The Underworld Podcast - Australia's Gangster King of Sin: Abe Saffron

Episode Date: July 22, 2025

Abe Saffron rose from wartime wheeler-dealing to become the king of Sydney’s underworld, a man whose appetite for sex, money and scandal was unmatched by any other Aussie gangster in the swinging Sixties. Saffron paid everybody off, brought Sinatra to Sydney, and hosted Sinatra. He was, in the words of one reporter, “Mr Sin”. But as Saffron’s empire of vice grew, so did the list of those desperate to bring him down — including his own henchmen. And as the Seventies dawned, Saffron would be embroiled in two fatal scandals that stained his reputation forever: one a tragic fairground fire, the other a kidnapping and murder that shocked the nation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. Saturday, June 9, 1979, at Luna Park, a sprawling amusement park on Sydney's North Shore. It's a little after 10pm and families are strapping in to take a ride on the ghost train. Almost a half-century-old, rickety as hell. You'll shiver and quake promises the soundtrack that booms over an NCHOAPR. Sue Manning, a 19-year-old youth leader, has brought some of her kids to Loon apart for some late-night fun. She hops on the ghost train herself and rides around, but she's confused.

There's a fake fireplace on the route, but it's giving off real heat. Manning completes the ride and disembarks, and then she turns around. The entire thing is engulfed in flames. A couple hours back is a father. John Godson and his two sons, six-year-old Damien and four-year-old Craig, their mother Jenny has gone to grab an ice cream alone. Behind them are five young friends. It's the first time they've been out loud out unsupervised.

The last of them sits in a car alone, and a tendon grabs him, yanking him off the ride before the car turns and heads into the ghost train's maze section. It will save his life. Parts of the ride duck out of the darkness, giving friends and family members a chance to waver their love. ones. But this time around, all they can see is an inferno, billowing out of the maze and

incinerating everything around it. Smoke, screams. Some passengers scramble to safety. Others, like the godsons, are trapped. So are the four boys behind them, Richard Carroll, Michael Johnson, Jonathan Billings, and Seamus Rahili. 10.14 p.m. Firefighters burst onto the park. The smoke is black as tar and great columns of it mushroom up of 100 meters into the dark sky. The old ghost train is highly combustible and there are no sprinklers. It's gone up like kindling. Only when the flames have died an hour later and the train is nothing more than a mess of twisted metal and smoldering timber, can they begin to recover the bodies of Carol, Johnson, Billings, Rahilly and the Godson's. Huddled together, John Godson's arms around his little boys in a final attempt to save their lives.

12-year-old Jason Holman, plucked from the seat behind his four friends, could do nothing but look on in horror. The fire was something different, he'll tell reporters four decades later, just nuts, out of control, and massive, dwarfing us. Newspaper reporters call Holman the luckiest boy alive. He doesn't feel like it. My friends, engulfed by flames, died in front of me, he says. Why did I survive? Why me? I ask that question nearly every single day. He's not the only one asking questions. Workers recall smelling kerosene near the ghost train.

Others claim that members of a notorious biker gang had been standing beside it discussing fuel and matches. But despite this, and police notes about faulty wiring and the lack of safety measures, Detective Inspector Doug Knight, in charge of the Lunar Park investigation, takes just a few short hours to call the whole thing an accident. He orders the wreckage to be a bit of a bit of a bit of a car accident.

be smashed and bulldozed onto trucks, destroying a potential murder scene. Every bit of evidence that could exist, says a firefighter, is gone. Knight is a known fixer, a man entwined with Sydney's underworld, as partial to bribes as a Burmese border guard. Among his criminal contacts, the man at the top of the city's pile. Abraham Gilbert Saffron, aka Mr. Sin, club owner, pimp, bootleger, and backhander to almost. every cop and lawmaker around.

It's barely been four years since Saffron was implicated in the disappearance of a high-flying Sydney socialite over an epic property standoff. Since then, Saffron run clubs, casinos and quote-unquote massage parlours have an uncanny habit of burning down. As it happens, there's a web of interest linking Saffron to Lunar Part 2. Rumors begin to fly. Aif Saffron may be one of Sydney's shadiest businessman, a purveyor of smut and scandal.

But is he an arsonist, a murderer, too? Welcome to the Underworld podcast. And welcome to your weekly dose of organized crime from two journalists right in the heyday of their careers. I'm Sean Williams in Wellington, New Zealand. First show from, I think this is the first show, is it, from my new homes studio slash guest house. I think second.

Slash grief hole. Oh, second, yeah, okay, then. Should I call it a man cave? I don't know. Am I joined today by Danny Gold in shimmering Spotify Towers? in New York where it's not only sunny but hot and yet no tank top I'm disgusted mate what's what gives first first of all grief hole is a fantastic phrase to describe uh anywhere anyone records a podcast phone isn't every man cave a grief hall and no every podcast studio is a grief

hall man caves are awesome but anywhere you record a podcast form is officially a griefful uh second it is really hot and I regret wearing wearing a shirt even if it's litan I should have either done this shirtless or wearing a tank top yeah I'm gonna get you like a wife beer on timu and you can wear that to the next one. A quick shout to those signed up to our Patreon. You've had a bit of a lean period, but we've got a lot of stuff coming up. We're doing stash houses more frequently now,

something on the Yakuza on my end and some other stuff I'm sniffing around. Yeah, so that's patreon.com slash aneworld podcast. You can also sign up on Spotify or on iTunes. For $5 a month, you'll get bonus interviews and our crime news rundowns we call stash houses. We're trying to do them, I think, every other week at this point, but you'll also get episodes early and night before.

and ad free, and you can sign up for that for only $3. $3, Danny, that's nothing. That's such a bargain. And speaking of bargains, if you want a nice t-shirt, are you wearing your Underworld T-shirt right now? No, not for this episode. Oh, for Christ's sake. If you want nice T-shirts like the ones Danny normally wears

or a hoodie or a mug or a sticker, of course, you can check out UnderworldPod.com and go to the merch bit, and yeah, that's the place for you. Anything else? Danny, you were doing some free ad space for friends, I don't know. You've got a palis running a marathon in Somalia or something? It's good to have something for you to just rag on me on. I like this. This is a good, this will be a good running bit. It's not quite like my, I don't know, sex and drug addiction.

