Meet the major figures in the Rebels Motorcycle Club
THEY’RE the tattooed “brothers” behind the handlebar moustaches, Harley Davidsons and designer threads. Meet the major players in the Rebels motorcycle club, who live by the mantra: “Why waltz when you can rock and roll”.
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MEET the tattooed “brothers” behind the handlebar moustaches, Harley Davidsons and designer threads.
They’ve been the major players in the Rebels motorcycle club, who live by the mantra: “Why waltz when you can rock and roll”.
Considered a “stable club”, the Rebels boast the most members in Australia with business interest in construction, transport and tattoo parlours.
But the group’s livelihood has suffered, a blow dealt by the Australian Government’s bid to smash the power of outlaw bikies.
With cancelled visas and deportation a real threat, the Rebels have struggled with a leadership vacuum after losing two of their head honchos Alex Vella and Simon Rasic.
Meet the men behind the confederate colours:
THE BLOODY AND BRUTAL HISTORY OF THE BANDIDOS
HOW THE COMANCHEROS BECAME THE MOST VICIOUS BIKE GANG
THE STORY BEHIND THE REBELS BIKIE GANG
ALEX VELLA
The club is in peril after former national president Alex Vella was dealt an unexpected blow while holidaying four years ago.
The Maltese Falcon, as he’s known to both loved ones and his enemies, now lives exiled in Malta following the cancellation of his Australian visa.
His fall from grace has taken the former bikie heavyweight from a plush home and big backyard in western Sydney and a fleet of luxury cars, to a cramped Maltese apartment with a cage full of squawking budgies where he writes poetry.
These days, at age 65, he no longer wears the club colours, despite bikes being his “greatest passion”.
“They are more trouble than they’re worth”, he told News Corp last year.
However, he’s still an active participant on the Rebels MC Facebook page, recently sharing an interesting set of rules supporters of the bikie club must follow.
Vella should know the rules well. He joined the Rebels when he was just 19, and went on to gain significant power after building the Sydney chapter from scratch.
He became the feared group’s national president a year later in 1973.
During these glory days, Vella was a boxer who did well, becoming the Maltese light-heavyweight champion in 1978, a career one of his sons, Alex, has followed.
During 2011 and 2012, while Vella was in charge of the Rebels, more than 700 members were investigated in relation to 1200 charges.
Not one to shy away from the cameras, he once famously opened the doors to his Sydney clubhouse to the media to answer questions, despite bikies rarely holding press conferences.
These days he barely leaves the dilapidated Maltese apartment he calls home.
The hardest part of living away from the life he built, is pining for his wife Heather, whom he misses deeply, as well as their four sons, among them Rebels member Alex Jnr, and nine grandchildren.
He says their time apart has taken a toll on their marriage.
When pressed about how he makes ends meet in his new world order, Vella says: “I cannot read and write, but I can count”.
“I worked hard as a bricklayer and a labourer and even as a bouncer at the clubs for a while.
“My cousin taught me how to make smart investments and that’s what I did.
“(The Australian Government) made me prove where all my money came from a while back and I was able to do so.”
Vella is leasing out the national clubhouse in Leppington — on a sprawling 2.7 hectare property — after cops shut it down for more than $100,000 a year after police put an end to the bikie haunt of almost 30 years.
The 2014 bid to impact Vella wasn’t the first time steps were taken to stop the multi-millionaire Rebels boss from re-entering Australia.
He encountered problems in 2007 after flying to Tokyo to watch his son, middleweight boxer, Adam Vella.
But supporters have not lost hope in bringing him home, having created a Change.org petition titled: ‘Approve Alex Vella’s resident return Visa’, with almost 9000 signatures.
“It’s unjust and un Australian preventing him from coming home to his family he has been in Australia for 46 years, paid taxes and votes !!! Cancelling his visa while out of the country is a pathetic un Australian act of bastardry!” it reads.
The exiled boss also set up a website selling merchandise to fund his legal battle to return home.
However, Vella’s exile will continue after an attempt to appeal to the Australian High Court was thwarted.
SIMON ‘THE KING’ RASIC
Rebels sergeant-at-arms Simon Rasic was an enforcing character who loved whiskey and beer, and was earmarked to rise to the top before his untimely death.
The concreter and floor sander, a dad-of-four, was poised to take over as next national president.
But he died of a suspected heart attack in his sleep days after former national president Alex Vella was locked out of Australia in 2014.
The 43-year-old much-loved son of former Socceroos coach Rale Rasic held the high-ranking position with the gang for more than a decade.
