Murder At 428 Crown Street

Inside the 1945 gangland murder at 428 Crown Street, that stunned Surry Hills

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By Elliot Lindsay

On the 29th of January 1945, the Red Army was advancing into Germany from the East, Americans were advancing into the Rhineland from the west and Australian soldiers were in a fierce offensive against Imperial Japan in New Guinea. 

Meanwhile, back in Surry Hills in the early hours a shabby terrace at 428 Crown Street, Surry Hills, became the stage for one of the most dramatic underworld killings of wartime Sydney. 

The house - wedged between Foveaux Street and the bustle of Crown Street, just up from the old Frog Hollow - was already notorious. Inside its dim, liquor-soaked rooms, black-market grog flowed freely, American servicemen slipped in and out without leaving their names, and the fractured domestic life of a gangster was grinding toward its violent end.

Donald Day was known throughout Sydney’s underworld as “Donald the Duck,” a former jockey turned brothel boss, liquor racketeer and king-hit artist. He was no stranger to violence. But even for Surry Hills, a neighbourhood used to standover men, sly-grog traders and razor-wielding enforcers, his death was shocking in its suddenness and brutality.

A Brewing Storm: Jealousy, Beer and the Maxine Club

Two nights before the shooting, tensions between Day and his longtime partner, Irene Merle Day, ignited in public. At the Maxine Club at 80 Oxford Street Woollahra, Day arrived with a new mistress: Joyce Cusack, a young blonde machinist from Darlington. 

Irene spotted them across the cabaret floor. She crossed the room like a storm front.

What followed became the talk of Surry Hills: accusations, a glass of beer thrown, and a retaliatory punch with a glass that split Joyce’s eye open. The two women ended up at St Vincent’s Hospital - the first of many injuries in a weekend that would spiral into chaos.

Joyce later told the court that Irene hissed at her:“If you want him, you can have him - dead.”

Whether it was threat, heartbreak, or theatre, the remark hung over everything that followed.

Later that night, Day returned to Crown Street to collect four bags of beer he claimed had been taken from him. As he lugged the bags out to his car, a brawl erupted on the footpath. American servicemen, local girls, Day, his rival Keith Kitchener Hull, and hangers-on were all swinging. 

Hull was knocked down - some said kicked while he lay on the pavement. He would later show the court a broken nose and bruised face.

The bad blood was now set.

The Night of the Shooting

Shortly after 1:45 a.m. on January 29, Day and his associate Reeves pulled up outside 428 Crown Street again. The door was opened by Irene and another girl. Day marched inside. Reeves lingered in the hallway.

Upstairs, in a small bedroom facing Crown Street, Hull was waiting. The Americans staying in the house - George Miller and Bill Simponis - had been drinking most of the night. At some point, Miller’s loaded revolver, hidden under his mattress, had gone missing. He later admitted he asked Hull about it.

“Yes, I took it,” Hull said. “I needed it. They’re after me.”

Reeves reported that Day walked upstairs and “half-closed the door.” Muffled voices followed, then three or four cracks - like muffled fireworks.

Simponis said he looked out of his door and saw a man running up the stairs holding a gun. Miller shouted: “Donald Day has got a gun - look out!”

When they reached the back bedroom, Day was lying on the floor, shot through the cheek, the chest, and the abdomen. Blood soaked the scattered clothing on the floor. Hull stood nearby, shaking, a gun in his hand. The Americans helped lift Day onto the bed, where he died almost instantly - one bullet had pierced his heart.

Meanwhile, Irene Day knelt beside him, holding his hand, weeping:“Speak to me, my Donnie… he’s my Donnie… my Donnie…”

Neighbours on Crown Street later recalled the sound of women screaming and the thud of feet on floorboards.

Guns Under the Bath

When police arrived, the scene was chaotic. Empty cartridges littered a neighbouring bedroom. The wardrobe had a bullet hole clean through its door. Under the bath in the adjoining house in Foveaux Street, detectives found the evidence that would haunt the courts for months: two heavy-calibre revolvers, one wrapped in a facecloth, the other a fully loaded American Navy pistol wrapped in a white handkerchief.

Who moved the guns? Who wiped them clean? And why?

The Coroner later declared the two Americans had “prevaricated, evaded, and committed perjury.” For a time, he even suspected they might have been accessories after the fact.

A Funeral Fit for a Kingpin

Despite the sordid circumstances of his death, Day’s funeral at Kinsela’s, Taylor Square, and later at South Head Cemetery, was a spectacle. More than 1,500 people crowded outside the parlours. His cedar coffin, silver-mounted, held the embalmed and surgically repaired body of a man who had lived - and died - hard.

A wreath from Irene and their baby son was placed beside tributes from “The Chow,” “Bronze,” “La Belle,” and others from the Surry Hills criminal milieu. As detectives watched from a nearby hill, women sobbed at the graveside. The crime queen Tilly Devine was even seen watching from the air-raid shelter at Taylor Square.

Surry Hills had lost a villain - and a folk hero.

The Courtroom War

In the weeks that followed, Crown Street’s gossip made its way into the Central Court. All four people present during the shooting - Hull, Irene Day, Daphne Kenny, and Nancy Burley - were charged with murder.

The court was a theatre:

• Joyce Cusack, in velvet hat and fur coat, testified dramatically.

• Americans contradicted themselves mid-sentence.

• Detectives sparred with lawyers about hidden pistols, wiped fingerprints, and missing cartridges.

• The Coroner criticised witnesses for “hampering instead of helping” the court.

But the turning point came when Hull’s injuries were examined. His broken nose, bruised face, and punctured elbow seemed to support his claim of a violent attack just hours before the shooting.

Hull’s statement was simple: “He came at me pointing a gun. I fired in self-defence.”

No gun was ever proven to have been in Day’s hand. But doubt lingered enough for a jury.

The Verdict

On 11 June 1945, after a trial lasting only a day, the jury took just 50 minutes.

Not guilty. Justifiable homicide.

Hull walked free - a rare victory for a man who had shot one of Sydney’s most feared racketeers at near-point-blank range.

Crown Street’s Ghost

Today, Crown and Foveaux look different - trendy cafés replacing sly-grog dens, apartments rising where old terraces leaned. 428 Crown Street is presumably no longer a den of vice as the murder house has been converted into a trendy pizza restaurant. The patrons all blissfully unaware of the gun smoke, the shouting, the chaos and violent demise of one of Sydney’s most feared gangsters in the room above them.

In Surry Hills, history hides in plain sight. And some stories, like the last night of Donald the Duck, refuse to stay buried. If you wish to learn more about Donald “the Duck” Day and the 1940s gang wars in Surry Hills book the Surry Hills true crime walking tour on Sundays at www.murdersmostfoul.com.