Remember when: professional hitmen were suspected in 1991 murder of a Gold Coast SP bookie

IT WAS feared that profressional hitmen were used to murder a Gold Coast SP bookie and his defacto wife in their Surfers Paradise unit.

Gold Coast History: Gold Coast Bulletin 1991, December 24. Front page.

Gold Coast Bulletin, Tuesday December 24, 1991

IT WAS feared that profressional hitmen were used to murder a Gold Coast SP bookie and his defacto wife in their Surfers Paradise unit.

“Indications are the killings may be progressional,” said Acting Detective Inspector Dave Marshall.

“There were a number of shots fired.”

The bodies of Peter George Wade, 53 and Maureen Ambrose, 53 were found in the Wheelan Street unit after 8am the previous day.

A close friend of the couple said “their only crime was to fall in love.”

Ronald Henry Thomas was eventually arrested for the murders.

Thomas, a man previously convicted of murder was sentenced to another two life terms for the executions.

Gold Coast Bulletin 1991, December 24. Front page.

In 1993, after a four-week trial, a jury took about eight hours to find the then-43-year-old guilty of the callous shooting.

Thomas, who the jury was told had been convicted of the murder of a nightwatchman during an armed robbery in 1967 and had spent much of his life behind bars, told the court: “This is not a bad sentence for something I didn’t do.”

But prosecutor Paul Rutledge told Justice Kevin Ryan the murder of the couple who lived at Whelan St, Surfers Paradise, was a particularly cold-blooded and calculated crime and police were still actively seeking Thomas’s co-accused, John Bobak.

Bobak remains at large and has never been captured by police.

In 2013, then-Police Minister Jack Dempsey issued a $250,000 reward for information about his whereabouts.