Gold Coast crime: City’s ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ couples revealed
They’re the Bonnie and Clyde – or Dazza and Shazza – of Gold Coast crime: The criminal couples who made headlines for their violent, shocking and downright odd offending. READ THE FULL LIST
Police & Courts
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SOME Gold Coast couples not only share their lives together, they commit a range of violent, shocking and downright strange crimes together.
The Bulletin is taking a look at the city’s Bonnie and Clyde-style couple and their offending, as it was heard in Southport Courthouse.
‘SHAZZA’ AND ‘DAZZA’
Darren Michael Baxter, 31, and Shayde Hodgson-Gulson, 23 – who went by “Dazza and Shazza” – stormed the Burleigh Waters Suncorp Bank dressed in motorcycle helmets, gloves and black jackets on September 26, 2019.
Baxter was armed with a fake pistol and Hodgson-Gulson was holding a black bag as if she was holding a rifle when they stormed the bank. It had no customers, but five staff. The Southport District Court heard they were “fried on ice” as Baxter ran to the tellers and Hodgson-Gulson kept a lookout.
The court heard Baxter pointed a fake pistol at a worker and told them to fill up a laptop bag with money. They fled with $5925.
They rode off on a motorbike, later dumped in a carpark. A fingerprint of Baxter’s linked him to the crime.
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They were arrested at Peppers Broadbeach three days later where the fake pistol, and ice was found. $1200 was recovered.
They pleaded guilty to armed robbery.
Last year it was revealed a homeless man dubbed “Sonny” – unaware Baxter and Hodgson-Gulson were involved in a stick-up hours before he met them – was befriended by them and stayed in hotels for three days where they ordered room service and took him clothes shopping.
The court heard the couple were engaged.
Baxter’s Barrister James McNab told the court his client wanted to break a cycle of drug use, have a “simple life” with his partner, get a job, have kids and a mortgage. He said Baxter, previously jailed for armed robbery, was addicted to ice at the time and had used 15g of ice in 10 days.
Judge Catherine Muir sentenced Hodgson-Gulson to 4.5 years, with parole on December 29, 2020. She was given earlier parole to spend time in a rehabilitation facility.
Baxter, who also pleaded guilty to 18 summary offences, was given a head sentence of six years in jail, with parole on June 29, 2021. At the time of the sentence, both had spent 291 days in custody, deemed time already served.
RIKKIE CHAPMAN AND JOSHUA JACOB CUTAJAR
A couple that starts a cannabis delivery business together, goes to jail together.
That is the harsh lesson Rikkie Chapman and Joshua Jacob Cutajar learned in October after owning up to their crimes in the Supreme Court.
To add insult to injury the newlywed couple were owed more than $11,000 by their customers when police shut down their drug operation on July 25 last year.
They were also found with more than 4kg of cannabis in their Coomera home. On the street the drugs were worth an estimated $25,000.
Chapman and Cutajar, married in August, pleaded guilty to multiple charges including trafficking dangerous drugs, supplying dangerous drugs, possessing dangerous drugs and possessing a weapon.
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Justice Ann Lyons sentenced the couple to three years in prison. They will be released on parole after they serve nine months.
In 10 months, the couple supplied the drug to 19 people on 104 occasions – at times with $50 bags and other times one pound bags worth $3500.
“Tick sheets” found in the home showed their “customers” owed them more than $11,000 for drugs already supplied.
Chapman’s barrister Sarah Thompson, instructed by Gatenby Criminal Lawyers, said Chapman suffered a back injury almost 10 years ago while working at a Masters Hardware store.
“Cannabis has played a large part in self-medicating the pain that she suffers from,” Ms Thompson said.
Chapman is on the disability support pension.
RICHARD AND RACHAEL LLEWELLYN
Richard and Rachael Llewellyn looked like any other successful couple with kids.
But behind the facade, they were living a lie and destroying the lives of young Queenslanders.
Richard Llewellyn, who had previously been a successful boat dealer, was on the dole and was secretly a street-level ice trafficker to Gold Coast night clubbers.
Drug money maintained his lifestyle including paying the rent for a Gold Coast high-rise apartment for his family.
When Rachael was not caring for their children, she helped with the drug sales, bagged and weighed “ice” for her husband, and once handed over 50 ecstasy pills to a “police operative”.
Details of the family business were revealed in the Supreme Court in May 2016 when Richard, 42, pleaded guilty to five drug charges and Rachael, 43, pleaded guilty to three charges of supplying drugs including $1000 worth of ecstasy.
Richard admitted he trafficked in ice over five months between August 31, 2013 and January 31, 2014 and pleaded guilty to producing speed, or at least trying to, at his home.
Richard Llewellyn admitted he got his supplies from an ice cook named “Mr Strutt”, then later he built a clandestine lab in his Boondall home in an ill-fated attempt to cook “speed”.
