A Fascinating Investigation

By Greg Cary

A Fascinating Investigation into the murder of Shock Jock 'Big Ed' Bradley.

Talkback host Edward 'Big Ed' Bradley thought he could say what he wanted, but being outspoken can also get you killed.

From the Gold Coast to Brisbane, Sydney and the beautiful seaside town of Lennox Head, the story unfolds from the p

• Language: English
• Publisher: Echo Books
• Release date: Jun 6, 2024
• ISBN: 9781922603630

Book preview

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A FASCINATING INVESTIGATION

into the murder of

Shock Jock ‘Big Ed’ Bradley

Greg Cary

First Published in 2024 by Echo Books

Echo Books is an imprint of Superscript Publishing Pty Ltd,

ABN 76 644 812 395

PO Box 669, Woodend, Vic, 3442

www.echobooks.com.au

Copyright © 2024 Greg Cary

Cover photo: Mark Taylor

Book design: Andrew Davies

ISBN: 978-1-922603-63-0 (ebook)

ISBN: 978-1-922603-31-9 (paperback)

The author worked in talk radio for many years and in that time met several generations of Talk hosts. Most were hard working professionals seeking to inform and entertain their listeners, but there were a few with different agendas. Ed Bradley is not modelled on anyone in particular but, rather, typifies a style of media performer now too often on display around the world. Any likeness to anyone living or dead is unintended (except where they think they might deserve the comparison).

Along the way you will meet many people, but the major characters (in no particular order) include:

Edward ‘Big Ed’ Bradley – talk show host (and victim)

Detective Jim Nicholas

Detective Cassandra Miller

Dan Shaw – owner/operator of The Lennox Chronicle

Shannon Leary – friend and colleague of Dan Shaw

Peter Grace – defamation lawyer

Steve Anderson – crime writer for The Telegraph

Alexandra Burns – Program Director of TRN

Chapter 1

ROYAL PINES GOLF COURSE – GOLD COAST

A murder in the trees

It’s a mistake to think that silencers render guns totally quiet.

They actually suppress the sound into something like ‘phht’ or, if you play golf, the delightful ‘thud’ of a well played sand-wedge out of a bunker. The latter analogy is probably more appropriate because that’s where I decided to kill him on this lovely April morning. April 4th, actually; her birthday.

She would have been 28.

He spent weekends at his house on the Gold Coast and, as he regularly told his listeners, played golf every Saturday morning at Royal Pines Resort. On this, at least, he told the truth.

It was for many years the venue for the Men’s and Women’s Australian PGA and had hosted some of the best players of the last 20 years, including Karrie Webb, Lydia Ko, Adam Scott and Cameron Smith.

Today it would host a murder.

The act itself would not be difficult. The fairways are lined with trees and my target spent a disproportionate amount of every round amongst them looking for his ball. As with his political and social views his tendency was to veer right and that’s where I would meet him (or, more importantly, he would meet me) during what would be the last round he ever played. He might have enjoyed it more had he been aware of that at the outset but, then again, maybe not. Death is best greeted by surprise: unplanned, unexpected and unfeared.

The final hole is a long par 4 with a raised green surrounded by deep bunkers but, as much as I enjoyed the game, none of that was of much interest to me today.

Instead, I focussed on the dense trees that separated the first and eighteenth holes, which ran parallel to each other. Finding a good spot didn’t take long.

I carried one club, which wasn’t really a club at all. My friend Harold, a former army man and expert gunsmith, had excelled. He’d once read Frederick Forsyth’s The Day Of The Jackal – about an attempted assassination of French President Charles De Gaulle – and adapted the camouflage of the weapon for purpose.

Harold didn’t know exactly what his creation would be used for, and didn’t ask, but the papers would tell him soon enough. It would evoke a certain pride in being able to help the man who had been there for him at various times in his own post-Vietnam life.

If, miraculously, the golfer managed to hit it straight on this day then it would wait until next week, or the one after … or the one after that. But the smart money was on him hitting his usual left to right slice and, happily (although not so much for him), that’s exactly what happened.

