Gold Coast bikies: Most shocking tales of 2020 including murders and other crimes
Across the past 12 months some of the biggest gang-related stories in the nation have happened right here on the Glitter Strip. Here are the most gripping bikie stories to hit the city in 2020.
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- Gold Coast couple ordered to cough up more than $10,000 for pool
- Ex-Coast bikie Ricky Chapman shot with Rebels boss Nick Martin
DESPITE mass lockdowns and the coronavirus pandemic raging, the Gold Coast bikie underworld didn’t slow down this year.
Across the past 12 months some of the biggest gang-related stories in the nation have happened right here on the Glitter Strip, including an execution-style murder, outlaw motorcycle gang member arrests and inquests involving well-known former club members.
Here are the most gripping bikie tales to hit the city in 2020.
POLICE CAUGHT UP WITH SHANE ROSS’ ALLEGED KILLERS
WHEN ex-Comanchero bikie Shane Ross was found dead at a Tallebudgera park in October last year, a large-scale investigation began to hunt the killers.
The mystery deepened after Ross’ friend and Monstr clothing business partner Cameron Martin was also found dead with a gunshot wound after crashing his car about a kilometre away.
But in March this year, police closed in on the pair’s accused murderers — arresting Lone Wolf outlaw motorcycle gang members Nathan Miller and Brodie Singh and charging them over the alleged premeditated slaying.
Singh is alleged by police to be the national president of the Lone Wolf bikie gang.
Another man is expected to be extradited to Queensland from NSW and charged with murder once he has completed a jail stint over an unrelated matter.
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When the arrests were made, Regional Crime Coordinator Detective Superintendent Brendan Smith said police had closed a complex and difficult investigation.
“The work completed by the investigative team demonstrates the Queensland Police Service’s commitment to solving complex crimes stretching over multiple jurisdictions,” he told the press.
“These were vicious and premeditated crimes we will allege were carried out by an organised crime gang.”
Later this year, Ross’ widow Alexandra Ross broke her silence about living with the “stigma” that her husband deserved to die because of his past involvement with bikie gangs.
“Had my husband known what he was walking into that night he wouldn’t have gone and he sure as hell wouldn’t have let his friend go there either,” Alexandra Ross told the Bulletin.
Singh later became one of six men charged in connection with the kidnapping and torture of a Belgian model and her businessman boyfriend at Ipswich.
He was charged in August with 16 serious offences including robbery, extortion and kidnapping and issued with a notice to appear.
Police will allege five men dressed as police and used a battering ram to storm the unit where Belgian model Caroll Dufailly and boyfriend Eduardus Groenewegen were sleeping on October 25, 2019.
Singh and Miller have been remanded in custody.
SHANE BOWDEN’S FATAL RETURN TO THE GOLD COAST
IN September, notorious Finks bikie Shane Bowden returned to his old stomping ground on the Glitter Strip after surviving a shooting in Victoria.
When he arrived on the Gold Coast, he was charged with breaching a COVID-19 laws by lying on his border declaration pass.
He was later fined $750 and no conviction was recorded in a Southport court.
The 48-year-old, who was once part of the Finks “terror team” and responsible for shooting Christopher Hudson during the Gold Coast’s wild ballroom blitz, had patched over to the Mongols outlaw motorcycle club in 2013 but had returned to his old gang, with plans to grow the Finks chapter in Queensland after being booted from the Mongols down south.
But less than one month after his return to Queensland, Bowden was dead after being shot in an execution-style killing in the driveway of the Pimpama home where he had been living.
Police believe Bowden’s killing may be related to an internal feud with the Mongols in Victoria.
Two hooded man lay in wait in a vacant northern Gold Coast lot in the hours leading up to his murder in October, police previously said.
Detectives are probing whether Mongols bikies are behind the bikie heavyweight’s death.
Two alleged Mongols associates, who have been named by police as persons of interest in the case, have been charged with weapons offences after being raided as part of the investigation.
No one has been charged over his killing.
HARLEY BARBARO’S HIGHS AND LOWS
ONE of Queensland’s most infamous bikies, Harley Barbaro has been in and out of the headlines all year.
The Gold Coaster is a member of the notorious Melbourne gangland Barbaro family and the brother of Ricardo Barbaro.
In 2020 the accused Mongols bikie, who was previously accused of being part of the Villains’ gang, was charged under the Government’s controversial anti-consorting laws.
