Karl Bonnette says he has survived ”by not mixing with criminals”. The man described in the 1970s as the godfather of the Sydney underworld admits to dining with the likes of Abe Saffron and Lennie McPherson but stresses he had nothing to do socially with the criminal riff-raff and would not even go to pubs where crims drank. It was simply too dangerous, like advertising to the police what you were doing. And so, he said this week, “Here I am.”
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In Sydney he found work as a doorman in a Kings Cross strip club and quickly rose into management. “We got the nod [from police] to open another place in William Street [which I ran]. From then on I got to meet all the so-called colourful characters.”
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When Anderson died in 1985, McPherson became the best-known Sydney criminal but he never attained the same level of power as Anderson. Asked to describe the two men, Bonnette says, “Fred could pick up the phone and get anything done like that [clicks his fingers]. Lennie was a charismatic sort of guy … He was more hands-on.”
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