Australia’s Gangster King of Sin: Abe Saffron

Abe Saffron rose from wartime wheeler-dealing to become the king of Sydney’s underworld, a man whose appetite for sex, money and scandal was unmatched by any other Aussie gangster in the swinging Sixties. Saffron paid everybody off, brought Sinatra to Sydney, and hosted Sinatra. He was, in the words of one reporter, “Mr Sin”.

But as Saffron’s empire of vice grew, so did the list of those desperate to bring him down — including his own henchmen. And as the Seventies dawned, Saffron would be embroiled in two fatal scandals that stained his reputation forever: one a tragic fairground fire, the other a kidnapping and murder that shocked the nation.

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