The modern-day mobsters who terrorised Melbourne were merely the latest in the city’s criminal history. Gangs like The Dockers, led by the Moran family in the Nineties, inherited their violent methods from the thugs who ran Melbourne’s waterfront after World War Two. The notorious Painters and Dockers Union operated a Mafia-like system of control over goods that passed through the port. Major earners for the union bosses were hidden shipments of heroin and more recently cocaine. Once safely out of the docks, these illicit substances were passed across the road to the adjacent Melbourne Markets, whose fruit and vegetable vans provided a handy distribution system.
The history of criminal gangs goes furthest back in Sydney, the first urban settlement of the fledgling colony. Groups of dangerous vagabonds flourished in the waterfront Rocks district in the nineteenth century. The most notorious of these was a Mob called the ‘Rocks Push’ that dominated this area of Sydney from the 1870s to the 1890s. The gang was engaged in running warfare with other larrikin gangs of the time, such as the Straw Hat Push, the Glebe Push, the Argyle Cut Push, the Forty Thieves from Surry Hills and the Gibb Street Mob.
The gang names are evocative titles from an age that was hardly glamorous. And it was hardly surprising that a gang culture existed at that time in Australia’s short history, for the country had been a penal colony within living memory, with some convicts still being transported (to Western Australia) until 1868.
Law-abiding Australians in the twenty-first century could be forgiven for thinking that criminals were still among the nation’s less welcome imports.
Asian and Middle-Eastern gangs are now active in major cities. Following the fall of the Republic of Vietnam in 1975, refugees arrived in Australia and settled in Sydney’s Cabramatta area, forming the 5T gang in the mid-Eighties. One of them was Tri Minh Tran, who rose to become leader of the 5T at the age of 14 in 1989. He was already well known to police. At the tender age of 11, he had been arrested for carrying a sawn-off shotgun, and during the next couple of years had been prime suspect in the murder of two rival gang members.
The 5T became dominant players in the heroin trade in Sydney’s western suburbs, especially at street level, and were believed to be involved in the murder of John Newman, the Member for Cabramatta in the NSW State Parliament. Newman had been the target of numerous death threats from Asian gangs but did not seek police protection. In September 1994 he was shot and killed while outside his home with his fiancée, Lucy Wang. A local club owner, Phuong Ngo, who had run against Newman as a rival candidate, was convicted of the killing in 2001.
The murder of Tri Minh Tran in 1995 sparked a power struggle within 5T and by the turn of the century the organisation had broken up, replaced by rival mobs the Four Aces and Madonna’s Boys. Although publicly not as violent as their predecessor, the new gangs managed a diverse criminal portfolio, profiting from drug importation and distribution, money laundering, human trafficking, and coercion of women into prostitution.
The scale of the drug trade in Australia was exposed in 2010 with the arrest of 14 members of a Vietnamese Syndicate in Victoria’s biggest drugs bust, with the seizure of merchandise and assets worth $30 million. Police had swooped on 14 properties in Melbourne’s inner northern and western suburbs following a ten-month Australian Crime Commission investigation dubbed Operation Sethra. In one Carlton apartment, allegedly used as a safehouse, they found a stash of heroin, almost $600,000 in cash and $50,000 in casino chips. A Keilor Downs house yielded 350g of heroin, $345,970 in cash and $54,500 in casino chips. The Syndicate had been using casinos’ high-roller tables to launder drugs money. In court, prosecutors claimed that proceeds of the illicit trade had been used to buy property in Australia and Vietnam, including the purchase of a hotel for $2.8 million.
The Vietnamese have no monopoly on organised crime, of course, and since the 1990s it is Middle Eastern gangs that have caused crime-fighters most headaches. They are most prominent in Sydney, where police have been accused of going soft on gangs for fear of being accused of targeting ethnic minorities. But a string of drive-by shootings shocked authorities into action.
The most serious was an attack on Lakemba police station, in Sydney’s south-west district, in November 1998. In the early hours of the morning, 17 shots were fired, bullets shattering the plate glass doors, with one punching a hole in a computer screen at head height. The attack was designed to deter cops from investigating a Lebanese gang named DK’s Boys, after its founder Danny Karam. Formed only in the late 1990s, this brutal Mob was responsible for one of the bloodiest periods in NSW criminal history – a drugs gang that killed its own boss and set out to rule Sydney’s nightlife district, Kings Cross.
