Disappearance
On 4 July 1975, Nielsen went to the Carousel Club in Kings Cross in order to discuss advertising for the club in Nielsen's newspaper, Now. She had been invited there by Edward Trigg, an employee of the club. The club was one of a number of bars and strip clubs owned by Abe Saffron, who was a major figure in Sydney organised crime, and it was managed by James Anderson, who, as a later investigation revealed, owed A$260,000 (about A$1.6 million in 2011 money) to Frank Theeman, and according to a 2008 book by Saffron's son Alan, Abe Saffron lent large sums of money to several prominent Sydney businessmen including Theeman.
Before June 1975 the Carousel had no connection with Nielsen or NOW, but that month Anderson initiated contact by sending Nielsen an invitation to attend a press night at the club on 13 June. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, she would not normally have been invited because NOW did not give free publicity to commercial ventures. In the event, Nielsen did not attend and both Trigg and the Carousel's receptionist Loretta Crawford have claimed that Anderson was "furious" about her non-appearance.
A few days later Trigg instructed the Carousel's PR man Lloyd Marshall to invite Nielsen to a meeting at the Camperdown Travelodge, supposedly to discuss advertising related to landscaping, but Nielsen's boyfriend later recounted that Nielsen became suspicious and refused to attend.
On 30 June, four days before the Carousel appointment, Trigg and another man, Carousel barman Shayne Martin-Simmonds, called at Nielsen's house on the pretext of inquiring about advertising the Carousel's businessmen's lunches in NOW. It was later claimed that Trigg and Martin-Simmonds intended to seize Nielsen when she opened the door, but their plan was foiled when her friend David Farrell answered the door instead. The two men played out their cover story, but Nielsen was listening in an adjoining room and after they left she complimented Farrell on his handling of the query, teasing him by saying she might send him out on the road to sell advertising in NOW.
When interviewed by police on 6 November 1977, Martin-Simmonds confirmed that the advertising story was a ruse and that their actual intention was to kidnap Nielsen if she was alone and take her to see "people who wanted to talk to her". He said that he and Trigg intended to:
"... Just grab her arms and stop her calling out, no real rough stuff, no gangster stuff. We thought that just two guys telling her to come would be enough to make her think if she didn't come she might get hurt ... we talked about when she came into the room, one of us would be standing there and the other one would come up behind her and just quietly grab her by the arms and maybe put a hand over her mouth or a pillowslip over the head."
According to her friend David Farrell, Nielsen was by then seriously concerned that her activism was putting her in danger. She mentioned her fears to Farrell about two weeks before her disappearance and she arranged to keep him regularly informed of her whereabouts.
Receptionist Loretta Crawford claims that Trigg instructed her to call Nielsen on the night of Thursday 3 July to set up a meeting at the club for the following morning. Crawford now claims that she knew that the advertising story was "bullshit", since the club did not advertise in "local rags", that she was doubtful that Nielsen would attend, and that she was surprised that Nielsen kept the appointment.
At 10:30am on Friday 4 July, Nielsen telephoned David Farrell to tell him that she was running late for the meeting. According to Crawford, when Nielsen arrived she proceeded to the landing on the first floor where Crawford's reception desk was located. Crawford offered her a seat and a cup of coffee, after Nielsen remarked that she had had a "hard night" (i.e. she was hung over), but that Nielsen didn't get to drink the coffee because Trigg arrived. Crawford said that she noted that he was on time, which she thought unusual since he was often late. He and Nielsen exchanged greetings on the landing and went upstairs to Trigg's office.
At this point in her account, given to the Sydney Morning Herald in 2001, Crawford made a new claim: that she then made a phone call to Jim Anderson at his home in Vaucluse, told him that Nielsen had arrived and that he was "quite pleased" by the news. Crawford was adamant that she was, in no doubt whatsoever, certain that Anderson was at his home in Vaucluse—not in Surfer's Paradise, as he has always claimed.
In statements given to police, Trigg and Crawford said that Nielsen had left the club alone, although in 1976 Crawford changed her story to say that Nielsen and Trigg left together. Nielsen was not seen again. Her handbag and other effects were discovered on 12 July, abandoned near a freeway in Sydney's western suburbs.
New Zealand born transvestite Monet King (who was then called Marilyn King), the former boyfriend of Trigg, told one journalist that Trigg had returned home on 4 July with blood on his clothes. A piece of paper in his pocket, which was later used by police as evidence before the coronial inquest, also had blood on it. This was supposedly a receipt signed by Nielsen for advertising money paid by Trigg. King said that Trigg threw out the shirt, and the portion of the paper with blood on it. King never gave testimony to the police or the coronial inquiry.
In late 1977, Trigg and two other employees at the Carousel Club were arrested and charged with conspiring to kidnap Nielsen. Trigg was imprisoned for three years, one other man was imprisoned for two years and the third was acquitted. However, it was still unclear what had actually happened to Nielsen. After the death of James Anderson in 2003, Crawford changed her story again. She claimed that she had seen Nielsen's body in the storeroom below the club, with Trigg and two other men standing over her. She saw that one of the men was holding a gun, and Nielsen's body had a small bullet wound.
Nielsen's body has never been found.
The obvious motive for Nielsen's presumed murder was her opposition to the Victoria Street development. However, there have also been claims that she was working on an exposé about vice, corruption and illegal gambling in the Cross. Her then boyfriend John Glebe gave evidence that Nielsen had told him about receiving telephone threats and he also testified that she carried cassette tapes in her handbag. According to Glebe, Nielsen had told him that the tapes could "blow the top off" an issue she was working on. An article in The Bulletin in 2005 ran claims by journalist Barry Ward that Nielsen had been given dossiers on "prominent Sydney identities" by private detective Allan Honeysett, and speculated that these documents would reputedly have exposed the principals involved in Sydney's illegal gaming industry.
Read more about this topic: Juanita Nielsen