Revealed: Bikie crimes that rocked Queensland
From murders to arson, stabbings and drive-by shootings, we take a look at crimes linked to bikies that have rocked our communities.
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While bikie gang wars have faded to a memory since the former Newman Government’s crackdown on outlaw clubs, that doesn’t mean some bikies haven’t still been creating havoc.
In the past few years a spate of bikie-linked crimes have been committed — some in public places to the horror of shoppers, restaurant owners, girlfriends, relatives and neighbours.
We take a look, including some crimes which have yet to be solved.
GOLD COAST COLD CASE MURDER
The January, 2012 disappearance of Gold Coast Mum Tina Greer was back in the headlines late last year when police raided a home hunting for clues.
Ms Greer, then aged 32, of Beechmont, disappeared after dropping her daughter at a friend’s place before driving to Spicer’s Gap to visit her boyfriend, patched Finks bikie gang member Les “Grumpy’’ Sharman.
Homicide Squad officers executed a search warrant on a Bonogin, Gold Coast hinterland property in August last year.
They believe Sharman murdered Ms Greer and that her remains are somewhere on the Bonogin property.
It was searched with cadaver dogs and State Emergency Service volunteers.
Police believe Ms Greer was murdered elsewhere and brought to the property with the help of others.
Sharman was immediately treated as a person of interest by police at the time of Ms Greer’s disappearance but was never arrested. He died in a car accident in 2018.
Last year, police posted a $250,000 reward and hoped somebody would come forward now Sharman — who they described as a “feared’’ man — was dead.
ROADSIDE KILLING
The nation was shocked when Lionel Patea bludgeoned his girlfriend Tara Brown to death by the side of a road in September, 2015.
He was sentenced to life in prison for the brutal killing.
A court heard Ms Brown was living in a safe house away from the Gold Coast just before her death.
On September 6, she returned to the Gold Coast to stay with a friend and was looking for a rental home to “get her life back in order”.
On the day of her death, Patea phoned the child’s daycare and asked if she would be attending.
Patea then chased Ms Brown as she drove away from the daycare, ran her off the road and bashed her to death with a cast-iron water hydrant cover as she lay trapped in her car.
It was reported at the time that Ms Brown made a harrowing Triple 0 call before her death.
ROAD RAGE HORROR
In March this year police said they had uncovered sensational new links between a Gold Coast road rage murder and a drive-by shooting at a Sydney tattoo parlour 13 years ago.
The breakthrough came during renewed investigations into the cold case killing of young Gold Coast dad Omega Ruston, who was gunned down at a Burleigh Heads bus stop on Australia Day in 2009 by a carload of men with suspected links to outlaw bikies and Middle Eastern crime gangs.
Police divers searched Sydney’s Parramatta River in March, recovering items of interest.
NSW police said they had collected “unique forensic ballistic evidence’’ from a drive-by shooting at the West Sydney Ink Tattoo Parlour.
“Police can now confirm that the firearm used in the shooting murder of Mr Ruston on the Gold Coast is an identical ballistic match to a firearm used in the West Sydney Ink tattoo parlour drive-by shooting,” they said.
“It can also be shown that this firearm ... can be linked to known persons of interest in the murder on the Gold Coast.
RESTAURANT FIREBOMBING, SHOOTING
Brisbane residents were shocked to learn early last year that a popular waterfront bar had been shot up and firebombed.
Police said at the time that they believed bikies might have been responsible for the attacks at Mr Percival’s, Howard Smith Wharves, which are still unsolved.
The shooting and firebombing took place about a fortnight apart.
A dinghy believed ot have been used in at least one incident was later found about 1km downstream at a Norman Creek pontoon, popular with anglers, near “Churchie’’ private boys’ college.
Police, who launched Operation Siera Stackbolt, said there was a “significant incident’’ at the venue in November, 2019.
“Some incidents (took place) at Mr Percival’s involving a number of people where there was inappropriate behaviour and threatening language to people and staff at Mr Percival’s,” police said.
“There’s been some suggestion that (the allegedoffenders) are linked to OMCGs (outlaw motorcycle gangs) — now whether that’s as a consequence of their membership or whether it’s coincidental, that remains to be seen.”
In February last year it was reported that ex-Bandidos president George Bejat was kicked out of Mr Percival’s just weeks before the firebombing and shooting.
There is no suggestion Mr Bejat, a convicted cocaine trafficker, is responsible for either the firebombing or shooting.
RESTAURANT DRIVE-BY SHOOTING
Drive-by shootings are not something people in up-market Toowong in Brisbane inner-west are used to seeing.
So when three shots were fired into the glass facade of Barolos Ristorante Italiano residents were deeply shocked.
Police said at the time they were searching for two people after the incident at the restaurant, formerly occupied by another restaurant, Mariosarti.
Mariosarti was run by underworld figure and convicted drug trafficker Daniel Milos.
It was among a number of properties raided by police in 2017 in what police described as one of Queensland’s biggest cocaine trafficking operations.
