‘Zip it': Explosive phone taps expose feared bikie boss’ prison orders

The feared bikie boss accused of masterminding the brutal execution of Shane Bowden is issuing orders from his cell to keep suspects who could tie him to the crime “zipped up”, detectives allege.

A bikie boss accused of masterminding the execution of Shane Bowden is issuing orders from his cell to keep suspects who could tie him to the crime “zipped up” and is believed to be using a jail counsellor as a go-between with other outlaws charged over the murder, police claim.

Explosive prison phone taps have captured feared Mongols boss Ian Ronald Crowden attempting to pay associates in jail and giving chilling instructions while he and nine other members of his gang await trial over the brutal midnight hit, detectives allege.

In just 13 seconds, Bowden was shot 21 times at point blank range in the garage of his Pimpama home on October 12, 2020 while still strapped into the driver’s seat of his girlfriend’s BMW.

Ian Ronald Crowden is among a swag of Mongols accused of Shane Bowden’s execution

Extraordinary new claims about the slaying have been revealed in documents filed in the Supreme Court during a successful bail application by accused killer, Adam John Murphy.

The documents lay bare the prosecution case about how Bowden became a marked man as he attempted to defect to the Finks, the meticulous planning the alleged killers carried out, their moves to cover up the crime and the evidence police have against them.

Police allege the execution was carried out by James Winston Mau’u and Junior Jasmine Torope, but the eight other bikies who have been charged with murder all played roles in the crime.

THE ‘INTIMIDATION’ OF WITNESSES

Detectives claim “there has been numerous instances of Mongols … hierarchy making attempts to silence witnesses and pay off or intimidate witnesses” since the murder.

“Crowden has been convicted of pervert justice and charged with witness intimidation previously,” the court documents reveal.

Police believe Crowden, the Mongols West City Chapter president, is using a counsellor who visits prisoners to communicate with other bikies on remand and his Sgt At Arms David Steven Meatuai was captured on a phone taps saying the Mongols “speak to the boys” through her, according to the documents.

Ian Ronald Crowden is alleged to have been making contact with other accused gang members via a prison counsellor. Picture AAP/David Clark

Police investigated the counsellor’s “legitimacy” attending prisons “acting as a means of communication without drawing suspicion” to Mongols gang members. 

Crowden, 38, has also been recorded on jailhouse tapped calls talking about paying fellow prisoners in various prison around the state and instructing them to “keep them zipped up” while talking about inmates who could link him to the investigation.

The court documents also reveal the extraordinary lengths that bikies go to, to enforce their code of silence, with all of the ten charged over the killing refusing to speak to police in interviews.

Police allege Bowden's murder was a ‘prolonged and deliberate’ plan. Picture: Tertius Pickard

LONG TERM PLAN TO KILL

Police allege Bowden’s murder was the result of a “prolonged” and “deliberate” plan which was hatched as early as September 15, the day after he was freed from mandatory hotel quarantine in a Queensland hotel.

Police allege Mongols bikies tracked Bowden’s movements using a GPS tracker, and did physical surveillance on him for up to a month.

Shane Bowden was killed in his garage.

“They took great lengths to avoid detection” police allege in court documents, using numerous hire cars, swapping cars and using encrypted cipher phones.

Mongols gang members Meatuai and Peter Michael Cummins also allegedly did a “dry run” of the trip to Bowden’s Pimpama home, and the getaway, in cars two days before the murder, police allege in the court documents.

TEST FIRE

Police allege that Crowden, and fellow gang members Meatuai, Hayden Thomas Forbes, Mau’u and Torope went to test fire the murder weapons at a 288Ha farm at Ripley, near Ipswich.

Afterwards Meatuai allegedly retained the weapons to be used in the murder for safekeeping.

On another occasion Murphy is alleged to have gone to the same property to test fire the murder weapons with Crowden.

David Meatuai.

Murphy is alleged to have also confided in a colleague at his Yamanto mechanics workshop that the handgun he test-fired at Ripley was so “high powered” that he “almost lost control of it”.

The property is owned by Marijke Molloy, who worked for Crowden and Murphy at the workshop in Yamanto, Empire Performance and Dyno, the documents say.

Ms Molloy and her husband use the farm to store machinery for their tree lopping business Sir Lop-A-Lot.

