Mystery Mr Big and the slaying of a bikie boss
When Bandidos boss Rodney “Hooks” Monk was gunned down, it appeared to be the work of a lone killer with a grudge. But the Saturday Telegraph finds information suggesting otherwise. Janet Fife-Yeomans reports.
When Bandidos boss Rodney “Hooks” Monk was gunned down, it appeared to be the work of a lone killer with a grudge.
Police were looking for Russell Oldham, 39, a fledgling member of the same bikie gang.
After a three-week manhunt, Oldham walked barefoot into the water at Balmoral Beach, put a gun to the right side of his own head and shot himself dead in a blaze of publicity. He knew that even if he was arrested for murder, he was a dead man walking with the bikies after him for killing one of their most charismatic leaders.
BIKIE GANGS IN SYDNEY: THE FULL INVESTIGATION
Chapter 1: The cops who crushed the bikies
Chapter 2: Inside the real-life police fight club
Chapter 3: The day bikies went too far
Chapter 4: Warlords of the underworld
But The Daily Telegraph can reveal evidence that suggests Oldham did not act alone or out of any personal grudge.
Police suspect that Monk’s murder was a gangland hit, connected to a leading underworld figure who has never been charged and who Oldham was said to “worship”.
In the violent world of outlaw motorcycle gangs where loyalty and treachery are as common as each other, friends said Oldham was caught in the middle. A loyal Bandido, he was also loyal to the crime figure.
Telephone records tendered to the inquest into Monk’s death show that as Oldham prepared to lure Monk to his death with a dinner invitation to East Sydney’s Little Italy on April 20, 2006, he made two calls and sent two text messages to this notorious man within 90 minutes that evening.
They include a call at 9.04pm as Oldham sat at the table at Bar Reggio with Monk, 31, Monk’s girlfriend and Bandido Castle Hill chapter president Ray Curry and Curry’s de facto partner as the waiter brought their bottle of red wine to the table.
There is no suggestion that anyone at the dinner knew what Oldham would do next.
Exactly what happened in those final moments inside the restaurant was also revealed at the inquest.
Moments after the 9.04pm call, Oldham asked Monk if he could come outside and “have a little talk” and leaned over to Curry and told him to order.
“I’ll have a talk with you later. I just want to have a quick chat with Hooks first,” Oldham told Curry, now 44, with whom he had spent five years in jail for the manslaughter of two men at Bankstown.
Curry stood up to go outside with them but Monk, who got his nickname Hooksie from the rugby position he played, put his hand up indicating for Curry to remain and said: “Just stay with the girls. I’ll just go out for a quick chat.”
Oldham and Monk left via the back door and walked to Chapel Street where Oldham coldly shot the president of the Bandidos Downtown chapter in the head at point blank range.
When Monk fell to the ground, Oldham shot him once more at point blank range.
Immediately afterwards, at 9.16pm, Oldham called the crime figure again. At 9.29pm, Oldham texted the man.
Police sources said there was really nothing they could arrest the man for because there was no evidence what they had discussed in those telephone calls and the gangland boss was “never going to talk”.
“Like every gangland murder, the only way it is solved is if someone rolls over and talks. That’s not going to happen,” the source said.
Monk’s funeral was massive as Nomads and Lone Wolf bikies joined their Bandido brothers to farewell the celebrity boss who was once photographed with millionaire businessman Mark Alexander-Erber and his then-girlfriend, Amber Petty, who was a bridesmaid for Princess Mark of Denmark.
The congregation included Monk’s older brother, Brad Monk, a senior NSW police officer, and their parents.
After the shooting, Oldham, once a medical student and opening bowler for the Sydney University Cricket Club, took a cab alone to the World Square Apartments and was not heard of again until May 3. He contacted no-one, not even his lover, former probation officer Lee Smith, nor the man for whom he was a bodyguard for many years, retired gangster Phillip Player.
Oldham had worked as a doorman when Player opened Bonnie and Clyde’s nightclub in Newtown, at which the staff dressed as gangsters and many of the patrons were the real thing.
“He was very loyal to his friends,” Player said.
At midnight on May 3, Oldham turned up at his sister’s house in Wollongong where he told her he had killed Monk. His sister told the inquest there was no sign her brother was on ice or any other drugs.
“He was lucid, coherent and precise in his actions and conversation,” his sister said.
He told her he had killed Monk because Monk had threatened Smith. Smith concurred.
“Rodney had inquired about my `well-being’. Russell said it was not the done thing unless there was a subtle message behind it,’’ Smith, who said he had been devastated when she aborted their baby, told The Daily Telegraph at the time.
Oldham took the truth along with his guilt to his grave. On his body, police found $1685 cash and a 9mm Parabellum Calibre Smith and Wesson self-loading pistol. It was the same gun that killed Rodney Monk.
After the inquest into Monk’s death, former State Coroner Mary Jerram entered a finding that he died as a result of “gunshot wounds to the head, homicide by Russell Oldham”.
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