A former police officer who blew the whistle on disgraced ex-police commissioner Terence Lewis says he was an “evil man” and a “natural born liar”.
Lewis died on Friday aged 95.
In 1986, Lewis became the first serving Australian police commissioner to be knighted, but was jailed in 1991 for official corruption after being named in the Fitzgerald Inquiry.
He always maintained his innocence.
Nigel Powell — a former licensing branch police officer, who worked with corruption investigators on Lewis’s case — said Lewis “perverted the job”.
“[He was] an evil man, working with other evil men for their own greed and their own sense of power, and there’s no such word but un-assailability,” he said.
“I don’t use [evil] loosely. They were evil people who perverted not only the job they were supposed to do but [also] many other people who came under their power.”
Lewis was Queensland highest-ranked police officer in what reporter Chris Masters described as the “last era of absolutely entrenched corruption”.
Masters’s ABC Four Corners report, “Moonlight State”, on police corruption helped spark the Fitzgerald Inquiry.
Lewis was named by the Inquiry as a major player in police corruption, accused of pocketing more than $600,000 in bribes.
“In a way [Lewis] did the Australian public a favour, because the corruption was so visible and it was able to be exposed because it had this architecture,” Mr Masters said.
“[Corruption] had eaten into the policing systems across the nation, to a point where it was ridiculous that we should be spending a fortune on a police force that was actually working against the public and against the community.”
Masters said he looked back on that era “in distress”.
“I spoke to young police officers who didn’t want to be a crook but the only way that they’d be trusted, ironically, was to side with the bad guys, the guys that were taking a quid,” he said.
“Terry Lewis had a lot to do with that. I know he’s considered to be more of a passive figure in the Queensland rat pack, and there are plenty of people who think that the people around him were even more evil.
“But Lewis learned the tricks of the trade early in the piece, standing over prostitutes and getting money off them and that was a habit that he really couldn’t beat.”
Lewis was convicted of 15 counts of official corruption in 1991.
He was jailed for 14 years but paroled in 1998, less than halfway through his sentence.
Author and Journalist Matthew Condon — who spent almost three years interviewing Terry Lewis — said he left behind “two legacies”.
“He was a beloved father and grandfather and a human being,” Condon said.
“The second, more importantly and with more gravity, was that he was an intricate part of one of the darkest chapters of Queensland’s history.
“What is a shame is that he could not see fit to actually come clean, tell the truth and correct history.”
‘A born liar’
Lewis’s claim to innocence was just what Mr Powell expected.
“He was a born liar. He’s lied about so many other things, why would he change his spots? He would never be able to face what he’s done. He wouldn’t even consider it to be something he should think about,” he said.
In 1998, Lewis told the ABC he was “depressed” and “angry” about his conviction and hoped “in the long run, I will be vindicated”.
Masters said Lewis might have felt compelled to maintain his innocence.
“It’s very hard for people to admit that they are bad and, particularly often, to their own family, and they’ll spin a tale forever and ever that they’re a victim of a conspiracy and it was all nonsense,” he said.
“You don’t have to listen to that. Just look at the evidence. It was absolutely clear to the courts and to the Fitzgerald Inquiry investigators that he was in it up to his neck.”
Fitzgerald Inquiry and a fall from grace
Lewis had a rapid rise through the police ranks.
In 1976, he was an inspector at a small police station in Charleville, when he was appointed Deputy Police Commissioner by the Bjelke-Petersen government.
Just over a decade later, in 1987, he fell from grace — named at the Fitzgerald Inquiry as a major player in police corruption, accused of pocketing more than $600,000 in bribes.
The inquiry, headed by Tony Fitzgerald QC, ran for two years. It heard from 339 witnesses and ended in Lewis losing his superannuation, knighthood and his freedom.
Also convicted were senior police as well as Fortitude Valley kingpin Gerry Bellino, who was sentenced to seven years in prison for paying bribes.
‘Never gracious enough to tell the truth’
Condon said journalists and investigators had spent decades trying to “unpick” the true depth of police corruption.
“[Lewis] never had the graciousness to tell the truth and, essentially, to tell the truth and to take responsibility for his role in that extraordinary period,” he said.
“If he’d just come clean and laid the cards on the table, he would have done Queensland history a great service and it’s just a shame that didn’t happen.”