Bandidos bikie Ross Brand died in a hail of bullets fired by rival members
FEATURE: BANDIDO Ross Brand ended up riding shotgun at his own funeral. That's the risk of joining a bikie brotherhood, writes Paul Anderson.
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IT was Ross Brand's last ride.
The Bandidos bikie lay in a polished coffin on a motorbike sidecar, riding shotgun at his own funeral.
Men who take up membership in outlaw motorcycle gangs well know the risks that come with joining a bikie brotherhood.
And Brand was well entrenched.
Fierce pride in their colours, a territorial nature and a hatred of rival clubs often leads to flak and bloodshed - and outlaw bikie gangs don't do things by halves.
Known rivals, the Bandidos and The Rebels had long coexisted in Geelong, sometimes with violent consequences.
It was two half-brothers connected to a subsidiary crew loyal to The Rebels who carried out the fatal gun attack on the Bandidos' clubhouse at Breakwater in Geelong that would claim Brand's life.
This month marks five years since that day. Bullets are still be fired at bikie clubhouses with shocking regularity.
It would seem little has changed in today's outlaw club landscape but the names of the groups involved.
In 2008 it was Rebels member John Russell Bedson, founder of the Rebels affiliate group Death Before Dishonour, holding the gun in a vengeful drive-by shooting.
He took up arms to stop his younger half-brother, Derek Bedson, making the biggest mistake of his life.
Bedson would later say he wasn't trying to kill anybody xbut simply send a loud message or, in his exact words, "let them know that they'd done the wrong thing".
If that was true, his plan backfired.
GALLERY: More pictures from the Ross Brand funeral
TIMELINE: Ross Brand case in pictures
IT was October 22, 2008 - the day of the Geelong Cup at the Geelong Racecourse.
Trackside was a group of young men, including Derek Bedson, with connections to the Death Before Dishonour (DBD) organisation.
So, too, was a group connected with the Bandidos.
As the day wore on sparks flew between the rival groups, leading to a punch on.
Arrests were made.
"The fight occurred against a background of antagonism between the Rebels and the Bandidos," Crown prosecutor Chris Ryan, SC, would say during John Bedson's Supreme Court murder trial.
According to Mr Ryan, the assault and the arrest of a DBD man incensed club loyalists.
"Derek Bedson in particular," Mr Ryan said in court.
John Bedson, a concreter and pizza cook by trade, had spent that day at home and was driving to the Rebels' clubhouse for a beer.
On his way he received a text to meet a couple of mates, including a Rebels member, at some shops.
Bedson parked his 4WD vehicle.
One of his mates told him about the dust up at the races.
"He just said that there'd been a fight and we had to go pick up Meat Axe," Bedson said in evidence in court.
The trio drove to the track and collected the associate colourfully known as Meat Axe.
"He was talking about how JJ had been in a fight with some 'noms' (nominee members) for the Bandidos, and that JJ had been arrested by the police," Bedson told the jury.
Bedson and friends then drove from the racetrack and met up with more associates.
The six men then drove to the Bandidos' clubhouse.
In prosecutor Ryan's words, they headed there to "have a go".
In other words, to fight.
According to Bedson's version, they drove there after he received word his half-brother was heading there drunk and on the warpath.
Bedson claimed in court he wanted to cut Derek off at the pass.
"I'd been told he was a little bit worked up about what had happened (at the races) and he was coming in to shoot the clubhouse," Bedson told the jury.
"I wanted to go see where Derek was - make sure he hadn't gone there yet …(and) we pulled up out the front.
"I'd jumped out - my feet had barely hit the ground when, I'm not sure. Someone yelled out 'gun' so I quickly turned back around, hopped back in the car and made sure everyone was in the car and then took off … It was not a very smart idea to hang around."
DEREK Bedson was nowhere near the Bandidos clubhouse at that stage.
After the races he'd gone home.
Waiting for him was a man we shall call "Dean", due to a court suppression order.
According to Dean, Derek was angry and paced the carpet.
"He was yelling that his friend had been punched," Dean told the Supreme Court.
Dean drove Derek towards Whittington in Derek's white Hilux dual cab vehicle.
On the way Derek received a phone call, and directed Dean to stop at a local pub where they met up with John Bedson.
Bedson got into the rear of the Hilux.
Conversed with his brother.
"I just told him that we'd been (at the Bandidos clubhouse) and what had happened," Bedson told the jury.
"(Derek) said he wanted to go shoot the club."
Bedson told the jury he saw the end of a gun - a .22 semiautomatic rifle - jutting from underneath one of his brother's work vests.
"He was very, very drunk … I told Derek, 'You're not going to do it, I'm going to do it."
Dean was told to drive to the Bandidos clubhouse, nestled in an industrial pocket in Breakwater.
Dean told the jury that on the way he saw Bedson tie a balaclava around his face.
"It was covering his nose and his mouth," Dean said.
Dean pulled up in the darkness outside the Bandidos bunker about 6.15pm.
"I (then) heard noise coming from behind me … like some fireworks were crackling behind me," Dean told the jury.
"I saw John in the back holding a rifle … out the right passenger back window."
ROSS Brand, 51, was a long-time member of the Bandidos who, the Supreme Court heard, had a reputation for being armed with a knife or a gun.
He had prior convictions for armed robbery, assault and drug and firearm offences.
"He is no saint," Mr Ryan said in court.
But there are two sides to every coin, as Supreme Court judge Elizabeth Curtain explained.
