Underbelly 11 Page 7

  It was understood police planned to recruit a third person known to the football identity to help an undercover detective to infiltrate a ‘rat-pack’ of sporting and media people who regularly use cocaine.

  ‘People in his (the football identity’s) position should be careful what they tell the hairdresser,’ the source said. ‘Hairdressers do not tend to keep secrets under questioning.’

  The group reputedly buys thousands of dollars worth of the illicit drug from a favoured dealer each week. Police did not set out to target the members of the group but have used them to set a trap for the ‘dealer to the stars’, the source said.

  ‘The coppers haven’t spoken to him just yet but he is high on the list,’ the source said.

  ‘It’s called arrest by appointment: he will soon be invited in to the major drug investigation unit for a cup of tea and a teddy bear biscuit.

  ‘He will then either be charged or will help the police with their inquiries into the dealer. The way to put pressure on the dealer is to put pressure on his customers and get them to lag him in. The drug squad will get statements from the customers to nail the big guy.’

  The high-profile cocaine user will be faced with either supplying information against the dealer or risking charges himself.

  The investigation uncovered the existence of a luxury ‘love boat’. The multi-million-dollar pleasure craft is used for weekend cruises on the bay to which selected ‘guests’ pay up to $5000 for unlimited cocaine and sex with escorts. Current and former AFL players – and media ‘players’ – are believed to be among those who have used the boat.

  The secret police investigation was another episode in a turbulent season for football off the field in 2007, following revelations about the extent of drug abuse among AFL players.

  The uproar over the admission that Eagles star and Brownlow medallist Ben Cousins was dangerously addicted to ‘ice’ (crystal methamphetamine) has affected football followers from the cheer squad to AFL headquarters and the Prime Minister’s office.

  Prime Minister John Howard said on Melbourne radio he favoured ‘zero tolerance’ towards all illicit drugs inside or outside sport.

  And AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou used the AFL’s 2007 season launch in March to promise support for Cousins and his family for the player’s rehabilitation.

  This foreshadowed Cousins being sent to an expensive drug clinic in Los Angeles for a month before being allowed to resume with the Eagles in late July.

  The media frenzy over the story prompted speculation that several other West Coast players also abused illicit drugs.

  The manager of one West Coast player was so concerned at rumours that he took the unusual step of contacting a news-paper to say that if any story were published about his client without ‘stat decs, video evidence and an affidavit from his mother’ then he would sue for damages.

  West Coast coach John Worsfold eventually revealed that Daniel Kerr was one of up to eight Eagles players who had admitted taking recreational drugs.

  ‘I would suggest that it would be half a dozen, maybe eight players, that have admitted they have used an illicit drug – but we are certainly not talking about drug problems,’ Worsfold said.

  CHAPTER 4

  Blood on the streets

  If they were not outlaw bikies many would be just overweight, middle-aged men with no career prospects, few life skills and chronic body odour …

  THE bikies had every reason to hate Don Hancock. They knew the former senior Perth detective turned country publican had shot dead a Gypsy Joker member called Billy Grierson after a minor dispute in October 2000.

  By the time police got to Hancock he was showered and changed. The stickler for police procedure refused to hand over his original clothing, defied instructions to stay at the scene and then ate an orange to remove gunshot residue.

  Investigating police believed Hancock was the sniper who shot Grierson that night in the West Australian goldfields town of Ora Banda.

  The Gypsy Jokers believed Hancock, former head of the CIB, was not charged because the reputation of an ex-policeman was more important than a bikie’s life.

  They vowed revenge – and then went to war. They repeatedly bombed Hancock’s pub and home – concealing the explosives before one attack in the coffin of a teenage boy.

  Hancock – known as the Silver Fox – knew he was a marked man and returned to Perth where a state-of-the art security system was set up in his home.

  Although retired he was allowed to carry a handgun because of the constant threat to his life.

  But video cameras and a .38 revolver would never be enough to protect the 64-year-old former policeman.

