Qld bikie crimes: Most infamous incidents caught in public
The bad blood between Queensland bikie gangs has long been simmering but it becomes truly terrifying when it spills on to the streets. SPECIAL REPORT
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Queensland’s reputation as a hotbed for simmering bikie tensions has grown over the years.
Former superintendent Jim Keogh, who led the bikie-busting police team the Rapid Action Patrol (RAP) squad from 2013-15, told News Corp in 2021 of his ongoing concerns about gang violence.
“The bikies are as prevalent now as they have ever been,” he said.
Here are some of the terrifying bikie incidents to have played out very publicly in Queensland in recent years, sparking fresh calls for change.
Tugun exhibition shooting
The relative anonymity of bikies changed in 1996.
Bikies were known to be on the Gold Coast but they were out of the public eye until a motorcycle exhibition at the Tugun Seahawks Rugby League Club in November 1996 became the scene of a shooting.
Black Uhlans associate Sean Jones shot fellow club members Richard McKenna and Steve ‘Bam Bam’ Zaicov McKenna because of a domestic dispute.
The shots left both men with serious injuries and Zarkoff was restricted to a wheelchair.
A court heard when McKenna started a relationship with Jones’s former de facto wife there was bad blood between the two men.
When media crews turned up to cover the event enraged bikies attacked them. Cameramen had tape ripped from their video cameras, death threats were given to any media trying to enter the club and Channel 9 reporter Jo Shoebridge was chased from the scene by a carload of bikies.
Jones was charged with two counts of attempted murder and possession of a concealable weapon.
A year later his attempted murder charges were dropped and he was found guilty of grievous bodily harm and was sentenced to five years’ jail.
The mystery behind Sid Collins
The former president of Victorian bikie gang the Outlaws and later a member of the Black Uhlans, Sid Collins is still on the missing person’s register after not returning to his Gold Coast home in September 2002.
Collins was last seen driving his black 2001 Falcon XR8 ute in late August of 2002, heading to northern NSW from the Gold Coast.
His son reported him missing on September 1, 2002 and Collins’ ute was found the next day more than 100km away near Tabulam.
Notorious bikie and author Mark ‘Chopper’ Reed shot Collins in the stomach in 1992, leading to an eight year sentence in Hobart’s Risdon Prison for attempted murder.
Reed claimed in an interview with 60 Minutes – which aired in October 2013 after Reed’s death – that he killed Collins in 2002 for telling police about the 1992 incident and buried his body near a football oval in Casino.
Despite the confession police still doubted Reed’s comments and are still investigating Collins’ whereabouts.
The Ballroom Blitz
It was a bikie brawl Queensland had never seen the likes of before.
A kickboxing contest in the ballroom at the Royal Pines Resort turned into a bloodbath when more than 40 Finks members approached opposition gang the Hell Angles.
Former Fink Christopher Hudson, who had patched over to the Hells Angels, was targeted but the all-in brawl resulted in five men taken to hospital from being shot or stabbed.
More than 1500 people watched in horror as the violence erupted, with the hundreds of people fleeing the scene screaming or hiding under tables, including a Sydney teenager, who was also shot in the foot while under a table.
Finks bikie Shane Bowden, who was killed in a street slaying in Pimpama in 2020, shot Hudson in the back and jaw and was sentenced to six years’ jail for his role in the incident.
Hudson’s former friend and Finks leader Nick ‘The Knife’ Forbes was handed an 18-month sentence for assault from the event.
Hudson had his charge of affray dropped based on lack of evidence but a year later was behind bars for life following a separate incident in Melbourne when he shot and killed a man and wounded two others.
Robina shopping centre shooting
The Ballroom Blitz saw bikies brawl in a public space but the Robina shooting in April 2012 was perhaps the most prominent case of bikies bringing their wars to an open arena.
The incident occurred at the Robina Town shopping centre when an argument between Mongol bikie Mark Graham and rival bikie Jacques Teamo from the Bandidos broke out.
CCTV footage of the incident that has been released shows the men confronting each other before Graham pulls a gun on Teamo and shoots him in the arm and an innocent bystander Kathy Devitt was shot in the hip.
Graham was arrested for the event two days later trying to enter Melbourne and faced court for attempted murder and unlawful wounding.
His case that he acted in self defence because Teamo threatened him with a knife was dismissed and Graham was sentenced to 12 years in jail.
Former bikie’s final meeting
Ex-Comanchero bikie Shane Ross was found dead at a Tallebudgera Park in October 2019.
According to Ross’s wife, the father-of-three had turned a new leaf and had left his bikie life behind him.
Despite his change in life, the former bikie and his friend and Monstr clothing business partner Cameron Martin were killed.
