team was notified of Trigg's death in case he left any clues - such as a manuscript for a book he was rumoured to be writing.

    If it ever existed, it hasn't yet been found. Nor has Nielsen's body. No one has ever been charged with her murder.


    Cross to bear ? anti-development campaigner Juanita



    The disappearance of Nielsen, who

    Nielsen went missing on July 4, 1975. Photo: Nigel McNei

    vigorously opposed high-rise development in Victoria Street, Potts Point, raised issues of corruption and cronyism in Sydney long before the Wood Royal Commission into the NSW police, and long before anyone had heard of Eddie Obeid.

    Born in 1937, Juanita Nielsen was a member of a wealthy family that ran the retailer Mark Foy's. She was independent, privileged and precocious.

    In his book, Killing Juanita, author Peter Rees describes a meeting between her and one of her cousins at a family wedding in Bellevue Hill.

    "During the evening," the cousin recalled, "this gorgeous creature who looked like a French model and sounded like Tallulah Bankhead came up to me and said 'Darling, could you get me a whiskey please?

    "The head waiter told me she couldn't have one. I asked why. He said 'she's only 12'."

    In the 1970s, living in a terrace at 202 Victoria Street, she started a local newspaper called Now, which was mostly advertorial.

    But she took a strong stance against the high-rise development proposed by the businessman Frank Theeman, which would have seen the demolition of many of the stately terraces in Victoria Street.

    As the 1983 inquest into her death heard, it was a tumultuous time. Residents opposing the massive development clashed with police and ''heavies'' hired by Theeman. Many were fearful and with good reason. One protester, Arthur King, was thrown in the boot of a car and kidnapped. Fortunately, he survived.

    A barrister, John Basten, told the inquest: "There was an air of violence and confrontation in the street."

    The Builders Labourers Federation supported the residents, imposing green bans that delayed Mr Theeman's controversial proposal.

    Counsel for the Nielsen estate, Neil Newton, said Theeman had the motive to get rid of Nielsen because she was holding up his project and costing him money.

    "Hers was the voice that would not be stilled and hers were the hands that would not cease to write in opposition," he said.

    The court heard that Theeman was on friendly terms with Jim Anderson, the manager of the Carousel and other Kings Cross clubs. Anderson had a fearsome reputation in the red-light area, partly because he had shot and killed standover man Donny ''The Glove'' Smith and partly because Anderson worked for the notorious Abe Saffron.

    Anderson in turn had employed Trigg at the Carousel Cabaret. Trigg had a troubled childhood and was placed in an institution. He went on to become a small-time criminal. In July, 1975, he was managing the Carousel's VIP bar.

    And that is where Nielsen went on July 4, the last day of her life, ostensibly to discuss the Carousel placing advertising in her paper.

    Police eventually charged Trigg and two others with conspiracy to abduct Nielsen but they didn't have enough evidence to go one step further and say who had actually committed the murder.

    In 1983, Trigg surprised everyone by pleading guilty to the conspiracy charge. He was sentenced to three years' jail with non-parole of 15 months. He later insisted he was innocent.

    Rees said on Friday Trigg "was a heartbeat from Juanita's final moments.'' He said he believed it was Trigg who killed Nielsen and disposed of her body at the behest of Anderson who in turn was doing the bidding of Theeman.

    Theeman and Anderson always denied any involvement in the killing. Both are now dead.

    Police said Trigg was found in his room at the Abbotts Hotel about 11.45pm on Saturday, February 23.

    "He basically drank there every day. I got the impression he smoked and drank himself to death," a police source said.

    "It's a bit of a sad day really, Eddie taking it to the grave. It doesn't leave many options."

    Down, but maybe not totally out. Officially, the Strike Force Euclid will remain ''active''. Anyone with information is urged to contact the police
    .

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    (these stories are from March 2013, there's been no book & no break in the Nielson case since then)


    http://m.theaustralian.com.au/news/n...-1226589495542

    "DEATHBED" manuscript written by underworld figure Eddie Trigg, which purports to reveal the true story of the notorious murder of anti-development campaigner Juanita Nielsen, is understood to be in the hands of his lawyer.

    The manuscript "names names", sources told The Australian, and claims to say where Nielsen's remains lie, nearly four decades after her death.

    Trigg, who died last month, served a jail term for conspiring to kidnap Nielsen, and was the last main player known to have been with the local newspaper publisher on the day she disappeared in 1975.

    The Australian can reveal that two individuals claim to have seen a manuscript Trigg wrote about his time in the underworld of Sydney's Kings Cross, including Nielsen's murder, to be published after his death in the hope of providing an inheritance for his descendants.

