Listed: Where 31 of Australia’s most notorious criminals and bikies went to high school
You’ll be shocked to learn where our most infamous Aussie crims and bikies went to high school. Warning: Some schools don’t want you to see this list.
School students joke about which of their classmates will end up a criminal.
Sometimes, the answer is all too predictable – like sickening child killer Derek Percy, who was spotted by his young classmates appearing to act out an imaginary stabbing at a local waterhole while dressed in a women’s nightgown.
Other times, it’s the kid no one would guess – like triple murderer Erin Patterson, who was forgotten by many of her classmates and described by one who remembered her as quiet, staying “on the periphery”.
Whether you take their school years as cautionary tales or just curious footnotes, some schools would prefer you didn’t know about these famous alumni.
Erin Patterson
Reason for infamy: Murderer who used mushrooms to kill three house guests
High school: University High School, Parkville, VIC
Patterson was a gifted student who was accepted into University High School’s accelerated learning program – nicknamed the “task force” – where students finished high school at a younger age after zooming through the curriculum.
Then named Erin Scutter, before her later marriage to Simon Patterson, she was just 17 when she graduated in 1991 from the inner city school, where she commuted from Glen Waverley in Melbourne’s southeast.
A former student told the Herald Sun she had been “quiet, reserved and didn’t get involved in the wider group … she really kept on the periphery and kept herself to herself”.
Many in the year level said they had no memory of the world’s best-known mushroom cook, including University of Melbourne vice chancellor Emma Johnston and actor Marisa Fraser (nee Warrington), who played Sindi Watts on Neighbours from 2002 to 2005.
READ MORE: Erin described as ‘brilliant but unhinged’
Brenton Tarrant
Reason for infamy: Terrorist behind mass shootings at New Zealand mosques
High school: Grafton High School, Grafton, NSW
Former classmates told The New York Times Tarrant had been disruptive, cocky, a one-time fan of heavy metal, and bullied even by his own friends as a student in the small town of Grafton, south of Byron Bay.
One classmate said that before graduating and becoming a personal trainer, Tarrant had been “sort of like your class clown … always trying to make people laugh and always being silly”.
In an online manifesto written before his attack, the terrorist said he had “little interest in education during my schooling, barely achieving a passing grade”.
Gerald Ridsdale
Reason for infamy: Priest convicted for abusing more than 50 children over three decades, dating back to his ordination in 1961
High school: St Patrick’s College, Ballarat, VIC
Ridsdale left school at 14, in 1949, to work for accounting firm J.N. Cooke and Co before he decided to study for the priesthood.
He later gave evidence he had been sexually abused three times while a school student, twice by family members and once by a Christian brother, although he said he could not remember if the brother had been part of St Patrick’s College.
The ABC reported a black line has been put through Ridsdale’s name on a board of ordained collegians at the school, while a plaque beneath reads: “The black line above stands both as a symbol of respect to the bravery of victims and survivors, and for the college’s deep remorse.”
Carl Williams
Reason for infamy: Gangland figure convicted of three murders
High school: Broadmeadows West Technical School, Broadmeadows, VIC (now Hillcrest Secondary College)
Before leaving school in year 11, Williams had been a schoolyard bully who tormented a girl to the point of suicide, the Herald Sun reported.
The victim, who wanted to be identified only as Ana, told the Herald Sun in 2015 that Williams and a crew of 30 friends made derogatory comments about her appearance every time they saw her.
A teacher, who confirmed Williams had been a bully in his later teen years, said he had earlier been a charming “little boy with a basin-bowl haircut” and “butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth” before he hit adolescence.
Martin Bryant
Reason for infamy: Mass murderer responsible for the 1996 Port Arthur massacre
High school: New Town High School, New Town, TAS
Bryant began his primary schooling at the Friends School – ranked in News Corp’s Top 100 Private Schools – which referred him for an assessment that found him to be “aggressive, destructive and very difficult with other children”, according to a psychiatric report.
His difficulties continued at New Town Primary School, where school records showed he lacked friends, struggled scholastically, stole, had violent outbursts, tormented vulnerable children, and took delight in the failure of other children, the report said.