Between July and December of 1998, the gang terrorised the inner city, committing four murders, at least 16 shootings and several knee-cappings. Their violence was for monopoly over the cocaine trade that raked in a fortune for Karam but much less for the young runners he used to distribute the drugs. In December 1998 his minions rebelled. As Karam sat in his car outside a Surry Hills safehouse, he was sprayed with bullets by gang members led by Michael Kanaan, a thug with a criminal history that includes three murders and four charges of GBH.
Kaanan was an immediate suspect in the drive-by shooting at Lakemba police station but he and fellow gang member Wassim El-Assaad were found not guilty by a court. A third man, Saleh Jamal, was later convicted. He had jumped bail when first accused of the shooting but was extradited from Lebanon in 2007 and jailed for nine years for another act of violence, the kneecapping of a rival in 1998. It was not until May 2010 that Jamal was found guilty of the police station attack and jailed for an additional 12 years. It was revealed that Jamal was so feared that police had to promise that four witnesses who testified against him would be given new identities. Although fellow gang member Michael Kanaan had been found not guilty of the Lakemba shooting, he won’t be coming out of prison. For his other offences, he has three life terms to serve plus an additional 50 years at maximum security Goulburn Correctional Centre.
The final clampdown on DK’s Boys and similar thugs came after New South Wales Police set up a special squad to tackle organised crime by Middle-Eastern gangs. The move was prompted by an extraordinary event in Sydney’s recent history – a huge public backlash against Arab gangsters who had been allowed to gain ground as police seemingly overlooked the crime wave, fearful of Internal Affairs investigations for targeting ethnic minorities.
Apparently unaware of growing public fury, the police were taken by surprise when, on Sunday 11 December 2005, a vast crowd gathered at Cronulla, singing and waving the national flag as they ‘reclaimed’ the beach. The so-called Cronulla Riots grew into a series of sectarian clashes and Mob violence that spread, over the next few nights, to other Sydney suburbs.
The fuse for this popular explosion of rage had been lit a week earlier when a group of volunteer surf lifesavers were assaulted by a band of young men of Arab appearance, with several other violent assaults occurring over the following days. By midday on 11 December about 5,000 people had gathered at Cronulla beach to protest against the spate of violence against locals. But fuelled by drink, some of the protesters turned to violence themselves, attacking a sunbather of Middle-Eastern origin. Similar assaults occurred elsewhere later that day. Retaliatory riots took place that night and on subsequent nights, resulting in extensive property damage and even attacks on police and ambulance crews. The riots forced NSW Premier Morris Iemma to promise a permanent Middle-Eastern Organised Crime Squad similar in vein to an existing Asian Crime Squad.
The riots might have tarnished Australia’s image abroad – several countries issued travel warnings – but it also awoke police and politicians to the anger of ordinary Aussies in the face of unchecked gang warfare.
CHAPTER 15
‘BIKIES’ RIDE OUT… INTO AN ALL-OUT WAR
On Australia’s affluent East Coast, gang warfare has erupted between rival outfits across two states, conducted on high-powered mach
ines by modern-day ‘bikies’. The motorcycle-riding old guard is being supplanted by a violent new breed of steroid-pumped, amphetamine-taking young rebels, often of Middle Eastern or Eastern European descent. They shun leathers and straggly hair, preferring designer clothes and ‘gansta’ bling.
According to police, the feud between rival gangs is now a step away from an all-out war. The epicentre of the current outbreak of violence is Sydney, where there were more than 60 drive-by shootings in 2012 alone. Homes have been sprayed with bullets while children have slept inside.
Tensions in the city go back to an infamous massacre in 1984 when six bikers were shot dead in a pub car park and a teenage girl killed in the crossfire. Since the 1980s there have been about 100 biker killings across the country and 1,000 shootings. The most dramatic was the 2009 murder of a biker in the crowded main terminal of Sydney Airport. The scale of the problem was highlighted by police in a major crackdown on the gun-toting gangs – which, in Sydney alone, resulted in 555 people being arrested and 908 charges laid.
