How a strip club lunch led to gym owner Wayne Amey’s murder

MURDERED Hawthorn gym owner Wayne Amey’s fatal mistake was attending a seedy businessmen’s lunch at Richmond strip club in 2003.

PLEA hearing for femme fatale Robyn Lindholm and Torsten Trabert and John Ryan over the murder of Lindholm's boyfriend Wayne Amey. Torsten Trabert CONFIRMED BY PADDY MURPHY. Picture: Jay Town

MURDERED Hawthorn gym owner Wayne Amey’s fatal mistake was attending a seedy businessmen’s lunch at Richmond strip club in 2003.

It was at the Richmond Club Hotel — then the host of explicit sex shows — where Mr Amey met femme fatale and black widow Robyn Lindholm, a long-time stripper and former girlfriend of slain underworld thug Alphonse Gangitano.

Lindholm and Amey went on to develop a stop-start relationship that eventually soured and ended in a bitter property dispute that led to Mr Amey’s murder in December 2013

Lindholm, 42, today fronted the Supreme Court along with John Anthony Ryan, 38, and her lover Torsten Trabert, two goons she enlisted to murder Mr Amey.

The trio stuffed Mr Amey’s beaten and stabbed body between two boulders at Mount Korong in central Victoria before going a for a celebratory drink at a nearby pub.

Lindholm today smiled several times and winked at Trabert, 46, when her barrister John Kelly described their relationship as “a fling”.

John Ryan enters the court.

Robyn Lindholm is brought to court.

Mr Kelly said Lindholm excelled at Malvern Girls’ Secondary but dropped out of a science degree at Monash and became a stripper to pay for a farm she brought for her horses.

Mr Amey’s son Patrick gave a moving victim impact statement, describing his father as his best friend.

“He put so much effort into your life and you took his,” Patrick Amey said to Lindholm.

Prosecutor Gavin Silbert SC earlier branded Lindholm a femme fatale who controlled men and had been involved in an intense drug-fuelled sexual relationship with Trabert.

“Mr Trabert was infatuated with her. He left his wife and children,” Mr Silbert said.

“He was involved in an intense sexual relationship with her.”

Victim Wayne Amey

Amey and Lindholm were involved in an acrimonious breakup and were due in court the day after the alleged murder to settle a dispute over a farm in Bittern they jointly owned.

The dispute was the driving force behind the murder, Mr Silbert said.

Neither Ryan or Trabert knew Amey well but agreed to get involved in the “contract killing” because they were under the influence of Lindholm, Mr Silbert said.

“She had an uncanny ability to manipulate men,” Mr Silbert said.

Justice Lex Lasry will sentence the trio at a later date.