Secrets of the Missing Joker: Blayze Williams says she knows who killed her dad Steve Williams

Blayze Williams, the daughter of missing Joker bikie Steve Williams, claims that she now knows who killed her dad after blaming the wrong man for two decades.

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Walking in to meet Blayze Williams, there is something girl-next-door but glamorous about her, something rugged but very soft.

Her arms are covered tattoos - a face split by skin and open skull. Under her forearm it reads - the sharp knife of the short life.

Blayze’s make-up is precise – crystalline blue eyes, subtle contouring on her cheekbones and jaw. She doesn’t hide things, she accentuates them.

Likewise, I get the impression Blayze doesn’t want to mask the truth about her father.

She wants to dig it all up – the rumours, the fear, the silence – hold it to the light, examine it, and finally lay it to rest.

WATCH EPISODE ONE: NEW THEORY

WATCH EPISODE TWO: FINKS V JOKERS

Steve Williams was last seen at the Gepps Cross Hotel in Adelaide around 2.30pm on June 14, 2005.

The former Gypsy Jokers president’s white Ford Falcon was later found abandoned in the hotel’s car park. It wasn’t until the next day – when he missed a scheduled meeting with Blayze – that people knew something was wrong.

The state’s then highest-profile bikie was supposed to drop off a laptop the next afternoon to Blayze. He never arrived or called.

Blayze Williams misses her doting dad, notorious bikie Steve Williams. Picture: Brenton Edwards

Blayze was his world. He was hers.

“I lost a piece of my soul when I lost him,” she said. “I thought I’d get to share my life with him. He lived for every achievement I made – every horse win, every school award – he wanted to hear about it all.

‘I still go to ring him sometimes. I still think, ‘Oh, I’ll tell Dad’. And then I remember I can’t.”

Gypsy Joker biker Steve Williams in BP's Hotel in Adelaide before he vanished.

Blayze paints the picture of a “loveable idiot”. devoted to her and her horse riding. A contrast to his reputation as “horrible” – the bikie enforcer, a feared debt collector, and man sued by police after retreating from an all-in brawl armed with a baton, with a broken jaw.

“He’d tell me about fights, about things that happened, so I could understand his different sides.”

But mostly she remembers his kindness to animals, for being the child misfit until he became a bikie prospect in his teens – and for not being able to fix anything.

He was also a man who seemed to forget who he was.

“I remember I had a boyfriend in Year 7 and we had a school disco. He turned up fully patched and shook my boyfriend’s hand, and my boyfriend couldn’t believe it.”

Losing her father at 13 has left her scarred, and in some ways, the grief has worsened over time.

Speaking to the Sunday Mail in front of her richly filled trophy cabinet – horse trophies, sashes, and sparkling tiaras – in her northern suburbs home, Blayze explained the emptiness made worse by not knowing exactly what happened to him.

Blayze is resolute: her father’s death had nothing to do with his former club – an idea she described as “hurtful”.

The Gypsy Jokers “remained close” even after Williams stepped down.

She trusts the police, dismissing claims that officers had something to do with her father’s disappearance.

She also relies heavily on the police for information.

Crucially, Blayze does not believe his death was linked to his anti-pedophilia activism as some sources claim, though he had troubling thoughts about Bevan von Einem’s connections.

“He did not meet an anti-pedophile campaigner at Gepps Cross Hotel,” she said.

Blayze holding a photo of her dad, Steve Williams. Picture: Brenton Edwards

She confirmed The Advertiser’s report that her father was working for a loan shark – also a family friend – and met him at the hotel. She isn’t sure if this man was the same person who drove him to the Gillman truck yard.

The Advertiser reported on Saturday that Williams met with the moneylender who briefed him about collecting a debt from two men – believed to be Finks bikies – at the premises at Gillman.

It is thought Williams was killed at the truck yard, with his body covered and removed in a white ute.

Why he went to such a hostile, relatively unguarded place remains unclear.

Blayze said she has concluded the moneylender – who told her dad about the debt owed by the Finks – was not involved in his death.

Blayze Williams confirmed that her father was working for a loan shark at the time her disappeared, presumed murdered, 20 years ago. Picture: Brenton Edwards

“That man was a family friend,” she said. “We spent a lot of time with him when I was young.

“For years I held anger toward him, thinking he had something to do with it because he was the last to see him. But I let go of that animosity.

“If he ever sees this, I want him to know I don’t hold anger. I know I’ve seen things wrong for a while – it’s hard not to blame something when you’ve got nothing to blame.”

Blayze is certain a rival gang killed him at the yard, and she believes it was “fast” – execution style.

“But there isn’t enough evidence to lay charges,” she said.

“We don’t know why. It could’ve been personal. Or maybe someone just wanted him gone. He had enemies – he was in the public eye. Could’ve been something petty. Or something bigger.”

Steve Williams was leader of South Australian bikie gang the Gypsy Jokers.

Outside at her property on Adelaide’s rural fringes – years, or even months, away from being surrounded by new suburbia – there’s a chill in the air.

It’s on days like today that she finds comfort in the warm shoulders and chests of her four horses.

She said her father always thought she’d be famous – and over-achieving has been her escape.

Blayze remains haunted that her father was “disposed of” as a “something” rather than a “someone”.

With her rugged confidence, she pleads: there are people who know where her father’s body is.

There are possibly – too – family members of those who disposed of his body. And she wants them to consider what the last 20 years have been like.

She says she is not interested in prosecution. She just wants a resolution.

“I’d like to spend one part of my life without worrying. Just give us a break and let there be an end to this. Let us finish it, and everyone can be at peace.

“I always try to see the best in people because I grew up with people that other people didn’t think were good, but I still see the good in them.”

Her platinum-blonde hair blows off her face, waving in the winter wind across the plain.

“Let me bury my dad.

“Please let me sit somewhere with him and know he’s there.”

Note: The Advertiser reporter Luke Williams is not related to Steve Williams.

Originally published as Secrets of the Missing Joker: Blayze Williams says she knows who killed her dad Steve Williams