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The Luna Park Tragedy Pt3 · DEADBUG SAYS

• 0:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: You were about to partake in a dead-bop podcast, and as always this podcast, well, it might not be that everyone's taste, especially children's.
• 0:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: So if you're ready to proceed, I'd ask if you want thing.
• 0:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's you, shut that pleasure given most of yours.
• 0:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: Smoking with regardum, shut the fuck up.
• 0:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: And enjoy.
• 0:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: Sydney, Australia, and the late 1970s was a city with its sleeves rolled up, and its eyes have shut.
• 0:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: Malcolm Fraser was Prime Minister, the tall liberal who taken power after the Whittland dismissal, and was trying to steady the country through inflation, unemployment, and the long hangover of the early 1970s boom.
• 1:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: In New South Wales, Navarrans Labour government was reshaping the city.
• 1:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: The Sydney Opera House was fully alive.
• 1:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: In the eastern suburbs
• 1:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: Art's funding was flowing, and Sydney was stunned to feel like it might actually be more than a big country town with a harbour.
• 1:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: Music was loud and local.
• 1:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: ACTC was still the wild boys from the suburbs.
• 1:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: Called Chisel were grinding out pub rock anthems.
• 1:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: Had midnight oil with that bald-headed singer?
• 1:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: Was still a couple of years from being a worldwide success and was still
• 1:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: This go, and the BGs, still ruled the airways, and you couldn't escape the sound Abba, and it seemed that every Australian man had a Ziggy Stardust haircut, and will wear in Daisy Duke cut-off shorts.
• 2:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: Multiculturalism was also taken hold.
• 2:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: Oxford Street was beginning to claim itself, but the mob in the old Sydney underworld was very much still in business.
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: Under the harbor bridge, Luna Park still greened its neon face every night, just for fun.
• 2:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: Families, teenagers, holiday makers came from around the country to enjoy the rides.
• 2:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: The ghost train had been runnin' since 1935, with its dark tunnels, fake monsters, and imitation fireplace with streamers blown by a fan.
• 2:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: I torn a half minute ride that had never killed anyone until the night of June 9, 1979.
• 2:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: Seven people never came out, a father and his two sons, four school boys on the first unsupervised night out, with one boy pulled out last minute, a reprieve from the Reaper, as a mother, stood
• 3:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: The official story ended, September 1979, but that was just a start at the mystery.
• 3:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: The $1 million award has been announced for information that the fatal fire at Sydney's Lunar Park almost five decades ago.
• 3:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: The blaze around the binocular ghost train ride in about 10-15pm.
• 3:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Back on Saturday, June 9, 1979, six boys and a man were killed.
• 3:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Police blamed it on an electrical fault at times.
• 3:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your claims are that fire was deliberately lit.
• 3:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was linked to Sydney's underworld.
• 3:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: You South Wales police minister has asked
• 3:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: A 1979's coroner's inquest gave a detailed overview of the key facts.
• 3:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: The coroner was Kevin Sidney Anderson.
• 3:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: His formal findings on the death of John Robert Godson, Damian Paul Godson, Craig Godson, Jonathan Sean Billings, Richard Charles Carroll.
• 4:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: Michael David Johnson and Seamus Patrick Rahely, cause of death, carbon monoxide poisoning and burns, or in one case burns only, as a result of the ghost train building catch and fire.
• 4:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: Findings on the fire itself and, as instead it clearly, the cause of the fire cannot conclusively be stated.
• 4:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: Keep points from his reasoning.
• 4:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: The fire originated in or in the vicinity of the imitation fireplace.
• 4:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: The display used a fan and colored streamers to simulate flames.
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: Expert evidence showed it was most unlikely the ignition came from the electrical fault in the permanent wiring or attractions, however, that possibility could not completely be excluded.
• 4:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: Several calls and reports after the incident claiming that the fire had been an act of awesome, well-aided discounted.
• 5:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: It had been investigated by police and found that the be untrue and mischievous.
• 5:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: Patrons frequently ignored most smoking signs and had a habit of discarding food wrappers and other litter inside the ride.
• 5:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: The most probable cause in the coroner's view was the ignition of flammable litter by cigarette homage, carelessly or recklessly discarded by a person riding on the train.
• 5:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: Despite that assessment, Anderson repeated that the evidence did not allow him to say how the fire was actually ignited.
• 5:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: His form of finding on the fire was, on the 9th of January 1979, the property known as the ghost train, Aluna Park, Milton's point was destroyed by fire, which originated in the vicinity of an imitation fireplace.
• 5:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: But how the fire was ignited?
• 5:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: The evidence provided does not enable me to say.