It seems to come up on the show every week. People like really like that. Yeah. Anyway, today's show, Abe Saffron, Mr. Sin, called the King of the Cross. Now, you might think I found out about this guy through, I don't know, my deep, Aussie, crime contacts or simply by knowing everything about criminal underworlds down under. You would be wrong. I actually discovered this guy when some guy messaged us about, what was it, roots from trafficking saffron in the world, the actual spice itself. And I googled, I think, Saffron Crime. And yeah, this guy just came up.

Dude, don't tell them how the sausage gets made. Oh, man, sausage is kind. It turns out this guy was one of the biggest names in Australian crime for decades. I'm sure people listening in from Australia know who he is. He knew crime bosses in Vegas, LA, befriended Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., opened Australia's first strip clubs, his first gay clubs, bedding more women than Casper, the mattress company, not the friendly ghost. That would have been a weird movie.

And was right at the heart of Sydney's emergence in the 60s as a global capital of night life. That's a lot you just told us, but the Casper joke was pretty good, dude. You're on it, man. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, I'm really spending some time on this. this true comedy um which you know sydney still is a pretty good place for nightlife um pretty weird

a bunch of like 17 year old kids taking designer drugs but uh yeah melbourne's better in my opinion so come at me in fact the show 60 minutes so the australian one it once stated that saffron was the best known person in the country with over 90 000 articles of books written about him only two of those books i've actually read for this show but uh sorry to the production assistant that i'd to go through 90,000 to get that figure. But like you heard in the cold open, Saffron was also involved in two of post-war Australia's biggest scandals. So one is the disappearance of Socialite Oneita Nilsson,

which we're going to get into soon. And the other is the tragic Lunar Park fire, which claims seven lives and whose sordid details are still tumbling out today. So it's a good old-fashioned criminal profile this week with a weird little postscript of crypto scams and Gordon Ramsey for good measure. So are you ready? Good. I mean, yeah, I can't hear any of you listening, but let's crack on.

Abraham Gilbert Saffron is born October 6, 1919 in Annandale, which is a western suburb of Sydney, to Samuel and Annie, Eastern European Jewish emigres. He's the fall for five kids, and by the time he comes along, the family runs a successful drapery store, and they live in a flat above it. according to a biography of Saffron by his son Alan called Gentle Satan. Yeah, Jesus. Yeah. That's a title.

It's hard to tell. Yeah. The family believes that Samuel Saffron had come to Australia from Poland for a championship boxing match and liked it so much he stayed and that Annie had met him for an arranged marriage. Quick side note, if you've got a cool surname like Saffron and have you got your pick of Polish, Jewish, Russian, Aussie names to go for. Like, calling your son Alan, that is, that's a crime. All our listeners are named Alan. Don't listen to Sean. I respect you and your name.

I mean, people know that I'm obsessed with Alan Partridge and some people come out with the quote sometimes. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, we're going to find out it's probably going to rub off on Saffron's son later on in life this problem with the name. Anyway, in any case, Alan Saffron

tells a 2010 documentary quote, My father changed the face of Australia. There's no question that he did. He changed it completely. The entertainment world, the gangster world, everything. He changed everything. Oh, we get it, mate. He's probably one of the most significant people in Australia's history, good and bad. Sam Saffron claims to his kids that he's from royal stock in Europe and that one day a medal would arrive from the male from Russia confirming

their nobility. But while the family's business does well, they're middle class. And in 1920s Australia, they get more than their fair share of anti-Semitic abuse. So basically the same as Australia in the 2020s? Yes, nothing. has changed at all. Abe, who is a shortish kid, gets tired of being taunted as a quote due boy by his classmates and he gets boxing lessons from his dad and then he's able to fight back, which he does. But as the boy grows up, he also develops this fierce controlling street that nobody seems able to blunt. Saffron's first business venture comes at the tender age of eight when he sends to get cigarettes for his dad during a weekly poker game with friends. The players

always tip the boy a penny, but he figures he can make more if he buys the Sigs in bolt with the cooperation of his mother. Before long, he has a stock room in a kitchen cabinet, passing on the packs at retail price for a tidy profit. Saffron runs a similar game with old-school textbooks, but he also dips his toes into Sydney's criminal marketplace, most notably stealing car radios. I mean, that's the ageal question. Do people still steal car radios? Do they? Do they still steal Chappelle bit, you know, when he's like, people at the steals.

Oh, no. Yeah. The old one, like 20 years ago. Anyway, moving on. Okay. Well,

you didn't get Partridge. I didn't get Chappelle. Yeah. It's fine. Yeah. Yeah. Do people still still like a catalyte converter? Is that still a thing?

I remember that was a huge thing. Yes, they do. I mean, I haven't had mine stolen in a couple years, but they definitely still steal catalytic converters. Okay. Okay. Now,

Ape Saffron, he also, as well as still stealing car radios enjoys gambling, most of which is illegal at the time. And before his 21st birthday, Abe Saffron has already pleaded guilty to gambling and theft charges. Interestingly, Australia had its own prohibition era between 1910, 1928, but it was mostly focused on the National Capital Territory, Canberra, basically, as well as a few sporadic bands out in Western Australia, which was because of whites trying to limit Aboriginal Australians' access to liquor. The Aussie words for an unlicensed liquor store or speak easy, a quote,

Sly Grog shop, which, yeah, sometimes you really do got to hand it to the Australians, which is what I definitely won't be doing in December, which is when I'm at the Ashes. Yes, I'm at the Ashes at the Embassy, in Melbourne, all of which Danny just fully understood and fully endorses. Yeah, no idea what you're talking about, dude. I cannot overstay this enough. It is like my dream. It is literally the dream to go to that day of cricket.

and I will be doing it this year. Anyway, Sydney, which is a city of around 1.1 million people in the late 20s, has six o'clock bar closing times. That is awful, isn't it? Something introduced during the First World War to improve, quote, public morality. Now, this might be unpopular, but I've drank with Australians. And even as something of a liberty in myself, I understand why someone would subject them to, like, a 6 p.m. bar closing time.

