COLD-BLOODED KILLER A 43-year-old
cold case exposes a murderer
The name Vincent O’Dempsey rings loud and clear in the minds of Queensland’s underworld criminals, police and the family and friends of Barbara McCulkin, 34, and her two daughters, Vicki, 13, and Leanne, 11. O’Dempsey, with the help of Garry “Shorty” Dubois, brutally murdered the McCulkins in 1974. It took 43 years for their family to find justice for the three, who were driven into bushland in Warwick, Queensland, where O’Dempsey strangled Barbara to death before he and Dubois opportunistically raped and killed her daughters.
Author and journalist Matthew Condon has spent years searching for answers to uncover the truth about what really happened. “I knew of the case working in newspapers in the ’80s and I just couldn’t understand how a terrible triple murder had never been solved.”
In 1980, a coronial inquest recommended that O’Dempsey and Dubois be charged over the murders, however, Condon says “the Crown Law office made a decision that there was not enough evidence to pursue it, so those charges were dropped”.
Just 10 months before the McCulkin murders, 15 innocent people were killed when Brisbane’s Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub was firebombed. James Finch and John Stewart were convicted, but “there was always rumours that other people were involved”.
The link between the fire and the McCulkin murders? “The understanding is [Barbara] in fact knew a lot about the other people behind the Whiskey Au Go Go,” Condon says. “She was married to a gangster Billy McCulkin, who did jobs with Vincent O’Dempsey.”
On the 40th anniversary of the McCulkin deaths, police appealed to the public for new information. “They brought many, many people in to be interviewed in the Star Chamber where, if you are found to have lied, you can go to jail for perjury. This produced
an enormous amount of fresh information.”
Evidence given by O’Dempsey’s former lover Kerri-Anne Scully and former Clockwork Orange Gang member Peter Hall was paramount in helping to convict the men. “Peter Hall named the entire group in the story of the McCulkins and how they were murdered,” Condon says. “Garry Dubois told him the day after the murders.”
In addition, Condon reveals “there was ample evidence that over the years [O’Dempsey] bragged about the killings”.
After a four-week trial at the Brisbane Supreme Court in 2017, O’Dempsey was found guilty of the three murders and sentenced to three life terms in jail, while in a separate trial, Dubois was found guilty of the manslaughter of Barbara and the rape and murder of Vicki and Leanne.
Condon recalls: “O’Dempsey was diagnosed as a psychopath when he was a teenager. When he spoke about the McCulkins in court, there was a sort of weird self-satisfied half grin on his face.”
Sadly, the McCulkin case may only scratch the surface of a lifetime of crimes allegedly committed by O’Dempsey, who, Condon says, “was considered the most feared man in the Australian underworld of the ’60s and ’70s”.
“He was described by Justice Peter Applegarth in his sentencing as an absolute, chillingly cold and brutal killer.”
Legend has it that O’Dempsey has his own “private graveyard” with so many bodies, they had to be buried upright, Condon reveals. “According to men that knew O’Dempsey, there’s no question that there is a piece of land out there where there are bodies resting.”
There are also other murders that O’Dempsey has been linked to. “There is no question that police are looking at this string of cold cases and they’ve got their eye on Vincent O’Dempsey,” Condon adds.
And while his conviction in 2017 provided some closure for the McCulkins’ family, their bodies have still not been located. “The only people who would know where the bodies are, are Vincent and his co-accused,” Condon says. “O’Dempsey has forever said that ‘they will never, ever, find the bodies.’”
However, the solving of one of Queensland’s oldest cold cases brings fresh hope for other families. “The conviction of O’Dempsey and Dubois from an Australia-wide point of view is a game changer,” Condon says. “You’ve got a crime that occurred 43 years earlier, you’ve got no bodies, potential witnesses that have passed away, yet with very powerful circumstantial evidence you’ve [eventually] got two men convicted of those murders.”
He adds: “Finally there’s been some justice for Barbara, the girls and her family.”