The gap in leadership left a power vacuum the club is struggling to recover from.
As one of Australia’s best-known bikie bosses, his funeral attracted more than 1500 mourners, which included dozens of patched Rebels from Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Malta.
Members from other clubs, including patched Bandidos, also attended the send-off.
Rasic’s young son Alex played a key role in the funeral, arriving at the church on the back of a Rebels’ bike.
He was seen in powerful images carrying his father’s spray-painted coffin, consoled by patched members during the ceremony.
Now four years on, his son is much older and still has links to the Rebels, having developed a close friendship with high-ranking member Chris Rymer.
The pair are frequently together, sharing pictures of their glamorous lifestyles on their respective Instagram accounts.
CHRIS RYMER
Senior Rebels bikie Chris Rymer likes to show off his gang tattoos, luxury shopping trips to Louis Vuitton and his attractive girlfriend in photos posted on Instagram.
And before the 27-year-old sensationally quit the social media platform in February, he posted a picture of himself announcing he was going to be a dad.
“Straight out straight into it,” he posted.
He had developed a cult following for sharing his glamorous life after his acquittal and prison release for the ‘Sons of Anarchy’ torture attack.
Rymer and his seven Rebels bikie friends were found not guilty late last year of the 2014 kidnapping and 36-hour torture ordeal of a former gang president.
The victim was allegedly hog tied with cable leads, burnt with a blowtorch, had his nipples sliced open and his right arm shattered.
The incident attracted the nickname of the TV show Sons of Anarchy, which features ritual attacks on those who leave a fictional outlaw bikie club on bad terms.
As revealed exclusively by News Corp, Rymer returned to his comfortable lifestyle from the squalid confines of Silverwater prison in New South Wales after a jury found all eight men not guilty.
MICHAEL ‘RUTHLESS’ DAVEY
Rebels bikie Michael Davey was in the prime of his life working as a motorcycle mechanic and a dad to a little boy when he was shot dead on a driveway in western Sydney.
But Davey, 30, was no innocent man.
Known as ‘Ruthless’, he was jailed for manslaughter over the brutal bashing of a teenager in Emu Plains in 2002.
Aged just 17 at the time, Davey was convicted along with three others in 2005 and was released in late 2006.
The group were initially charged with murder but accepted guilty pleas to manslaughter.
Their victim, aged 19, died from brain damage after being hit and kicked in the head.
Davey — who was well known to police and had been in and out jail since 2009 — was shot multiple times in a driveway about 100m from where he was living with his girlfriend, Sky.
He was lured to his death, having received a phone call from a ‘friend’ prompting him to go outside before he was shot, Sky told reporters.
It was described as a “gruesome” scene, and Davey couldn’t be revived by paramedics.
The Rebels posted a tribute on their Sydney Facebook page.
“It’s with deep regret and sadness i (sic) bring the news of Micky D’s passing this morning,” the post reads.
“On behalf of the club I offer our sincere condolences to the Davey family on this tragic loss.
“You will be truly missed brother you were one of a kind. May you ride in the Forever Chapter.”
Davey was linked on Facebook to former national president Alex Vella and appears in several photos in club colours.
ALEX VELLA JNR
Alex Vella Junior was holidaying with his Rebels boss dad Alex Vella and cousin Damien Vella when they discovered his dad’s visa had been cancelled under “the character provisions of the Migration Act”.
Alex Jnr is a citizen, along with his brother and mother, unlike his dad who never applied for citizenship despite living in Australia for more than four decades.
Alex Jnr and Damien made headlines when they became stranded overseas after their airline, Emirates, refused to fly them back to Sydney.
The men claimed they were told the decision was based on advice from the Federal Government — a claim rejected by Immigration Minister, Scott Morrison.
They were forced to wait 24 hours, until their Australian lawyer secured written advice from the Australian High Commission in Malta confirming no order had been issued by the Government.
“It looks like we’re the victims of a vendetta,’’ Alex Vella Jr told News Corp in June, 2014.
“We turned up at the airport last night with our tickets and our luggage, only to be told by Emirates airline staff that we wouldn’t be allowed to re-enter Australia.
“We couldn’t believe it. We’re stranded here now with Dad.’’
DAMIEN VELLA
Damien Vella took the reigns after his uncle, and former boss Alex Vella became trapped in Malta.
His uncle, an immensely proud man, said he was glad his sons never took over following his exile.
“It wasn’t up to me, the club has to vote on that,” he said when asked about a power vacuum being created when he stood down.