The target was about 188 cm in height and close to 100 kilos which meant that, even though misdirected, the ball travelled quite a distance before coming to rest about 20 metres from where I waited. On golf courses nobody pays much attention to people wandering around in the trees dressed in golf garb and carrying a club. Nor did the man headed this way now.

Have you lost your fucking ball, too? the golfer asked, more with a hint of shared experience than any sense of friendliness. Perhaps he was a little worried I was going to steal it. The only concern in his voice was determining how he would hit his next shot.

Not really, came my reply with an easy smile. I was just waiting.

You pick strange fucking places to wait then. What the fuck are you waiting for – a tree lopper? A bus? Greg Norman? Fuck me.

At that I chuckled, as if playing along with him, before reaching for my new wedge, which wasn’t really a wedge at all.

The tall, burly man with the bad mouth looked at my club of choice and laughed the same laugh I’d heard many times on the radio. Cynical, mocking, mean.

You can’t hit a fucking wedge out of the fucking trees, you fuckwit. At that he laughed again, enjoying his somewhat restricted mastery of the language from which he made his living. You’ll be here all fucking day.

Well, one of us would.

At that, I took off my hat and sunglasses and removed the wig and false beard that might have been over the top but added to the required deception nonetheless. CCTV, after all, was everywhere these days. Strange how change happens isn’t it. Not long ago there were heated debates about something as simple as a universal Australia Card as identification. They’ll steal our privacy! was the common objection. How innocent we were. Now ‘they’ could trace our every step, journey and transaction, yet nobody seemed to care or even remember the arguments of other not too distant times.

The golfer found his ball (not that he would need it again) and glanced at this bizarre image waiting in the woods. There was a glimpse of recognition as his synapses worked overtime making the connective link and that pleased me. I wanted him to recognise the last person he would ever see and to know why he was about to die. The thoughts, the names, the events were coming to him now.

I know you, don’t I? That case. The girl who …

Yes. She was … I said in a quiet tone, respectful of the two words that followed, … my daughter.

What the fuck? That was 10 years ago. I’m sorry about what happened.

That prompted a sad smile as I gripped the wedge that really wasn’t a wedge at all and looked at the golfer straight in the eye. "It was nine years ago, I said, and I doubt that you’ve ever been sorry for anything or anyone except yourself in your entire miserable life."

I said it in a non-threatening way as if sharing a weather forecast: Fine and mild … with the chance of bullets.

You’re probably right, he replied. And then, as if contemplating his retort and taking some pleasure from it, he doubled down. Yes, you are right. I’m not really sorry at all. That was just me doing my job. What she chose to do was her business.

Except she was none of what you said she was and hadn’t done any of what you said she had, I calmly corrected him. And you knew that. But chose to destroy her anyway. And you did.

Well, what the fuck. It is what it is.

I appraised that thought as an artist would when, with head tilted slightly to one side, they examined the day’s work. Yes, it is what it is, I agreed. But, unsaid, it only was what it ended up being because of this man who now stood somewhat puzzled by a conveniently hidden memory emerging before him. He’d long ago thought everyone had moved on which, of course, was exactly what I’d wanted. It never occurred to him that there are some things from which you never move on and for which there will always be a day of reckoning. This was that day.

From the other side of the fairway, a voice asked their playing partner if he needed help finding his ball. No, I’ve got it. See you up at the green.

Which wasn’t going to happen.

O.K. You saw me. You told me. Now fuck off. This approach worked so often for him that he seemed genuinely stunned when I remained unfazed and looked at him as you might a strange exhibit caged in the museum. How had it evolved and to what end? And then I smiled again.

I knew the day she died that I would kill him. I’m not a violent man and my friends would think me incapable of this but, in an odd way, I didn’t see it as a violent act. Just something that had to be done and I promised would be done. Of course, she was no longer alive when I made the promise, but that only added to the certainty with which it was made.