Barolos opened at the Toowong site in 2018.
Mariosarti changed operators following the 2017 raid but a year later, a handwritten note posted on the door said the venue had “gone out of business”.
Soon after, it was rebranded as Barolos, with Milos returning to the Toowong venue.
Lunchtime diners at Mariosarti were startled to see police raid the restaurant, from which Milos later admitted to supplying $128,000 worth of cocaine to a “law enforcement participant”.
A court heard he used Uber Eats bags to move drugs and used code names like “ragu” and “table of eight” to describe cocaine.
PUBLIC STABBING
In June last year 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.
He confronted Picone after he found out the millionaire had an alleged sexual encounter with Smith’s wife, Carly Smith.
Smith arranged for the meeting after seeing Mr Picone send a sexually suggestive message to Mrs Smith 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.”
TATTOO PARLOUR FIRE BOMBING
In 2019 Rebels member “Little” Mick Kosenko’s tattoo studio in Brisbane’s north was fire bombed, prompting him to say those responsible should have dealt with him “face-to-face”.
Koolsville Studios in Brendale was broken into and set alight in an apparent “escalation” of the bikie violence between the Rebels and Bandidos.
“Real men deal with issues face-to-face and don’t destroy other people’s property,” Kosenko posted on Facebook after the incident.
Police said a “specific group of people” were responsible for the firebombing and a separate shooting of two others, including bikie Gokhan Turkyilmaz.
A Go Fund Me Page was set up to raise funds for Kosenko’s repair expenses.
The page stated that Kosenko had no criminal record, employed 14 people at the time and had “revolutionised” the tattoo scene in Queensland over 30 years.
Rebels bikie Gokhan Turkyilmaz was shot seven times in the leg and once in the groin at his home in Upper Coomera in about the same period.
Also an MMA fighter, he was peppered with bullets by a group of up to five masked men who stormed his home.
LEAGUE CLUB SHOOTING
Bikie-linked incidents fought out in public are nothing new.
Indeed, they reached their peak in the late 1990s and 2000s.
Bikie Sean Jones’ involvement in a shooting at the Tugun Seahawks Rugby League Club in 1996 was the start of decades of bikie incidents on the Gold Coast that eventually led to the Newman Government introducing its controversial VLAD laws in 2013.
In November, 1996 a motorcycle exhibition became the scene of the leagues club shooting after Black Uhlans associate Jones shot fellow club members Richard McKenna and Steve ‘Bam Bam’ Zaicov McKenna.
Fleeing from the scene, Jones handed himself into police two days after the shooting and 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. He was sentenced to five years’ jail.
BALLROOM BLITZ
One of the most infamous bikie crimes in Queensland history, Finks member Nick “The Knife’’ Forbes is alleged to have started the melee at a kickboxing tournament at the Royal Pines Resort in March, 2006.
Forbes threw a punch at Christopher Wayne Hudson, starting the violent brawl.
Three people were shot and two stabbed in the incident.
Forbes was sentenced to 27 months in jail for grievous bodily harm related to his role in the melee, but was released on a suspended sentence after serving 18 months.
Hudson was shot twice in the brawl by murdered bikie Shane Bowden.
A year later Hudson killed lawyer Brendan Keilar and shot a Dutch backpacker. He was sentenced to 35 years’ jail for murder.
MURDER SUICIDE, SOUTHPORT
Dubbed the “Lizard Man” for his bizarre facial tatts, Bronson Ellery took his own life with a drug overdose after killing his girlfriend.
At the time he was trying to start a Gold Coast chapter of Dutch-based bikie gang Satudarah MC and his heavily tattooed girlfriend, Shelsea Schilling, had taken out a domestic violence order against him.
His final moments were witnessed by friend Michael Ryan Warburton, who arrived at Ellery’s Southport apartment to find Schilling lying in a pool of blood in 2016.
For an hour Warburton held his best mate who then said, “I promised her I would go with her” and committed suicide in front of him, a court hearing into a drugs charge Warburton faced was told.
CAR PARK SHOOTING, EIGHT MILE PLAINS
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.
ROBINA TOWN CENTRE SHOOTOUT
Mark James Graham was jailed for 12 years for the attempted murder and unlawful shooting of Bandidos member Jacques Teamo at a packed Robina Town Centre in 2012.
Shoppers dived for cover, with innocent bystander Kathy Devitt injured.
Less than two years later, Teamo was expelled from the Bandidos, with club members reportedly ordered to “shoot on sight”.
Justice Alan Wilson described the incident as “brazen’’ and “shocking’’.
Justice Wilson said it remained a mystery why Mr Teamo armed himself with a knife and Graham with a handgun to go shopping with their respective families.
“When you saw each other, neither the presence of family nor of large numbers of innocent bystanders, discouraged you from a confrontation which resulted in Teamo and Ms Kathy Devitt, a person unknown to you, being shot,” he said.
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