"He and his wife had been together for twenty years, married for fourteen and together they had a son who was twelve at the time," Justice Curtain would say.
"Mr Brand was much loved by his family."
Brand was at the Bandidos clubhouse drinking with a fellow gang member and two mutual friends.
One of those friends was a man named Paul Szerwinski.
He was not a Bandidos member.
The four men present had decided to finish up and head their separate ways, and were leaving the club when six rifle shots rang out.
One round hit Brand in the head.
Two rounds tagged Szerwinski: one lodging in his left thigh and the other piercing his left wrist.
"We were basically ambushed and shot at," Mr Szerwinski told Bedson's trial.
"It looked like a car load of tradesmen finishing the day - coming back to the yard to lockup, go home … I heard the ricochets. The firing."
Mr Szerwinski saw Brand go down.
He did not realise he himself was shot until a few minutes later.
"I'd gone to get towels - something to stop the bleeding," he told the jury.
"(One of the others) was on the phone calling the ambulance. I've spotted blood on the floor, and realised that, yes, I had been hit also."
The men dragged Brand back inside the clubroom as Dean drove the sniper away.
Bedson was shouting "go, go, go!"
In court Bedson claimed he fired indiscriminately because he thought Brand was about to pull a gun.
"I thought we were going to be shot, so I just picked the gun up and started shooting," Bedson claimed.
During the trial his barrister, Ian Hayden, asked him if he knew Brand.
Bedson: "I knew his face. I knew his reputation and that."
Mr Hayden: "What was his reputation, as you knew it?"
Bedson: "That he's not someone to play games with."
Mr Hayden: "What do you mean by 'not somebody to play games with?'"
Bedson: "He's very quick to pull a knife or a gun."
Prosecutor Ryan had a different take on the shooting.
He told the jury that it was a deliberate attack designed to kill or seriously injure Bandidos' members as a form of punishment.
Mr Ryan: "You managed to hit him (Brand) in the head, and hit Mr Szerwinski."
Bedson: "That's what's happened, yes."
Mr Ryan: "See, what I suggest happened this particular day was this; you felt slighted because one of your friends had been hit by somebody connected with the Bandidos - that's right, isn't it?"
Bedson: "It's not that big a deal really."
Mr Ryan: "It was big enough of a deal for you to go there with a loaded firearm."
Bedson: "It wasn't my idea to start with."
Mr Ryan: "It was your idea to be the shooter; you've told us so."
Mr Ryan suggested Bedson must have been "pretty fond" of the DBD organisation in order to pull a gun.
Bedson: "It was something I was proud of for a while, yes."
Mr Ryan: "So proud you had the initials tattooed on your face?"
Bedson: "Yes."
Mr Ryan: "And you were a member of the Rebels motorcycle group as well?"
Bedson: "Yes."
Mr Ryan: "And you had your colours?"
Bedson: "Yes."
Mr Ryan: "They just don't get handed out, do they?"
Bedson: "You get put on a probation for 12 months."
Mr Ryan: "You've got to earn them, don't you?"
Bedson: "You've got to do as you're asked; serve drinks, clean the club house, look after the
bikes on runs, yes."
Mr Ryan: "They don't just give those colours out to anybody, do they Mr Bedson?"
Bedson: "You've got to have 12 months to show that you're dedicated, that you're going to stay, you're not going to just leave."
Mr Ryan: "And you were dedicated to the Rebels?"
Bedson: "Well yes I was."
According to Dean, Bedson said "I think I got one" as they drove away after the gunfire.
Brand and Mr Szerwinski were rushed to the Geelong Base Hospital.
Brand was transferred by helicopter to the Alfred Hospital and died hours later.
Bedson pleaded not guilty to murder and attempted murder.
In his closing address, Mr Ryan told the jury Bedson had strong motive to take revenge on the Bandidos.
"At the moment John Bedson fired that rifle he was a DBD. He was a Rebel," Mr Ryan said.
"And so far as he was concerned, one of his associates had been hit by a Bandido at the racetrack. He was slighted … And my submission to you is John Bedson went back to the Bandidos to punish them.
"In my respectful submission it's as plain as punch that (Brand and the others) were silhouetted against the open doorway of the Bandidos clubhouse. Those shots were directed towards these men.
"In fact, if it wasn't so serious, you'd say of Mr Bedson it was damn fine shooting."
The jury found Bedson, 27, guilty of murder and intentionally causing serious injury.
Justice Curtain sentenced him to 23 years' jail with an 18-year minimum.
"It appears that your conduct was motivated by misguided loyalty to the honour of The Rebels or Death Before Dishonour and, in that distorted perception, you came to the view that you were justified in taking retaliatory action," Justice Curtain said.
Bedson unsuccessfully appealed against his conviction and sentence.
Derek Bedson, a 23-year-old apprentice carpenter, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and reckless conduct endangering life.
Justice Curtain sentenced him to 12 years' jail with an eight-year minimum.
"It was your decision to shoot up the clubhouse, apparently as a retaliatory act," she told him.
"You were not a member of the Rebels motorcycle club, nor were you a member of Death Before Dishonour, but nonetheless you must have acted out of some sense of allegiance - if only by reason of your brother's connection to those groups.
"It is fair to say that, had it not been for your response to what occurred at the Geelong Races, these events would never have occurred."
Derek appealed the length of his sentence, and had it reduced to eight years with a five-year minimum.
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paul.anderson@news.com.au
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