I will never forget the expression on the face of the man standing just a metre or two away at this moment and would recall it many times in the years ahead. Not out of regret or conscience but as you store and recall all manner of unique sights and experiences.

There was momentary surprise which turned to bemusement and then panic as the golfer saw me invert the club, unscrew the handle and aim at his chest.

In the unlikely event of Edward ‘Big Ed’ Bradley ever having reflective moments, he might (as we all do at some point) have contemplated his final seconds on this brief journey, but it’s doubtful that he could have imagined anything quite as surreal as this. So weird, in fact, that I half-smiled and Bradley seemed to think I was kidding. That a cosmic joke over which he had no control was unfolding in a most peculiar and disturbing way.

But then I thought of her again – and the commitment made – as I looked at him with a measure of determination and peace that made what happened next the inevitability I decided it would be years before. I was no longer smiling and he noticed the change.

His partners yelled for him to get a move on but he was too focused on what was being aimed at him to either move or speak. Is this really happening? he might’ve been wondering. Yes, yes it is, would’ve been the reply if he’d been able to find the words. But, for the first time in his life, there were no words. Another irony: had there been no words – those words – all that time ago then none of this would be playing out now.

That was when a bird sitting pensively on one of the branches high above would’ve heard the sweet sound of a perfectly hit sand wedge, that wasn’t really a sand wedge at all.

I then picked up the ball Bradley would never need, looked at it closely, took three others just like it from his golf bag, pocketed them and nonchalantly walked onto the adjoining fairway and back towards the clubhouse.

Chapter 2

ROYAL PINES RESORT

An investigation begins

This is how it unfolded at the scene in the hours and days that followed.

After yelling out to ask Bradley if he needed a hand, his two playing partners – Mike Patman and Peter Brewer – were now on the green waiting to putt, joking about what misadventure Ed was confronting in the trees. The golf had been both business and pleasure and the radio man’s performance pretty average. They were as yet unaware that it had just taken a dramatic turn for the worse. Five minutes later, caution dictated one of them go back to help. Serious accidents on golf courses are not unusual.

Brewer, a noted real estate guru in Queensland, drove the cart back down the fairway and upon arriving in the trees shouted to Patman up on the green to call 000. After giving the emergency operator their location he walked back to where Brewer had entered the woods. There he saw an unmoving Bradley lying on his back clutching his chest. Never a good sign with clients.

Brewer, usually calm, was clearly agitated believing Bradley had suffered a heart attack. That was understandable enough, given that small caliber bullets (all you need at close range) often leave little or no blood, besides which it was unthinkable at that point that it could be anything other than natural causes. He was carrying excess weight, worked in a high pressure environment and his personal life was rarely peaceful. Patman, a highly respected financial adviser, and Brewer had combined to secure Ed Bradley’s financial well being, but found his tumultuous personality somewhat trickier to navigate than the markets they long ago mastered.

The paramedics arrived in just under five minutes and found confusion typical of these kinds of scenes as a crowd gathered to see what the fuss was about. They took over the fruitless CPR that Brewer and Patman were attempting, trying for several minutes to revive Bradley before telling the golfers he would be playing no more golf this day. Or any other. He was ‘gone’. A statement that inspired the reasonable question: gone where? In this case that would’ve been debatable, with no obvious answer.

The paramedic working the defibrillator on Bradley saw a small wound when he lifted his black polo shirt, which he had worn under a grey jumper. He made no conclusions from it but contacted police headquarters. They called a Code 3, which meant ‘get there as fast as you can but there was no emergency’. The man was dead after all.

The nearest uniformed officers were about three minutes away attending a domestic incident at Emerald Lakes, a self-contained community of high rises, whose dark shadows created an atmosphere in which the sudden appearance of Batman and The Joker would have surprised no one.

Attending officers secured the scene as they awaited detectives travelling the 15 minutes from Surfers Paradise who then established an incident room in the breakfast annex next to the Pro Shop some 200 metres away.

