How small-time drug crook and swindler Gordon Hamm was killed in a bloody ambush on Nelson bridge
BOXED in by two four-wheel drives on a narrow bridge with a hulking rifle-wielding giant striding towards him, Gordon Hamm surely knew his luck had finally run out.
BOXED in by two four-wheel drives on a narrow bridge with a hulking rifle-wielding giant striding towards him, Gordon Hamm surely knew his luck had finally run out.
Minutes earlier, Hamm had laughed at lingering kangaroos as he smoked from an ice pipe — the fruits of his “change of luck” at the pokies two nights earlier.
Now he froze in terror as the hulking frame of Mark “Fred” Moreland came at him amid the disorienting glare of headlights, while Christopher Tippins and Tai Thorp rounded him up from behind in a planned ambush at 4am on July 17, 2013.
All four men were integral cogs in Mt Gambier’s drug community and dealt and heavily used crystal meth, or ice.
Moreland, Tippins and Thorp are now awaiting sentence after being convicted of manslaughter by a Victorian Supreme Court jury.
In four minutes, Hamm was bashed, apparently shot in the leg then beaten with the butt of a .22 rifle before being bundled into a beaten 4WD driven by Thorp to his as-yet undiscovered grave.
The attack startled fishermen and stirred residents of the tiny hamlet of Nelson, not far from the Victorian-South Australian border, close to where the picturesque Glenelg River flows into the angry Southern Ocean.
Brothers Jacob and Matthew de Hann were drifting off to sleep after a night fishing the river when shouting, followed by a gunshot, pierced the morning silence.
Matthew de Hann said he immediately recognised the shot as being from a .22 rifle.
“From that gunshot, the screaming was basically a constant, terrified scream or a shrill scream as you call it,” he said.
“The screaming was basically constant except for to get the next breath to scream again. It was very loud, it was probably as loud as somebody could scream.”
In a blind panic, Hamm jumped off the bridge onto a picnic area, chased by Tippins and Thorp while Moreland shone a spotlight from above.
Jacob de Hann described hearing a loud, thudding noise, which prosecutors said was Hamm being bludgeoned with the butt of the rifle.
“I heard a buzzing, banging sound and with each bang the screams were getting quieter and quieter, until they got down to almost nothing, and then it stopped,” he said.
He heard a mocking male’s voice asking “where are you going?” before someone said “help get him into the car”.
The 4WDs sped away towards the Victorian border, turning right towards the tiny town of Donavon’s Landing, where a woman heard two vehicles racing past her home just after 4am.
The trial heard that Moreland, 37, Tippins, 30, and Thorp, 22, had conspired to block the car Hamm was a passenger in as he returned over the Nelson bridge after “reloading” on ice in Portland the day before.
They knew when Hamm would arrive, because he was travelling with Samantha Porter, the girlfriend of Tippins’ brother.
Ms Porter told the court her path was blocked by Moreland’s Ford Maverick and as she tried to reverse, slammed into Thorp’s old Mitsubishi Pajero.
She told the court Tippins urged her to “get out of here” as Moreland laid into Hamm with the rifle after he and Tippins dragged him from her car.
Ms Porter was with Gordon Hamm two nights earlier, when he scored $6000 from the pokies at Mt Gambier’s Western Tavern, and word got out to Moreland and Chris Tippins that he was cashed up and on the hunt for more ice.
Hamm, 34, was a small-time drug dealer who constantly broke the rule of not getting high on his own supply — and everyone else’s.
He had the sweet-talking charm of a polished salesman, but none of the business acumen.
Hamm was in deep — way over his head — and the Mt Gambier rumour mill put his debts at anywhere between $45,000 to $140,000. It was money he could never hope to repay.
The debt collectors move in
One of those he owed big money to was decorated local football coach and player, Tim Stringer.
Stringer told the court he initially provided Hamm with $10,000 as “basically a loan with a good interest rate” but admitted he knew the Kiwi would use it to trade ice.
After handing over about $50,000, Stringer said he realised the elusive Hamm was unlikely to ever repay the debt.
“He’d just go missing. He never really had a phone, he’d use other people’s ... so he was a hard man to get in contact with,” Stringer said.
Stringer’s frustration boiled over when Hamm swindled his wife out of their last $1500 and admitted sending him a text that said “you’ve signed your contract”.
Despite the ongoing financial dramas, Stringer said he allowed Hamm and his partner to hide out in a shed at their property when the heat was on.
Weeks before Hamm was killed, Stringer was paid a visit by acquaintance Fred Moreland and Chris Tippins, who he had never met before.
Stringer told the court Hamm’s nickname was “The Eyes” — because of his protruding eyeballs — a feature no doubt accentuated by his rampant meth habit.
Moreland told Stringer: “This is Chris, he’s been scoping out The Eyes. He might be able to try and retrieve, or you know, get back some of your money”.
Stringer said the pair told him they planned to “pay Hamm a visit” and thinking they meant no more than a possible smack to the mouth, he jokingly replied “give him one for me”.
