The World's Most Evil Gangs (16 page)

In January 2013 a Hells Angel was killed and another man wounded in a shooting at the offices of a trucking company in Wetherill Park, Sydney. When police looked into the background of the victim, 45-year-old Zeljko Mitrovic, they found that, although he was a senior Hells Angel, he also had a network of friends in the Bandidos. He had been jailed in connection with a double murder in 1998. And he had been one of the confrontational Hells Angels members sent to Queensland’s Burleigh Heads to found a new chapter there. The convoluted saga of the bikie gangs’ feuding seemed to be summed up in the character of the victim of one single random slaying.

Another long-established Outlaw motorcycle club is the Coffin Cheaters but their approach is very different to the high-profile gangs such as the Hells Angels and Bandidos. Founded in Perth in 1970, the Cheaters’ chapters have spread from Western Australia to Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland – as well as Asia and even Norway. They have between 200 to 300 members. To join, applicants must be blood relatives of existing members, hence the patch ‘Blood in Blood Out’. For this reason, they have no ‘prospects’ (probationers). Neither do they claim any state territory, which is why their profile is lower than most of the major gangs.

Their mission statement runs: ‘We only claim the ground we are standing on at any given time. We look for no trouble, but our history dictates that we do not hesitate to settle any. We do not want to be featured on TV, Gangland, the History Channel
or anywhere else. Leave us alone and we will leave you alone. We do not participate or condone the use of or sale of guns, drugs or any illegal activity of any kind. We have stayed off the radar for 40-plus years’.

Australian Coffin Cheaters are most often seen on
long-dista
nce
runs. They claim that these extensive road trips, undertaken in relatively small groups, are the sole reason for their existence. They have sought to demonstrate to the public that, although fiercely independent, they are honest and principled. Yet they are known to be one of the gangs that have spread their network into Asia, one of their strongest overseas chapters being in Indonesia. They own businesses in Kuta and have been seen in groups wearing their colours in clubs and bars. Other bikie gangs with a presence in Bali include the Bandidos and Rock Machine.

Nick Anticich, WA assistant police commissioner and the force’s top bikie expert, confirmed the Cheaters had a local club in Bali and said gangs were ‘expanding aggressively overseas, opening clubhouses and absorbing smaller clubs in other countries’. He added: ‘Intelligence suggests local clubs are keen to build connections to some South-East Asian countries where amphetamines and the precursor chemicals needed to make them can be more easily obtained. There is also anecdotal information to suggest the interest in overseas countries may be to facilitate money laundering. The tough laws in Bali around drug dealing we believe provide a significant deterrent for members to engage in that activity – but we are not so confident that this deterrent exists in relation to the chemicals that can be used for drug manufacture.’

The Notorious gang reveal another dimension to bikie culture. It’s a recently formed Middle Eastern group that has
begun competing with established Australian gangs in a turf war for drug sales. Notorious was established in 2007 in Sydney by Alan Sarkis and senior members of the Nomads motorcycle gang after the latter’s Parramatta branch was disbanded. They started to recruit youth of Middle Eastern and Islander backgrounds, aligning themselves with street gangs to boost numbers and challenge rivals, in particular Bandidos, Comancheros and Hells Angels.

Although considered to be an outlaw bikie club, its members don’t all ride motorcycles. They are sometimes called ‘Nike bikies’, for wearing expensive trainers, fashionable T-shirts and being clean shaven, in contrast to the traditional bikie attire. The club emblem features a skull with a turban brandishing twin pistols and the words ‘Original Gangster’ along with the motto ‘Only the dead see the end of war’.

Labelled as one of Australia’s most dangerous gangs, the Notorious grew to between 150 and 200 members, with the usual criminal activities of drug trafficking, arms dealing, extortion, prostitution, money laundering, murder, assault, kidnapping and drive-by shootings. However, leader Alan Sarkis has denied any involvement his club may have with organised crime and repudiates feuding with other gangs. He claimed the club had a very strict policy on drugs – even though Notorious members as young as 14 have been charged with possession and drugs supply. In an interview with a Sydney newspaper, Sarkis said: ‘Linking us to drugs or the drug trade is way out of line. We want to be acknowledged and respected as a motorcycle club, not as gangsters.’ This protestation apparently did not wash with NSW police, who arrested key members in 2012 in a bid to close it down.

While Notorious considered themselves ‘new blood’, the Rebels are ‘traditionalists’. Founded by Clint Jacks in 1969 with Brisbane as its heartland, the Rebels are by far the largest club in Australia, with around 2,000 members in 29 chapters. It also claims to be ‘the biggest all big twin Harley-Davidson club in the world’.

The structure of the Rebels hierarchy is revealing as to how these gang leaders and their minions think of themselves. To quote from a membership website, the Rebels ranks are as follows. ‘Head’ is the boss/leader. When he is around everyone has to listen to him and take orders, and of course he is the most respected and most powerful when it comes to deciding. ‘Second In Hand’ is the underboss/co-leader, the acting head while the leader is not around. He’s running everything in the gang and is in charge of recruitment. ‘Rebel’ is a made person, a high rank within the gang. This person must be respected by other members; he’s adviser for higher ranks and teacher for lower ranks. ‘Thug’ is a half-made person, a regular member, active and respected, involved in everything in the club. ‘Outlander’ is a person who is around sometimes, under watch by other members; more respected within the club. ‘Scum’ is the lowest rank. It’s the one who is outsider for the gang. He doesn’t have the respect of other members and leaders.

It is significant that followers are proud to be called thugs and others are happy to be known as scum. Perhaps this acceptance of their roles is something to do with their leader, a colourful character named Alessio Emmanuel ‘Alex’ Vella. Born in Malta in 1954, Vella, who was one of the original founding members of the gang, is an ex-boxer known to his followers as the ‘Maltese Falcon’.

Protesting that he was no more than an honest businessman
importing motorcycles, police raided Vella’s Sydney suburban home in 1990 believing it to be a methamphetamine factory and found a $15,000 stash of marijuana, for possession of which he served a brief prison sentence. He has also been arrested, but not convicted, on other suspected crimes including stabbing two men and assaulting a woman. In 2008 he successfully sued the ANZ Bank for $2.7 million after accusing his former business partner, Tony Caradonna, of falsifying Vella’s signature to re-mortgage three properties, including the Rebels’ own clubhouse.

In 2009 Rebels members were the target of 49 coordinated dawn raids across Australia by 250 officers who swooped on homes in Western Australia, Queensland and South Australia. They seized drugs, including methamphetamine, heroin and cocaine, banned weapons, cash, child pornography, stolen vehicles and large amounts of stolen gold. Twenty-seven people were arrested, mainly on drug and weapons charges.

In 2011 New Zealand police announced that the Rebels were attempting to set up a chapter there, and that their introduction was not welcome. Some Australian Rebels members were deported. But not all the publicity surrounding the gang’s activities has been adverse. Unexpected scenes were recorded in Canberra in 2012 when 800 bikies descended on the capital for the Rebels’ National Run, the biggest in the club’s history, with members arriving from as far afield as Western Australia and Tasmania. The ‘shock’ news was that everyone was well behaved! As the club’s Canberra president, Wayne Clark, said: ‘We were very happy with the behaviour of everyone. And we were very happy with the police assistance – they were great.’

Whereas gangs like the Rebels are capable of displaying their
more peaceable natures, the Gipsy Jokers glory in their notoriety. An Outlaw motorcycle club that was originally formed in San Francisco, California, on April Fool’s Day 1956, they are one of the most violent motorcycle gangs in both the US and in Australia, where they have 200 to 300 members. Gypsy Jokers MC Australia, established in 1969, has a high profile in state capitals Sydney, Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane as well as provincial Mt Gambier, Wadonga and Kalgoorlie. The club’s colours feature a skull with the thirteenth tooth missing, which corresponds to the thirteenth letter of the alphabet: ‘M’ for marijuana. Their criminal activities include armed robbery, arson, drug trafficking, fraud, gun trafficking, homicide, identity theft and prostitution.

The Gypsy Jokers continued to hit the Australian headlines. Since the turn of the century, there have been charges of assault, unlawful possessions of large sums of cash, weapons and ammunition and attempted murder. In 2001 member Anthony ‘Rooster’ Perish and his brother Andrew (a Rebels follower) abducted a jailed drug dealer who was on a work release scheme. Believing the man, Terry Falconer, had previously murdered their grandparents, and also suspecting him of being a police informant, the Perish boys placed him in a sealed metal container, where he was asphyxiated. They then chopped up his body and disposed of it in the Hastings River, near Port Macquarie. It was 11 years before justice was meted out when, in April 2012, the brothers, along with a third man, were handed hefty jail sentences for the murder.

Another high-profile incident occurred in May 2009 when five members of the Jokers were involved in a drug-related shoot-out with another gang in Perth. Two were wounded and taken to hospital, one of whom was club president Leonard
Kirby. But the most savage act of violence and vengeance by the Gypsy Jokers was the infamous 2001 car bomb murder in Western Australia of an ex-detective.

On 1 September 2001 Detective Don Hancock, formerly of the Criminal Investigation Bureau, and also known as ‘Silver Fox’, was returning from a day out at Perth’s Belmont racecourse when a massive bomb, planted under his car at the race meeting, was remotely detonated, killing him and his passenger, a bookmaker friend named Lou Lewis. The murder of the tough, popular detective, with 35 years service in the Perth force, caused a public outcry against the perpetrators, a faction of the Gipsy Jokers bike gang.

The case was not clear-cut, however. As investigations got underway, it became clear that Hancock, the son of a Kalgoorlie prospector, had tarnished his career by persistent allegations (since his death proven true) that he had doctored evidence in a notorious 1988 gold swindle case. It was at first thought that the murder was connected with these allegations but it became evident it was a clash he had with the Gypsy Jokers that got him killed.

After retiring as head of the Perth CIB, Hancock bought a pub in the hamlet of Ora Banda, about 50 kilometres from Kalgoorlie. In October 2000 several Gipsy Jokers entered the pub and badmouthed the barmaid, who was Hancock’s daughter, after which he threw them out. Later that night, one of the bikies, William Grierson, was shot dead as he sat around the group’s campfire. The Jokers believed Hancock was the killer. So, more significantly, did the police who came to investigate, though they had insufficient evidence to charge him.

Hancock remained free but the Jokers vowed vengeance.
They repeatedly bombed his pub and home, concealing the explosives before one attack in the coffin of a teenage boy. Hancock returned to Perth, where he kitted out his home with a high-tech security system. But the Jokers discovered his visits to the racetrack and, supposedly with the details of the bookie’s car leaked by a Transport Department insider, they located it at Belmont and planted a package of ammonium nitrate under the passenger seat. It was remotely detonated by a mobile phone as Hancock drove away with his innocent friend.

In September 2003 a known bikie chief, Graeme Slater, sergeant-at-arms of the Jokers’ Kalgoorlie chapter, was put on trial for Hancock’s murder. The principal witness, however, was a minor gang member who had turned informant in return for a reduced sentence on another charge. He was deemed unreliable and Slater walked free, although local police superintendent Dave Caporn said afterwards: ‘We considered that Slater was a dangerous criminal who committed violent crimes. We considered that he killed Don and Lou, but he’s been found not guilty and we have to live with that decision.’

With more operation strike forces across Australia to target outlaw bikie activities, the gangs have been squeezed in recent years. In May 2008 South Australia passed what Premier Mike Rann proclaimed as ‘the world’s toughest anti-bikie laws’. In a blueprint for other states, the Rann Act put restrictions on clan gatherings, created a new law of ‘criminal association’ to isolate gang chiefs, made it more difficult for gang members to get bail, and created new offences of violent disorder, riot and affray.

But the dubious glamour of the outlaws on two wheels still attracts followers. Criminologists put the increase in bikie warfare down to recruits from street gangs, the waves of new
migrants and young newcomers, often recruited in prison. They usually arrive with existing grudges – against family rivals, other cults and cultures or, all too often, society at large.

N
ew Zealand’s image is one of tranquility – a beautiful, peaceful, civilised country where citizens old and new have merged in an enviable semi-rural idyll. So it comes as a shock that the nation’s population of four million has the highest ratio of gang members in the world. A police estimate puts the number of major gangs at 40, with more than 70,000 members.

According to a 2012 police report: ‘These gangs have been involved in serious violence, selling and distributing drugs, possessing firearms and offensive weapons, and using intimidation and threatening tactics in pursuit of their criminal activities’. The problem in NZ’s largest city, Auckland, has become so serious that some politicians have called for all gangs to be banned.

The gangs are mainly made up of Maori, Pacific and Polynesian communities who moved in the late 1950s from the
countryside into the newly prospering towns hoping to find jobs and wealth. Instead, many of them claim, they found themselves socially excluded and deprived of the economic growth enjoyed by their white neighbours.

The result was the rise of ethnic-minority gangs that are now linked to drugs, theft, assault, rape and murder. Increasingly, they model themselves on Los Angeles street ‘gangstas’ and adopt the violent, drug-fuelled culture that goes with them.

Largest of the rival Maori-dominated gangs are the Mongrel Mob, Black Power, the Nomads, the Tribesmen and the Stormtroopers. They have similar hierarchical structures, with a president and a sergeant-at-arms leading so-called ‘patched’ members and ‘unpatched’ recruits.

To earn a ‘patch’ (a tattoo or a symbol sewn onto a jacket) a recruit must pass initiation tests ranging from drinking urine from a gumboot to committing a serious crime or even doing another member’s time in jail. This explains the high percentage of gang members behind bars. Forty per cent of inmates at Auckland’s Springhill prison are in a gang. Although only 15 per cent of NZ’s population is Maori, they make up 50 per cent of the prison population.

One of the most violent gangs, the Mongrel Mob, was formed in Hawkes Bay in the late 1960s. Its name originated from comments made by a district judge who described a group of men up in front of him as ‘nothing but a pack of mongrels.’ Their territory is now nationwide, with a network of more than 30 chapters. There is even a branch in Auckland Maximum Security Prison.

Members wear principally red and are recognised by the bandanas they tie around their heavily tattooed faces. The tattoos and matching ‘patches’ often depict a swastika and their
logo is a British Bulldog wearing a German army helmet. They greet each other with a shouted ‘Sieg Heil!’ Indeed, the Mongrel Mob’s ditty runs:

Pitched battles are a weekly occurrence between the Mongrel Mob and their deadly rivals, Black Power, which formed in the capital, Wellington, in the early Seventies. Their ‘patch’ of a closed black fist and the identifying blue scarves are now seen nationwide.

Attacks in recent years have included a gang member shot in the face – the retaliatory assault leaving a man stabbed in the face and another in the spine. Drive-by shooting victims have included a man blasted with a shotgun and a two-year-old child killed in crossfire. Gang sex, termed ‘blocking’, is a particularly vile practice. A teenager was murdered for refusing to have sex with a Mongrel member in 1987. The following year, a young woman was raped by 15 Mongrel Mobsters at one of their conventions.

The growth in drug use is now the most worrying trend, say police. The rituals of gang membership disguise the manufacture of illegal stimulants – particularly smokable methamphetamine (known as ‘P’ or ‘Pure’). Three-quarters of raided laboratories making ‘P’ have been under the control of the gangs. Money from this illegal trade is laundered through legitimate tax-paying businesses such as nightclubs, massage parlours and sports fishing.

Now the growing threat is from Pacific Islands youth gangs as new generations of young islanders distant from home cultures have grouped together. They particularly model themselves on US style ‘gangstas’ and favour rap music, flashy jewellery and expensive cars, paid for by aggravated robbery, drug dealing and intimidation. By 2010 there were reckoned to be more than 50 such gangs with around 1,000 members in South Auckland alone, although many have nebulous memberships and exist for only short periods. In addition to these are the street gangs who mark their neighbourhood presence with graffiti. As their names often form three-letter acronyms, they are referred to by the police as ‘ABC gangs’ – such as Respect Samoan Pride (RSP), Killer Beez (KBZ) and Bud Smoking Thugs (BSTs).

‘These gangs could be much worse than those we’ve seen in the past,’ says sociologist Dr Jarrod Gilbert of the University of Canterbury. ‘They want the trappings of success, the bling, the cars and fancy clothes – but their means to achieve that legitimately are blocked, and that leads inevitably to more profit-driven crime.’