There were now a dozen uniformed police on the scene and one of them, Billie May, remembered a case where they thought the victim had suffered a stroke only for the coroner to later find a bullet in the back of his head. Some stroke. It caused quite a stir at the time and she wasn’t about to repeat the mistake. When the paramedics arrived and examined Bradley’s body more closely they saw a trickle of blood on his chest. Some heart attack.

Blood, as it usually does, added a sense of urgency. The senior Detective, James Nicholas (he preferred Jim), instructed May to record every person at the scene and those who came and went over the next few hours.

Nicholas lived in Brisbane but was meeting with colleagues on the Gold Coast when the call came in. He instructed police to guard all entrances and exits and ordered the resort itself be temporarily closed to anyone wanting to enter or exit. That would make for some unhappy tourists but the small compensation would be the story they could tell for years to come.

No doubt many of the Japanese visitors to the resort would be attempting to photograph the scene. If the golf loving tourists liked anything more than golf, it was taking photos of themselves playing golf. Jim found their national love affair with cameras strange. He remembered being intrigued, when standing in front of the Mona Lisa at The Louvre in Paris years earlier, to see most people photographing the painting rather than actually looking at it.

Leaving aside the fact that perfectly fine postcards of the lady’s famous smile were available in the souvenir shop, it seemed that nothing existed for them without photographic evidence. But, in fairness, that isn’t a new phenomenon.

Mona Lisa wasn’t regarded as a masterpiece until the middle of the 20th Century after attaining international celebrity status when stolen from the Louvre by the Italian Peruggio in 1911. Before the theft it was just another highly regarded piece of art but, afterwards, tourists actually gathered to look at the blank space on the wall signalling her absence. Strange creatures human beings, as Andy Warhol proved in the early 1960s when his painting 32 Cans Of Soup fetched $16 million. Half a million per can!

Fast forward a couple of decades and the concept has evolved in odd ways. A prime minister, president, famous athlete or film star might walk by but, rather than observing them or even saying hello, the mobile phone would need to record the event as proof of what they saw. Like the tree falling silently in the forest, does an event actually happen if there is no photographic proof? But, when looking through a lens, did that mean you never really saw it at all?

And now a new generation, not content with photographing the thing they were looking at to prove its existence, found it necessary to include themselves in the photo, confirming not only the existence of the thing being observed, but of the observer as well. They were aptly named selfies. It was a little ironic (or perhaps not) that selfies ruled at a time when genuine self-worth was in decline.

***

Nicholas refocused and told a colleague to immediately start compiling lists of all guests along with everyone who had played golf in the last 48 hours. He also wanted to know where the CCTV footage covered and to get the tapes ASAP. He would need the registration of every car as well and the owners identified. No one was to leave the property until interviewed and their whereabouts for the last hour checked.

The pathologist confirmed the death murder a couple of hours later. It was indeed a small caliber bullet, but deceptively powerful over a short distance, which itself became the first clue: the victim saw no problem being at close quarters with his assailant. On golf courses, however, bumping into strangers was more the rule than the exception and getting shot by one of them was rarely a consideration.

Crime scene specialists were scouring the scene and taking casts as police and detectives searched for anything that might shed more light. Bullet casings, finger prints, blood or anything else that could provide DNA. Casts were taken of foot prints, photographers forensically recorded the scene and locals observed that not since Cam Smith prevailed in the PGA several years earlier had the 18th provided so much drama.

Outside the resort, police cruised the streets and started knocking on the doors of adjoining houses. The minutiae of murder: a life ends and the investigation begins unleashing ripples destined to land on unknown horizons with consequences both intended and unforeseen. This prospect always fascinated Detective Nicholas: where will this lead and how will my life be affected?

The question would carry even more significance when, a few months from now, he knew the answer.

***

The shooter, meantime, long ago walked slowly out the front entrance of the resort, turned left into busy Ross St and strolled anonymously for the 10 minutes it took him to get to Nerang–Broadbeach Rd, where he turned right and waited at the bus stop outside Metricon Stadium, the home of the Suns Aussie Rules team.

