From gun cyclist to a life of crime: Adelaide bikie Shane Bowden’s sad path

Once an accomplished cyclist admitted to the AIS, Shane Bowden’s real dream was to take his criminal career from Adelaide to the national stage. It finally ended in a hail of bullets on Sunday night.

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Former Adelaide bikie Shane Bowden was the main antagonist in one of the most notorious rival bikie gang incidents of the last 20 years, but it was likely his own club murdered him in an act of petty revenge.

Once an accomplished cyclist admitted to the Australian Institute of Sport, the career criminal specialising in drugs and violence spent most of the past two decades in custody.

Tipping the scales at 120kg and built like a weightlifter, Bowden became a fearsome enforcer in the bikie community since he entered the crime world in Adelaide in around 1994.

He left SA in the early 2000s, already with a string of convictions, to pursue a national crime career. He had already assaulted police, been caught carrying an offensive weapon and faced drug charges.

Bowden, 47, was found dead on Sunday night outside his home in Pimpama, on the northern Gold Coast. He had been shot dead in an execution-style murder while his new partner and two small children were inside.

Bowden cut his teeth in Adelaide’s bikie underworld as the SA tough-on-crime era under former premier Mike Rann took off. Bikie gangs were a favourite vote winner for the Rann opposition, who personally announced he would drive a bulldozer through bikie fortresses in Adelaide.

Police at the scene of Shane Bowden’s murder. Picture: Annette Dew

Bowden craved a national career and moved from state to state as tough bikie laws forced gangs to be more mobile. Over the last 20 years he divided his life of crime between SA, the Gold Coast and Melbourne, although spending most of it looking at the ceiling of jail cells in Victoria and Queesland.

The cause of his demise is thought to go back to a long and tangled history with the Finks and Mongols gangs, and Bowden’s attempt to establish power in the latter in recent months.

When based in Adelaide Bowden was a senior figure in the Finks Motorcycle Club, but during his latest stint in custody he was backed by the Mongols, via their Brothers Behind Bars support program.

On release from Loddon Prison near Castlemaine in June, Bowden was met by a contingent of Mongols. They travelled in convoy pm bikes from Melbourne to central Victoria on bikes with a stretch limo to collect him.

But whatever joy he was greeted with went cold as he tried to reassert his power within the gang, which is believed to have caused internal ructions.

Just weeks after the flashy exit, Bowden was attacked in a drive-by shooting at Epping and hit by a bullet in the lower body.

Last night’s murder was a culmination of the ensuing turmoil in the gang, and an inglorious end for one of the most violent men in the bikie underworld.

Bowden was one of the main players in the infamous “Ballroom Blitz” brawl on the Gold Coast in 2006 during a kickboxing match, not prominent because of its death or injury toll, but the emergence of graphic live vision on pay-per-view and replayed at his trial.

Maintaining his Adelaide links, where family still live, SA police through its Operation Avatar bike task force, had caught wind of the Bowden plot to disrupt the Hells Angels event.

They tipped off Queensland police, who despite stopping the Finks contingent on arrival, found no weapons during a search and were forced to accept the version of events that they were on a Gold Coast ‘holiday’.

Bikie Shane Bowden was killed in Queensland in the early hours of Monday morning. .

Shane Bowden. Picture: Supplied

Days later, they were involved in a brawl which shocked the nation and Bowden had the national profile he craved in the subsequent nationwide manhunt.

It was the first major incident between gangs to be played out in public since the Milpera massacre in 1984, after which rivals had settled their differences in private.

Bowden had only been released from jail a few months earlier after a stint for inflicting grievous bodily harm.

The blitz fight was supposed to be in the ring but the battle raged across the room in front of an 1800-strong crowd, sparking fears of an ongoing bikie war.

Members and associates of the Hells Angels were sitting ringside at the tournament when the large group of rival Finks including Bowden and Nicholas “The Knife” Forbes arrived.

The incident provided the Australian public with the best visual insight into the animalistic brutality of bike gangs, as some fighters were beaten repeatedly despite having given up.

Bowden was filmed shooting Finks defector Christopher Wayne Hudson in the face and back.

Forbes then held Hudson against the ring while Bowden and another man rained more blows on him.

Bowden had travelled with other Finks members to Queensland as part of a national manhunt for Hudson, which culminated in the massive brawl.

The Finks were dispatched with the instructions to remove a full-size tattoo of the club’s colours from Hudson’s back with acid and paint scrapers.

In September 2008, Bowden and Forbes were sentenced to six and a half years’ and 18 months’ prison respectively for their roles in the melee, which took place in front of 1800 shocked spectators and caused $10,000 worth of damage.

After being released from prison, Bowden patched over to the Mongols and fled Queensland for Victoria following the introduction of the Newman Government’s tough new anti-bikie laws.

Police at the murder scene in Pimpama where notorious bikie Shane Bowden was shot to death in his driveway. Picture Glenn Hampson

Bowden was jailed again in 2015 after being convicted over a violent aggravated burglary in South Yarra.

He burst into the property with fitness model Janet “Aysen” Campbell and attacked two people inside.

Dressed in camouflage gear, wearing night-vision goggles and brandishing a knife, he kicked one victim in the head and stomped on his face before being given $700.

Bowden’s spell inside made headlines in 2017 when raunchy photos of a female prison guard were found in his cell at maximum security Port Phillip Prison.

A corruption probe was launched after the pictures were found by Corrections Victoria staff.

The officer in the images was suspended and later resigned.

Bowden’s latest brush with the law came with a whimper as a covidiot, not at the end of a gun.

He made headlines last month when he was charged by Gold Coast police for alleged COVID-19 breaches.

He was charged with giving false and misleading documents under the Public Health Act, with police alleging he lied on his border declaration pass.

Ironically, his final encounter with the law also ended in a swipe at an ambiguous COVID form by the magistrate.