The court was told police could not accurately estimate the profit the Llewellyns made from their drug empire. But Richard was busted selling $27,920 worth of drugs – including 52g of ice worth $23,400 – and ecstasy tablets to a “police operative”.
Richard also admitted selling ice to at least eight customers over five months in 2013 and into 2014, ranging from 0.1g to an “eight ball” (3.5g). He also offered cannabis and ecstasy for sale.
He was sentenced to 20 months behind bars, with a head sentence of five years, and Rachael to a wholly suspended nine-month sentence.
Richard’s barrister Colin Reid told the court his client’s “biggest regret” was involving his wife in his trafficking and he was finding it “very difficult to forgive himself”.
DYLAN NIKELLER AND RENEE HART
Police found so much stolen property at a Gold Coast “crackhouse” they had to hire a truck to remove it and shipping containers to store it.
Drug addicts Dylan Nikeller and Renee Hart, dubbed the “beauty burglars”, were sentenced in the Southport Magistrates Court in 2019 to three years in jail for the treasure trove.
Nikeller pleaded guilty to 42 charges and Hart pleaded guilty to 37 charges, which included offences of stealing, receiving tainted property and burglaries.
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They spent 403 days in custody following their arrest and were given parole.
The pair’s six-month crime spree began in December 2017.
Some of the property located at the couple’s Varsity Lakes home was stolen by other people and some by the pair.
Defence lawyer Michael Gatenby, of Gatenby Criminals Lawyers, said the couple took responsibility of the property at their home because they knew about it.
“It was a well-known crackhouse,” Mr Gatenby said.
“They did not intend to benefit from all of it.”
Hart’s father was a career criminal and mother was a drug addict, the court was told.
“She started speed at 14, by 16 she was living on the streets injecting drugs,” Mr Gatenby said.
A pregnant Hart gave birth in custody and her five-month old daughter has been living with her behind bars.
Nikeller, 30, fell into old drug habits because of unemployment, the court was told.
“He was sitting around doing nothing and started to associate with former friends,” Mr Gatenby said.
The lawyer said both were remorseful.
About $53,000 of sunglasses were stolen.
Nikeller took $34,800 from inside a safe at a Coles store.
The couple were listed as engaged on their Facebook pages as of November this year.
ALEXIS MAIDMENT AND RYAN HODGES
A GOLD Coast couple demanded they be let into an Ashmore home and then punched a man when he refused to give them cannabis, a court was told.
Alexis Ann Maidment, 26, and Ryan Hodges, 35, both pleaded guilty in the Southport District Court in October 2018 to the 2017 assault.
Hodges was sentenced to two years jail. Maidment was sentenced to 12 months prison.
Hodges knocked on the door of the Ashmore home about 1am demanding to be let in.
The pair forced their way in, stealing sunglasses, a mobile phone and a backpack from a man’s room.
Maidment then demanded cannabis and when she was refused punched the man in the face and threatened him with scissors.
Another resident heard the commotion and came to help and Maidment scratched her arm and pushed her on the bed.
Hodges and Maidment left and were later found by police.
BENJAMIN POWER AND DONNA MCAVOY
A couple shared a kiss as they sat in the dock of a Gold Coast court, days after the shooting death of popular Gold Coast police officer Damian Leeding.
Benjamin Power leaned over in the dock to plant a kiss on the cheek of Donna McAvoy, and whispered a message in her ear, as details first emerged of the botched robbery at a Pacific Pines tavern that led to the callous killing of Detective Senior Constable Leeding in May 29, 2011.
Another man, gunman Phillip Graeme Abell would also be found responsible for his death. He would be jailed for life for murder.
McAvoy may not have pulled the trigger, but she was heavily involved in the robbery and its preparation – helping tie up hotel customers with zip ties.
She was convicted of murder.
For her role in the heist, the death of a police officer and a previous raid on the Tallai Country Club, McAvoy will be locked up until at least May 30, 2023 – 12 years after she was first taken into custody.
Power, 39, pleaded guilty to manslaughter for his role as lookout and getaway driver. He also pleaded guilty to charges of armed robbery and deprivation of liberty. He was sentenced to nine years in jail.
ODD COUPLE
A SOUTHPORT man accused of retaliating after his partner allegedly bit him on the penis returned to his woman’s arms.
The Southport Magistrates Court was told in April 2019 that the couple’s relationship was now apparently so strong they were moving in together after assault charges against the man were dropped.
He was accused of smacking the woman in the head in retaliation after she bit him while performing oral sex as they showered in their home in December last year. The bite was hard enough that the woman’s teeth broke the skin.
The pair split after the man was charged with assault occasioning bodily harm. The woman was never charged.
Police dropped the assault charges against the man, offering no evidence to the court. They did not say why the charges were dropped.
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