59 lines
2.9 KiB
Markdown
59 lines
2.9 KiB
Markdown
**Shirley Margaret Brifman** was a sex worker and brothel madam nased in
|
||
Brisbane, Queensland, [Australia](Australia "wikilink") who was known as
|
||
a whistleblower on [police corruption](Police_Corruption "wikilink").
|
||
She died at the age of 36 in suspicious circumstances, in what was ruled
|
||
a suicide, although some have suspected a
|
||
[conspiracy](Conspiracy_Theory "wikilink").
|
||
|
||
## Life
|
||
|
||
She was born in Atherton, Queensland, the daughter of Beatrice (née
|
||
Currey) and James Emerson. She began working as a barmaid after leaving
|
||
school, and in 1957, she married Szama "Sonny" Brifman, a
|
||
[Polish](Poland "wikilink")-born hotel owner; they would have four
|
||
children together. Her career in prostitution had begun by at least the
|
||
following year, when she was known to be working in a Brisbane brothel,
|
||
under the alias "Marge Chapple".
|
||
|
||
She moved to Sydney in 1963. She worked out of a hotel in the Kings
|
||
Cross (famous for [something
|
||
else](Kings_Cross_Green_Ban "wikilink")) red-light district until 1968,
|
||
when she began opening her own brothels. She ran establishments in Potts
|
||
Point and Elizabeth Bay, and claimed to be making up to $5,000 per
|
||
week. Brifman operated under police protection, but in 1971 she and her
|
||
husband were arrested and charged with prostitution offences.
|
||
|
||
She later appeared on *This Day Tonight*, a national television program,
|
||
to make allegations of police corruption, and over the following months
|
||
was interviewed by senior officers from both the New South Wales
|
||
Police and Queensland Police. She named over fifty police figures (from
|
||
both states) who had been involved in prostitution, but criminal charges
|
||
were brought against only one officer – detective senior sergeant Tony
|
||
Murphy was charged with perjury.
|
||
|
||
## Death
|
||
|
||
She died at a police safe house in Clayfield in March 1972, aged 36. Her
|
||
death came eighteen days before she was due to appear as chief witness
|
||
in the trial of Tony Murphy; the case against him subsequently
|
||
collapsed. The police gave her cause of death as "barbiturate
|
||
intoxication", and the State Coroner declined to investigate further, as
|
||
police advised there were "no suspicious circumstances". Her family
|
||
believed she had been murdered, and her husband ensured that her body
|
||
was buried rather than cremated in case an exhumation was required.
|
||
Allegations of murder were raised at the Fitzgerald Inquiry in the late
|
||
1980s, but no action was taken. However, Brifman's daughter Mary Anne
|
||
continued to lobby the Queensland government for a further
|
||
investigation, and in January 2017 the Attorney-General, Yvette D'Ath,
|
||
announced that the State Coroner would "make further inquiries" into her
|
||
death and "determine whether an inquest should be held".
|
||
|
||
## See Also
|
||
|
||
- [Shirley Finn](Shirley_Finn "wikilink")
|
||
- [Juanita Nielsen](Juanita_Nielsen "wikilink")
|
||
|
||
## References
|
||
|
||
[Wikipedia](Wikipedia "wikilink") -
|
||
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Brifman> |