Then, three days later, Stringer received a text message from Moreland which read: “It’s a tiling contractor. Job’s done.”
Stringer freaked out, no doubt spooked by swirling rumours that he was somehow involved, and tried frantically to get in touch with Moreland.
Moreland told him: “I’m telling people you’re not (involved). You’re a good bloke. You’re not one of them kind of people.”
None of the accused gave evidence, but Moreland’s lawyer Theo Kassimatis said while his client admitted abducting Hamm, the last time he and Tippins saw him was when they handed him over, hurt but alive.
Tippins also admitted to taking part in the bridge incident, but said he had nothing to do with Hamm’s actual death, while Thorp denied point blank being at Nelson.
Phone records showing him in constant contact with Moreland before the ambush and his DNA on the rifle were used to disprove his lie.
While Moreland and Tippins exercised their right to silence, Thorp sought out homicide detectives to protest his innocence.
He told them he only knew of Gordon Hamm through the news and Facebook and said: “I think what happened to Gordon is pathetic, disgusting and no amount of money could be worth that.”
Thorp was originally charged with perverting the course of justice but that charge was upgraded to murder once his phone records and DNA were discovered.
No drugs or money were found at the scene, but prosecutors said he was in possession of both when he was kidnapped.
They argued Moreland, Tippins and Thorp had taken their chance at recouping some of their debts, and had at the very least, planned to cause Hamm serious harm.
Bikie rumours and a misinformation campaign
After the disappearance, the Mt Gambier drug community’s rumour mill went viral with theories, including that Hamm owed big bucks to the Finks Motorcycle Club.
However, prosecutors said that story was just that — a fiction designed to pass the blame and to frighten anyone considering talking to police.
Detectives from anti-bikie taskforces in SA and Victoria both told the jury they found no intelligence that Hamm or any of the accused had any connection with the Finks.
Det Snr Sgt Wayne Cheeseman told the court if an outlaw motorcycle gang wanted to murder someone, it would be carried out by members or nominees and not by outsiders such as Moreland, Tippins and Thorp.
One of those who spoke of the alleged Finks drug debt was Hamm’s mate and fellow drug dealer Ricky Noonan.
Hamm and Noonan would smoke a gram a day, a wildly addictive and expensive habit at up to $800 a gram.
Noonan told the court Hamm was upfront about his spiralling drug debts.
“He would buy drugs off other people to sell so he could try and make money and pay older debts to people he had previously scored from,” Noonan said.
He told the court Hamm had bought an ounce of ice for $10,000 on credit from the Finks Motorcycle Club.
“Gordon was telling me about the debt he had with the Finks and said that in a couple of weeks they were back, I don’t know whether that meant they were coming back for the money or for him,” he said.
Noonan testified he was at home about 5am on the morning of the incident when a clearly agitated Chris Tippins appeared on security cameras monitoring the home.
Tippins threatened to “blow the f---ing door in” before telling Noonan that he and Moreland had been paid $5000 each to hand over Hamm to someone he owed drug money to.
“I asked, where was Gordon, was he dead or alive? ... That’s when he said to me that ‘I daresay that you won’t be seeing him again’.”
Another woman and drug user, whose name was suppressed, told the court Tippins had arrived at her house on July 23 — two days before he and Moreland were arrested and charged with murder.
“He was frantic ... he looked a mess. He looked pale, he was fidgety, he was just pacing up and down,” she said.
The woman said Tippins told her that “Gordon was being stubborn and they had to shoot him in the leg” before scoffing at rumours Hamm was last seen floating down the Glenelg River.
Where is the body?
Whatever transpired after the vehicles sped away from Nelson, Gordon Hamm’s body has never been found, despite aerial and ground searches and divers scouring local sinkholes.
Police believe the body could be somewhere in the dense pine forest near where Thorp’s burnt-out car was found three months later, close to the Princess Margaret Rose Cave.
In her closing address to the jury, Crown prosecutor Michele Williams QC said the motive was simple — “money, drugs ... greed”.
Ms Williams said the level of violence meant all three accused must have known they would at least cause serious harm.
“I mean have a look at Moreland. He’s a big bloke, he’s huge. You imagine that if he’s slamming a rifle butt down, you might imagine they were fairly serious whacks,” she said.
“Of course there isn’t a ‘hey come with us, we’re going to take you to the bikies’ story. Oh no, violence is inflicted immediately. Gun pointed, hands and knees violence inflicted.”
Ms Williams said the jury could find the burning of Thorp’s car showed a consciousness of guilt and urged the jury to find all three guilty of murder.
However, defence counsel said that given Hamm’s body has never been found, it was plausible the trio had handed him over to a third party.
The jury eventually returned a verdict of not guilty of murder, but guilty of manslaughter.
All three languish inside Victorian prisons awaiting sentence and will face court again next month.
Whether Gordon Hamm’s family in New Zealand are ever able to lay him to rest in a proper burial remains a mystery that likely lies somewhere amid the pines near the SA-Victorian border.