  For months the bikies tried to follow Hancock without getting close enough to kill him but they soon found his weakness. The former old-school copper was a creature of habit who regularly went to the races with a mate, retired bookie Lou Lewis.

  When Gypsy Jokers were leaked the details of the bookie’s car by a tame source within the WA Transport Department the rest was easy.

  Gang members strolled around the Belmont Park racecourse until they found Lewis’ unlocked car and then gently slipped a bomb under the passenger seat.

  As the two men drove home on September 1,2001, one of the bikies used a mobile phone (as terrorists often do) to trigger the ammonium nitrate bomb, muttering ‘Rest in peace, Billy’ before the bomb detonated, obliterating both victims.

  The explosion was heard more than eight kilometres away. The ramifications would last for years.

  Don Hancock was their enemy but Lou Lewis was not involved. To the bikies he was just acceptable collateral damage.

  Welcome to the world of outlaw motorcycle gangs, where violence is often the first and only resort.

  ON June 18, 2007, as Melbourne’s morning rush was peaking, behind closed doors in the so-called entertainment district centred on King Street, some were still coming down from the night before.

  A stripper from Spearmint Rhino, Autumn Daly-Holt, was dancing provocatively next door in Bar Code. Then she was bashed savagely, allegedly by a member of the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang.

  The bikie, Christopher Wayne Hudson, was alleged to have then jumped in a taxi with another stripper, Kaera Douglas, 24. As they argued the cab pulled up at the corner of Hinders Lane and William Street.

  Witnesses said a man, later identified as Hudson, tried to drag her from the car.

  Two men, solicitor Brendan Keilar, 43, and Paul de Waard, a 25-year-old Dutch backpacker, tried to step in. Keilar was shot and died in the street. De Waard and Douglas were also shot and seriously injured.

  Witnesses said the gunman hesitated then pointed the gun under his own chin as if considering suicide. But self-preservation instincts over-rode the impulse and he dumped the gun before escaping.

  The obscene violence that morning graphically exposed what happens when Melbourne’s underbelly of guns, drugs and vice collides with the mainstream world on a busy city street.

  And while the rampage cannot be blamed on the Hell’s Angels – it appeared to be a domestic dispute gone mad – it raises questions about the bikie culture and the community’s response to the ever-present threat.

  The Australian Crime Commission says there are seventeen outlaw motorcycle gangs in Victoria, and 35 throughout Australia, with a total of 3500 fully-patched members and perhaps as many again who are associates.

  The ACC is investigating bikie groups as established criminal networks, and has connected them with prolific money laundering, tax fraud, firearms trafficking and drug manufacturing.

  The commission has found that the ‘size, profile, geographic spread and level of sophistication of OMCG (outlaw motorcycle gangs) criminal activity presents a significant threat to Australia and its interests’.

  It says gangs infiltrate legitimate business enterprises, ‘including finance, transport, private security, entertainment, natural resources and construction’.

  There is nothing subtle
about outlaw bikies. While many gangsters try to conceal their underworld connections behind closed penthouse doors, bikies wear their colours to show their criminal spots.

  It is a deliberate strategy designed to forge military-style loyalty between members while simultaneously intimidating outsiders.

  Some brag they are like a swarm of bees that will attack (and die) to protect the hive.

  The analogy has some substance. Most of the bikies are like worker bees. They do not share in the massive profits but get their identity from the collective.

  If they were not outlaw bikies many would be just overweight, middle-aged men with no career prospects, few life skills and chronic body odour.

  But those who rise to run the clubs often have affluent lifestyles and manage to run successful businesses – suspected of being fronts to launder drug money. Bikies have also moved into debt collecting, using their fearsome reputations to stand over parties in civil disputes.

  They have been known to wear their gang colours to auctions – a move designed to intimidate rival bidders.

  The outlaw bikie world remains in a constant state of tension, with smaller clubs at risk of violent takeover by the Hell’s Angels, Bandidos, Rebels, Outlaws, Black Uhlans and Nomads.