Bryant, who had an IQ of 66, told the reporting psychiatrist that at New Town High School he was frequently hazed, bullied, ignored by other children, no one wanted to be his friend and he would invent minor illnesses to stay home from school.
READ MORE: Bryant’s motive revealed
Mark “Chopper” Read
Reason for infamy: Gang member convicted of crimes including armed robbery and kidnapping
High school: Lalor High School, Lalor, VIC (now Lalor Secondary College)
In his memoir, Chopper From The Inside, Read wrote he “grew up to hate bullies” after getting bullied five days a week at school, where he stood out because he was a Seven Day Adventist.
“I guess that’s why I take such delight in belting the hell out of the so-called ‘tough guys’. I’m violent, but I’m not a bully,” he wrote.
He left school at 15 – later counting this as one of his many regrets – “to go cane cutting up north”. By 16 or 17, he was entering into illegal bare knuckle fights to win prize money.
READ MORE: 25 years since Chopper movie
John Bunting
Reason for infamy: Ringleader of the so-called Snowtown murders in the 1990s
High school: Inala High School, Inala, QLD (now Glenala State High School)
Before Bunting left his inner Brisbane high school at 17, he had wanted to take classes in physics and chemistry, but was not allowed because he had not studied advanced maths, according to Jeremy Pudney’s book Snowtown: The Bodies in Barrels Murders.
As a teenager he drifted from hobby to hobby, including astronomy, electronics and photography – the latter beginning a “sinister interest in chemicals” as he developed pictures with chemicals stored in a makeshift darkroom, Mr Pudney reported.
Bunting became the leader of a crew that killed 12 people, eight of whom were discovered in 1999 inside acid-filled barrels at the old bank at Snowtown, north of Adelaide.
READ MORE: Bunting ‘artwork’ pulled from sale
Melissa Caddick
Reason for infamy: Fraudster who stole millions of dollars from her family and friends
High school: Peakhurst High School, Peakhurst, NSW (also known as Georges River College)
Former classmates have remembered Caddick as “a pretty average or just above average student … aspirational even then and quite organised but there was nothing that stood out about her,” a coroners’ report said.
“She was keen to impress girls from wealthy families. Strong-willed and very private, she ‘would not share unless she wanted to and she would control the narrative’,” the report said.
The fraudster stayed connected to school in surprising ways – defrauding former schoolmate Katherine Horn, before a running shoe containing the remains of Caddick’s foot was discovered on a beach she previously camped at for a school excursion.
Bradley Edwards
Reason for infamy: Killer who targeted women at Claremont, Perth in the 1990s, found guilty of two murders and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 40 years
High school: Gosnells Senior High School, Gosnells, WA (now Southern River College)
In his school year book, Edwards joked his life ambition was to be a “life member of AA” and recorded his high school nickname as “Bogsy”.
Living in Huntingdale, a six minutes’ drive from the school, he was described by a prosecutor as a socially awkward teenager with a fetish for wearing and stealing women's’ underwear, news.com.au reported.
When he was 19, he wore a women's’ silk kimono while sexually assaulting a former schoolmate’s teenage sister in her Huntingdale bedroom.
Lionel Patea
Reason for infamy: Bandidos bikie gang enforcer who murdered his partner and a drug runner, sentenced in 2017 to life in prison
High school: Keebra Park State High School, Southport, QLD
Patea’s first brush with police came at age 16 when he knocked out another student in a schoolyard fight, triggered by a racial slur, Gold Coast Bulletin reported.
He had been a promising rugby league player at school, representing the South Coast Maori Rugby League team, but after graduating he “got a bit lost and got involved in a rough crowd”, a school friend said.
Patea had a relationship and a daughter with his high school sweetheart Tara Brown, who he beat to death with a fire hydrant cover in 2015.
Joel Cauchi
Reason for infamy: Mass killer who stabbed and killed six people at Westfield, Bondi Junction, in 2024
High school: Harristown State High School, Harristown, QLD
Cauchi was first diagnosed with schizophrenia at 17, when he was in year 12, Queensland Police Acting Assistant Commissioner Roger Lowe said.
In a social media post, a former schoolmate said he had been “shy, always a bit on the weird side, but whenever he did something it was always full-tilt,” news.com.au reported.
