Jade and Dionne Lacey: The drug pusher bad boys who shot and bullied their lives away

CRIME SPECIAL: FLUSH with money and influence, the Lacey brothers had the world at their feet. But they were bullies and drug pushers with a mean streak that led to their downfall in a spectacular way.

Ken Lacey used his fortune from a Melbourne milk run to buy up big on the Gold Coast, including a brothel, called Club Lace, which eventually closed its doors in 2012.

JADE Lacey put his gun to his victim’s head. Owen Matthews had already dug his own grave, and was kneeling in it, waiting for his executioner to squeeze the trigger.

They’d motored to the sand island in a rubber dinghy in the middle of the night — Lacey, his younger brother Dionne, and Matthews. The Lacey brothers had been ripped off in a drug deal and someone had to pay, and pay up. They blamed Matthews, and told him that he was going to die that night.

Matthews had no doubt they were serious — the crazed brothers were detached from reality, living the lyrics of a rap song. Preparing for the end as he was marched across the island, Matthews had dropped parts of his broken Medicare card on the ground so that one day it might lead to the discovery of his body. Dionne threw him a shovel and told him to dig. When Matthews was done, he was told to kneel in the dirt with his hands behind his head, like they do in the gangster movies. Jade stood above him and fired, three times. Click. Click. Click. The gun didn’t go off.

It was April 2007 and Jade, 24, and Dionne, 20, were runaway trains and they were about to derail. They could have had university degrees and been in high paying corporate careers. Instead, they were just high. They had the flash designer suits, but not the jobs.

Their dad, Ken Lacey, had made more than enough money to last several generations, turning a Melbourne milk route into a multi-million dollar fortune. When people asked how he did it, he said he never took a backward step — when rivals tried to muscle him, he’d muscle them back, harder.

Ken Lacey used his fortune from a Melbourne milk run to buy up big on the Gold Coast, including a brothel, called Club Lace, which eventually closed its doors in 2012.

In early retirement, flush with cash from selling his milk distribution network, Ken landed on the Gold Coast in a big way, making a splash in the property market and in the media when he bought into the richest strip of real estate in the state, Hedges Avenue. His sons had their own money-making route, but instead of pints of milk the brothers dropped off pills.

Jade, aka rapper Lace Italiano, thought he was going to hit the big time on the US music scene. He looked the part, with ripped abs and bulging biceps. He had some assistance — he kept getting busted with steroids. But it was hard to shake the rich white boy image when his dad went public about supporting his boy financially while he pursued his dreams of being a rapper. An indignant Jade told anybody who’d listen that he made his own way and was the real deal, not some plastic gangster. He liked to boast that if you bought drugs on the coast, the bags and pills would have his prints all over them. On the glitzy Gold Coast, where drugs in clubs are as abundant as waves on beaches, it was a big call.

When the US music career didn’t pan out, Lace Italiano became plain old Jade again and went back to building his rap sheet with Dionne, who was four years younger and a school dropout. They’d been running riot for years. Jade had punched a hairdresser in an argument over his girlfriend’s haircut.

Jade Lacey, aka rapper Lace Italiano, thought he was going to hit the big time on the US music scene. He certainly looked the part. Instead he ended up in prison

The brothers were almost permanently armed. When someone gave Dionne some attitude at Jupiters Casino in 2005, he lifted his shirt to reveal a handgun tucked into his trousers. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with,” said the then-18-year-old.

The brothers were also almost permanently off their face. Life for Jade and Dionne, friends say, was a drug haze. They’d binge on everything they could lay their hands on, and with their money and connections they could get anything they wanted. Most of the time, they had no idea what they were doing, as one long bender merged into the next. Their drug trafficking network, flogging off ecstasy, cocaine and cannabis to hordes of customers, dated back to at least 2006. Being high and keeping track of who owed what was hard to manage, so they kept a “tick list” in a Versace shoebox.

Police were on to them and searched the properties they used, finding a gun silencer, ecstasy tablets, cannabis, a pill press, steroids and ammunition. It was a trouble-prone business. One of the men they supplied had hidden the drugs in a drain, and the package was washed away in heavy rain — he’d have to pay the brothers back when he saved earned enough as a tiler.

Then came the drug rip-off involving Matthews — the beginning of the end. It was meant to be a straightforward trade of 500 ecstasy tablets, supplied by the Lacey brothers, for three pounds of marijuana, supplied by another dealer. Instead, the ecstasy was stolen. Jade and Dionne blamed Matthews and, luring him to a house, laid into him with baseball bats. Jade pulled out his gun and fired at Matthews, but the bullet didn’t hit him. It was the first escape for Matthews, who was bundled into a car and driven around to try to find $13,000 to repay them.

On the way, they stopped off at the home of another man involved in the rip-off, and trigger-happy Jade fired shots there too. From there it was over to Brown Island, where Matthews dug his own grave in the moonlight. He tried to protest — “If I’m going to die I’d rather not dig” — and was punched in the face. He finished digging, knelt and heard a gunshot. There was a pain to the side of his head, but he was alive. That was when, for theatrics, Jade put his gun to his head and squeezed the trigger three times, without a bullet being fired.

Jade Lacey in cuffs after the brothers gave themselves up via their lawyer, Chris Nyst

Dionne Lacey after the brothers turned themselves in over Kevin Palmer’s murder

Matthews wasn’t getting off yet. Here, Jade gave him the choice of a body part to be shot. Matthews chose his foot, but it would have made for an awkward walk back to the boat, so Jade shot him in the hand, according to Matthews’ account to police.

Matthews phoned his mum and told her he needed $50,000 — the debt had gone up. She called the police.

Back at their unit, the Lacey brothers handcuffed Matthews to a cupboard in a laundry while they waited to see if the money would lob in his bank account. There was no rest for the wicked, and Jade and Dionne had another job to do. This time, with Matthews still locked up in their unit, it was the brothers behind the drug rip off. They went to collect 20 pounds of cannabis, but when their dealers produced the stash, Jade and Dionne pulled out their guns. A shot was fired, grazing the calf of one of the dealers. When they returned to their unit the brothers set Matthews free.

The Lacey family leave court during Dionne and Jade’s trial

It wasn’t long before there was more trouble, and this time when the smoke cleared after the gunfire the bender would finally be over for the Lacey brothers. Jade was armed with a .25 calibre pistol and Dionne with a .38 calibre pistol when they went to a Nerang unit on May 6, 2007. Dionne didn’t like the way someone was looking at him and announced: “If you want something to look at, come outside.” Jade had ducked out to discuss a cocaine deal and came back as things got heated. “What’s your problem with my brother,” Jade demanded.

Kevin Palmer was a friend of the brothers but on this night they were at loggerheads. “If you’re a man, shoot me,” Palmer dared.

Jade fired first, shooting Palmer in the legs from a few metres away. Moments later, Dionne fired too, and this bullet went through Palmer’s heart and lung and lodged in his rib tissue, killing him. Dionne would be found guilty of manslaughter and Jade would be found guilty of wounding with intent to maim. Together with their other convictions for offences including drug trafficking, the torture of Matthews and armed robbery for their drug rip off, they faced lengthy prison sentences. One hell of a hangover to wake with.