Ross was 36 when he was found dead with gunshot wounds from two different guns.
Nathan Miller, Brodie Singh and Garry Brush were all charged with the pair’s murder.
In January 2022, a more than two-week committal hearing was told of Mr Ross’s movements leading up to his death.
On March 11, Magistrate John McInnes discharged Brush of the two murder charges.
A week later he did the same for Miller and Singh, ruling there was not enough evidence for trial.
Three jailed over fatal Coast stabbing
Bandidos bikie Max Waller died in June 2013 after suffering six 7-11cm deep wounds to his chest and arms after a fight on the Gold Coast.
Waller was high on ice when he was fatally stabbed during a fight with fellow bikies.
The 28-year-old’s body was found outside Broadbeach’s Carmel by the Sea building on June 23, 2013.
Finks bikies Wade Yates-Taui, 25, and Benjamin Thomas Mortimer, 30, and non-bikie co-accused Cohen Andrew Smith, 24, were originally charged with the murder.
A court heard in November 2017 that Mortimer, who’s a professional martial arts fighter, brought a steak knife from a friend’s apartment before going to the fight.
He was sentenced to nine years and six months’ jail for manslaughter with parole eligible after four years and six months have been served.
Yates-Taui was sentenced to seven years and six months’ jail for manslaughter and was eligible for parole after serving two years and three months of the sentence.
Smith was sentenced to eight years’ jail for manslaughter but will be eligible for parole after four years.
Broadbeach Brawl brings on crackdown
It was the event that changed it all.
The brawl between about 60 Bandidos and two Fink associates in Broadbeach brought the toughest anti-bikie laws Australia has seen.
Bandidos bikie Jacques Teamo pulled together club members to approach two Finks associates, including former pro boxer Jason Trouchet, at the Aura lounge bar in September 2013.
It was later revealed in court to be over Trouchet’s ex-girlfriend who was dating Teamo.
Police swarmed the Broadbeach bar and arrested a number of Bandido bikies.
Disgruntled members then went to Southport police station, demanding the release of their fellow Bandidos who had been arrested during the brawl.
Initially 18 “former” Bandidos pleaded guilty to charges including riot, affray, public nuisance and assault and obstruct police but all walked free from court in August 2015 with suspended jail sentences, fines and in one case a good behaviour bond.
A year later police appealed the sentences of five members involved in the brawl and had all sentences increased, including Teamo’s four-month suspended jail sentence stretched to 13 months wholly suspended and former Bandidos president Adam White having his four months wholly suspended jail sentence increased to 12 months wholly suspended.
The event led to the LNP Government bringing in the Vicious Lawless Association Disestablishment (VLAD) laws in 2013 making huge penalties for crimes by gang members and criminalising people wearing club attire.
Eight Mile Plains chaos
Bogdan Cuic, a scary Serb with links to the Bandidos, had to be extradited after fleeing the country when police charged him with murder.
But after years of investigations, detectives got their man and personally escorted him home from Serbia in 2016.
In November, 2018 he pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter, claiming he accidentally shot another man during a botched $17,000 cocaine deal.
Cuic was jailed for nine-and-a-half-years for the killing of Jei “Jack” Lee at Eight Mile Plains in April, 2012.
A court heard Lee had been dining with friends and was leaving a shopping centre restaurant when he was shot in the head in the car park.
His co-accused, Marko Cokara, who went with Cuic to the drug deal, was also sentenced to eight years in prison for manslaughter.
The day after the shooting, Cuic left Australia and was tracked by police through Asia before being nabbed in Serbia.
Regional battlefield
The day Mackay was a bikie battlefield has become one of the regions ‘where were you’ moments.
August 31, 1997 was the day the tension of two bikie groups, the Odin’s Warriors and the Outlaws, spilt over and Mackay went into a lockdown.
According to investigators at the time, a possible confrontation had been brewing for weeks until a group of Odin’s Warriors rode past the Outlaws’ clubhouse, known as the ‘Round House’, and stopped at a nearby hotel.
Soon after stopping, a truck was driven from the Round House, straight across Barnes Creek Road and into the Odin’s Warriors members.
Immediately after the crash there were shots fired, with as many as 40 rounds fired from different types of weapons.
Officers were called in for overtime, while every available detective in the district, including from Moranbah and the Whitsundays, were involved.
The investigation that followed was “extremely frustrating”, as all 53 bikies from the two clubs adopted a ‘code of silence’.
Despite 53 people being arrested and charged with causing an affray, no one was found guilty in the ensuing court case.
Three stabbed in Burleigh Park
Mystery still surrounds the triple stabbing outside of a Burleigh Heads restaurant involving men with alleged ties to the Mongols bikie gang.