• 6:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: Findings on Aluna Park Management and Staff,
• 6:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: In 1977, approximately 18 months before the fire, North Sydney Council, and the fire brigade had inspected the ghost train and identified it as a fire risk.
• 6:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: They recommended a series of safety measures, including sprinkler system emergency lighting and mocked exits to be added to the ride.
• 6:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: The management had shown a marked reluctance to spend money on these upgrades.
• 6:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: A design consultant had specifically advised installing sprinklers in December of 1977.
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: This was ignored.
• 6:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: An extension of the time that had been granted for some of the work including emergency lighting had been extended several times and yet it was still ignored.
• 6:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: The ride had been inspected three times in the six months before the fire.
• 6:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: The structural, mechanical, and electrical issues and was found satisfactory each time.
• 6:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: No obvious wiring defects were recorded.
• 7:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: And the last point in the overview that stands out the most is that there was no attendant inside the ride that night.
• 7:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: The usual internal patrol person had left early and had not been replaced.
• 7:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: Anderson found the Lunaparks owners and management failed
• 7:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: He ruled that this failure did not reach that high of a degree of negligence, necessary to support the charge of criminal negligence.
• 7:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: No criminal charges were recommended against any individual or the company.
• 7:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: The inquest also interviewed a large number of witnesses that included staff, writers, and experts, and the firefighters.
• 7:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: Some statements included referring to groups of use and possible smells of accelerants.
• 7:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: Stamies have been taken, but none of the witnesses were ever called to give evidence.
• 8:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's interesting to note that later reviews, notably the National Crime Authority in the late 1980s, describe the original police investigation and the coroner's inquest as substantially flawed and ineffective.
• 8:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: This was the official end of the formal enquiry in 1979.
• 8:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: The findings have remained the legal baseline ever since, even as later investigations witness statements and public pressure have repeatedly questioned whether the inquest fully tested all available evidence.
• 8:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: By firefighters, police, witnesses, and coroner Kevin Anderson's own reports, the bodies just didn't burn.
• 8:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: and they were found in positions that still haunted the people who saw them.
• 8:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: John Godson's arms stretched out over his two little boys, protecting him, where he literally melted on him.
• 8:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: The bodies were fused, Damian Six, and Craig IV could only be recognized by dental records.
• 9:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: He'd been trying to shield his children from the flames, and the carbon monoxide that filled the black timber tunnels.
• 9:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: For 13-year-old friends, from waverly college, Jonathan Billings, Richard Carroll, Michael Johnson, and Seamus Rehealy, scattered in another section, so badly burned that the searches at first couldn't tell if they were mannequins from the ride.
• 9:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: Jason Holman, the fifth boy, would yank though of his carriage the last second than this life was saved.
• 9:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: left standing below holding a novel deep black back scratcher, looking up watching his friends perish in the inferno inside the tunnel.
• 9:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: Jenny gods and ice cream still in a hands told the firefighter my husband and children in there.
• 9:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: That sentence haunted the firefighter and lived inside of the
• 10:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: But firefighters looked at the switchboard that was largely intact.
• 10:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now, will you'd expect from an electrical fault that supposedly started near the roof and tore through the whole structure in minutes?
• 10:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: Some riders had smelled something sharp, like caracine, around where the imitation fireplace was.
• 10:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: Others saw groups of young men, some described as bikers, wearing leather jackets and knee high boots, with sounds a bit foggy to me, but that's beside the point hanging around the ride and coming out of it shortly before the smoke appeared.
• 10:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: One witness later said that he heard talk of teens talking about pouring carousine and then spreading it and even saw them with matches, even though this was later discounted.
• 10:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: Many believe the reason these witnesses had been discounted or shut down so quickly, was because of detective inspect the Doug Knight, the man running the show for North Sydney Police.
• 11:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: Within hours he was telling reporters there was no doubt in his mind it was an electrical fault.
• 11:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: No suspicious circumstances.
• 11:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: The search for those young men was called off.
• 11:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: Witnesses who stuck to their original statements later said they felt leaned on, hounded, some put it, to soften or change what they'd seen and heard.
• 11:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: Several key accounts never made it into the inquest in any meaningful way.
• 11:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: They were filed under, takes the inquiry no further.
• 11:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: Night had a reputation.
• 11:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: Later investigations and offices who'd worked for him, called him a fixer.
• 11:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: Someone who could make problems go away.
• 12:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: Someone with known connections, the figures in the Sydney underworld, including Jack Rooklin, a book a machine man, an associate of Abe Saffron.
• 12:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: Saffron was known as Mr.
• 12:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: Sin.