I'm just saying it makes perfect sense to me if you've ever. you know, spend time in southern Thailand or probably in Bali too and you've drank with Australians, you're like, oh, I get it, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know which way to spin this, but either way, the idea of public morality and six o'clock closing times did not work. But a 1928 New South Wales referendum on prohibition falls predictively flat on its

backside, which 71% of people voting no. New South Wales, in case anyone doesn't know, that is the state containing Sydney, founded as British Penal Connolly, pretty lawless, so again, nothing has changed at all. On March 7, 1941, everything in Saffron's life, however, changes when he's drafted into the army. And he spends the next two years rising to the rank of corporal, mostly in barracks doing administrative work. He gets an honourable discharge, then joins the Merchant Navy, and it's a board of repurposed passenger steamship ferry and troops from Australia, a New Guinea, that's American troops, I think, as well, that Saffron hooks up with an old Sydney

friend called Hilton Kincaid. Lots of good names in this show. Hilton Kincaid is already using his role to smuggle contraband, including liquor, cigarettes, stockings and pornography. But he's no Al Capone, and he keeps getting cool. Fortunately, his old Pallet knows exactly how to get away with stuff. You pay everyone. Saffron ensures that he and Kincaid, I've got the captain of whatever ship they're on firmly in their pockets, plus anybody else who might grasp them up. Reminds me of Catch 22, which I never actually read the book, but the Hulu show. Terrific. But also, if you think about it, like right now, we can get all the liquor, cigarettes, stockings, and pornography we want.

You know, these guys have to smuggle it. Yeah. We're living a blessed, really is a blessed time we're living in. I've been watching the Adam Curtis documentary Shifty about the 70s and 80s in Britain. And why do people want to go back to these times? They're brown, like beige, disgusting, horrible, awful. Everything is better now. I don't know, dude.

The 90s kind of ruled. I don't think everything's better. We have cell phones and smartphones and social media make everything and everyone miserable. But the 90s were great, dude. You just need one cell phone for you and your friends. So when someone gets beeped, you can all borrow that phone and then call the person back. That's all you need, dude. One cell phone and eight beepers for you and your friends.

Then you're good. And you got paid like $10 of words. article for GQ, which was, that's pretty good. Anyway, King Caden Saffron's business is booming. But then the war ends, and both men land back on Terra Firma. So Saffron gets into horse race betting, illegal, of course, making an immediate fortune on what is fast becoming Sydney's criminal cash cow. Look, I'm going to say it.

Everything about this guy rules so far. Like, I'm on board, you know? I think that's probably going to change soon. But right now, he's doing, like, you know, he's having fun. I mean, he's only a few years from calling his son Allen, so it's all going to go downhill, but he's doing okay. I mean, by the early 1960s, there are some 6,000 so-called starting price or off the books, bookies across New South Wales. And the Royal Commissioner, basically, a judge, says in 1963, the quote, it is highly probable that there is no place in the state, city, town or village, with 250 more inhabitants in which there is not a starting price bookmaker operating.

Now, Saffron would always loudly complain about his bad line of this guy for doing this. Saffron would always loudly complain about his bad luck in investments during this time, claiming his losing money hand over fist when he's, in fact, raking it in to avoid anyone thinking he should pay taxes. So funny. Oh, God. And avoid someone trying to rob you, too. I mean, that's the, we always say about, like, criminals on Instagram who flash all their wealth, and they get stuck up.

I know, you know, a kid doing that, who I'm like, dude, Now, everyone can see this. Like, you're going to be a target. So good on him. Yeah, he figured it out even before. Yeah, figured out before Instagram. I just went into like, you know, I went into the ghetto with a car with a goldfish bowl and like a 10 foot go.

A blaster on top. That's bad. Anyway, by, so, where was I? By the 60s, yeah, the 60s, swinging 60s. Saffron is already well known for another trade altogether, which is clubs. His first venue is the Roosevelt, a 1943 open music hall that he buys four years later in 1947. It's still going today, in fact. Although from what I can see, it's one of those fake, speakeasy places with cocktail ways with those, I don't know what those things are around their shirt sleeves and drinks for like 30 bucks.

Yeah, it's one of those places where the waiters, the bartenders all dressed like also barbers that will charge you $90 for a haircut. Yeah, I was going to say with the. Butchers that will charge you $75 for a single rabbi. They all kind of have the same style. Yeah, I was going to say, like, is there a ceiling to how expensive cocktails are going to get? Or is it just going to be, what, $60, $70,000 in like five years in the middle of Williamsburg? I don't know. I remember going to that meatpacking place, the boom, boom bar, boom bar, and paying like $20

bucks about 15 years ago for a cocktail. And that was a scandal. But, yeah, now you've got to remortgage your, home for a dirty martini, Danny. Am I right? Am I right, though? Am I right? You kind of are. I mean, $24, $26 cocktails. A bunch of spots like that, man. And I find myself paying it every now and then. Yeah. If Mamdani had come out against high cocktail prices, that would have been the end of all political parties, I think. Anyway, the Roosevelt becomes one of the places to be in post-war Sydney. Remember this place is heaving with American GIs,

international visitors. Australia generally just booming from rural and mineral industries, tons of foreign investment. The GDP of the country shoots up by 50% in just a few years, and Saffron is right in the middle of it all. He buys up a bunch of pubs and nightclubs near the Roosevelt, all in this seedy Kings Cross District of the city, just east of its downtown. His genius and profit margin is based largely on flouting post-war restrictions on the supply and sale of alcohol. Saffron would illegally transfer drinks from his hotels to his clubs and sell them from

enormous markups. I mean, this isn't like morally, this is not the worst. He also laps up media attention and earns a degree of notoriety in 1951 when a photographer snaps him at one of his clubs through the legs of a female performer, which is a classy shot. And Saffron's star

just continues to rise. He buys up more property in Kings Cross, which is Sydney's Red Light District by now. These are usually table service can can show jazz band cocktail kind of joints very very sort of late 50s big band and of course anybody who's anybody in the city shows up to saffron venues politicians judges lawyers gangsters and of course cops and most of them are out way later than the 6 p.m closed time mandated by local law often it's 3 a.m that's really late saffron's there during the table rounds, greeting everybody, keeping tabs on who you'll have to bribe, police officers might

catch a show, get the drinks, compton, and pick up a big bag of cash on the way out. So I thought the 6pm thing was struck down, no? It continues into the 50s? That was prohibition. No, the 6pm thing was going. Yeah. Although I think no one followed it. And there are still laws out there now that I think are like really sort of patrician and

Puritan, but no one follows him because of Australia. Where? is Daredevil. I'm right here. Don't miss the return of Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again. So what's next? I'm going to take this city back. In an all-new season, now streaming only on Disney Plus.

