Andrew Rule: The making of Comancheros top dog Mick Murray

WHAT does it take to lead one of Australia’s most feared bikie gangs, the Comancheros? He might be a thug but Mick Murray is a highly-organised one, writes Andrew Rule.

IN the dog-eat-dog world of “one percenter” outlaw motorcycle gangs, Mick Murray has been at the top of the food chain for years.

Like a crocodile, he has a thick hide, rarely blinks and operates silently below the surface.

In fact, it was the Comanchero hard man’s big show of loyalty to the “code of silence” that has earned him long months of extremely quiet time in solitary confinement, a prison term that ends soon.

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That’s why, when he turned 40 in February, the outlaw bikie boss was in a cell.

There were no birthday cake or gifts, no wife or daughter or friends to celebrate with: all part of the price paid for profiting from a life of organised crime most of his adult life.

Mick Murray refused to answer questions in court and found himself in solitary confinement in prison. Picture: Hamish Blair

But while there were no birthday candles, there were some fireworks.

The same week as Murray’s birthday, former Comanchero boss Mahmoud “Mick” Hawi was shot dead in Sydney. And 48 hours after his birthday, his former right-hand man Robert Ale was shot repeatedly in a tattoo parlour in Hampton Park.

It is possible this did not come as a surprise to the gang leader, who had handed the reins of the Comancheros to another willing lieutenant, apparently leapfrogging Ale in the hierarchy.

At the time, of course, Murray was waiting to be sentenced for refusing to co-operate with the authorities.

When he went before Justice Peter Riordan for sentencing in the Supreme Court in March, he steadfastly maintained the silence that had put him behind bars in the first place.

If the big man was sending a message to the biker fraternity about how staunch he was, Justice Riordan played his part.

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He sentenced him to eight months — less 68 days already served in custody — for refusing to swear an oath and answer questions at a compulsory hearing before the Chief Examiner early last year.

The Office of the Chief Examiner has extraordinary powers to force people to ­answer questions about serious organised crime. Murray had been taken before the ­secretive hearing to be examined about his knowledge of several serious offences. He refused and was charged, with the inevitable result.

The Supreme Court appearance put on record the key exchange that led to the prison sentence he has now almost completed.

EXAMINER: Are you prepared to tell me why you won’t take the oath or affirmation?

MURRAY: Mate, this is very, very simple. This is set up for people to lag. I’m not a dog. I’m not answering questions. I’m not lagging anyone. Can’t make it any more simple than that. You guys are gunna ask questions about people that I might know or know. I’m not gunna answer any questions.

EXAMINER: And why is that?

MURRAY: I’m not a dog, mate. I’m not lagging anyone.

EXAMINER: That’s your reason?

MURRAY: That’s right.

When Murray was jailed he passed the leaderships reins to Hasan Topal.

Murray outside Nitro Gym in Hallam.

Murray has had 23 hours a day of enforced isolation to reflect on the stand he took against taking the stand.

During the other hour he walked alone under fluorescent light, never seeing the sun.

Presumably the big man kept up his considerable strength. He could need it. When he leaves Barwon prison, he will be walking back into the centre of festering Comanchero wars — one internal, the other against rival gangs.

He seems poised to regain day-to-day control of the gang which he has reputedly helped to become one of the most powerful of all the outlaw motorcycle groups in Australia.

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If there is opposition to his return, it will probably be expressed violently. It’s the bikie way.

While Murray has been in jail, the violence has continued. One reason, maybe, was that he handed control to former male model Hasan Topal.

As a model, Topal is no catwalk pussy: he was filmed on security cameras smashing a glass on his own head before wading into a biker brawl in a Canberra strip club during a Comanchero “run” in August last year.

Topal might look like Tarzan but he does not play like Jane.

Then there is the mysterious shooting of Robert Ale in a tattoo parlour in Hampton Park last February.

It was a miracle that Ale survived the barrage of bullets that hit him. But was it a rival gang — or an inside job to prevent Ale from being tempted to inform on his “brothers”?