The couple are not accused of any wrongdoing.

In the court documents, police allege that some of the bullets they retrieved from trees at Molloy’s farm after the murder were fired from 9mm automatic submachine weapon.

TRACKING, TRACING AND MORE DNA

DNA profiles of two other accused killers, Fidel Gunes and Joshua James Small, were allegedly found on the SIM card inside a GPS tracker police removed from the rear right undercarriage of Bowden’s car after his alleged murder.

Police allege Gunes and Small – both patched members of the Gold Coast chapter of the Mongols, secretly and boldly put the tracker, attached with magnets, on Bowden’s car at about 8.15am on October 1, when he parked near his lawyers office next to the Southport Courthouse.

Bowden was attending court for breaching Covid-19 rules.

Gunes is also alleged to have activated this GPS when he purchased it at Oz Spy in Slacks Creek, then the tracker was seen to travel to Gunes’s home address in Redland Bay, court documents state.

The SIM card inside the tracker was allegedly registered in the name of one of Gunes’ former staffers.

The tracker was “paired” with a phone registered to another of Gunes’ former staffers from his truck haulage company, police state in court documents.

Two men were captured on CCTV allegedly putting a tracker on Bowden’s car.

The first tracker Gunes is alleged to have bought, and to have allegedly been hidden under the back of the BMW by two men late at night on September 20, fell off the car the next day.

Gunes is alleged to have “paired” this tracker to his personal iPhone.

Another tracker Gunes allegedly bought in the name of “Fidel” was returned for a replacement because it would not activate, police allege.

A witness has told police that she saw Meatuai and Torope set up two GPS trackers a month before the murder, putting SIM cards inside them, using black disposable gloves and wiping down the devices with alcohol wipes afterwards.

DESTRUCTION OF EVIDENCE

Police have been unable to find the two murder weapons, or the clothes and shoes allegedly worn by Torope and Mau’u.

Police allege Mongols West City Chapter president Crowden assigned the vital job of destroying the two murder weapons to fellow Mongol and Adam John Murphy, his business partner in his mechanics workshop at Yatala.

Murphy was also allegedly assigned the job of burning the clothes and shoes worn by the two alleged shooters – Torope and Mau’u.

Murphy is alleged to have disposed of the gun parts in various locations around Ipswich, court documents state.

THE SMELL OF BLEACH

A witness who worked with Crowden and Murphy at the Yamanto mechanics workshop told police that hours after the murder when he turned up to work he smelled a strong whiff of bleach, which was unusual.

Crowden was there when he arrived. Crowden allegedly told the man that it was he who had bleached the bathroom.

MOTIVE

The motive for Bowden’s murder is alleged to be his attempt to return to the rival Finks bikie gang, after he was “kicked out” of the Mongols, when he was allegedly shot twice in a drive by shooting in Melbourne allegedly by members of the Mongols in June 2020.

POLICE WORK

According to the court documents, painstaking police forensic work over hundreds of hours is helping authorities to overcome the Mongols bikie code of silence.

From reviewing prison phone calls, to motorway traffic monitoring cameras and CCTV from petrol stations and fast food restaurants, to obtaining search warrants for key properties.

Police got CCTV from the Elanora McDonalds on the Gold Coast five hours before the murder, allegedly showing Cummins as a passenger of a car in the drive through.

Police allege that in that car at the time was a phone dubbed “Yellow Cipher” purchased by a Mr Hoang on August 19, 2020.

Another phone dubbed the “Blue Cipher” was allegedly purchased from Officeworks in West Burleigh in May 2020, as part of a bundle of ten phones for $2290.

Police tried to get CCTV of the purchase but they could not obtain it.

On August 12, Murphy was granted bail by Justice Shaun Cooper, despite the prosecution arguing there was a risk of further reoffending and obstructing justice.

Justice Cooper said at the hearing none of the material before him alleged that Murphy participated directly in the murder of Bowden.

All other Bowden murder accused remain in prison on remand.

Forbes and another co-accused Jake Andrew Taylor, 27, both applied for bail but were refused by the court.

The court heard that the ten men will face a single committal hearing in “the next few months”.

The men are contesting the charges.

Their cases are back in Brisbane Magistrates Court on September 2.