“In hindsight, he probably didn’t regulate that well. Dropped off the radar after school but to my knowledge he didn’t maintain any friendships with his circle of school friends.”
READ MORE: Bondi killer ‘had knife obsession’
Tony Mokbel
Reason for infamy: Gangland figure serving a 26-year prison sentence for drug trafficking and importation, but was given bail in April pending an appeal
High school: Brunswick High School and Moreland High School, VIC
Mokbel has claimed he was never given a bag, books or pencils by his parents, and his “deep sense of inadequacy” pushed him into the role of a class clown, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
The ABC reported he struggled at school and dropped out after his father died when was 15, before he got a break in life when he became the owner of a pizza shop at age 21 with his brother.
He attended St Margaret Mary’s as a primary student, having spoken no English when he arrived in Australia from Kuwait as an eight-year-old.
READ MORE: Mokbel awarded $1m for prison bashing
Chris Dawson
Reason for infamy: Pro rugby league player who murdered his wife and had an unlawful sexual relationship with an underage student, found guilty in 2022 and sentenced to 24 years in prison
High school: Sydney Boys High School, Moore Park, NSW
As a student at Sydney Boys High School, Dawson met his future wife and murder victim Lynette Simms when she was studying at the adjacent Sydney Girls High School.
He later taught at Sydney’s Cromer High School, where had a sexual relationship with his student, 16-year-old Joanne Curtis, who he later married.
During their affair, the teenage student from a troubled home became the full-time live-in babysitter to Chris and Lynette’s two young daughters, news.com.au reported.
Moudi Tajjour
Reason for infamy: Ex-Nomad bikie gang member,convicted in 2006 of the manslaughter of Robin Nassour – the brother of Fat Pizza actor George Nassour – spending four years in jail
High school: Merrylands High School, Merrylands, NSW
Before reforming and becoming a TikTok star, Tajjour was a criminal even in high school, leaving Merrylands High in his early teens after being caught selling drugs to classmates.
“I had no childhood, straight out, since 11 years old I’ve been a criminal,” he told The Daily Telegraph in 2022.
“I got my first tattoo in year six and I’ll never forget, I went in to get a tattoo and the bloke goes: ‘Get out of here mate, you’re just a baby’.
“We went up to the servo, bought a pair of scissors, broke them apart and walked back in and said, ‘You are going to f--king tattoo me or I’ll stab the f--k out of ya’.”
Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran
Reason for infamy: Ringleaders of the Bali Nine heroin smuggling group, executed in 2015 in Indonesia
High school: Homebush Boys High School, Homebush, NSW
Chan and Sukumaran both lived in western Sydney and attended the same high school, but they were not in the same year level and were not friends, news.com.au reported.
Chan often joked that he was not the smartest chap, and the only A on his school report card was the A in his name.
He had a heavy addiction to cannabis by age 15, which persisted until he was jailed in Bali.
Sukumaran told a forensic psychiatrist his early school years were difficult as he faced racism and bullying, only finding friends and acceptance for the first time in his early teen years.
Derek Percy
Reason for infamy: Serial killer suspected of killing as many as nine children
High school: Mount Beauty Higher Elementary School, VIC, Corryong High School, VIC, and Gosford High School, NSW
Bill Hutton, a former schoolmate of Percy’s at Mount Beauty, told author Alan Whiticker the murderer would flick fellow students with a long key chain on a leather strap, then let out a “girly, high-pitched laugh” when they complained.
Mr Whitticker’s book Derek Percy: Australian Psycho describes that in the 1965 Mount Beauty yearbook, Percy listed his pet aversion as “girls”, his ambition as “playboy”, his probable fate as “bachelor” and his perpetual occupation as “isolating himself”.
Percy was once spotted by Mount Beauty classmates at a local swimming hole wearing a silky, see-through women’s negligee, waving a knife around, slashing at a bundle of clothing towards the crotch with his eyes “full of excitement”, then defecating in the water.
Bilal Skaf
Reason for infamy: Leader of a gang of men who raped women in Sydney in 2000, serving a 31-year prison sentence with a non-parole period of 28 years
High school: Strathfield South High School, NSW, Belmont Boys School, NSW, and Homebush Boys High School, NSW
Skaf left school at 14, having attended Strathfield South High School and Belmont Boys School, and worked as a spray painter, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.