    Nielsen, 38, from a wealthy family that was heir to the Mark Foys retail empire, was last seen on July 4, 1975, at the Carousel Cabaret in Kings Cross where Trigg was night manager. Her body has never been found.

    The case, which is still open, remains one of Australia's most speculated-about unsolved murders, with rumours that Nielsen was killed for her opposition to property development, or that she was set to expose drug dealers and corrupt police.

    Desperate to find a copy of Trigg's manuscript, detectives conducted an extensive search on Tuesday of Trigg's room at the Sydney hotel where he had been living. But a close friend of Trigg, who also lives at the pub and was a bouncer associated with the late "boss of the Cross" Abe Saffron, told The Australian "they wouldn't have found anything".

    "The cops came here on Sunday after he died, then they came back today (Tuesday) and spent half a day going through his room, taking the place apart, looking for the book.

    "But Eddie was too smart, he didn't leave anything, and it's all with his lawyer. His son and his nephew have been told."


    A NSW police spokeswoman told The Australian: "Police from Redfern Local Area Command are conducting routine investigations into the death, which included searching the deceased's home. No information will be provided as to the result of that search, other than to say that there has been no breakthrough in the Juanita Nielsen case."

    The retired bouncer said he had seen Trigg with four copies of a book, suggesting that what he wrote could be very close to publication, but another source has described it as a manuscript.

    "Trigg had a manuscript written detailing all the information on Juanita Nielsen's disappearance, murder and where her body was buried, and naming names," this source, also retired after a career spent around the entertainment industry in Kings Cross, told The Australian.

    "There will no doubt be a lot of people very nervous after the death of Eddie Trigg, including some senior police, so I am told."

    A coroner found Nielsen had been murdered, but no charges have ever been laid.

    Nielsen, who published the local Kings Cross alternative newspaper Now, vigorously opposed the high-rise development in Victoria Street in Sydney's Potts Point, being proposed by businessman Frank Theeman.

    In 2004, Loretta Crawford, the transsexual receptionist who greeted Nielsen at the Carousel, came forward to say Nielsen had been shot in the storeroom of the nightclub.    
    Last edited by blighted star; 05-12-2014 at 08:05 PM.

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    2004

    http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2004/s1046350.htm


    MONET KING, WITNESS: He said to me that she didn't feel a thing.

    And I said: "Oh, Eddie", I said: "Well, where is she?"

    You know, he didn't answer me.

    He said: "What you don't know won't hurt you."

    EMMA ALBERICI: New Zealand's Auckland Harbour is a long way from the life Monet King knew as a glamorous 31-year-old transvestite in Sydney's seedy Kings Cross.

    It was the 70s, and his name was Marilyn King.

    He worked as a cocktail waitress at the Carousel nightclub.

    Upon his return to New Zealand 20 years ago, he took up painting, became a born-again Christian and a community health worker.

    But in all these year he has never forgotten his live-in boyfriend of 10 years, Eddie Trigg.

    MONET KING: I said: "Well, what about that blood on your shirt?"

    He took off his shirt to change it and there was a piece of paper, notepaper in the top pocket, and he said: "Oh, I'll need that.

    Give that to me.

    I'll need to show that to the police.

    That's my alibi of why I had to see her".

    EMMA ALBERICI: That piece of paper was later to become police exhibit eight, a receipt for $130 written by Juanita Nielsen supposedly in recognition of a deposit paid for advertising in her newspaper Now.

    MONET KING: I said: "Oh, look, there's a bit of blood on it" and I said: "For goodness sake, what on earth's going on", so the piece of notepaper, instead of being the whole piece, was suddenly cut in half and the piece with her signature on was kept and the other bit with the spot of blood on it, like the spot of blood on his shirt, was cast out into the rubbish.

    EMMA ALBERICI: Eight years after Juanita Nielsen's disappearance, Eddie Trigg was sentenced to three years in jail for conspiracy to abduct her.

    His colleague from the Carousel, Shane Martin Simmonds, got just two years because he confessed to the crime.

    He told police a story about trying to secure advertising in the Now newspaper was just a ruse.

    The real intention of a visit to Juanita Nielsen's home in Victoria Street on June 30 was to kidnap her.

    But on that day she wasn't alone and their plan was foiled.

    PETER REES, AUTHOR, KILLING JUANITA: It's hard to believe that there could be two different plots going on at the same time that were not connected in this way.

    After all, both Eddie and Shane were at the Carousel on the morning that Juanita went round to conduct a purported advertising deal which was later proved to be a ruse.