While he lost a bid to have how the tough anti-consorting gang laws are applied considered in the High Court of Australia, Barbaro later had the state’s highest court rule in his favour to find he had a reasonable excuse not to tell police the passcode to his phone after being arrested two years earlier.
He claimed he should not have to give his passcode because there was no way to guarantee police would not look at the private conversation with his lawyer.
The Queensland Court of Appeal found disclosure of the password would have meant putting police officers in a position to read the privileged information.
The case is likely to change how police deal with this issue in the future.
However Barbaro has since been charged with another offence of failing to give police access to his phone.
He is also accused of breaching a bail condition by associating with alleged bikie members after he attended a Logan barber shop opening in August.
LIAM SCORSESE POLICE SHOOTING PROBE
EX-GOLD Coast bikie Liam Scorsese was shot dead after he ran at police with a knife after failing to break into his ex-girlfriend’s home in Brisbane’s east in September 2018.
This year, an inquest into the shooting was finally held, which considered the circumstances around his death.
The alleged Comanchero associate was well-known on the Glitter Strip after in 2016 being jailed for bashing a tourist bus driver in Surfers Paradise.
A month later he was allegedly found with counterfeit $50 notes, gambling at the casino in Broadbeach.
In December 2016, following a traffic accident in Broadbeach Waters, TV footage showed him leaping from a stretcher and lashing out at paramedics, as a friend pleaded for him to calm down. Charges were later dropped.
Two years later he was fatally shot by police in Brisbane when they encountered him “enraged” and armed with a knife outside his ex-girlfriend girlfriend Chireez Erasmus Beytell’s family home.
An inquest, which was held in Brisbane this year heard the man was “different” the day he was shot by police outside a Wakerley home after arming himself with a knife.
A jogger who witnessed the shooting told the Queensland Coroners Court he saw police fire at Scorsese and the death was “unnecessary”.
The inquiry also heard he was shouting: “Go on, shoot me, shoot me” to police, however both officers involved in the incident failed to turn on their body-worn cameras.
“He was armed with a knife, walking toward me: I believed he was going to stab me, so I shot him to stop the threat,” Constable Damon Till told the Coroners Court.
The inquest findings have not yet been handed down.
BEN GEPPERT ARRESTED, AGAIN
The Insta-famous ex-Hells Angel previously hit the headlines after getting kicked off Hamilton Island following a steamy weekend with his ex-girlfriend.
Ben Geppert later became known for his online feuds with well-known Gold Coast gangsters.
But this year, Geppert was arrested following a dramatic police chase over rooftops and backyards in Kingscliff before being extradited to Queensland.
He is accused of bashing a man in Broadbeach Waters home with a baseball bat.
The man was arrested in September and charged with extortion, assault occasioning bodily harm, making threats and demanding property with menace, but has been remanded in custody.
His brother Harry Geppert, 17, was allegedly stabbed to death in Frascott Park, Varsity Lakes on September 4 last year.
Jarvis Farrier has been charged over Harry Geppert’s death, but has not yet been required to enter a plea.
In August 2019, the home of Geppert’s former neighbour was shot at in Carrara and police investigated whether it was a failed attack on well-known criminal.
EX-GOLD COASTER RICKY CHAPMAN’S BIZARRE SHOOTING
In December, the ex-Bandido who was once linked to the infamous Broadbeach brawl this year surfaced again due to his links to a bizarre underworld shooting that happened on the other side of the country.
Ricky Chapman became collateral damage during a brazen killing of former Rebels bikie president Nick Martin, who was shot dead in a sniper attack in front of hundreds of horrified onlookers at a Western Australian racetrack.
He was gunned down in Perth in front of his wife and other family members.
Chapman, who is dating Martin’s stepdaughter Stacey Schoppe, was hospitalised after being shot in the leg and a young boy with the group was also injured.
Chapman was one of nine men who either pleaded guilty to riot or downgraded charges in 2015 over the Broadbeach brawl at Aura Tapas and Lounge Bar.
He was charged with rioting after the September 2013 melee that erupted in a Broadbeach restaurant in an effort to hunt down former Bandidos boss Jacques Teamo’s rival Jason Trouchet.
Chapman famously tried to backflip after entering a guilty plea to his role in the brawl and subsequent storming of Southport Police Station, arguing he didn’t read a document his lawyer asked him to sign.
However, he was later sentenced for a downgraded charge.
Several years later in WA, Chapman was sentenced to more than five years jail in WA for supplying ice, after being sprung selling drugs to an undercover cop.
Originally published as Gold Coast bikies: Most shocking tales of 2020 including murders and other crimes
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