“My sons never wanted to be in charge anyway, they saw what happened to me, how police target me.
“And I wouldn’t have wanted them to do it for the same reason.”
Damien — who has a criminal record — was holidaying in Malta with his cousin Alex Vella Jnr and his uncle Alex Snr whose visa was cancelled in 2014.
But Damien and Alex Jnr won their fight to be allowed back into Australia.
At the time, a senior Rebel said: “Alex Jnr and Damien are obviously relieved to be heading home. It’s still unclear exactly what happened, but what is obvious is that it’s caused the family a lot of grief.
“We don’t believe it’s just a coincidence they had their flight plans disrupted after what happened to Alex’s dad, Alex Vella Snr’.”
AARON ‘AJ’ GRAHAM
Notorious criminal Aaron ‘AJ’ Graham joined the many bikie bosses kicked out of Australia, when he was escorted onto a flight and flown to Auckland last October.
Graham, the founding member of the Rebels bikie gang’s Tasmanian chapter, was deported to his native country — despite winning a High Court appeal against his second visa cancellation.
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton cancelled Graham’s visa for a third time within hours of a High Court decision that his earlier visa cancellation decision was invalid.
Graham, 50, was jailed for 15 months in 2009 over a vicious attack on a teenage insurance fraud investigator.
His terrified 19-year-old victim was made to sit on a chair in front of Graham’s suburban Hobart home and told to look at the Rebels flag flying on top of the unit.
As he did so, Graham punched him twice in the face, knocking him off the chair, and then continued punching and kicking the teenager before poking him in the eye with a radio aerial.
DEAN MARTIN
Only a few months ago, former Rebels Victorian president Dean Martin, believed to be a 50-year-old security manager for a construction company, handed over the club’s leadership during a “peaceful” changeover.
Martin, the brother of exiled former Rebel bikie Shane Martin and uncle to star Richmond footballer Dustin, has been a long-term Rebels leader and is understood to have remained within their ranks.
The handing over of the president’s badge occurred at a Whittlesea clubhouse on April 14 followed by a party.
The Herald Sun understands the top spot at the Rebels has been taken up by the cousin of Norm Meyer — known for years as a prominent Comanchero and union figure.
Martin, a married father-of-five with no prior convictions, took the fall when cops raided the club’s Sunshine West clubhouse in 2013, raiding its bars and fridges of booze because there had never been a liquor licence or BYO permit issued to the address.
They found cans and bottles of Jim Beam, Jack Daniels and Bundaberg Rum, XXXX beer, 13 UDL cans, 25 Carlton Draught cans, two Hummer sparkling brut, a bottle of Ouzo and one bottle of Zibibbo champagne.
He pleaded guilty to charges of selling liquor without a licence and dealing with property suspected to be proceeds of crime.
The judge took into account the guilty plea and lack of priors before dishing out a 12-month good behaviour bond without conviction, on condition he pay $750 to the court fund.
RICK REYNOLDS
It was the unexpected moment police saved the life of a Rebels chief.
Rick Reynolds was strapped to a chair with cable ties as an uprising mutiny of gang members worked him over with cricket bats, pliers, a pickaxe, shovels and a gas burner (for scorching off club tattoos).
The sergeant-at-arms had been ambushed outside a smash repair workshop on the way to work in Sydney’s west, then dragged inside where the brutality played out.
Blood poured from Reynolds (his real name is suppressed) and he drifted in and out of consciousness as the beating unfolded in January, 2013.
Footage captured the moment dozens of armed police and canine units burst into the factory — tipped off by passers-by who witnessed the ambush — where they found Reynolds seated in the chair.
The attack served as a reminder of the grave consequences for breaking the bikie code.
Was it because he’d been planning to leave the club, a claim that he was a police informant or cheating with a fellow gang member’s partner (a cardinal sin in the bikie code)?
A secret recording suggests the latter.
Reynolds told a visitor in a hospital room that was being recorded by police: “Bloke got out of the car and goes, ‘You f---ing dog c---, you f---ed my missus’.”
A group of eight Rebels were sentenced to up to three years in prison over the attack.
‘COUSIN’ OF NORM MEYER
The Herald Sun understands the top spot at the Victorian arm of the Rebels has been taken up by the cousin of face-tattooed bikie Norm Meyer — known as a prominent Comanchero and union figure over the years.
The Herald Sun does not know the name of the cousin, but understands the handing over of the president’s badge from Dean Martin occurred at a Whittlesea clubhouse on April 14 followed by a party.