• 12:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: Gambling, prostitution, illegal liquor, protection rack, it's property.
• 12:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: He had wanted a piece of loona park for years.
• 12:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: The hobba park land under the bridge was gold.
• 12:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: The park's lease was shaky.
• 12:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: Often it was uncertain whether the park would renew it or not.
• 12:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: After the fire, the site was put out the tender.
• 12:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: Companies connected to Saffron's family and associates ended up in the mix.
• 12:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: The National Crime Authority in the 1980s looked at it and noted the while they couldn't prove Saffron became a beneficial owner.
• 12:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: The original police work and the first inquest had been substantially ineffective.
• 13:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: Public confidence took ahead.
• 13:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: They also recorded the allegation that the fire had been lit as a trigger to clear out the existing tenants so someone else could take control.
• 13:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: Monshop, the artist who had helped redecorate the park in the 70s, the man who painted the famous clown face at the gate, refused to let it go.
• 13:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: For more than 30 years he collected every document, every tape, every scrap of evidence he could find, and in a few people, he built an archive.
• 13:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: He became convinced that the fire had been deliberate.
• 13:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: He called the way it started, in the fake fireplace, as total deviousness designed to fool the writers for no one raised an alarm until it was too late.
• 13:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: He pushed, and pushed, and kept pushing long after most people had moved on.
• 14:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: Some of his theories went into strange territory, but the core of what he uncovered, the ignored leads, the rushed official story, the land pressure kept finding the ways.
• 14:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: Then, in 2021, Australia's ABC Network did an exposed series and dragged the whole thing back into the light.
• 14:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: New witnesses came forward publicly, multiple overlapping accounts of the suspicious groups, the accelerant smell, behaviours of those around the park that didn't fit an accident.
• 14:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: Several former police officers appeared on camera, and they said that they believed that Abe Safran had ordered the fire.
• 14:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: Safran, known as Mr.
• 14:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: Sin, was one of the most powerful and notorious organized crime figures in Sydney, joined the 1940s up to the late 80s, known to run every brothel of massage tolerant town, illegal gambling, pornography, liquor operations, extensive property holdings,
• 15:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: There wasn't a secret that Apes out from one of the property where Luna parks stood, and he tried to get it more than once, using unscrupulous means, including when he'd been refused trying to get his cousins and his nephews involved in the tender process of the park.
• 15:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: Saffron himself also had game machines installed that later.
• 15:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: He'd always denied any involvement in the fire, but then of course you'd expect him to say that.
• 15:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: But most of the police force, the retired ones anyways who weren't on the take, pointed the finger his way.
• 15:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: Many found it suspicious that the investigation had immediately stayed away from Austin, and that night, and others protected the powerful.
• 15:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: The series made a hard case that the fire was no accident.
• 15:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: and that the cover-up ran deep.
• 15:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: An independent review later agreed the program was strong on us and our police failure and corruption.
• 16:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: But well, wrong was basing its theories on politically led, motivations, particularly when trying to link New South Wales' premiere never ran.
• 16:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: But the core findings about the investigations in how the quizzes stood.
• 16:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: Despite the criticisms of the investigative series, the reaction to it was immediate.
• 16:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well this afternoon I'm joined by Commissioner Fuller and Senior Members of Detectives of New South Wales Police Force to announce that the New South Wales Government will be offering a $1 million reward to any significant information that the public may be able to come forward with relating to the tragic fire at Luna Park.
• 16:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: On the evening of the 9th of June, 1979, Sydney changed forever with the loss of those seven lives at the Lunar Park Fire.
• 16:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: It has been an ongoing concern to the New South Wales Police so far as the investigation and they have never given up and making sure that the victims of this tragedy have the families of the victims of this tragedy have closure.
• 17:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm delighted that the government has seen fit to offer a $1 million reward it is appropriate given the public interest in this investigation.
• 17:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, the passage of time has made it just that little bit more difficult for us to get evidence.
• 17:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's why I'm appealing to members of the public if they know anything, even if they think that they've passed it on, please come back to the New South Wales Police
• 17:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: We wait of course for the ABC to provide us with the information that they gathered in their investigation and obviously disappointed that it's taken this long, but I'm certain that whatever is presented will be of use to the New South Mars.
• 17:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: Strike 4 assessment was set up by the unsolved homicide team to review everything.
• 18:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: family's pushed for a fresh, coronial in-quest.
• 18:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: In September 2024, the Strike Force finished its work, a redacted report went to the families and the council.
• 18:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: State Corner Theresa O. Sullivan took it under consideration.
• 18:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: The matter was back in the court on October 2024.
• 18:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: As of 2020, the public still doesn't have the full report.
