Falling for his charms

Falling for his charms

The ardent supporters of the controversial Dhammakaya abbot are hardly the first to follow a charismatic man.

SOCIAL & LIFESTYLE

Those ardent followers of the abbot of Wat Dhammakaya remind me of a story that occurred 30 years ago with an equally ardent group known as the Friends of Finch.

The saga is intriguing, dear reader, and one that requires no embellishment from me for a change. If anything I must tone it down to fit into this single page of Brunch.

It is a story that begins and ends with conflagrations, the first of a literal kind, the second, metaphorical.

It also embodies the great spirit of perseverance and faith we humans show in our quest for what we perceive to be right. The Friends of Finch were a group of followers who, like the human barricade of Dhammakaya supporters, saw injustice and pushed and pushed … until they got what they finally asked for. But let's start at the beginning.

This story happened in Brisbane, Australia, my place of birth and where I began my career as a journalist. On March 8, 1973, there was a terrible fire at an inner-city nightclub called Whiskey Au Go Go.

At the time, namely 2am, the club was full of guests listening to a band called Trinity. Somebody locked the doors, splashed the entranceway with two barrels of gasoline and set it alight. The ensuing blaze killed 15 people -- including two members of Trinity.

Brisbane is the capital of Queensland, and the Queensland police had a reputation for being a little shady. Back in the 1970s this was especially true with allegations of underworld dealings, stand over tactics and just about everything else you might find in modern-day Thailand with the exception of the 100 baht under the driver's licence trick.

The Whiskey Au Go Go fire was believed to have been the work of a protection racket that may have involved the cops. Such corruption would come to a head in the late 1980s with an official enquiry that led to the top Queensland cop losing his knighthood and being jailed along with the dismantlement of the police system. But that was still a long time away in 1973.

A week after the fire two men were arrested for arson and 15 counts of murder. One of them was a Brit by the name of James Finch.

Finch was not your average fine upstanding Brit; he was a thug, a petty criminal who had been jailed in Sydney in the 1960s then kicked out of the country. He had returned to Australia just 12 days prior to the fire bombing.

From the moment he was arrested he cried foul play. Appearing in court, he shouted that he'd been coerced into confessing and had been beaten up by the police.

The court case was held up for many reasons; once Finch bit off the tip of one of his pinkies to draw attention to the miscarriage of justice.

Considering the reputation of the Queensland cops, Finch's almost frantic claims of innocence, and some unreliable evidence, it was an uncomfortable day in October 1973 when the court found both men guilty. Finch was sent to jail for life, screaming his innocence as he was dragged away. All his appeals were turned down.

The conundrum with Finch was this; he was clearly a brute, but there was a feeling that justice had not been served. Even brutes don't deserve to spend their lives in jail for crimes they didn't commit -- not even British ones.

It was in the mid-1980s, when I was working for the Queensland state newspaper, that I was sent off to interview a woman called Cheryl Cole.

She was wheelchair-bound, suffering from muscular dystrophy, and she had fallen in love with James Finch. She had been writing to him daily for three years.

I read all his letters and indeed, he sounded like a man who was not just in love, but prepared to do anything to secure his freedom. He was humbled by her support and that of her friends.

In my interview with Cheryl, she seemed very devoted and well-intentioned. She knew Finch better than anybody else, she said, and it was clear he had been framed. He was sitting in jail for a crime he didn't commit.

She said Finch was now the "Birdman of Boggo Road", a gentle soul raising birds and reading the Bible every day. With Cheryl at the helm, and a broom sweeping through the Queensland police force, she and her friends set up Friends of Finch to get him released. Finch didn't just propose his innocence to her; he proposed marriage, and in 1986 that's exactly what they did, in a ceremony in Brisbane's Boggo Road Jail.

The groundswell of support was growing. By now there was an all-pervading feeling that there had been a miscarriage of justice. Friends of Finch campaigned tirelessly for his release.

Then, in February 1988, pressure mounted against the Queensland government as calls went out for a royal inquiry into the corrupt police force. The Whiskey Au Go Go case was used as an example of malfeasance.

And suddenly the news -- Finch was to be paroled, on the one condition he left the country and never came back.

(This prompted the British government at the time to express its displeasure. "We sent them all our convicts 250 years ago and now they're starting to send them back," one UK politician surmised.)

It was a thrilling bolt out of the blue. The press went crazy. Friends of Finch held a huge celebration. Finch was pictured giving a victory sign as he left the jail and headed straight for Brisbane airport. As for the wheelchair-bound Mrs Finch, she could hardly control her excitement. Finch told her to stay put; he'd make plans to get her over to England soon.

What a happy ending, and one that shows how one should never give up the fight over what you believe is right. A miscarriage of justice cannot quell the human spirit. The Friends of Finch had fought long and hard for his release.

In this way the Friends of Finch were just like the current-day followers of Phra Dhammajayo of Wat Dhammakaya. They, too, are battling a police force alleged to be corrupt, and they, too, are flying in the face of authorities who claim their beloved leader broke the law.

There is one other remarkable similarity.

It comes in the form of a post script to the Friends of Finch story.

In October 1988, eight months after Finch had left Brisbane Airport in a blaze of glory, one enterprising Brisbane reporter quietly hopped a plane to the UK.

That reporter sought out Finch and got an interview. In one of the best twists in modern criminal history in Queensland, Finch made a shocking revelation from the safety of his UK home.

"Actually, I really did do it."

Yes, he'd done it. He'd unscrewed the tops of those gasoline barrels, poured out the gasoline, lit the fire, burned the pub down and killed 15 people. He never came back for his wife, either, who would divorce him in 1991 and pass away not long after that.

I tried to contact the Friends of Finch after this dramatic revelation but they were too devastated to comment. Understandable to say the least.

The lessons learned by the Friends of Finch are many and varied. How well-intentioned they were, and how seemingly invincible they were to anybody who proffered an alternative opinion.

And finally how utterly foolish they were to have fallen for a charismatic con man. History just plods and plods along, doesn't it, repeating and repeating itself.

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