The Death of Ducky O’Connor

Fifty years ago, in the early morning of 28 May 1967, Lennie McPherson was enjoying a drink in the Latin Quarter nightclub at 250 Pitt Street Sydney. The Quarter was a posh joint, and served beer on ice in champagne buckets. Lennie was there with colleagues “Rattie Jack” Clarke and Anthony Williams, and they were all the worse for wear. Ten metres away sat Detective Sergeants Maurice Wild and Brendan Whelan of the CIB.

At 3.20am, in came Ray “Ducky” O’Connor, a man with a grudge.

“How are you, cunt?” he said. These men were not just murderers, but foul-mouthed, sexist swearers.

“All right cunt, how are you,” McPherson replied.

O’Connor pulled out a pistol and said, “This is for you, cunt.”

Clarke bravely leapt to Lennie’s defence and in the ensuring fracas, O’Connor was shot in the head with his own gun. Fatally.

No one saw anything.

The subsequent effort by a  police artist to reconstruct what might have happened is shown in the attached picture, published here for the first time.

 

The Latin Quarter
The Latin Quarter