Mr Meyer was revealed as the key player in standover tactics for the militant CFMEU in the building industry in 2014.
He was sacked when video footage surfaced of his attempt to collect a debt, dressed in full Comanchero colours.
The menacing bikie — sergeant-at-arms of the former Williamstown chapter — became the poster boy for alleged corruption in the building trades.
EDIN ‘BOZ’ SMAJOVIC
Edin “Boz” Smajovic, a 23-year-old Bosnian refugee and popular Rebels member, was killed by a single bullet fired into his heart, a murder that still remains unsolved.
Known as their ‘little brother’, Smajovic’s fate was sealed soon after arriving at a car yard, in Campbelltown in Sydney’s southwest, on a summer afternoon in 2009.
Smajovic’s funeral, at Auburn Gallipoli Mosque, in Sydney, was attended by over 300 Rebels, including national president Alex Vella.
Anthony Tan, a business partner in the car yard along with Nathan Reddy, was charged with murder.
Police accused Tan of fatally shooting Smajovic in a gunbattle, which also saw Tan shot in the neck by Smajovic.
Reddy was charged with being an accessory to murder. Not the world’s most straight-laced character, he had numerous criminal convictions staining his record and was looking at up to 25 years in jail.
But both men were sensationally acquitted on February 26, 2013 — as their trial in the NSW Supreme Court was set to begin — when it emerged that police had inexplicably sat on evidence that showed Smajovic had likely been shot by another bikie who had accompanied him to the standoff with Tan and Reddy.
A NSW Coroner has recently recommended a probe be launched into the possibility that police caused evidence to be lost in the murder investigation.
ANDREW PERISH
The notorious Perish brothers — Anthony, 48, and Andrew, 46, — whose life of crime was told in the fifth Underbelly series, Badness, are doing time.
The grandchildren of Croatian immigrants, the brothers and their four siblings grew up in semirural Leppington in southwestern Sydney where their father, Albert, ran the family’s egg business.
In 1993, their elderly grandparents were shot dead, a crime that remains unsolved.
Interestingly, the brothers belong to rival outlaw motorcycle clubs.
Anthony became a Rebels outlaw in 1994 and was soon convicted of conspiracy to manufacture amphetamines out of a shed on the family property.
The next year, a man was killed in a pub brawl and Andrew was charged with murder.
Witnesses had been harassed and encouraged not to give evidence, the Crown claimed during the committal.
At the trial in 1998, Andrew was found not guilty and a witness, whose car was found outside the Rebels’ Leppington clubhouse, had disappeared.
By 2012, more trouble followed, and Andrew was found guilty of conspiring to murder convicted Sydney drug trafficker Terry Falconer.
Andrew, played by actor Josh Quong Tart in Underbelly: Badness, was sentenced to nine years jail.
His brother, Anthony ‘Rooster’ Perish, a Gypsy Joker Motorcycle Club member played by Jonathan LaPaglia, was found guilty of murdering Falconer, and sentenced to 18 years.
Both are suspected of being connected to more than a dozen other killings.
However, a key witness in the notorious murder trial confessed to the killing on his deathbed claiming he wanted to “make peace with myself” and was “riddled with guilt”.
The man, legally known as Witness E, died from cancer in 2014 but signed an affidavit recanting evidence, claiming he accidentally killed Falconer in “a botched kidnapping”.
The confession was a backflip on the evidence he’d given to police to get a 50 per cent discount on his own jail sentence where he said Falconer was killed on Anthony Perish’s orders.
Falconer’s murder occurred because Falconer was alleged to have murdered Perish’s elderly grandparents.
COLIN ‘SNAKE’ WEBSDALE
Colin Websdale is the boss of the Geelong chapter, and father of the Bedson boys, and has managed to stay out of the headlines.
That hasn’t stopped him from supporting his sons, half-brothers John and Derek, in court.
They were called to task after bullets flew during what turned out to be a fatal gun attack on the Bandido’s clubhouse at Breakwater, Geelong in 2008.
Long-serving Bandido member Ross Brand was shot dead outside his clubhouse.
The jury found John Bedson, 27 at the time, a concreter and pizza cook by trade, guilty of murder and intentionally causing serious injury.
He was sentenced to 23 years’ jail with an 18-year minimum.
Derek Bedson, a 23-year-old apprentice carpenter, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and reckless conduct endangering life.
He was sentenced to 12 years’ jail but had it reduced to eight years with a five-year minimum.
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