They're hunting us. It's time we started hunting them. I can work with that. This should be tons of fun. Marvel Television's Daredevil and Born Again, now streaming only on Disney Plus. here for MintMobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities, so do like I did

and have one of your assistants assistants to switch you to MintMobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com slash switch. Up front payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com. The juror sat in a dark room, hands resting on a Ouija board. They weren't guessing. They were asking the victim who killed them. Sounds unbelievable, right? But it happened. And that's just one of thousands of stories waiting for you on Morning Cup of Murder. Hi, I'm Karina B. B. Mr. Dürfer, and every single day on Morning Cup of Murder, I bring you a real, chilling, true crime story connected to that

exact day in history, from Killer Cannibal Brothers to the Boy Scout who was obsessed with the cult and the strange story of the bloody hammer in the frozen cabin. These aren't the cases you've heard a hundred times. They're the ones that make you stop and think, how have I never heard this before? With over 2,500 episodes and a brand new story each and every single day, morning cup of murder becomes part of your routine fast. If you like your coffee hot but your bones chilled,

then sit back and start your day with a morning cup of murder. Go listen to Morning Cup of Murder, you get your podcasts. And remember, stay safe. Anyway, Ape Saffron isn't the only wise guy doing this. Post-Wor, Sydney is stuffed full of illegal Baccarat games, after-hours, bars, and brothels, and the boys in blue take kickbacks more regularly than a Bolivian prison officer. But other patrons don't pin their face to the device, and nobody has the same clout with the authorities that he does. On one Thursday night, two clueless goons sneak into the Roosevelt after hours and swipe all the takings, including the

club's weekly payroll. These two guys clearly don't realize who they've ripped off, because they're bragging about the swag all over town. So Saffron calls in some of his police friends, and the pair are arrested within a week. Here's Alan Saffron in his biography, should I say again, gentle Satan. Quote, what followed was a demonstration of my father's growing power. Officials decided that these petty criminals needed to be made an example of and sent them to prison for several years. The club was never robbed again. Saffron also flaunts his wealth in a way few others in Sydney do. He's always dressed in tailored press suits and he drives one of only two Lincoln Continentals in Australia with the license plate Abe 111. But there is another thing that sets Aves Saffron apart from other nightclub owners in Sydney,

which is his legendary sex life. Saffron had married his wife Dorian Crants in 1948 and the couple had Alan a year later. But Abe spends at least three nights a week at a King's Cross apartment, and by all accounts the man is a sex addict, hooking up with dancers, staff, patrons. He's got more notches on his bedpost than a really notchy bedposty thing, sorry. And Alan writes of one episode where, imagine writing this about your dad, man, quote, he had a girl under his office desk performing oral sex while he was interviewing another two girls for a job at his club. Saffron has a longstanding affair with one of his dancers. and they have a daughter together named Melissa.

Throughout the 50s, Saffron as to his empire of sex, setting pornography and blue movies to cinemas. He'll eventually have financial interests in a hundred brothels, marked officially as, quote, massage parlors, alongside 50 nightclubs. But clearly, he hasn't paid quite everybody in the Vice Squad off, because in November 1956, they charge him and his old pal Hilton Kincaid with scandalous behaviour.

having taken part in an orgy in the seaside suburb of Palm Beach. Also charged is Saffron's brother Henry and a quote, Negress. Jesus, I don't know if you can even use that word anymore. Anyway, she had been involved in the orgy. These men, say a police prosecutor, had, quote, openly outraged public decency by taking part in lewd, obscene, and disgusting exhibitions. They had willfully exposed themselves in the presence of other persons for long spaces of time, and by their evil example, corrupted the minds and morals of those persons.

None of which sounds too bad, does it? As part of this investigation, cops discover a whip with furry yellow thongs and a camera in Saffron's Kings Cross apartment, which the local papers, which are, you know, they're delighted, of course, run a mock with. Depraved contact, whip used on nude girls, reads one of them, how far we've all come since then. Sean, what if I told you about revealing too much about your personal life on the show? I'm just saying, you know, this guy sounds healthy. Well, a minute, it's my, no, my girlfriend doesn't listen. Around the same time, there is a Royal Commission on Liquor Laws in New South Wales.

What would the laws being flouted more openly than a really, really flouty, I don't know, opening thing? The commission calls Abe Saffron as a witness, and he is caught lying about some of his financial interests. Now, Saffron doesn't actually get convicted for any of this stuff, because he's girlfriends, of course. but it puts him firmly in the sights of law enforcement and transforms his reputation all over Australia. So what does Saffron do? Well, he doubles down, of course. Australia's laws and society relax into 1960, which is when Abe opens the country's first ever strip club, the staccato. It will soon be followed by the Pink Pussy Club and many others.

Saffron might be the face of vice in Sydney, but his business concerns are fronted by dozens of straw men, and for the most part he keeps himself well off the books. Neither does he get involved with any of the intimidation and violence that inevitably follows his empire around. Saffron hires a constellation of crooks and tough guys to work the doors at his clubs and to dissuade anyone else from stepping up on his turf. Mark Chopper Reid, you might know from, yeah, that film, he actually works an Abe Saffron club in his early days,

but nobody will be as consequential as the man Saffron hires in 1968. Jimmy Anderson. I know what you're thinking, Danny, obviously not the England fast bowling legend, but a violent thug from London, well known in the Sydney underworld. So wait, is there such a thing as slow bowling? Like, what are these, the amount of like these weird English bar games that you know, I don't, is there like slow bowling, regular bowling and fast bowling? Because I've seen professional bowling. It seems all fast bowling to me. Yeah, it's, imagine there was a guy who just threw like 60 mile per hour curve balls. That is basically what I bowl, because I'm a weak little man. But Jimmy Anderson is not that guy. He bowls at like 85 to 90 miles an hour.

