Shane Bowden shooting: The chequered life of slain Gold Coast bikie
As a key figure within the Finks, notorious bikie Shane Bowden was a member of its “Terror Team” whose motto states “violence with attitude’’.
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SHANE Bowden’s notoriety on the Gold Coast ended how it started — violent and bloody.
The gangland heavy’s executive-style slaying after a visit to the gym brought the curtain down on a two-decade reign of bullets and bashings.
In 2006, Bowden was part of a wild brawl which erupted at a kickboxing tournament at the Royal Pines Resort between Finks and Hells Angels gang members.
The violence began after Christopher Wayne Hudson was spotted at the event following his defection to the rival Hells Angels.
Bowden, then a Fink, produced a handgun and fired at Hudson, hitting him in the face.
It became known as the “Ballroom Blitz’’.
The fight was supposed to be in the ring but the battle raged across the room in front of a crowd of 1800 people.
Members and associates of the Hells Angels were sitting ringside when the large group of rival Finks, including Bowden and Nick “The Knife” Forbes, arrived.
The fight started when Forbes threw a punch at Hudson.
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Footage showed Forbes and Hudson coming to blows, before Bowden pulled a handgun and shot Hudson twice in the face and back.
Forbes then held Hudson against the ring while Bowden and another man rained more blows on him.
It was believed the shooting was retribution for Hudson, a former Finks member, defecting to the Hells Angels.
Bowden, who was on parole at the time for drug trafficking and property offences, was convicted and went back to prison for seven years.
As a key figure within the Finks he was a member of its “Terror Team” whose motto states “violence with attitude’’.
A judge would declare Bowden a “serious violent offender’’ whose crimes included a 1998 assault of a woman outside a nightclub.
The year following the “Ballroom Blitz’’ Hudson, fuelled on ice, would shoot three people in Melbourne’s CBD.
Bowden was released from prison in early 2012 and was black-listed from the Gold Coast.
He was ordered to surrender his Finks membership and warned not to associate with members of an outlaw gang. He was forced to live in a halfway house under strict parole conditions until March 2013.
Bowden’s time as an infamous Fink ended when the club was involved in nationwide “patching over” to the international Mongols gang in 2013.
Bowden became a major plank in the Mongols’ Melbourne push as a known enforcer.
As the club’s national Sergeant at Arms, he came to Victoria with another prominent member, Greg Keating, as it established its roots in a Port Melbourne factory and began recruiting.
But it wasn’t long before Victoria Police’s Echo task force was disrupting Bowden’s activities.
News Corp revealed Bowden had moved to Victorian in November 2013, when Bowden was the subject of a raid by Victoria Police’s special operations group.
As heavily armed police surrounded a Port Melbourne warehouse where he was staying an officer called out on a megaphone: “Shane Bowden, come out with your hands up.”
By 2015, Bowden’s decisions became erratic and he was arrested over a violent aggravated burglary in South Yarra.
Bowden, dressed in camouflage, burst into the property wearing night vision goggles and brandishing a knife along with his accomplice, fitness model Janet ‘Aysen’ Campbell.
He attacked two people inside the home, kicking one victim in the head and stomped on his face before taking cash from him.
While in maximum security Port Phillip Prison he charmed a female guard, whose raunchy photos were found in his cell in 2017 by Corrections Victoria staff.
The officer in the images was suspended and later resigned.
A couple of years earlier, in-between prison stints as a ‘’professional’’ outlaw bikie, Bowden posted pictures of himself on social media sipping champagne with his glamorous fiancee flying business class.
In another picture, Bowden is standing with Mitchell.
In it he is wearing a Mongol top with the words ‘‘Respect Few, Fear None’’ emblazoned on it.
That credo would come back to bite him.
Originally published as Shane Bowden shooting: The chequered life of slain Gold Coast bikie