He had been a primary student at Chullora Primary School, played soccer and won two karate trophies, according to the publication.
He had also been a student at Homebush Boys High School, news.com.au reported, and was remembered by Bali Nine member Andrew Chan as “a loose cannon” even back then.
Schapelle Corby
Reason for infamy: Jailed in Indonesia for cannabis smuggling in 2005. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison but was released on parole in February, 2014
High school: Loganlea State High School, Loganlea, QLD
In his book Schapelle, author Tony Wilson recounted Schapelle had been a competitive runner and athlete at school, “but the lure of the Gold Coast’s surf was greater and she set her sights on the coast as a 16 year old, leaving school in 1993 and ceasing contact with her school friends”.
Her father, Mick Corby, told ABC’s 7.30 his daughter had never touched drugs, adding “she might have had a pull when she was in bloody grade 10 or something, around the back of the schoolyard like kids do”.
Schapelle and her siblings learnt taekwondo karate for many years at high school, and were members of the Bilinga Surf Lifesaving Club.
Brendan Sokaluk
Reason for infamy: Arsonist who lit fires contributing to Victoria’s 2009 Black Saturday bushfires. He was found guilty in March 2012 of 10 counts of arson causing death, and sentenced to 17 years and nine months in prison, with non-parole period of 14 years
High school: Morwell Technical College, Morwell, VIC
Sokaluk was routinely bullied at high school, one day getting off the bus with faeces smeared on his back and another time arriving home with mucus in his hair, Chloe Hooper wrote in her book The Arsonist.
His mother had thought he would have fared better at a special school, and he was later diagnosed with autism, the book recounts.
Sokaluk’s parents pulled him out of school in year 11 having “passed nothing” and barely able to read or write.
Vincent Focarelli
Reason for infamy: Former Comanchero bikie gang leader, released in 2006 from prison after a six and a half-year stint for drug offences
High school: Enfield High School, SA, and Blackfriars Priory School, SA
In 2020, Focarelli told The Advertiser he first realised he could fight when he joined Gepps Cross Primary School.
“That’s the first time I was scared,” he said. “They weren’t talking Italian. There was a lot of racism. I realised I had some ability to be strong, but because I was small and tiny, people didn’t see that until they got a taste.”
By 16, Focarelli was wagging Blackfriars Priory School with friends and cousins to chase good times on Adelaide’s Hindley St.
Brent “BJ” Reker
Reason for infamy: Former Finks leader, who brought Rock Machine bikie gang to Australia
High school: Karingal High School, Frankston, VIC (now McClelland College)
Reker’s mother Lynette Kersten in 2020 told the Herald Sun her son was like any other child and loved playing footy and being with friends.
At age 16, Reker got his first tattoo and the next year started the Rock Machine bike gang in Perth, telling his mother, “I’m going to start my own club”.
“I said, ‘what the hell, it’s not like football’ and he said he could do whatever he wanted,” Ms Kersten said.
Julian Knight
Reason for infamy: Killer behind the 1987 Hoddle St massacre, serving seven concurrent sentences of life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 27 years
High school: Melbourne High School, South Yarra, VIC
In sentencing remarks, Justice George Hampel said Knight, who as adopted as a child, had an IQ of 132, but he was an underachiever at school where he had motivational and behavioural problems
“As a result, you had to change high schools twice but finally completed your HSC in 1985 at Melbourne High School,” he said.
“Thereafter, you had a short unhappy period at Latrobe University where you felt emotionally and socially isolated.”
Cassie “Cocaine Cassie” Sainsbury
Reason for infamy: Jailed in Colombia for attempted cocaine smuggling
High school: Yorketown High School, Yorketown, SA
Sainsbury grew up at Minlaton on South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula before moved with her father to nearby Warooka after her parents divorced when she was 11, the Herald Sun reported.
Her father Stuart Sainsbury told the Herald Sun the farm girl had nursed chickens and remembered taking her camping when she was 16.
“She climbed to the top of one the highest rocks she could find looking for reception with the phone up in the air,” he said.
