How police smashed brutal Comanchero puppet gang The Last Kings

The Comanchero bikie gang set up a brutal sub-group called The Last Kings — led by the so-called “Cry Baby Bikie” Robert Ale — to target rivals in a dangerous escalation of a bloody turf war with the Rebels. Here’s the elaborate surveillance and sting operations police used to ultimately smash the group.

EXCLUSIVE: The Comanchero bikie gang set up a brutal sub-group called The Last Kings to attack its enemies in a dangerous escalation of a bloody turf war with its Rebels gang rivals.

The Herald Sun can today reveal elaborate surveillance and sting operations by police thwarted attempted hits and drive-by shootings, and ultimately smashed The Last Kings.

The group, led by the so-called “Cry Baby Bikie” Robert Ale, had the job of doing the “dirty work” of the Comanchero — the gang detectives have labelled Victoria’s most dangerous.

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In one operation, Victoria Police’s bikie-busting Echo Taskforce set up fake crime scenes and bogus booze-bus sites to scupper a Kings plan to riddle a rival’s home with bullets.

The thwarted would-be assailant, Mustafa Baydar, sent Ale a text: “Man, it was gonna be boom, boom, boom, tack, tack, tack, zack, zack, zack, slug, slug, slug, and out, bro”.

In another, police used a routine vehicle intercept to avert an attack they learned about from bugged phones.

Bikie Robert Ale arrives at the Melbourne County Court last month. Picture: David Crosling

The emergence of The Last Kings and their brazen violence, and the creative methods police adopted against them, has been detailed during months of court hearings.

After bugged mobile phone chats revealed an attack was imminent in November 2016, police taped off a fake crime scene in the target’s street.

Knowing two henchmen were on their way, investigators evacuated the home and set up a random breath-testing site nearby to try to deter them.

But The Last Kings members were ordered to drive around the area until the breath-testing unit left.

As detectives listened in, more patrol cars with flashing lights flooded the area, traffic cones were used to block off the road, and police pretended to investigate a crime. Ale eventually called the pair off.

Courts heard how The Last Kings recruited patrons of Comanchero boss Mick Murray’s Nitro gym in Hallam.

In November 2016, an arson attack on Kittens nightclub was plotted because Ale’s crew wrongly suspected rival bikie gang members owned it.

Ale, 35, the former right-hand man of Comanchero national president Mick Murray, was himself badly wounded last February 22, when he was shot multiple times at a Hampton Park tattoo parlour, possibly due to an internal dispute.

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On March 14, 2017, some 300 officers, including the Echo taskforce and the federal police’s national anti-gangs squad, swooped on Ale and his crew in raids on 27 properties.

Last month, Ale, of Lyndhurst, was remanded after pleading guilty to 18 charges including conspiracy to commit arson and recklessly cause injury, and trafficking a large commercial quantity of methylamphetamine. He is to be sentenced next month.

Police acknowledge that outlaw bikies view Victoria, because of its laws, as a destination for its annual general meetings and national runs.

Outlaw bikie gangs based in Victoria include the Hells Angels, the Mongols, the Bandidos and the Finks.

The Comanchero, founded in 1966 in Sydney, has chapters across Australia, but the gang has since also become a global operation, with chapters in Spain and in Bosnia.

As the gang created new national chapters in recent years it widened its membership to allow Middle Eastern and Islander members.

Police raided more than 40 Comanchero-linked businesses in 2018, including gyms, brothels and a law firm.

Then-Commander Cindy Millen said at the time that the club was an organised crime gang “we know have ­traditionally been involved in violent crimes such as shootings, assaults, arson, drug ­trafficking and extortion”.

Police were “essentially working to shut down their ability to operate”, she said.

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