As well as an epidemic of violence centred on Sydney, New South Wales, there have been several related shootings in South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland. The main target of Sydney gangs is the lucrative drugs trade on Queensland’s Gold Coast, where in April 2012 a tattooed gunman shot a rival and a woman bystander in the region’s biggest shopping mall.
It is estimated there are 35 ‘outlaw’ motorcycle groups in Australia with an inner circle of 3,500 fully ‘patched’ members and many thousands more followers. Among this assortment of bikie groups, a handful are especially powerful, some of them with international branches. Among them are the gangs profiled below – not a comprehensive list but one that reflects the sometimes typical, sometimes differing aspects, attitudes and histories of these Aussie outlaws.
Pre-eminent are the Bandidos, which the American FBI has identified as one of the ‘world’s Big Four’ outlaw motorcycle gangs, with an estimated 210 chapters in 16 countries. Nineteen of these chapters are located across Australia, comprised of up to 400 members. The Bandidos’ international origins go back to 1966 when it was formed by a Texan named Don Chambers. The Australian chapter was not founded until 1983, by Anthony Mark ‘Snodgrass’ Spencer, its first national president, following a split from the existing Comanchero Motorcycle Club. Its motto is: ‘We are the people our parents warned us about’.
The Bandidos is one of the clubs that has actively recruited from ethnic groups in recent years. Wannabe members are called ‘hangarounds’ and the chapter president decides when they can become a ‘prospect’. To become patched members, other full members must unanimously vote them in. Members wear leather or denim vests known as ‘cuts’ because the sleeves are cut off. The logo is a Mexican bandit.
The Bandidos are probably best known for their involvement in the Milperra Bikie Massacre on 2 September 1984 – a dramatic event related later in this chapter, and one that was a catalyst for significant changes to gun laws in New South Wales. Among the 30 convicted combatants, ‘Snodgrass’ Spencer took his own life in prison.
Over a decade later, in October 1997, it was thought the club had mellowed but a triple murder of three of the members prompted the National Crime Authority to wrap up a two-year investigation into the Bandidos, code-named ‘Operation Panzer’, during which two undercover detectives had infiltrated the Bandidos’ operations in Ballarat, Victoria. State police raided properties in Ballarat, Geelong, Shepparton and Bendigo, while simultaneous raids took place in New South Wales, South Australia and Western Australia. Police seized more than $1 million worth of drugs – including cannabis, LSD, amphetamines and heroin – and weapons such as an AK-47 assault rifle and sawn-off shotguns. Nineteen people faced charges, including 13 Bandidos in Victoria.
The raids initially weakened the Bandidos but the club continued expanding in regional Victoria by taking over smaller rivals. Inter-gang feuding continued. In October 2008, Bandido member Ross Brand was shot dead while walking outside the gang’s Geelong clubhouse. The rival Rebels motorcycle gang was blamed and affiliate John Bedson was convicted of the shooting and sentenced to 23 years in jail.
In New South Wales in March 2009, the ‘sergeant at arms’ of the Bandidos chapter in Parramatta, Mahmoud Dib, was arrested and charged with firearms offences by police investigating a string of drive-by shootings in Sydney. Police found a .45 calibre semi-automatic pistol that was loaded with seven bullets. Days before Dib’s arrest, his family home was the scene of a wild shoot-out between members of the Bandidos and the rival Notorious gang in an ongoing feud with the latter Parramatta based bike group. In Queensland, enemy gangs in the Brisbane metropolitan area targeted Bandidos properties, the most serious incidents being two drive-by shootings at their Woolloongabba clubhouse and a Milton tattoo parlour in June 2012.
Among the Bandidos’ main rivals are the Comancheros. Boasting roots that go back to Hispanic-American traders from New Mexico who made their living by dealing with the nomadic plains tribes in that state and neighbouring Texas. One of the oldest and smallest outlaw clubs in Australia, with a New South Wales membership of perhaps 100, its headquarters is in Sydney’s western suburbs.
Club positions include president, commander, vice-president, sergeant-at-arms and secretary. Prospective members are ‘nominees’ and expected to obey the motto: ‘If the president says jump, ask how high’. Titles are indicated in patches on the front of a vest or jacket, usually including the letters ACCA (Always Comanchero, Comanchero Always).