    EMMA ALBERICI: For author Peter Rees, Juanita Nielsen's disappearance has become somewhat of an obsession.

    He's been following the case since day one and believes his book, Killing Juanita, and the wealth of new information it contains could finally lead to a murder charge, something the coronial inquest, the longest in NSW history, was unable to achieve.

    PETER REES: So far as the involvement of the third man is concerned - we don't know, we can't say for certain, that he fired the gun.

    He was standing there with a gun in hand when Loretta Crawford walked into the storeroom.

    EMMA ALBERICI: What Monet King, formerly Marilyn, reveals in our interview, he has never before told police.

    Having previously denied being a witness, he now links Eddie Trigg to a sinister deed.

    Monet King says for a month before Juanita's disappearance, he helped Eddie track her movements.

    We caught up with Eddie, now 63-years-old, and living in Sydney.

    He refused an on-camera interview, maintaining he has no idea what happened to Juanita Nielsen.

    His girlfriend at the time believes he's lying.

    MONET KING: And I said: "Well, thank goodness.

    Is she all right?

    Where is she?

    Has she gone home?"

    And he showed me his fist and it was swollen, dreadfully swollen, and he said: "If the police ask, if the police ask what happened, say that I hit you."

    And I said: "Well".

    EMMA ALBERICI: Juanita Nielsen wasn't the first anti-development campaigner to face intimidating tactics.

    ARTHUR KING, ANTI-DEVELOPMENT CAMPAIGNER: I was asleep at the time, yeah.

    Two guys came, one on either side of the door, opened the door, bundled me out, out here to Victoria Street.

    We were away from Sydney for three days.

    But a condition of my release was that I would take no further part in any anti-development activities in Victoria Street.

    EMMA ALBERICI: For a time before his abduction, Arthur King was head of the Victoria Street residents action group, another thorn in the side of Frank Theeman's development plans.

    LORETTA CRAWFORD: The entrance was actually those three whole doors.

    There was the one entrance to the Carousel Cabaret.

    There were three small stairs, then a landing, then two lots of stairs going up which would have led to my office, and after Eddie and Juanita had their meeting.

    Then Juanita, Eddie and the third man came down the stairs.

    Once they went to the stairs below my office where the grill was, that's where I heard a clang and I heard someone make the statement about trouble makers get what they deserve.

    EMMA ALBERICI: The manager of the Carousel nightclub, Jim Anderson, was a close friend of property developer Frank Theeman and his drug-troubled son Tim.

    The inquest heard that on Sunday May 25, 1975, just six weeks before Juanita Nielsen's appointment at the club, the Theeman's family company, FWT Investments, paid $25,000 to Jim Anderson.

    Anderson claimed the cheque was an advance for a club bought here on Bondi Beach on behalf of Tim Theeman.

    He told the jury he paid $23,000 to a local club owner.

    But when questioned at the inquest, the club owner said he'd never received any money from Anderson or the Theemans.

    So the question still remains - what was that $25,000 for?

    PETER REES: That's very much the case.

    EMMA ALBERICI: What do you suspect it was for?

    PETER REES: I suspect the money was paid to remove Juanita Nielsen.

    EMMA ALBERICI: Hit money?

    PETER REES: Hit money indeed.

    EMMA ALBERICI: Those close to Juanita Nielsen have all passed away and are resting here in the Foy-Smith family crypt.

    A lone cross stands in the place she would have been buried had the 38-year-old's body ever been found.

    Her nemesis, property developer Frank Theeman, died in 1989.

    But the three men present on the morning of her last apparently fateful meeting are still alive.

    Twenty nine years on, the project Juanita fought so desperately against now dominates the harbourside landscape.

    LORETTA CRAWFORD: I felt guilty, I think, yeah.

    Because I often wonder what would have happened if I would have sort of said something to her like: "Just go.

    Just don't stay here". I just want the people who did this to be brought to justice.

    KERRY O'BRIEN: And police have confirmed they'll follow up those fresh leads in the Nielsen case.

    Emma Alberici.

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    http://www.milesago.com/features/nielsen.htm

    In 1976 journalists Barry Ward and Tony Reeves released a media statement saying their investigations into the Juanita Nielsen case had uncovered a police cover up and they implored Premier Neville Wran to set up a Royal Commission into the police investigation. Their plea was ignored so the two journalists sent a telegram to Wran on July 22, 1977. In part the telegram said:

    "We are dismayed and disgusted at your refusal to conduct a Royal Commission into the murder of Juanita Nielsen and the subsequent cover-up of that event. One of the significant points your announcement neglects to consider is that the police officer upon whose advice the Government`s conclusions are based was involved significantly in the original investigation about which we made allegations of a cover-up.