READ MORE: Cassie denies beauty salon mishap
Christopher “Badness” Binse
Reason for infamy: Long and varied criminal career, most recently jailed after armed robbery and shooting at police in 2012. He is currently serving an 18-year, two-month sentence
High school: Williamstown Technical School, Williamstown, VIC
Binse was expelled after he accepted a dare to flash the teacher, shortly after moving to Williamstown Tech, author Matthew Thompson wrote in his book Mayhem.
“I went and bought him a whole new school uniform – jumpers and trousers and everything,” his mother Annette told the author.
“Chris gets expelled and I give those clothes away. And we didn’t have any money.”
He did not finish year eight and spent much of his youth in prison after his overwhelmed mother asked a judge to make him a ward of the state.
Steve Williams
Reason for infamy: Former Gypsy Joker bikie gang leader and enforcer
High school: Banksia Park High School, Banksia Park, SA (now Banksia Park International High School)
Williams was bullied as a child because he suffered dyslexia, leading him to leave school at 15 to work on a sheep station in the Flinders Ranges, his mother Jan Williams told The Advertiser in 2015.
He drifted into the bikie gang culture when he was 17 or 18, socialising with gang members and finally joining the Gypsy Joker gang.
“He was looking for that sort of club thing, that was what he thought he was after. It worried me a bit,’’ Ms Williams said.
READ MORE: Secrets of the Missing Joker docu-series
Jacob Hersant and Thomas Sewell
Reason for infamy: Leading members of neo-Nazi group National Socialist Network, convicted for violent behaviour towards six hikers in Victoria in 2021
High school: University High School, Parkville, VIC, and Balwyn High School, Balwyn North, VIC
In sentencing remarks for a charge of violent disorder, Judge Kellie Blair said Hersant had excelled academically at University High School, and built a strong social network despite struggling socially and displaying behavioural issues.
“You had a relatively happy childhood and were close with your brother; however, this relationship now involves limited contact due to disagreements over your political views,” she said.
She said Sewell had completed VCE at Balwyn High School and his father had described him as an above average student who excelled in most sports, particularly soccer and squash.
Mahmoud “Mick” Hawi
Reason for infamy: Former Comanchero bikie gang leader convicted of second degree murder
High school: Punchbowl Boys’ High School, Punchbowl, NSW
Hawi obtained a high school certificate at age 16 and took an apprenticeship at his father’s spray painting business while he attended TAFE.
He married his high school girlfriend, Carolina Gonzales, and murdered one of his school classmates, Hells Angel member Anthony Zervas.
Punchbowl Boys’ High School was so overrun with crime in the 90s that former principal Clifford Preece applied to sue the Department of Education for failing to protect his safety, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.
Samantha Azzopardi
Reason for infamy: Con artist who used fake identities to gain money, sentenced in 2021 to two years in prison for child stealing
High school: Mount Annan High School, Mount Annan, NSW
Growing up in Campbelltown, Azzopardi took a job at the local Pancakes on the Rocks restaurant after finishing high school.
As an adult in late 2016, she enrolled at the Good Shepherd School in Sydney posing as a 13-year-old named Harper Hart, The Sydney Morning Herald reported – ultimately leading the international conwoman to get caught.
Earlier, as an adult in February 2012, she was enrolled in year 11 at Perth’s Girrawheen Senior High School, attending until March when she was removed by a fraud squad.
Ivan Milat
Reason for infamy: Serial killer who targeted backpackers in the 1980s and ’90s
High school: Patrician Brothers, Liverpool, NSW (now All Saints Catholic College)
Milat made little impression on friends at his Catholic school, where the Brothers were liberal in “dishing out sadistic punishment for slight indiscretions”, Mark Whittaker and Les Kennedy wrote in their book Sins of the Brother.
He was not scholarly and when he began wagging school regularly with a group of friends, police would sometimes bring him home “like a taxi service” after finding him wandering around Liverpool.
At 13 Milat was sent to Boys Town, a home for wayward boys, where was an altar boy, a champion boxer in his weight division, and won a best and fairest award in Aussie rules football. He left at 14 and never returned to school.
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Originally published as Listed: Where 31 of Australia’s most notorious criminals and bikies went to high school
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