Sitting on the bench he smiled as he recalled Bradley asking him in the trees (was it really only a few minutes ago?) if he’d been waiting for a bus. Precisely four minutes later the number 740 arrived to take him into the centre of Surfers Paradise where, with hat and beard gone and T-shirt changed, he found the Subaru Forrester he’d borrowed from Harold early that morning parked in a station off Orchard Avenue.

He drove west through Nerang, on to Beaudesert and then southwest for 15 minutes, passing the Kooralbyn turnoff before turning left just before Rathdowney. That road took him over the mountains and the border before the beautiful drive on the Lions Rd down through the rainforest to Gradys Creek, 20 kilometres north of Kyogle. He drove across the rail lines onto Harold’s farm, left the key where agreed before heading towards home in his own car.

He stopped briefly 45 minutes later at a small bridge near Lismore in northern NSW at about the same time as the attending detectives were confirming that there had, in fact, been a murder. The sand wedge (that wasn’t really a sand wedge at all) now rested in three pieces at the bottom of the Richmond River, which he crossed blissfully unconcerned and uncaring about what was happening at Edward Bradley’s least favourite golf course.

Chapter 3

ROYAL PINES RESORT

Anyone seen a ball?

The initial chaos morphed into organised mayhem as police sealed the perimeters and the search continued. Jim’s partner, Detective Cassandra Miller, arrived a little earlier and he was bringing her up to date. Cassie was in her late 20s, twelve years younger than Nicholas, and relatively new to homicide.

She was smart, tallish and, with shoulder length blonde hair (which she sometimes wore in a ponytail), still looked fit enough to be the Olympic kayaker she nearly became six years earlier. Anxiety was an issue then and the idiots in the press coined phrases like ‘lay down Cassie’ when the adrenaline pumped and the fight or flight mechanism kicked in. They mocked her with the same tag they’d earlier ascribed (in their ignorance) to Sally Robbins, which in turn was a play on a hit song at the time by Eric Clapton. Did they ever wonder if their cleverness was causing others pain when they could least endure it?

Cassie subsequently learned what caused the anxiety attacks and how to overcome the paralysis they generated. There was not an ounce of fear or quit in her and nobody who knew her would mistake Cassie Miller for being weak. Strength came in many packages and this one was now creating some anxiety amongst those who, to their peril, too easily took her for granted.

Good to see you, Cassie. Thanks for getting here so fast.

What’ve we got?

A dead talkback announcer. Edward Bradley.

"Geez, my parents listened to him all the time. ‘Big Ed’. Dad loved him and mum couldn’t stand him. Said she preferred Mr Ed. Nicholas grinned at the reference to the famous talking horse. Looking down at the victim, she added, Seems she wasn’t the only one."

Jim smiled at the sardonic comment, which reminded him of something the wonderfully cynical New Yorker Lennie Briscoe might’ve said in Law and Order. Like Lennie, she was a good cop.

Exits are blocked, he told her, and we’re beginning interviews with a couple of hundred guests and everyone who’s played golf here in the past 48 hours.

Why so long?

Well, the murderer was waiting here for the victim. The question is: for how long? Could’ve been minutes, could’ve been hours.

But surely someone would’ve seen them in the trees?

Lots of golfers in the trees and if you’re passing by you only see them once. For the same reason we’re getting as much CCTV as they have. There’s some for the paths around the course and plenty in the resort itself. None in the trees.

Find anything at the scene?

Nothing yet, the Senior Detective said. It’s all twigs and branches so I doubt we’ll find much in the way of footprints and, given they’ve been professional enough to carry this out in such a bizarre way, my bet is we’ll find no fingerprints or casings either.

And they didn’t.

But why would the killer be waiting here in the trees?

Good question.

How would they have known he would be here?

Another good question Cassie. Maybe they knew he had to be somewhere and this wasn’t the first place they waited.

Wrong. It had been the only place.

Must’ve hit his ball to the right Jim and came looking for it. Found more than he bargained on.

"In golf you usually do. A frustrating game. Chasing perfection in the certain knowledge