The incident was one of four acts of violence allegedly by bikies on the last weekend of November 2021. Police have since revealed the incidents were not related.
“Investigations continue into the November 2021 incident with no arrest or charges. It is believed the victims were associated with the Mongols Outlaw Motorcycle Gang,” police said in a statement.
It’s understood phones were seized over the incident. Investigations are ongoing.
Upper Coomera ‘bikie’ shooting
After being shot eight times former MMA fighter Gokhan Turkyilmaz wrote to social media taunting his attackers: “I’ve had harder sparring sessions”.
The then-Rebel’s bikie then posted a photo of himself drinking a beer.
Turkyilmaz, 33, was shot up to eight times and bashed with a baseball bat by a group of balaclava-clad men who stormed his Upper Coomera home in February 2019, according to reports at the time.
Police were then investigating whether it was a “get back” for a shooting at the Logan Hyperdome shopping centre earlier that month, in which it is alleged members of the Logan chapter of the Rebels ambushed members of the Beenleigh chapter of the Bandidos.
Police have not discounted this theory, it’s understood.
Five months after the shooting, sources said a bikie code of silence was holding back an investigation into the incident.
“Investigations are ongoing and no charges have been laid,” police told News Corp almost three years on from the attack.
Mystery gunshot wound
Police are still investigating the shooting of a man linked to the Finks.
The 26-year-old was injured in a mystery shooting on the final weekend of November 2021. He presented to Gold Coast University Hospital with a non-life threatening gunshot wound to the left arm.
Police are investigating the shooting of a man allegedly linked to the Finks bikie gang.
At the time police initially believed the shooting occurred in Southport but the man – who detectives say has links to the Finks Outlaw Motorcycle Gang – was refusing to help investigators.
It was later revealed he was charged with drug offences after an early morning bust by police days after the shooting.
Logan Hyperdome Shooting
Rebels Logan chapter sergeant-at-arms Lucas James Pain was in July 2021 sentenced to 13 years’ prison for a brazen attack on Bandidos member Harley Cranston in broad daylight at the busy shopping centre.
He opened fire in a terrifying incident in February, 2019 after planning to ambush Cranston during a meeting at a restaurant.
Pain was sentenced to six years’ jail for the attack. He also became the first person in Queensland to be slapped with a mandatory cumulative seven-year jail term for the serious organised crime circumstance of aggravation, due to his outlaw-motorcycle-gang links.
It means Pain will be forced to serve a minimum of 11 years of the 13-year sentence behind bars.
CCTV vision showed Cranston running to his car, where he pulled out a machete before jumping out of the way of a vehicle driving on the wrong side of the road outside the shopping centre.
He was then shot in the leg and ran back through the centre brandishing the machete, his leg streaming with blood, fleeing the wrong way up escalators and past shocked families with children.
Cooly Rocks On Festival
In June, 2013 ex-NRL player turned Finks bikie Anthony Watts and others were arrested over a brawl at the Cooly Rocks On festival on the Gold Coast.
The wild weekend street brawl occurred between Finks and Nomads bikies at Coolangatta.
Shocked festivalgoers, including women with prams and children, were forced to take cover as the brawling bikies wrestled over the top of classic cars and bashed each other with cafe furniture.
Watts, who was charged with affray, was later sentenced to community service.
Finks members Clint Harris, Leslie Andrew Markham, Billy Raymond Thomas, Grant Gavin, Clarence Joseph Kercher and Martin Hannken pleaded guilty in Southport Magistrates Court to affray and were fined or given community service.
Smoothie Bar brawl
Diners at the Smoothie Shack, including children, ducked for cover as bikies hurled tables and chairs during five minutes of mayhem at the Gold Coast bar in 2013.
The brawl was believed to have been a showdown between rival Hells Angels and Finks bikies.
Car park stabbing
In June 2020 ex-Black Uhlans bikie Stephen Edward Smith, 34, was sentenced for stabbing a millionaire businessman in a Gold Coast park.
The ex-bikie was heard telling someone to “take care of my wife and kids” moments before he stabbed Paul Picone at the Mudgeeraba Sports field in August, 2018, a court was told.
Smith arranged for the meeting after seeing Mr Picone send a sexually suggestive message to Smith’s wife on Snapchat, the court heard.
Judge Katherine McGinness sentenced Smith to four years’ prison for grievous bodily harm and assault occasioning bodily harm.
She said she accepted Smith was suffering from bipolar disorder, which would have affected his ability to control his reactions.
“When you stabbed him he was on the ground and essentially defenceless,” she said.
“The use of a knife was serious because it had the capacity to cause even more damage.”
Originally published as Qld bikie crimes: Most infamous incidents caught in public
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