Ale, incidentally, has been dubbed the “Crybaby Comanchero” after bursting into tears in court during a bail hearing. It is not a great nickname for an outlaw with leadership aspirations.

Knowing Mick Murray also proved to be bad luck for biochemist Stephen Dank, the man at the centre of the Essendon AFL team’s drug supplement scandal.

Dank’s face was injured when his house was shot up in a drive-by shooting in July 2016.

Then there is the fatal shooting of two innocent men in separate incidents in which each victim was mistaken as a member of the Mongols outlaw gang.

Comanchero associates are high on the list of suspects in each case.

The gang is one of the “big five” outlaw motorcycle clubs, alongside the Hells Angels, Rebels, Bandidos and Mongols. And, until further notice, Mick Murray is the man with his hand on the throttle.

But who is he, what motivates him and at what cost?

How did Mick Murray become top dog?

IF Michael Murray has a middle name the Victoria Police and the Supreme Court don’t know it. Perhaps his family could not afford one.

All that is known to police is that he was born into a tough life in a dysfunctional family in New South Wales in early 1978.

According to the background material produced in court, older family members were violent with each other and towards the two children, Michael and his younger sister.

The boy did not attract much notice at school until he was in Year 9, the level when troubled teenagers going through puberty tend to rebel if they are that way inclined.

By age 21, Murray owned and operated his own security company.

He was taken out of school three times for fighting, a tendency so disturbing he was sent to stay with relatives in the United States for three months to try to break the cycle of violence.

It didn’t work. By the time Murray turned 18 in 1996, he had turned his violent streak into a business.

He got hold of a security licence — which might tell us something about the “security industry”.

By age 21, he owned and operated his own security company. It expanded to 70 locations with more than 300 employees, and that tells us about the man himself: he might have been a thug but he was a highly-organised thug.

Business wasn’t the only thing about Mick Murray that was getting bigger. He was, too. Literally.

By the time he headed south around the turn of the century, he was nearly as wide as the Murray River. Pumping steroids and iron will do that.

According to documents filed in court, Murray has used so many drugs since he was a teenage tearaway that he needs special treatment in jail to counter their effects.

Years of steroid abuse have swollen Murray’s tattooed muscles to the size of Harley fuel tanks but chemical shortcuts to extreme bodybuilding come at a cost. As doctors repeatedly warn “gym junkies”, steroids do not enlarge every organ.

A legal document listing Murray’s medical and mental problems for the Supreme Court suggests that the hard man renowned in Comanchero circles for his cojones has, ironically, a problem in exactly that area.

Years of steroid abuse meant Murray needed special medication while in prison, all of which was detailed in court.

Lawyers have revealed in court that their client suffers from severe side effects of steroid abuse. They hardly need to spell out that such side effects can include shrunken testicles and related problems.

Medical experts call it “drying up of the luteinising hormone”, which is so bad for the reproductive system that prison authorities had to grant Murray special medical treatment during his time behind bars.

In other words, the taxpayer paid for “good” drugs to counter the effects all the bad ones he had abused for 20 years.

Compromised testicles are a problem, but so are his eyeballs: he has been diagnosed with glaucoma.

Drug abuse led to erratic behaviour. The court was told that Murray was engaged to a woman for five years but that she left him because of a string of infidelities.

He married his wife, Debbie Pittman, around 2004 but their only child was not born for several years.

The court was told that she has left him after 14 years together because of threats to their lives and because their daughter is “terrified” of seeing her father in jail.

Then there is the unhappy prospect of facing bankruptcy and a joint tax bill of $3.72 million.

Police warned Murray early this year there was a contract on his life.

This was not exactly a surprise. He had already received a letter calling him an informer and threatening “You’re a dead man” and “We will kill your family”.

Give or take a few million dollars of “easy money ”, it looks as if the outlaw life hasn’t done him many favours. Crocodiles are not protected in Victoria.

Originally published as Andrew Rule: The making of Comancheros top dog Mick Murray