  Police in Sydney are facing bikie violence as gangs battle to gain control of the lucrative nightclub drug scene. In the same week as the Melbourne CBD shooting a bomb exploded outside a Hell’s Angels clubhouse in Sydney. Similar battles have broken out in Queensland.

  Unlike the Melbourne underworld war, in which victims were shot in ambushes, the Finks and Hell’s Angels went to war within a crowd of 1600 people at a kickboxing event on the Gold Coast.

  In Geelong the Rebels’ headquarters were firebombed in April 2007 and the Bandidos’ clubhouse was sprayed with bullets.

  Earlier that month two gunmen shot four Rebels gang members in an Adelaide nightclub.

  Police say outlaw gangs in Australia have been bullying their way into nightclub ownership, club security, strippers, entertainment, modelling agencies and prostitution. They have attempted to buy a legal brothel using associates with no criminal records as a front.

  In Melbourne, while bikies do not appear to own nightclubs – at least on paper – police intelligence shows gang associates own, run and control security at some venues.

  Police say rival bikie gangs are trying to gain control of security at popular venues so they can green-light the distribution of their drugs through sanctioned dealers.

  ‘Control the front door and you control who gets in. Control who gets in and you control the distribution of drugs,’ according to one veteran investigator.

  In Victoria, bikie headquarters are easily identified and heavily protected.

  The Special Operations Group has used bulldozers, a ram truck and explosives to gain access. In Western Australia special anti-fortification laws have been passed to try to stop bikies building domestic forts in Perth.

  In the 1980s an Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence investigation into bikies codenamed Wingclipping found the gangs to be a serious organised crime threat.

  And the problems have only escalated in the past two decades. In Angels of Death: Inside the Bikers Global Crime Empire, Canadian experts William Marsden and Julian Sher say Australia has the highest number of bikies per capita in the world.

  Marsden and Sher found that since the mid-1990s Australian bikies have been locked in a decade-long battle to control their slice of the massive drug market. ‘Over the next five years, 32 bikies would die and many more would be beaten as the Hell’s Angels, Bandidos and other clubs fought over the amphetamine trade.’

  In fact it was in the mid-1970s that the Hell’s Angels pioneered the trade in Australia – and first established the international nature of Bikie Inc.

  PETER John Hill was not an average bikie. The former private school boy and son of a bank executive loved motorbikes and became an original Melbourne Hell’s Angel.

  Hill became friendly with senior Californian Angels, including hitman James Patton ‘Jim Jim’ Brandes.

  When Hill visited the Oakland Chapter, Brandes took him to prison to meet the gang’s amphetamine expert – Kenny ‘KO’ Walton.

  Walton told Hill how to make speed and later mailed him a detailed recipe. In return Melbourne Hell’s Angels organised to smuggle a vital ingredient for amphetamine production to the US gang.

  At the time the chemical P2P was difficult to source in the US but remained freely available in Australia.

  Hill and his team filled three-litre Golden Circle pineapple tins with the chemical and mailed them, two at a time, to the Oakland chapter.

  After 50 deliveries the Californian gang had sufficient to make $US50 million in speed.

  Bob Armstrong was the Victorian policeman who would spend half a career in investigations, surveillance and undercover work that centred on the bikies. His original team smashed the Hell’s Angels Greenslopes amphetamines lab in 1982, finding three kilograms of speed, cash, handguns and a machine-gun.

  Later he received a call from Peter Hill’s mother, Audrey, telling the detective that a US hitman was on his way to kill him.

  The suspect was grabbed as he walked from his plane into Melbourne Airport.

  It was ‘Jim Jim’ Brandes, who had previously seriously injured an American detective after setting off a bomb next to the policeman’s car.

  Peter Hill later fell out with the Angels and in an act of revenge he sold the original speed recipe to a rival gang for just $1000.