But that's regular bowl. He's old. He's a legend. That's fast. I think, no, so we have, so in typical cricket style, we have fast, fast, medium, medium, medium, medium to slow, slow, left arm, slow right arm, leg spin. I can't even tell if you're kidding. I can't tell this is. I'm not kidding. This is literally, these are literally classifications for bowlers. Oh, he's a bowl. I thought, okay, so not bowling where you knocked the pins

down. You're saying he's a bowl like a cricket bowler. He's a cricket bowler, yeah. Oh, that's why I was confused. Okay. All right. Well, he sounds great. But that proves that you know he is anyway. Alan, by this point, Alan Saffron, remember that guy?

He's by this point a bit of a party guy and a fixture at his dad's clubs. And he warns Abe about Jimmy Anderson, not the bowler, the tough guy. Quote, he was unlike any of my father's other friends or employees, he writes. But Saffron holds this guy in uniquely high regard, and it's Anderson's name that's on the lease for many of his venues. Not too long afterwards, a standover man named Donnie the Glove Smith comes to Saffron's new club,

The Venus Room, on behalf of a madam trying to sell her girls. Saffron says no, and Smith and Anderson get into a row. Anderson grabs a pistol and shoots Smith dead. At first, cops charging with murder. But soon, the charge is downgraded to Manslaw and eventually Anderson gets off on self-defense, despite Anderson having put no fewer than five bullets in Smith. Here's Alan Saffron again, quote. The word was out that my father was king of the cross and his enforcer Anderson wouldn't tolerate any misbehavior. Everyone in my father's circle urged him to get rid of Anderson, Nobody wanted him around. My mother hated the sound of his name, but no amount of advice from my mother would cause my father to be disloyal to one of his employees.

At one point, he was running some 17 clubs, and the truth is he needed someone tough and ruthless to watch over these operations. No one could scare Anderson, which made him a useful lieutenant, at least while he was still acting in my father's interests. It's around this time in the late 1960s that Ave Saffron really becomes the godfather of King's Cross. It's almost impossible to get a venue licence without his say-so, and anybody wanted to open a nightclub would pay him protection money. The police, of course, almost always looked the other way or helps Saffron directly. Remember, they're still getting piles of cash delivered or performing sex acts with women laid on by Saffron. In 1965, a newspaper editor stubbed Saffron Mr. Saffron.

sin, a name that will follow him around his entire life. A year later, Saffron is embroiled in yet another scandal when the Malaysian High Commissioner disappears for his Canberra office for days, having gone on a bender with a Saffron-run stripper named Sandra Nelson. Saffron also befriends two notoriously corrupt men who help pole vault his criminal career. The first is New South Wales Premier Bob Askin, and the second is Police Commissioner Norm Allen. Askin is widely considered to be the most corrupt premier in Australian history, which is a huge call. Is it known? Like, is Australia known for having a ton of corruption when it comes to politicians?

Yeah. Yeah. Like, anything you look back that far, I mean, we've done the stories about, like, the Melbourne underworld and stuff like this. Like, every time there's a police commission, they find out that about a million policemen are running, like, sex rings and drug importation rackets and stuff like this. Like, it's really, it's like American Wild West. It's really similar kind of culture.

and I think it's changed. I don't know. Maybe people can get in touch and let us know whether your country is a giant shit show. Anyway, while Norm Allen, the police commissioner, had been given an all-expenses paid trip

to the US by Saffron, including a young, attractive chaperone. Askin and Alan also enjoyed Saffron's patronage together, but they also view him as a useful bulwark. Bull-walk? Bull-wark?

Bull-wark? Bull-work? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, ballwork. A block. Just keep saying it. Against chaos. I'll keep saying it for the next hour.

This would be a great show. He's a useful block against chaos at King's Cross and Sydney's underworld at large. It's safer and more manageable, they reckon, to have a single kingpin in charge of everything rather than a bunch of smaller gangsters fighting over the city. That's kind of it, though, right? Like, when it comes down to it, that's not the worst. Like, we've seen that play out everywhere from the five families in New York to Mexico Hotel Wars in the late 2000s.

And Yakuza as well. Yeah. Like, the sad reality is it's true. When there is one more powerful, one group more powerful and dominant than everyone else, it does lead to less violence. Yeah, I think they're getting back hands and they're like, well, we can just make this work and sack off everyone else in the underworld. And that's going to be our deal.

So, yeah, A. Saffron makes Sydney's politics and police corrupt, but also politics and police kind of make him too. It's a bit of a chicken and egg thing. The only times that Abe and Doreen Safran ever seemed truly happy, his family, is when they travel together, which they do a lot, because they're wildly rich members of the new global jet set. In 1967, they visit the United States, even meeting President-elect Richard Nixon via a family friend. Saffron heads to Las Vegas, which is America's boomtown thanks to its own network of crime, vice and gambling. He gets in with the managers of the Rat Pack singers, Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, and he'll bring them all to Australia. He also sets up meetings with the mafia owners of several of Vegas's hotels, as well as representatives of the Teamsters Union, all of whom will soon be written into US criminal law.

These mobsters have heard of Saffron's success down under, and they ask if he wants to open a casino in Las Vegas, but he turns them down. perhaps because he's always doing so well at home, but more likely because he realizes that these are far more dangerous men than he's used to dealing with in Sydney, and he'd never have the same level of control. So Abe Saffron goes the way of Barry Humphreys, Danny Minogue and Steve Smith, massive down under, but never break in the States. And that's just fine, because by the end of the 60s,

he owns the Roosevelt, the pink pussy clat, pink pussy clot, the pink pussy clart, the stucinglars, the stucing, Carto, the Pink Parrot, Lodge 44, the Appin Apartments, the Raffle Apartments, Poet Call Raffles Hotel in Perks, two Baccarat games, a full squad of cool girls and dozens of, again, quote unquote, massage parlours. Saffron is also the middleman for a huge number of illicit businesses deals, and he's got almost every judge, politician and police officer in his pocket. From 1969, his gambling operations burst into life, and he's averaging around 10,000, Australian dollars a week, which is around 100 grand US today.

