Deadline: When Melbourne private school mums took aim at bikie boss

When the mums at Melbourne Girls Grammar realised the daughters of a bikie boss were in their midst they wanted them thrown out of the elite school. But he wasn’t about to take it lying down.

Melbourne Girls Grammar. Exterior shots of school and signage. Picture: Ellen Smith

Andrew Rule and Mark Buttler with the latest scallywag scuttlebutt.

Malkoun’s school of hard knocks

What happens when the world of a feared bikie boss collides with Melbourne’s private school belt?

Former Comanchero supremo Jay Malkoun has given us a taste, revealing the drama his outlaw motorcycle gang profile caused when his daughters attended Melbourne Girls Grammar.

Malkoun’s entertaining memoir, released this week, spells out how his bad-guy image caused some furrowed brows among parents at the prestigious school.

“I was in the papers most days and usually on the front page,” he writes in The Consultant.

“Before too long, rumours reached us that some other mums were trying to get our girls thrown out of the school.”

Malkoun, as he seems to have done in much of his life, was prepared to take a hard-line approach, if necessary.

Though the girls’ mother, Sam, was worried, Malkoun had a plan.

“I thought to myself, ‘Do your best, ladies. What do you think happens next? I’ll have Comos on every school gate greeting the mums and children as they arrive. Nobody’s going in or out. Take that to the parent teachers association, geniuses.”

The Consultant by Jay Malkoun is out this week.

As it happened, Malkoun didn’t need to execute that strategy.

“Fortunately, the school didn’t have a problem with the Malkouns and treated us as we presented, with respect and courtesy,” he wrote.

Despite that outcome, Malkoun recognised the negative impact his membership of a notorious outlaw gang could have on his children.

It was a point where he realised it was time to “look for other opportunities.”

“Our dream of having children and doing our best for them, providing a good education and everything else associated with developing well-rounded, smart, sporty kids was being hindered by my club life and gangster mates and all-round bad decisions.

“It was clear to me that I had made an epic mistake. Ultimately, it was isolating my children from school friends and any associated activity — such as birthday parties, play dates and all the stuff we take for granted — was at risk. I really f--ked up.”

Million dollar witness dials in

It’s amazing what the promise of a million-dollar reward can do. It rarely leads to a crime being solved but often stirs up interest among people who decide they have “vital” information that somehow slipped their mind for most of a lifetime.

Since a million dollar reward was announced in 2019 for answers to the mystery of who abducted and killed teenager Bronwynne Richardson in Albury in 1973, the lure of money has sparked up the odd memory. And, possibly, fired some imaginations.

Deadline was contacted by someone calling “for a friend” this week. The “friend” is claiming he saw several young men grab the 17-year-old Bronwynne in an Albury car park on the evening of October 12, 1973.

It seems that most, if not all, the suspects are now dead and any others so old they are harmless, so the self-proclaimed “witness” has belatedly mustered the courage to talk about it.

It strikes Deadline that to wait 51 years is an overabundance of caution, regardless of how scared the alleged witness might have felt over the last quarter of the 20th century.

Police announced $1m reward for information into Bronwynne Richardson’s murder.

The caller assures us that his nervous friend has his reasons, such as certain old-time police intimidating him, perhaps because his version of events highlighted how poor the initial investigation was.

He tells of local rumours that Bronwynne, who’d won the Corowa Showgirl beauty pageant, had been attacked by at least one offender from that area. Someone whose family might have been able to run interference in the investigation — which was also hampered by the fact that the investigators were NSW police whereas some possible co-offenders could have been from the Victorian side of the border.

The official line is that Bronwynne Richardson was seen being dragged into a pale green and white station wagon the evening she disappeared. Her body was found two days later in Horseshoe Lagoon next to the Murray River.

She had been raped before being strangled and drowned, according to the 1975 inquest. Another inquest was held in 2011 and a third in 2021, which pointed to the most likely offenders being three men.

One of them, Colin Newey, was Bronwynne’s second cousin. He was arrested for her murder in 2014 but the charges were dropped. He died in 2019. So have two of his alleged co-offenders.

But while there is a reward hanging over the case, there’s always the chance that someone else might be implicated. Perhaps someone who knows what happened to the green and white station wagon, which was never found.

What a tool!

Dramatic scenes at a Campbellfield factory on Saturday when Australian Federal Police officers swooped on four young blokes aged from 17 to 20.

The group was allegedly trying to find meth worth $300 million which they apparently believed was inside a hydraulic press imported from the US in June.

What they didn’t know was that Australian Border Force personnel had detected the shipment on arrival and that the (now empty) press was under surveillance from the moment it left the wharves.

A sample of the meth haul.

The group was reportedly looking for the meth packed inside a hydraulic press.

To add injury to insult, one of the group needed some post-arrest medical attention after a nasty run-in with a power tool.

The good news is that the young fellow might soon have the chance to brush up on his handyman work.

Most prisons have excellent industries sections where inmates can get the kind of skills that might serve them well after release. One way or another.

Copping pork on his fork

Strange times last week when cooked suckling pigs were sent to two Melbourne police stations.

Even weirder, we’re told, is that a hungry copper started chowing down on one of the unsolicited deliveries, which would seem a risky proposition.

The mystery was solved when it later turned out the benefactor was a Vietnamese chap showing his gratitude to hardworking police with a gift.

Only problem was that he didn’t know how to write a card in English and so the porkers arrived without “thankyou” cards.

Sharp-shooter

Turkey’s Yusuf Dikec became a sporting sensation this week when he won shooting silver at the Paris Olympics.

While his rivals competed in special lenses to avoid blur, other eyewear to enhance precision and ear protectors for noise, Dikec lobbed in a pair of prescription glasses and, one hand in pocket, beat all but one rival.

The Olympic #shootingsport stars we didn’t know we needed.

🇰🇷 Kim Yeji 🤝 Yusuf Dikeç 🇹🇷 pic.twitter.com/gfkyGjFg4I

— The Olympic Games (@Olympics) August 1, 2024

One Melbourne gangland observer remarked that Dikec could be in line for work here when he retires.

Those with long memories will recall the city’s rich history of bungling contract killers who have failed even from the closest of ranges or eliminated the wrong targets.

The late underworld sharpshooter Billy “the Texan” Longley would have approved of Dikec’s cool approach. He noted that most of his (largely deceased) rivals did not maintain their weapons and did not practise enough, whereas he did.

The proof was in the results. Longley died of natural causes in old age, whereas many of his enemies ended up in unmarked graves in the 1970s.

Booze cruise a bust

There’s nothing wrong with a wine tour but an Ashburton bloke allegedly took the wrong approach on the weekend.

Members from Nunawading highway patrol saw the 24-year-old cruise past them in his Toyota Yaris at Mitcham early on Sunday.

One hand was on the steering wheel and the other was being used to chug a bottle of wine.

He was pulled over and recorded a blood alcohol reading of .234, resulting in the immediate impoundment of the Yaris, his driver’s licence suspended and drink-driving charges.

Kaz’s clock ticking

Tiktok is the way for all manner of underworld types to get their message across.

We noticed this week that Kaz Hamad, architect of Melbourne’s tobacco war chaos, has a TikTok account in his name.

It’s not for us to say whether it’s genuine or not, though we’d probably bet on it being not.

Having said that, the only words on the page are “I’m here to collect.”

That bit does sound right.