Disgraced former Queensland police commissioner Terence Murray Lewis has died.
He passed away at the age of 95 after a life of controversy.
Once Queensland's highest-ranked police officer, he was jailed in 1991 for official corruption after being named at the Fitzgerald Inquiry.
He always maintained his innocence.
Early career
Lewis had a rapid rise through the police ranks.
In 1976, he was an inspector at a small police station at Charleville, when he was appointed Deputy Police Commissioner by the Bjelke-Petersen government.
The commissioner at the time, Ray Whitrod, resigned in protest.
Two weeks later, Lewis got his job.
Already, there were rumours that Commissioner Lewis was on the take.
Yet in 1986, he became the first serving Australian police commissioner to be knighted.
Fitzgerald Inquiry
A year later, he fell from grace – named at the Fitzgerald Inquiry as a major player in police corruption, accused of pocketing more than $600,000 in bribes.
Convicted of 15 counts of official corruption, Lewis was jailed for 14 years and stripped of his knighthood and superannuation in 1991.
"I certainly get depressed, I get angry, but I am hopeful that in the long run, I will be vindicated," he said in an interview with the ABC in 1998.
He was paroled in 1998, less than halfway through his sentence.