So we're not talking Jeff Bezos, Pablo Escobar, Danny Gold levels, but it's still a very handy fortune. And he's paying Norm Allen and Bob Askin around half his earnings. No wonder he's able to operate freely. Wait, so is that only from the galling operation he's making that much? Because $5 million a year doesn't sound like a lot for like the kingpan of a giant city. Yeah, this is a casino. know. So like the real number is going to be way, way higher because he basically runs every

single club in town and every single call girl. In fact, so well is Saffron doing that by the beginning of the 1970s, he has another revenue string, loan sharking. This isn't backstreet low-level stuff. Saffron lends huge amounts of cash to some of Australia's most prominent business figures, including Kerry Packer, who people might know from World Series cricket in the late 1970s and an Austrian Jewish property magnate named France Wilhelm Tiemann, better known as Frank. So remember that name, Frank Tiemann, because we'll be learning a lot more about him soon. In the early 1970s, Saffron leads the way in Australia's sexing. He opens Le Gilles, a transgender club, after visiting a similar establishment in Paris, which he

renames the carousel. He also opens several gay bars. You've got to get that pink dollar man. it pretty much isn't a place in King's Cross that Saffron doesn't own at this point. And he has the cool gold market, as I just said, well under wraps. But one person he's losing control over, Jimmy Anderson. No, Danny, not Lancash's King of Swing. Seriously, bowling for England until the age of 42. It's like, it's just incredible, man. I don't know how his body does it.

Probably the best sportsman of all time. This, of course, is not him. It's Jimmy Anderson, the London gangster who's become Abe Saffron's bloody right-hand man. in Sydney. In 1972, Saffron loses Norm Allen and the police commissioner he'd been paying off for years to retirement. And in 1975, he loses state premier Bob Askin too. So he's lost his two biggest allies, huge amount of cover there. And in 1976, MPs announced under parliamentary privilege that Abe Saffron controls all drug trafficking in Australia. Now, I don't know if listeners have an equivalent to parliamentary privilege like in the US or wherever you live.

but we have it in the UK too. Basically, you can say whatever you like in Parliament and nobody can charge you with contempt or defamation. Do you have that in the US? Does it exist? I don't know. I don't think you can say whatever you want, although judging on the way things have God

the past couple years, you can say whatever you want anywhere. But I actually don't, I don't, I have zero idea. Yeah, yeah. I mean, interesting history lesson. One of its earliest examples is in 1642. when King Charles I first tried arrest in five MPs. I'm really sorry, Danny, for treason,

the stuff they said in Westminster, which calls an uproar over privilege and freedom of speech, which led to the English Civil War, which led to Charles's neck, being removed from his shoulders. Thank you, this is UK History Corner with Sean Williams. Anyway, it's tough to pass this drug declaration by Aussie MPs in their own parliament.

The 70s are when drugs, especially heroin, are flooding into Sydney. Many locals blame American GIs on surely from Vietnam for this, but in fact it had started before they showed up on mass. But from what I've actually read, it does seem that Abe Saffron genuinely despises drugs and actively works against them getting into his clubs. Alan Saffron recalls that a clique of American mafia members try to get narcotics into saffron venues around this time, but they're sent packing by a quote, then loyal Jimmy Anderson,

before being arrested and deported. So the drug thing isn't true. Like, where does the accusation come from, especially because he's supposed to have everyone on the, you know, on payment? Yeah, my read is that I think once Askin and Alan the two bigwigs kind of went down or just got too old, like some politicians pretty high up wanting to ruin Saffron. So they just kind of threw everything into the mix alongside the clubs and the vice and stuff. But this one, from what I've read, I mean, you know, I've read a fair bit in the last couple weeks, but I don't think this one really sticks. It's just what they're trying to say to get him embroiled in a kind of drug scandal that's going around at the time. But Jimmy Anderson at this time, he is erratic, and he's increasingly skimming off the books of his Saffron run clubs.

One person describes Anderson as a quote, horrible, horrible man and a monster, and he frequently threatens dancers. As police inquiries into drugs at Saffron's clubs continues, Anderson reportedly calls his boss a quote, anchor in Sydney's narco industry. Alan Saffron plays up this increasing divide between Anderson and his father, and that's because of what happens on July 4, 1975, something that sends shockwaves through Sydney and Australia and threatens to bring Abe Saffron's criminal empire toppling down. Now, Victoria Street is right at the heart of King's Cross,

historic and unique, and full not only of artists, hippies and other bohemian types, but older residents, some of whom have lived there for 40 or more years. Here's ABC describing the street, quote, it was gritty and dangerous but also beautiful. Around the main strip, gleefy streets were lined with historic terrace houses, home to artists, migrants, the elderly students,

Woffies, I think that's dockers, and seafarers. Victoria Street had affordable housing and sweeping views of the Sydney skyline. Pensioners and single-parent families scored prime views of the Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge. Most older residents live under rent control similar to New York. But Frank Tiemann, remember him, he spends 60 million US dollars in today's money buying up one side of Victoria Street in a bid to knock the terraces down and build his own NYC dream. Glass-fronted high rises, lots of them.

Within a week of the purchase, Tiemann has evicted all but's 12 of the street's 40 residents. Those who remain vowed to fight him. Their champion is fellow Victoria Street resident Juanita Nilsson, a glamorous Sydney cider and editor of local magazine now. As the battle against Tiemann hots up, Nilsson turns now from a Cosmo-style rag into a muck-raking tabloid, threatened to expose the shady lives of Tiemann, his friends in high office, and aged Saffron.

Nielsen sets up a ratepayers association and residents barricade themselves inside the terraces. Timon fights back. He hires fair-waving goons to intimidate and smash windows. By mid-1973, Nilsson scores a big win when she allies with Australia's biggest construction union on a so-called green ban against development of Victoria's Street. No unionised worker will lift a finger for Teaman, ostensibly to preserve the street's heritage, but really to protect Nielsen and her neighbours. The union demands, however, that the terrorists remain occupied for the ban to stick. 30 out of towners show up and they squat,

holding placards with press photographers reading stuff like Houses for people, not profit. Very 1960s or 2020s or whenever I guess. By this point, Frank Teaman is losing 200 grand a week, US, fighting this. So he gets dirty. Arthur King is a Victoria Street resident who's been instrumental in the Green Band. In August 1973, he wakes in the early hours to find a heavyset man in a suit, standing over his bed.

