REMEMBER WHEN

Wednesday, July 3, 1985 GOLD COAST BULLETIN

FEARS that Gold Coast businessman John Gillespie, allegedly involved in the Fine Cotton ring-in affair, had been killed were rife as a nationwide search for him continued.

Gillespie, a company director of Benowa, failed to appear in the Brisbane Magistrates Court the previous month to face charges of conspiracy to defraud and false pretences.

A Brisbane consorting squad detective said the search for Gillespie was continuing throughout Australia.

An anonymous call received at the Bulletin, however, suggested it was unlikely that anyone would see Gillespie, 44, alive again.

The caller said inside sources from the ring-in affair suggested Gillespie may have “known too much” and had been killed.

Gold Coast, Brisbane and interstate criminals wanted Gillespie “out of the way”, the caller said.

His Heeb St home was placed on the market, with their family phone number disconnected by Telecom.

Police confirmed later that month Gillespie was still alive and in 1986 he pleaded guilty to having conspired with Hayden Haitana and Robert North to affect by deceit the result of a horse race conducted by the Queensland Turf Club on August 18, 1984.

They painted a horse to look like another. He was jailed for four years with hard labour and released in 1990.

By 2008, he was found living in Murwillumbah.

In recent years he was named in the infamous Panama Papers with links to offshore banking as a client of Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca.