Far North bikies: The men behind the region’s gangs and crimes
Bikie gangs and their propensity for crime have been a part of life in the Far North for decades. Here are some of the region’s bikies who found themselves on the wrong side of the law. SEE THE LIST
Cairns
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BIKIE gangs and their propensity for crime have been a part of life in the Far North for decades.
Here are some of the Far North’s bikies who found themselves on the wrong side of the law.
The Bandidos murder
JASON Tyler’s brutal death at the hands of his Bandidos bikie gang club mates in the early hours of August 20, 1995, shocked the Far North.
A drug dealer and bouncer at the End of the World nightclub in Cairns, that night Tyler had been lured to the Bandidos clubhouse in Collins Avenue, Edge Hill.
He was shot five times through the legs, before the killers stuffed a sock into his mouth and bashed him.
His offence? The courts were never fully satisfied of what he had done to earn the violent retribution of the gang.
But they did note that members of the Bandidos club maintaned a “code of silence” and carried out revenge against those who contravened it.
First, his body was thrown over a cliff near Port Douglas, but later retrieved and buried in a shallow grave in scrubland on the Rex Range.
Three of Tyler’s gang members were jailed over the slaying — with one committing suicide in prison before going to trial.
Michael Anthony Rousetty, 35, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Sydney man Grant Clear was found dead in his prison cell before going to trial.
Another man, charged as an accessory after the crime, David Houghton, also spent time in prison.
Former Cairns chapter president Peter Klarfeld was given full immunity from prosecution, after leading detectives to the burial site three years after the killing and providing evidence to police about the murder.
Mr Klarfeld told the murder trial in the Cairns Supreme Court in August 1999 how he confronted Bandidos sergeant-at-arms Rousetty, at the clubhouse on the afternoon after the murder took place.
Mr Klarfeld said Rousetty told him the beating had got out of hand after Mr Tyler fought back.
Rousetty and Houghton were first convicted of murder in August 1999, before they both appealed.
In Rousetty’s case, a mistrial was ordered, while Houghton was found not guilty of murder, but guilty of accessory after a crime.
In August 2002, Rousetty was found guilty of murder and jailed for life.
His appeal against that conviction was knocked back in January 2003.
The Cassowary Coast connection
At the time, it was heralded as one of the most successful police operations of its kind.
A sting two years in the making culminated in 10 Bandidos club members and associates being jailed in August 2001.
At the helm of the operation was president of the club’s Cairns chapter Maxwell Patrick Geary, who was initially sentenced to 12 years in jail for his role in controlling the large drug operation which covered Mission Beach, Tully, and other areas, in the late 1990s.
Geary operated a Mission Beach tattoo shop at which the drug deals took place, although no drugs were found on the premises.
Appealing his convictions, Geary was able to shave two years off his jail term, bringing it down to 10 years.
But while serving time in Lotus Glen Correctional Centre, Geary cooked up a plan to have a fellow inmate steal for him.
“I’ll have a four-wheel-drive and a jetski”, Geary told the inmate while the pair chatted in the jail kitchen back in 2011, the Cairns District Court heard.
The man delivered when he was released from jail, stealing two jetskis.
Geary was eventually given a 12 month suspended sentence for that offending, which also included unlawfully possessing a .32 calibre Savage pistol.
It was during that case in April 2014 that the court heard Geary had severed all ties with the Bandidos and was no longer a member.
He was in the process of rebuilding his life and operating a successful Cassowary Coast contracting business with at least 25 employees.
But it wasn’t to be.
On the afternoon of April 21, 2016, Geary was driving in heavy rain on the Palmerston Highway when he lost control of his vehicle and it rolled down an embankment.
A 22-year-old passenger managed to crawl from the wreckage and wave down a passing motorist for help, but Geary was later pronounced dead at the scene.
He was 52.
A Rebel and two Poles
For about nine weeks in 2017, Gokhan “Pitbull” Turkyilmaz flew between Bali, Cairns, Townsville and Sydney, debt collecting for the methylamphetamine trafficking business being run by Polish father and son Wieslaw and Bryan Stasiak.
The Rebels bikie member paid himself a “wage” of just over $16,000 for his efforts, and the Cairns District Court rewarded him with a six-year jail term.
The Stasiaks are both currently serving lengthy jail terms for drug trafficking, after they pleaded guilty in mid-2020.
The trio allegedly made the deal while watching the welterweight world title fight between Jeff Horn and Manny Pacquiao at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane during July 2017.
Turkyilmaz pleaded guilty in January 2020 to drug trafficking, cannabis possession and contravening an order.
Justice Jim Henry sentenced him to six years’ jail, plus a further six months for refusing to allow police to access his phone, with a parole eligibility date in December 2021.
While his case progressed through the courts, Turkyilmaz, who is also an MMA fighter, was shot eight times when a group of up to five masked men stormed his Upper Coomera house in March 2019.
Turkyilmaz, 33, taunted his attackers on social media after being released from Gold Coast University Hospital.
“Shot eight times, will take more than that to put me away,” he captioned a Snapchat video.
“I’ve had harder sparring sessions. I’m alive and well.”
The life and times of Damien Squizy Van Taarling
From relatively low level offending back in 2009, Damien Squizy Van Taarling went on to become a sergeant-at-arms for the Bandidos outlaw motorcycle gang.
At the age of 23, Damien Squizy Van Taarling was fined $500 for possessing two ecstasy tablets which the Cairns Magistrates Court heard had been purchased from a backpacker.
He was also fined $300 for stealing, after being found with a stolen mobile phone he said he found at a nightclub, and $250 for possessing a restricted item – an extendible police baton.
Fast-forward to 2018 and the former Bandidos sergeant-at-arm’s Kallangur home was raided, where police found $70,000 of the drug ice in a load of dirty washing.
Van Taarling had previously served time in jail in Cairns for drug-related offending.
In July 2019, the former Cairns resident was sentenced for possessing the $70,000 in methylamphetamine and weapons offences in the Brisbane Supreme Court to eight years in prison.
Justice Martin Burns said Van Taarling’s father was murdered when Van Taarling was a toddler and that the former Shepparton resident had experienced violence and homelessness as a youngster.
“You have had a difficult history – you have experienced much tragedy and suffering in your early life,” Justice Martin said.
“You have for a long time struggled with drug addiction and for a long time given into the temptation to serious drug offending.
“You have a long way to go in your rehabilitation – there is much more work to be done.
“You need to become determined to live a life away from drugs.”
He was to be eligible for parole in October 2021, were it not for an alleged incident at the low security Lotus Glen Correctional Centre camp on the outskirts of Innisfail in May.
A joint probe was launched by the Queensland Corrective Service’s investigation unit and police after Van Taarling and a second 37-year-old prisoner were allegedly found with the phones in the prison.
The pair were subsequently returned to the high security facility at Mareeba.
They have both been charged with dealing with prohibited things and contravening an order about device information from a digital service.
Van Taarling’s matters have been listed for mention on August 30 in the Innisfail Magistrates Court.
Emil Tangaroa
A former “baby bikie” involved in the infamous 2014 Broadbeach brawl which sparked the then-Newman Government’s harsh bikie laws, Emil Tangaroa was quickly back on the radar of police as one of three bikies arrested over a violent home invasion in Atherton in January 2015.
Tangaroa and his co-accused bashed and demanded cash and drug contacts from a man while another accomplice stood over the victim’s 13-year-old son.
Cairns Supreme Court judge Jim Henry slammed the attack as “despicable and cowardly’’.
“They were real tough guys doing this in front of the man’s son, real heroes,” he said.
In August 2016, Tangaroa was sentenced to four years’ jail after pleading guilty to extortion and assault occasioning bodily harm while armed or in company.
In April 2019, Tangaroa was arrested by Border Force officials at Lotus Glen Correctional Centre after being released on parole.
He was deported back to his native New Zealand, leaving his fiance and three children behind.
Shane Dennis Oien
He moved to Mission Beach in 2014 at the height of the then-Newman government’s crackdown on bikies, but convicted killer and ex-bikie Shane Dennis Oien didn’t stay for long.
A police raid of his rented Mission Beach shed in June 2014 allegedly uncovered more than $400,000 worth of methamphetamines, four firearms, and tainted property worth more than $1 million.
The offences led then-immigration minister Scott Morrison to ask for answers on how Oien had remained in Australia.
British-born Oien first arrived under another name in the 1990s after serving time in New Zealand for manslaughter and had been kicked out of Australia three times at that point.
In late 2015, Oien was deported for a fourth time without being dealt with over the Queensland charges.
Border Protection confirmed Oien, who had repeatedly slipped into Australia via New Zealand, was “voluntarily removed’’ back to the UK in November of 2015.
His assets were seized by police and auctioned off as proceeds of crime.
Originally published as Far North bikies: The men behind the region’s gangs and crimes
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