    We will continue in our campaign for exposure of then truth in this affair, despite your Government`s cowardice to come to grips with this most serious issue. We will explore and expose numerous other references ofpolice improprietyto their fullest. It is shameful that we will have to embarrass this Government into action."


    In late 1977, two and a half years after she disappeared, Trigg and two others were finally arrested and charged with conspiring to abduct Juanita. Trigg absconded in 1981 while on bail awaiting trial but he was eventually recaptured in the US in 1988 and deported to face trial. He pleaded guilty and was gaoled for three years. The second suspect, Shayne Martin-Simmonds, was convicted in 1981and was gaoled for two years. The third man, Lloyd Marshall, the Carousel's "PR man" in 1975, was acquitted.

    Ever since there has been a persistent sense in the community that the full story of the Nielsen disappearance has never come out, and that the facts of the case have been hidden under a cloud of corruption. Ross Coulthart reports that when Trigg was caught in the US, he allegedly said: "It's all bloody politics, anyway ... It's all about crooked cops, dirty politics and one big cover up. The guy who is benefiting from this is an alderman who made megabucks out of this."

    In 1995 The Bulletin magazine ran claims by Barry Ward that Juanita had been given dossiers on some "prominent Sydney identities" by private detective Allan Honeysett. The article speculated that these documents could have lifted the lid on the principals involved in Sydney's illegal gaming industry. Honeysett claimed these documents were the real reason why Nielsen was killed -- because it appeared likely she was about to expose big names involved in vice and illegal gambling. The Bulletin story also interviewed two anonymous female staffers who had been showgirls at the Carousel in 1975. They named three men who did the murder and the story went on to detail how the men who ordered the murder are still at large.

    In 1998 NSW police reopened the case after a witness came forward with new information. The witness claimed that her flatmate had confessed to her that he was Nielsen's killer. Police flew to London to interview the suspect but to date no charges have been laid as a result of this new investigation, although the case remains open to this day. The same is true of Loretta Crawford's new allegations, printed in the Herald on July 1 2000.

    The facts and implications of the Nielsen case reverberate in the Australian psyche and over the years it has left a strong imprint on local culture. It has been examined in many newspaper articles, numerous nonfiction books, formed the basis for several novels including Dave Warner's Big Bad Blood and Mandy Sayers' The Cross, and also directly inspired at least two feature films.

    Donald Crombie's The Killing of Angel Street (1981), explored corrupt official involvement in a city property development, from local police to the highest levels of government. Phillip Noyce's Heatwave (1983), also clearly based on the Nielsen case, starred Judy Davis as an Juanita-type activist battlingdevelopment in an inner city, low-income neighborhood.

    A quarter of a century later, the lasting testament to Juanita Nielsen is Victoria Street itself. Through her efforts, and those of her neighbours and supporters, many of the beautiful terraces were saved, and her memory lives on as achampion of social activism and responsible, human-centred development, and as someone unafraid to stand up against the forces of crime and corruption.

    In March 2001 the Greens party launched the Juanita Nielsen Memorial Lecture series, an annual lecture series commemorating the work of women activists. Announcing the series, Greens MLC Lee Rhiannon said that it was important that the contemporary Green movement realised that many of the battles against corruption and for democracy are re-runs of past controversies.

    In July 2008 Abe Saffron's only son Alan returned to Australia from his home in the USA to promote his memoir Gentle Satan: My Father, Abe Saffron. The book reportedly names former Saffron associate Jim Anderson as the chief agent of the conspiracy to silence Nielsen (although Anderson consistently denied any involvement while he was alive). In his interview with Lisa Carty of The Sydney Morning Herald, Alan Saffron said that he had received death threats over the book because it would name some of the people involved the conpsiracy, but that he was unable to name everyone involved for legal reasons, because some were still alive.

    Saffron claimed the people he could name people "much bigger" than former NSW premier Bob Askin and one-time police commissioner Norman Allan, with whom his father corruptly dealt to protect his gambling, nightclub and prostitution businesses, and he specifically referred to:

    "... one particular businessman I was desperate to name, and there's one particular police officer who isextremelyhigh ranking. They're thebiggest names you can imagine in Australia".


    According to the Herald article, all the conspirators are named in the original manuscript of the book, which is now in the possesion of Saffron's publishers, Penguin, and that the book will be re-published after as the others allegedly involved in the Nielsen case die.

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