Secrets of the missing Joker: New shock theory behind missing bikie Steve Williams

It’s been 20 years since the Jokers president vanished without a trace, but new claims point to an explosive theory on why he was killed.

It remains one of Australia’s most mysterious bikie crimes – former Gypsy Jokers president Steve Williams vanished 20 years ago, presumed dead and his body never found.

In the first of a three-part series, Secrets of the Missing Joker, The Advertiser can reveal a new shock theory – that sadistic pedophile group The Family may have been involved in his murder.

High-profile bikie Steve Williams accused major Adelaide underworld figures of involvement in secret, powerful pedophile rings before his disappearance, a new claim reveals.

In the months before former the Gypsy Jokers’ president Williams, 38, vanished from a Gillman trucking yard, he was living in a dank unit above Stormy Summers’ otherwise meticulous Waymouth Street brothel.

Recently voted out of the SA presidency, he sat in the room with curtains drawn, windows shut. The room smelled of stale cigars. Scattered around him were pages scrawled in urgent verse – part poetic, part incoherent.

Fist holes punched the wall.

Cracks ran through the mirror.

Cracks ran through his mind.

Gypsy Joker biker Steve Williams in BP's Hotel in Adelaide in 2005, six months before he disappeared.

He believed secret high society pedophiles — including a towering underworld debt collector and a media figure — were operating in plain sight. More and more, he saw his purpose as smashing this suspected pedophile ring apart.

“Steve was very worried about child abuse. He was always trying to protect the vulnerable,” a bikie insider said.

“In those last few months, he talked about (Bevan) von Einem (from The Family) all the time.”

A year earlier, Williams had formed a cross-bikie group to expose abusers.

Steve Williams spoke “obsessively” about SA convicted murderer Bevan Spencer von Einem in the lead up to his disappearance – convinced von Einem and The Family had links to both the Adelaide establishment and the Underworld.

Adam Shand, a journalist and author of Outlaw, told The Advertiser: Williams came to see himself as the Marvel vigilante The Punisher, says Shand – starting a dangerous quest for justice.

The Family, a term coined by SA Police in the 1980s, refers to a suspected group of “well-connected men” believed to have abducted, sexually tortured and murdered young men in Adelaide. Von Einem remains the only person convicted.

Brothel owner madam Stormy Summers standing outside her brothel in 1999.

Steve Williams came to see himself as the Marvel vigilante antihero The Punisher, according to journalist Adam Shand.

Around this time, Williams grew close to forensic psychologist Arthur Veno — “the mad professor” — who was funded by Monash University to mediate between the Gypsy Jokers and SAPOL.

Veno set up an office above Summers’ brothel, next to Williams’ studio, and later said Williams feared for his life and believed the rings “could be assassins”.

One day in June 2005, Williams bought stolen goods from a local amphetamine dealer — which included a bundle of documents.

Veno said the documents came from jailed pedophile magistrate Peter Liddy, and Williams claimed they implicated prominent Adelaide identities in elite pedophile networks.

Veno believed the timing was crucial: The deal happened less than two weeks before Williams vanished.

On the day he disappeared — June 14, 2005 — some sources claim Williams planned to meet a detective and anti-pedophile campaigner at the Gepps Cross Hotel, not to collect a debt as some believe, before heading to the Gillman yard where he was likely killed.

One person connected to Williams was Wendy Utting, later charged – and then acquitted – of libel for accusing a police officer and MP of abuse.

She told SBS in 2016: “The day he (Williams) was due to meet with this (police) officer … those couple of days … is when he disappeared.”

But others tell a different story.

“I think these were symptoms of the same psychotic illness that saw him voted out,” Adelaide criminologist Dr Allan Perry said. “The idea that people in power would organise a hit is far-fetched. They have other ways to protect themselves.”

Steve Williams, then leader of South Australian bikie gang the Gypsy Jokers, in 2003.

Retired criminologist Dr Allan Perry at the site of Stormy Summers former brothel on Waymouth Street. Picture: Brenton Edwards

Its been 20 years since a heartbroken Blayze last saw her father Steve Williams. Picture: Brenton Edwards

Police mugshot of convicted murderer Bevan Spencer von Einem, dated 1983.

A well-known anti-pedophile figure said the only known pedophile ring at the time involved correctional officers at Magill Training Centre.

An independent researcher who’s spent over a decade looking into The Family believes members were “almost certainly dead or close to it” by the time Williams began speaking out.

Shand thinks it’s more likely Williams was meeting a moneylender and had grown increasingly paranoid in his final weeks.

Police and SES search land at Gillman for the body of bikie Steve Williams in July, 2005. His body has never been found.

One bikie insider said Williams had even begun to suspect Stormy Summers, the madam whose apartment he lived in — despite being best man at her wedding.

“She’d take in homeless teens and have them working for her … I think Steve started to wonder if she was somehow tied to it all,” one insider said.

While most dismissed his theories as delusions, others believe his accusations may have unnerved people in the underworld — which may have contributed to his death.

“I think people were spooked,” Dr Perry said. “What else was he going to say? At best, he was a loose cannon.”

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

Originally published as Secrets of the missing Joker: New shock theory behind missing bikie Steve Williams