Stephen Dank shooting: Victoria Police probe Comanchero bikie boss connection
OUTLAW bikies are at the centre of the police probe into who shot Stephen Dank, with allegations the disgraced sports scientist owes cash to Comanchero boss Mick Murray.
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OUTLAW bikies are at the centre of the police probe into who shot Stephen Dank, with allegations the disgraced sports scientist owes cash to Comanchero boss Mick Murray.
Detectives are examining information that suggests Dank, whose peptides program brought chaos to Essendon, is in debt to Murray, one of the nation’s most powerful crime figures. The Herald Sun can reveal that police from the specialist anti-bikie Echo Taskforce have been making inquiries about the debt.
It is believed they are working closely with Armed Crime Squad police, who are running the probe into the July 23 early-morning shooting at Dank’s address that left him with a graze to his forehead after bullets were fired into his home.
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Police are examining whether the alleged debt — a five-figure sum — relates to Dank’s peptide business.
Dank yesterday denied he had any debts to Murray.
“Certainly I don’t owe any money to Mick Murray or anyone else,” he said. He would not say whether he knew the bikie boss. “I’m not going to answer any more questions,” he said.
Police are also investigating whether Dank had contact with any other members of the Comanchero gang in the months before the shooting.
Dank, 52, has denied having any debts and has previously insisted he has no links with bikies. The Herald Sun does not suggest the possible debt involves illegal activity.
The architect of Essendon’s fateful 2012 supplements program, he helped treat former Bandido sergeant-at-arms Toby Mitchell after he was shot in 2011 outside a Brunswick gym.
Murray, the Comanchero president who has faced multiple charges relating to firearms and performance-enhancing drug possession, was out of the country around the time of the Dank shooting.
Dank was asleep in his lounge room when a drive-by gunman fired six shots at his Ascot Vale home at 2.30am.
The biochemist, who is banned from the AFL and NRL for doping players, emerged from hospital later that day claiming the shooting was an attempt to silence him over explosive sports-related information that he intended to reveal. As yet, he has revealed nothing.
The Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority is still investigating aspects of the disastrous supplement regimen Dank ran while working in the AFL, and Dank is appealing his AFL ban.
Separately, Dank is being sued through the civil courts for unpaid debts relating to a failed investment scheme.
Police spokeswoman Melissa Seach said: “The investigation by Armed Crime Squad detectives remains ongoing.”
Murray did not return calls.
‘Mad scientist’ is always in denial
STEPHEN Dank will go down in history as an arch villain of sports doping in Australia, the biochemist whose reckless approach to supplementation plunged two football codes into unprecedented chaos.
Yet for his part, the self-styled “sports scientist” seems convinced he has been unfairly cast as a bad guy.
Despite a string of court findings against him, Dank continues to insist he’s done nothing wrong.
He’s been booted from both the NRL and AFL for trying to traffic banned substances.
And while he’s contesting his AFL ban, overwhelming evidence suggests his approach to treating athletes reflects that of a mad scientist more than an informed professional.
In March, a Sydney jury found he had acted with “reckless indifference” to the life of rugby league player Jon Mannah, who died after Dank gave him peptides while he was in remission from cancer.
The jury found it was “substantially true” that Dank had “administered dangerous and cancer-causing supplements” to players.
The Herald Sun revealed in 2013 how Dank and a pharmacist had discussed testing on Essendon players a “new polymer” applied to racehorses.
Evidence at the AFL Tribunal hearing into the Essendon supplement debacle shows Dank had boasted how the Crown Prince of Qatar wanted to “trial my services” on his camels and horses.
People, thoroughbreds, camels, you name it. No wonder former Telstra chief Ziggy Switkowski, in his review of Essendon’s supplement program, concluded the club’s shift in treatments under Dank led to a “pharmacologically experimental” environment.
ASADA boss Ben McDevitt, commenting on whether Dank had any record of what he gave Essendon players, said: “All the evidence that I have seen probably would indicate if there were records, they would be shambolic and chaotic.”
So maybe Dank, who runs his own private peptide business, simply lost track of the money he allegedly owes professional bad guy and bikie boss Mick Murray.
Peptides are popular with all types of gym junkies, including outlaw bikies.
It should come as no surprise that police investigating a drive-by shooting at Dank’s Ascot Vale home in July would look in this general direction, especially with allegations swirling that Dank owes money to Murray, who is the president of the Comancheros.
Not that Dank would admit to dealing with that world. Yesterday he denied owing money to Murray or anyone.
Presumably, he’s told police what he has hinted at in public — that the shooting relates to sports doping. “I have my suspicions,” he said. “I will not be silenced or bullied and will continue in my attempt to put the truth out there.”
He hasn’t said anything yet. Perhaps he’s saving it for September, when he is listed as a guest speaker at Sydney’s aptly named Festival of Dangerous Ideas.