Deadline: Cobram bikie raid link to Bellarine Peninsula takeaway shop

Why have bikie arrests in Cobram set tongues wagging in a quiet Bellarine Peninsula town? The answer lies in a local fast-food shop. Andrew Rule and Mark Buttler with the latest crime buzz.

Melbourne’s top crime writers Andrew Rule and Mark Buttler with their weekly dose of scallywag scuttlebutt.

OMG, MONGOL DRESSES FOR CAMERAS

There’s nothing like brand promotion, even if you’re a bikie just dragged out of bed by the police.

One of those arrested in raids at Cobram on Sunday pulled on an item of Mongols club merchandise: a top emblazoned with the letters SYLM.

For those not in the know, which is most people, SYLM stands for Support Your Local Mongols.

Police suspect the Cobram-based chapter of the club has been doing pretty well at supporting themselves with cross-border drug trafficking.

It’s always a good time Support Your Local

Their presence in the Murray River town has been noticed for the past year.

The Mongols already have a strong hand in Echuca where they patched over the Bandidos a while back under the leadership of Jason Addison.

Echuca’s clubhouse was raided at the weekend as part of the synchronised swoop at Cobram, which resulted in a 51-year-old being nailed with a loaded gun and cash as he crossed the bridge.

Police also picked up 2.5kg of drugs around the district.

All of which is excellent gossip for judges, lawyers, retired doctors and others who walk their cavoodles and drink coffee in a quiet seaside town on the Bellarine Peninsula.

Why? Because a local fast-food shop taken over by out-of-towners last year was closed suddenly the day after the arrest of a family member who spent his time not cooking, but on his mobile, chain smoking and talking furiously.

And the Cobram connection?

According to the sticker on fast-food boy’s car, that’s where the restaurant people are from. What a small world.

MORALLY BANKRUPT

He’s a money man long suspected of being a key launderer of various organised crime figures in Melbourne.

His many friends will have been troubled to see a while back that he was heading for bankruptcy, another blow in a run of bad luck.

But they needn’t feel too sad because our man has somehow been able to stay active in the property market, buying and selling like a Mokbel in the 1990s.

One of the acquisitions has a commanding view of the CBD and beyond, making it a good spot to ponder the misfortunes of recent years.

It’s a wonder he has been able to scrape together enough money for the kids to stay in their private schools and for the luxury cars to be kept from the clutches of repo men.

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COLD CASES AND HOT GUNS

Victoria Police’s new illicit firearms unit is coming up with some interesting history on the weapons it seizes.

The unit, led by Detective Inspector Mick Daly, spends time and trouble working out the background of seized guns, which frequently pass through many hands.

An example is the gun used in a non-fatal shooting not long ago.

It turned out to have been stolen in a burglary in South Australia in 1991, vanishing for 30 years (as far as the law was concerned) before surfacing when a crook used it to shoot someone in Victoria.

Those with long memories will recall the reverse happening in relation to a double murder in Adelaide in 1996 which led to the notorious unsolved killing of Vicki Jacobs at Bendigo three years later.

Gerald Preston (centre) is doing 32 years in a very small cell.

The callous but clumsy Adelaide hits were the work of Vicki’s estranged husband Gerald Preston, a petty crook out of his depth.

Preston had been befriended in jail by a vicious Hells Angel, Terrence Tognolini, who offered him $10,000 and a Luger pistol to shoot Adelaide garage owner Les Knowles, involved in a drug turf war with the Angels.

Preston, driven to the scene by one Kevin Wayne Gillard, managed to shoot two men and wound another because he wasn’t sure which one was his target.

Vicki Jacobs was shot dead as she slept next to her son.

Preston was as stupid as he was callous.

He fled to the country but instead of ditching the Luger, he “hid” it at a relative’s place, where police soon found it.

The pistol was traced to a burglary in South Gippsland years before, in which a legitimate gun collection was stolen.

Preston is doing 32 years in a very small cell for the $10,000 Tognolini gave him.

He has always claimed not to know anything about his Hells Angels “friends” executing his ex-wife Jacobs as she slept beside their six-year-old son, but police who have studied his mail believe he is lying.

The only good news is that Tognolini was beaten up and thrown out of the Hells Angels for sexual offences against under-age girls.

And, by chance, two bikies suspected of being directly involved in killing Vicki Jacobs have met sticky ends, one by his own hand and the other in a tree-felling accident.

THE LADY HITS A SNAG

The sizzling case of the Dandenong sausage thief had our sources reaching for their mobiles after a Clow St resident was woken up by the strange sounds of sausages being extracted from his refrigerator.

The unhappy sausage owner was then hit in the head with his own frying pan before two intruders escaped, sausages in hand.

Investigators, human bloodhounds who can smell a crook metres away, snagged a 33-year-old woman in a nearby unit allegedly frying the hot sausages.

The other offender remains at large.

The ultimate fate of the sausages remains unknown. It is unlikely that diligent Dandy cops would eat evidence but we fear the wurst.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the naked city, thieves with green thumbs have pinched so many roses from Altona parkland that the local council has put up a sign to try to shame them.

Sadly, the sign is earnest and long winded when it could have been sharp and to the point. Clearly, it should have a simple headline that states the obvious: WHAT A BUNCH OF PRICKS.