For almost a decade after its inception in 1966, the Comanchero Motorcycle Club kept to itself, shielding the public from boozy, violent behaviour within. Their founder, Scotsman William George ‘Jock’ Ross, ruled the Sydney-based club with an iron fist, demanding members live by the club’s rules of loyalty. It was the violation of this sacred law that sparked Australia’s most infamous bikie battle, the 1984 ‘Milperra Massacre’.
After months of in-fighting, Ross’s follower, Anthony ‘Snodgrass’ Spencer, defected from the Comancheros to start the first Australian chapter of the American group the Bandidos. His defection was seen as treason and on Father’s Day 1984 the two bikie gangs squared off in Milperra’s Viking Tavern car park, as families visiting a motorcycle swap meet ran for their lives. Four Comancheros, two Bandidos and an innocent bystander, 14-year-old Leanne Walters, died during a ten-minute gun battle that left at least 20 others injured. In a landmark trial lasting 14 months, nine men were found guilty of all seven murders and affray, while 21 others were found guilty of manslaughter and affray. Judge Adrian Roden, who presided over the trial, warned about the dangers of bikie culture. ‘As patriotism can lead to jingoism, and mateship can lead to cronyism, so bikie club loyalty can lead to bikie club war,’ he said. On appeal, all nine murder convictions were overturned and all those jailed were back on the streets in just over five years.
In the decade following the massacre, tensions between the Comancheros and the Bandidos simmered but both clubs were also careful not to further tarnish their image. However, like most outlaw gangs, the Comancheros continued to be involved in tit-for-tat violence over turf and power. In 1999 the body of Comanchero bikie Peter Ledger was found dumped in the driveway of his ex-wife’s house. He had been tortured and beaten to death by Comancheros sergeant-at-arms Ian Clissold for selling a Harley-Davidson motorcycle against club rules. According to court papers, Clissold had been ordered to ‘sort somebody out who had been causing a bit of trouble’ and the beating ‘went a bit too far’.
By the turn of the century, both police and public had become enraged by the growing abuses of the motorcycle gangs. But by then the main outlaw groups had already agreed to curb their public feuding – by creating a mafia-style ‘crime Syndicate’. This loose association of the major players was formed not for altruistic reasons but to cut smaller clubs out of the lucrative drugs market. A 2000 police report into organised crime read: ‘In early 1994, following the world trend, there was a meeting in
Sydney between the major gangs where it was decided informally that the gangs in the country would adopt a similar stance to that already being set up by the rest of the OMCG (outlawed motorcycle gangs). It was agreed in principle that there would be a maximum of six gangs controlling Australia by the year 2000, hence the project being dubbed The Australia 2000 Pact’.
It appeared that the Comancheros may have been locked out of the drug market, as they were not included in the six powerful gangs vying for dominance. But they survived and the feuding continued. In 2001 their western Sydney headquarters in Erskine Park was fire-bombed, causing about $40,000 damage. The following years saw a spate of further fire-bombings, bashings and drive-by shootings culminating in the Sydney Airport shootings in March 2009. This time the feud, between the Comancheros and the Hells Angels, boiled over publicly with tragic consequences.
Comancheros president Mahmoud ‘Mick’ Hawi and four other members had boarded a flight from Melbourne to Sydney. Hells Angels chapter president Derek Wainohu also happened to be on board. When the plane touched down, each gang called for reinforcements. The ensuing wild brawl in front of horrified travellers claimed the life of Anthony Zervas, the brother of a well-known Hells Angels member. Zervas suffered stab wounds and massive head injuries when he was attacked with bollards and kicked, punched and stomped on as he lay on the floor of the domestic terminal.
Fourteen people were charged over the murder, including Hawi who, just days after the attack launched a ‘damage limitation’ exercise, banning the wearing of Comanchero club colours and rallying of motorcycles in a bid to curb the escalating violence. But Hawi’s call for calm among bikie gangs was ignored when the airport victims’ Hells Angels brother, Peter Zervas, was also murdered – shot as he arrived at his mother’s home nine days after the airport brawl. Police found Zervas leaning against his white car, which was left streaked with his blood.
The World's Most Evil Gangs Page 15