Back in the 1970s, a government initiative had aimed to reduce youth gang recruitment by helping underachieving students make the move from education to employment and by providing recreational activities outside of school. The money pumped into the schemes may or may not have reduced anti-social offending but it ironically raised the standing of some gangs and made them more attractive to young prospects. The Prime Minister of the time, Robert Muldoon, was a strong advocate of these schemes and took a personal interest in the gangs, giving them a status they had not previously enjoyed. Negative publicity resulted in a
sudden decision to close the gang support schemes in 1987 but at Muldoon’s funeral in 1992 the regard for the premier from those quarters was revealed when Black Power members performed a haka in his honour.

Throwing taxpayers’ money at the problem did not seem to work, as seems to have been proved by the growing power of the oldest established of these gangs, the King Cobras, who are heavily armed and were linked to eight murders over a two-year period during the early 2000s. The Cobras are a Central Auckland based gang who originated from an earlier group, the Polynesian Panthers, in the 1970s. Although mainly of island backgrounds, their ranks are not exclusive of other races. The Cobras’ turf stretches from Auckland’s Downtown area to the southern suburbs of Mangere and Papatoetoe.

A mainstay of their business surrounded the New Zealand peculiarity of so-called ‘tinnie’ houses which traditionally sell small amounts of cannabis wrapped in tinfoil, hence their name. Nowadays, however, a variety of other drugs may also be available through them. The houses are frequently run by gangs, using young prospects hoping for membership. If independently run, the ‘tinnies’ are hit with protection-money demands from the gangs. Busy operations are said to produce a daily income of up to $(NZ) 2,000.

In South Auckland in 2003 a notoriously brutal slaying took place at a ‘tinnie’ at Mangere, where a 15-year-old youth, Michael Heremaia, helped run the drugs den, hoping to work his way up to becoming a patched member one day. The teenager is believed to have blown the whistle on some of the senior gang members who had been stealing from the kitty – which is why a group of them visited the house with murder in mind. They were going to teach the boy a lesson – ‘you don’t
nark on patched gang members,’ said the state prosecutor in the subsequent trial at Auckland’s High Court.

The vengeful King Cobras, one of whom had already vowed that he was going to kill someone that night, burst into the house, where they found a man sleeping on a couch, held him down and stabbed him in the chest. When young Michael Heremaia emerged from a bedroom, they turned on him, allowing the first victim to flee. One of the gang then held the boy against a wall while two others stabbed him more than 30 times. The knife went into his neck, his head, his chest and at times plunged right through his body. One of the Cobras, Ofisa Andrew Kopelani, who said he had waited outside in a getaway car until the very end of the slaying, told police that Michael’s last words were: ‘What did I do? What did I do?’

The sale of joints traded from ‘tinnie’ houses was on a small scale compared with the major narcotics business that has made the King Cobras so powerful. In 2009 members of the gang were involved in a multi-million dollar methamphetamine drug ring organised within Auckland maximum-security prison at Paremoremo. According to the summary of a police investigation, the drug trade, which involved both importing and manufacturing, was carried out under the noses of – and sometimes with the assistance of – prison officers, allowing some inmates to make fortunes and at least one allegedly to have become a millionaire.

In July 2010 police intelligence revealed that the King Cobras were tooling up with Tasers and specially silenced pistols in what threatened to become all-out war for control of the drug trade on Auckland’s streets. This new threat brought in the Armed Offenders Squad, who used tear gas in dawn raids on two homes in their hunt for gang member Daniel Vae,
wanted on three arrest warrants. He evaded them but the police uncovered Vae’s patch, his methamphetamine gear, a
Chinese-made
Taser, a bulletproof vest and a specially adapted
semi-automatic
handgun. Vae was arrested a month later and pleaded guilty to possession of the Taser and firearm.