• 18:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: Some families who read the redacted version felt it was thorough, and that further investigation or more reports wouldn't change anything.
• 18:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: Others, wow.
• 18:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: But they once so convinced.
• 18:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: Helen Pitts, 2026 book on Luna Park, quoted anonymous police sources, saying it was unlikely there was enough new evidence to reopen the coronial report.
• 18:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's interesting to note that several key witnesses featured in ABC's Investigative Series were not interviewed by the new inquiry board, including the first firefighter on the scene, Peter Little.
• 19:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: And Jenny Gardson, the woman who'd lost her husband and two young children, they'd never spoken to the new strike force.
• 19:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: So here we are nearly 50 years on.
• 19:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: The official finding from 1979 still stands on paper.
• 19:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: The bodies must still in the ground.
• 19:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: Jason Holman still carries the weight of being one of the ones who guard out.
• 19:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: Jenny Gardson, still wants to know how her husband and son's died.
• 19:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: The parents of those four school boys still live with the knowledge that their kids first unsupervised night out, ended in the dark, burning mace.
• 19:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: A memorial plaque sits on the site.
• 19:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: are create open to 1982 under new management.
• 20:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: The ghost train itself is gone, never to reopen or reappear.
• 20:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: And who would be so stupid to do so?
• 20:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: People still laugh and scream on the rides under the bridge.
• 20:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: The neon face, it's still grins.
• 20:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: But the questions refused to die.
• 20:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: Was it a discarded cigarette in a place full of litter and dry timber with no sprinklers and no a tendon inside?
• 20:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: How was it deliberate?
• 20:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: An accelerant.
• 20:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: A group that rode the train and left a fire lit before they walked away.
• 20:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: A fire near the fake flames to fool everyone.
• 20:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: that are corrupt detective shut down the leads, because he knew that it would point the worst people that had power and connections.
• 20:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: Did someone want the land badly enough to risk lives, and eventually take seven?
• 21:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: The evidence is messy.
• 21:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: Memories are now 47 years old.
• 21:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: The key play is now dead.
• 21:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: The police report from 2024 is still locked away from most eyes.
• 21:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: No one has been charged with arson, and there has been no second inquest as of the posting of this podcast.
• 21:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: What's fucked up is the seven people died in a place built for fun.
• 21:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: A father tried to protect his two young boys.
• 21:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: Four friends who had finally trusted the go-out on their own, lost their lives.
• 21:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: A system that ignored repeated safety warnings, an investigation that moved too fast, and left too many witnesses unheard.
• 21:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now those witnesses are unavailable, or the dead.
• 22:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: and a group of families who have never stopped asking the full truth are what happened that night in Lunapark.
• 22:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: Lunapark slogan was just for fun.
• 22:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: On the night of June 9th, 1979, that slogan died with them.
• 22:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: The rest of us as they're living with what came after, the official story, the unofficial story, the gaps between them, and the stubborn demand that someone somewhere, finally fill those gaps with something more solid than cannot conclusively be stated.
• 22:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: The embers to that fire was long gone out.
• 22:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: The bodies, a meal to the maggots.
• 22:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: But questions, well, they're still there.
• 22:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: And until their hands are properly with evidence that can stand up, with witnesses who, when they've probably heard, with an open process instead of another closed report, the ghost train is still running in the dark, running in the minds of the family
• 23:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: and the end of the line for this series.
• 23:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: The seven names again, so no one forgets.
• 23:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: John Robert Gardson, Damian Paul Gardson, Craig Gardson, Jonathan Billings, Richard Carroll, Michael Gardson, The Seamless Rihely,
• 23:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: And the two who walked away, Jenny gotts, and Jason Holman, remember them, and keep asking, because the dead deserve better than unfinished business.
• 24:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: On until next time, this is that book, saying, how to use.
• 24:12
  [UNKNOWN]: You
• 25:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Again, measuring the space between us Realizing there's nothing between us If our past selves could have seen us
• 25:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hello, heartbreak, hello pain No one I'll never see you again Hello emptiness, hello regret What we had, I'll never forget Here we are again
• 26:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: The misery that distanced between us Remember it is nothing between us If our past selves could have only seen us Who the games?
• 26:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: No, I'll never see you again Hello, emptiness, hello, regret What we had, I'll never forget
• 27:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Here we are again And you're in the space between us Realizing there's nothing between us
• 28:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: For past sales could have seen us Who the shame?
• 28:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Who the shame?
• 28:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: Hell on break, hell on pain And knowing I'll never see you again Hell on emptiness, hell on regret What we had, how long
• 29:11
  [UNKNOWN]: You