When King chases the man out his front door, another two men grab King. One smashes him over the head with a bat, picks him up, gags and blindfolds him. The men drag King onto the street, bundle him into a car, and they drive to a motel. There they stay for two and a half days.

King tied up at knife point on the motel room floor. King hears the men say they've paid 5,000 Aussie dollars to, quote, get him out of the way for a while. When they drive back into Sydney, King can see from a hole in the car's trunk that they've parked outside the Venus Room, an Abe Saffron Club, run of course, by Jimmy Anderson. They disappear for a bit, and then they return with a message. Leave your apartment, they tell King, and never protest again. Play it cool, Arthur, one of them tells him.

Next time you might not get a couple of nice guys like us. You could get a couple of sados or someone to line you up in their rifle sites. Arthur King doesn't need tell him twice. He heads home, packs his stuff, and he leaves. He won't tell anybody about the ordeal for four decades. Arthur King gone, the standoff gets even uglier. Teaman hires a karate champion to turf out squatters with men from his dojo. I mean, like, I don't know.

Like Ralph Matrio and Coburkeye would not be my first instinct if I'm going to hire someone to clear out a bunch of squatters. Like what, what's, maybe in like the 1920s, I don't know, dude, but it's kind of funny. No? Yeah, I mean, maybe he literally saw them smashing bricks and bits of concrete with their hands. He's like, well, they can just smash the pipes of these houses. This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking.

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I'm going to hug you. I'm coming in for a hug. Anyway, in January, 1974, he tends a team of thugs to smash up pipes and the wiring with sledgehammers, which is probably a bit more useful than your bare hands in a bid to make the terraces unlivable and force out the squatters. Oneita Nielsen, now age 38, stands firm, writing about Teaman and City Corruption in Now magazine. She promises to go public with details of Abe Saffron's network of illegal bordellos and informers. This has gone too far, Teeman decides. He reaches out to Jimmy Anderson, this time with a mission. Get rid of Juanita Nilsson. On July 4,

Nilsson heads to the Carousel Club, allegedly to discuss advertising for now. It's the last time she'll be seen alive. Alan Saffron writes that a payment of 50 grand had been made to Anderson by Teaman and that Anderson was acting independent of Saffron. Alan says that, quote, Anderson was again branching out from my father and he would later boast of me when I ran into him in the clubs, I personally solved the Juanita Nilsson problem. Frank paid me and I got rid of her. Now,

the fact that Anderson has branched out from his boss and acted alone is very convenient, of course, for Alan. And given the fact that Tiemann and Saffron's business exploits stand to be shattered by Juanita Nilsson's muckraking, plus Tiemann's massive loans with Saffron, make me think

that maybe Saffron was involved. But here is what his son Alan says. Anderson confessed to him, Anderson was very smart and sent his son that morning to the airport where he booked a ticket to Queensland. The son used his dad's name to board the flight and again to check into a Brisbane hotel. For all appearances, Anderson had set up a perfect alibi because there was no confirmation of who was traveling in those days. A cursory police check verified his story. Meanwhile, according to the word on the street, Eddie Trigg and Anderson's adopted stepson's Shane took Juanita by force to a

motel in North Sydney near the harbour. And he goes on. Frank offered Juanita a substantial amount of money to back off in her attacks about his redevelopment. Naturally, Juanita was extremely angry about being kidnapped and started to scream at the top of her voice. Jim overreacted and hit her very hard, causing her to smash her head on a glass coffee table, which instantly killed her. Teeman and the policeman quickly ran from the room. There were a policeman in this room, apparently, leaving Anderson alone to take care of the corpse. A quick aside, I think this was literally a plotline in Neighbors or Home and Away. So whoever has read about Abe Saffron was writing episodes

of Neighbors in the 1990s. Anyway, Anderson then allegedly bundles Nilsson's body into the trunk of his car, drives to a remote location, cuts the body into pieces, puts the pieces into weighted plastic bags and drops them into Sydney Harbour off the side of a small boat. The other two guy, as Alan Saffron mentioned, were arrested for Nielsen's kidnapping 1977 and convicted years later. But Anderson escaped scrutiny. A 1983 inquest confirms that Nielsen had been murdered, but doesn't say how or who by. It adds that the investigation into her disappearance had been inhibited by a, quote, atmosphere of corruption, real or imagined that existed at the time. Authorities will later confirm that Jimmy Anderson, who never faced trial,

over Nilsson's death was a protected informant on Abe Saffron, even while he was a suspect in the case and other criminal acts. Wait, so hold on. The corruption in this case wasn't because Saffron had corrupted the cops for him. It was because Anderson wasn't an informant on Saffron, like kind of a whitey bulger situation. Yeah, apparently so. But I think at the highest level, they're kind of alleging a bit of both.

It's a bit confusing. Like, it's really hard to parse, and a lot of this is obviously, coming from the voice of Alan Saffron, who is like increasingly as this biography goes on trying to distance Anderson from his old man. So it's like, it's a bit confusing. I don't think anyone's really cleared this up. But not to jump too far ahead, but you say that he testifies against Saffron at his trial. He does indeed do that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're definitely the fact that they were using Anderson plays into this quite a bit. A worker at the carousel even breaks his silence on the. issue, like as recently as 2023, saying that, quote, Jim Anderson must have had instructions from Teaman that Juanita and Arthur King and whomever else. We want

them shut down. You're dealing with it. So even that guy kind of skips saffron in this sort of chain of command. The green bands wind up being placed in around 40 sites across New South Wales, including Sydney's incredible botanic gardens, like, seriously,

amazing part of the city is beautiful, which at one point planned to be replaced by a parking lot, which is a bit on the nose there. So they actually had a positive effect, right, in the end. But Frank Teeman, with Nielsen and King out of the way, he goes ahead with his development, albeit a much scale down on in 1978. And he tells the 1983 inquest that it has made him a tidy profit. So not all stories have actually end in, kids.

But before we get into the 80s, which is when A. Saffron's empire really begins to creak, we need to cover the Lunar Park Five and 1979, today's cold open. As I mentioned, Saffron's Kings Cross clubs had a funny habit of burning down during the 70s, and he always got a tasty insurance payout. So when Doug Knight, the detective in charge of the fire's investigation, wraps things up suspiciously early. A small group of people worked behind the scenes to pick apart the truth of what happened that fateful evening on the ghost train and who was behind it.