Following the raid, Detective Sergeant Callum McNeill, of Auckland Central’s Organised Crime Unit, warned that the Cobras were increasingly arming themselves, their favoured weapon being a compact semi-automatic. He said: ‘They can be concealed in a normal laptop bag so you could carry them around in the streets of Auckland and no one would know they are there. We are seeing them more and more on the streets. These are .22 rifles bought legally with licences. The crooks are getting their hands on them, taking off the stocks, putting on pistol grips, putting on bigger magazines, and cutting down the barrel and putting on a silencer.’ Detective-sergeant McNeill said the gangsters were also increasingly tooling up with illegal Tasers that had been smuggled into the country from China, adding: ‘We are concerned these guys are armed and ready for action.’

Just how pervasively lawless the New Zealand gangland scene has become was revealed in an Auckland court case in 2012. It ended with four King Cobra members and associates being jailed for kidnapping and assaulting two Asian men after a business arrangement turned sour. During the three-week trial, a jury heard how the underworld saga had begun two years earlier when a Chinese man, known as Han, engaged the King Cobras to track down a debtor, named as Johnson, who owed him $70,000. Han agreed to pay the gang $10,000 for their services.

The Cobras did indeed find their man but Johnson could
not pay Han, so he in turn was unable to pay the Cobras. Han was kidnapped and taken to a house in the Auckland inner suburb of Kingsland, where four of the gang were waiting: Joe Tie, Robert Logo, Ross Romana and Ofisa Andrew Kopelani, the driver in the ‘tinnie’ house slaying of 2003.

Fearing he was going to be tortured, Han rang a friend pretending he was raising the money but, speaking to him in Chinese, he was really calling for help. The friend, Jack Wu, sought out another senior Cobra to act as an intermediary and the pair turned up at the kidnap house. This enraged the gangsters, who punched and kicked Wu and Han. Ross Romana ordered them to pay half of the money the next day while Robert Logo, armed with a knife, threatened to cut off their fingers.

Again pretending to be raising funds from friends, the pair once more managed to raise the alarm. A Chinese speaking police officer called their mobile phones and they were able to explain their predicament and give their location. Police then arrested the men. In a subsequent court case, they were found guilty on multiple charges including kidnapping, blackmail and wounding. Romano, described as the ‘leader of the pack’, received the longest sentence, of six years. Kopelani, whose role in the group was said to be ‘at the lowest end of the spectrum’, was jailed for three.

Despite the involvement of Asians in that last case, Asian gangs have had a relatively small presence in New Zealand. But simply by their ethnic closeness and secretive nature, the full extent of their growth has probably been overlooked. By the late 1980s, police had identified Triad-type gangs – Hong Kong’s Wo Group, Sun Yee On and Malaysia’s Ah Kong – with involvement in drugs, prostitution, fraud, counterfeiting and extortion. A
more recent arrival was the Big Circle Gang from China, who brought with them expertise in protection rackets, extortion, gambling, counterfeiting, kidnapping and drug trading.

Recently law enforcement agencies have detected alliances between the Asian gangs and home-grown gangs offering their services as ‘enforcers’. But it is the introduction of international bikie cults that is likely to prove a more obvious cause of criminal behaviour, mainly inter-gang warfare. In 2011 Rebels Motorcycle Club patches were first sighted on bikies around the North island and the following year the Bandidos formed a chapter in Auckland.

It is this prominent display of gang membership that is often blamed for the public perception of the country as being in the grip of a crime wave. Since the turn of the century, the number of reported crimes has actually dropped, but visible and seemingly unchecked gangsterism has persuaded many New Zealanders to continue to believe that violent crime is out of control. Ministry of Justice statistics claim that the total number of offences in 2012 was the lowest since 1989, and gave the lowest crime rate per head of population since before electronic records were maintained.

A study undertaken for the Justice Ministry back in 2003 found that 83 per cent of New Zealanders held ‘inaccurate and negative views about crime levels in society and wrongly believed’ that crime was increasing. A more recent study in 2009 by Dr Michael Rowe, from Victoria University, found an overwhelming public belief that crime has got worse despite New Zealand’s murder rate dropping by almost half in the previous 20 years. Reflecting the depth of this perception, only 57 per cent of citizens reported feeling ‘safe’. This means that despite New Zealand’s international standing as a peaceful
country with a high level of human development, its inhabitants feel no more secure than citizens of countries like Iran (55 per cent) and Lebanon (56 per cent) and not much safer than those in African countries such as Nigeria and Uganda (both 51 per cent).