  That gang was the Black Uhlans, whose founding members included the ambitious John William Samuel Higgs, later to become the biggest speed producer in Australia.

  Higgs was in constant trouble with the police as a teenager, with his first conviction recorded at thirteen. He later gathered convictions as varied as manslaughter and the illegal possession of a stuffed possum.

  Higgs was to become wildly rich and showed his gratitude to his gang by donating its Melbourne clubhouse. In return he was made a life member.

  Higgs was the target of eight National Crime Authority, federal and Victorian Police operations from 1985, including Australia’s longest-running drug investigation, codenamed Phalanx. This eight-year inquiry led to the arrest of 135 people and the seizure of chemicals with the potential to make speed valued at $200 million.

  The money made by select bikies places them squarely on the A-list of crime.

  The investment portfolio of some gangs is vast.

  Police say some have invested heavily in natural resources, including Australian mining and Indonesian oilrigs.

  One illiterate ex-labourer and former bouncer known as the ‘Maltese Falcon’ controlled a real estate portfolio worth $3.3 million, 70 motorcycles and two Rolls-Royces. Bikies have also infiltrated government departments to access confidential computer records.

  Investigating hardcore bikie gangs is notoriously difficult. They are usually security conscious, rarely trust outsiders and use expendable ‘hang-arounds’ and ‘prospects’ to complete low-end criminal activities.

  They often have signs plastered on phones to remind them they may be bugged – although recently several forgot and used the phone to try to organise a quick insurance scam. The slipup resulted in a successful prosecution.

  They also have professionals electronically ‘sweep’ their clubhouses after police raids looking for listening devices. Routinely police find hot leads peter out when witnesses go cold.

  A tow-truck driver who removed a bikie’s vehicle seized by police was later bashed. A safe expert who opened a bikie safe after a police raid found his business badly damaged by fire.

  One man who made a statement against a bikie was at first forced to move from Melbourne, and when he was threatened with a one-way trip to the cemetery, fled the country never to return.

  One man who woke up in hospital after being tortured told police he had no idea what had happened.

  Victoria’s Chief Commis
sioner Christine Nixon defended the police response to bikie crime by saying the problem was greater in some other states.

  ‘We are, in fact, working on these different bikie gangs. We are part of a whole national approach working on these bikie gangs.’

  But some police disagree. The specialist bikie unit in the organised crime squad has been closed during a restructure. Some senior members of the crime squad want the decision reviewed.

  It is difficult but not impossible to infiltrate bikie groups. Ten years ago two Victoria Police codenamed Wes and Alby went undercover for thirteen months to infiltrate the Bandidos as part of a secret operation codenamed Operation Barkly.

  Alby and Wes were involved in more than 30 deals buying marijuana, amphetamines, LSD and ecstasy from Bandidos in three states.

  They were so trusted that Alby became the secretary-elect for the Ballarat chapter, giving him access to the club’s financial records.

  Police eventually arrested twenty bikies as a result and uncovered plans for the gang to open nightclubs in Geelong and Ballarat as fronts for drug dealing.

  Operation Barkly was closed because of the danger to the undercover police. During the investigation three Bandidos, including president Michael ‘Chaos’ Kulakowski, were murdered.

  Bikies pride themselves on protecting and dealing with their own, but there is a limit.

  The suspect in the CBD shooting was cut loose by the gang and had no choice but to surrender.

  Hudson gave himself up after his lawyer negotiated a deal with a ‘trusted’ senior detective.

  After two days of fruitless efforts to find him the breakthrough came when Northcote solicitor Patrick Dwyer contacted Detective Inspector Kim West, of the major crime investigation unit.

  Hudson was frightened he would be intercepted and killed by police as he left his country hide-away to drive to a designated police station.

  The first sign that Hudson had no alternative but to give himself up was when a Queensland lawyer who previously represented the suspect rang the homicide squad to say he could no longer act for him as it conflicted with the interests of his existing clients – the Hell’s Angels.