One of them is Martin Sharp, a prominent Sydney pop artist who had designed the giant's smiling face at Lunar Pooh. Park's entrance, as well as album covers and lyrics for the rock legends, Cream, weirdly. Sharp refuses to believe that the fire is an accident, and he keeps a huge file throughout his life, working with survivors to piece together eyewitness accounts of the kerosene discussions by biker gang members, for example. Sharp also helps uncover troves of evidence of corruption by Doug Knight and his links to crime lords, including Saffron. Most damning is evidence showing that Saffron's cousin and nephews control the company that would eventually win a contract of redeveloped

Lunar Park after the fire. Given Saffron's dense web of front men and family interests, it's almost certain he was stood to profit directly from the fire. In 1984, a journalist digs up tapes of conversations between a solicitor and a high court judge named Lionel Murphy discussing deals with the property. This leads to a Royal Commission that same year, during which Murphy is shown to have been in Saffron's pockets, having enjoyed sex with Saffron's girls at one of his Kings Cross clubs. The commission shows how Saffron controls fleets of powerful men this way, as well as by instrumentalising gambling debts. Finally, the shit actually sticks to Abe Saffron. The newly christened National Crime Authority, Australia's FBI, is digging deep into his empire.

In November 1985, which is the finest month in human history, according to my mum, authorities charged Saffron with tax fraud and 12 counts of making false declarations. After a two-year trial, he's found guilty, sentenced to two years in prison in order to pay back around $7.5 million US dollars in today's money. And Jimmy Anderson is the key witness. Wait, so he gets off on the murder and then testifies. But they don't even charge him on the murder and then he testifies. They don't even charge him. Yeah. I mean, I kind of might be behind with the son of sound.

Alan, dude. Yeah, it's, uh, yeah, it's, it's, everything points to Jimmy Hansen and not Abe Saffron. I mean, like, no one's denying that he was like doing loads of frauds, but yeah, Anderson might be a murder, like in his own episode at this point. The guy sounds like pretty wild. Yeah, he's like, he's a pretty interesting character. I'd like to know more about him, actually. Just like Al Capone, the books bring Saffron down in the end. But Saffron is a lifelong hawker, a huckster, and he runs business behind bars with what must be one of the earliest cell phones known to man. Saffron orders Chinese food for his fellow inmates. I guess you could just order Chinese takeaway on a cell phone with one of those giant aerials. I don't know. He even puts on strip and drag shows inside.

I would not want to be performing at one of those. And at one point, three inmates joined a famed dancer and do the can-can with her. Jimmy Anderson thinks Kings Cross is his while his old boss is locked up, but Saffron's much, much more canny than his cockney foe. He gets underlings to change all the locks at his clubs in a single afternoon on Sunday, effectively shutting Anderson out of Sydney's underworld. Anderson fowles revenge, reportedly hires a hitman named genuinely Con the hitman to take out Saffron. But Saffron's police contacts get wind of the plot and warn Con the hitman, they'll shoot him if he tries going through with the hit, Con the hitman. Hitman's hit. So Con the hitman backs out.

17 months later, Saffron gets out of prison and Anderson moves to the Philippines. Is there any update on what he gets up to there? Because I imagine it is not above board. No. Like all British and Australian men in the Philippines, I reckon I know exactly where he stayed and exactly what he did. But maybe I should do a show on him. He sounds like quite a character. Anyway, this is where Abe Saffron's career begins to fade out. He still owns tons of property, but the appetite for the kinds of establishments he's made his name running dyes. Pornography, especially home video, takes the sting out of life titillation and big bands.

And Saffron drifts through the next couple decades, still womanizing and accumulating a fortune of around $30 million today. Doreen dies in 1999, age 77, still living with her husband's constant. slew of lovers. writes Alan, quote, I'm absolutely convinced that my father killed my mother, broke her heart and caused her to stop the desire for living. I mean, she was

also 77 years old and it was 1999, but in 2006, while on holiday in Israel, Saffron has a heart attack and he has to return home. Two months later, he's admitted to hospital in Sydney with food poisoning and pneumonia, and on September

15th that year, age 86, he dies. The main beneficiaries of his will are a long-time mistress and his loved daughter, Melissa Hagenfeld, who I mentioned way up top of the show. In many ways, he's one of the most successful men in Australian criminal history, but the Saffron story isn't quite done there. This is some weird, like, post-script stuff. Alan Saffron emigrates Los Angeles in his middle age, and by 2010 he opens a restaurant called Burger Kitchen in Beverly Hills, stealing his son's portion of Abe's Saffron and inheritance money. In 2012, the Saffrons of Here on an episode of Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares that is known as one of the most chaotic in the show's

history. And I've watched it, and it is an absolute clown show. I mean, it's pretty ironic that Alan consistently complains about being sidelined and ignored by his father in Gentle Satan, but he does exactly the same thing to his son. And this is worth watching if, so. I think I've put it the reading list because Saffron is a complete train wreck. He's nuts, man. He dies in 2020, age 71. But even that is not the end of the Saffron story, because in December 2023, David Saffron, Abe's grandson, is convicted by a California court for running a crypto-based fraud. Here we go. Going back to 2019, stealing $25 million from victims under multiple false identities, including quote Bitcoin Yoda and Blue Wizard using an initial $1 million from his grandfather's estate.

Before David Saffron had embarked on the fraud, he'd run a bondage themed strip club in LA and he'd spent his ill-gotten gains on private jets, luxury hotels, a chef and mansions. As far as I can see, he is still awaiting sentencing. Okay, so that is the end of the Saffron story, guys. A. Saffron was many things, right? He was a pimp, a pimp, pay. Edel of Vice, a conman, extortionist, and a fraudster. But was he a killer? I don't know.

Last year, authorities released partial files from the Lunar Park fire case to victims' families, but they will not release the lot to the public. I think you've got to assume because so many high-profile people had been on the Saffron payroll. But the guilt is for you to decide. Cheers for listening and see you next week. Yeah, great one. Patreon.com slash internet world podcast.

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