It was a very very tense tense situation and nothing like we had seen in modern Western Australia this kind of thing didn’t happen cops or retired cops just didn’t get shot they didn’t get blown up no one messed with the boys in blue this was the kind of thing you’d see in
Mexico in in Colombia not in a first world country like in Australia welcome back it was the night when Australia was to unite in celebration of the best Olympic Games ever of the athletes of the country the first day of October in the year 2000 that day also became the last night
Of Billy Grayson’s life a gypsy Joker biky shot dead by a sniper around a goldfields campfire a fatal bullet and a fateful shot which changed lives careers reputations and fundamentally shifted this state’s attitudes to Crime and Punishment joining me this week to dissect the murder of Billy gon and the
Terrifying Fallout which followed is the West’s biky whispr Chief reporter and host of up late Ben Harvey thanks for so much for joining us hares my family loves that nickname 25 years interviewing Premier Prime Ministers Business Leaders celebrities and I’m remembered as the guy who had an ice
Cream witho yes it’s the blos with the leather and the patches that uh tend to stick out in in in various forms of life in this state and you’re the one that has been following them closest I suppose 25 years of following bikes and I’ve learned one thing about them
There’s three types of bikes when you distill it down you’ve got the complete hapless idiots who just get dragged into this lifestyle without really realizing what they’re getting into they are 1ent is in the truest sense of the word I’m talking arithmetic remedial English the
Lot then you’ve got a very rare type of bike here and that’s the man who genuinely wants a sense of Brotherhood and family who’s missing something in his life like it’s it’s it’s a misplaced desire but it’s a genuine one they just want to belong and then the third type
Of biky is the most dangerous type of biky and that is your old school dirty denim career criminal incredibly dangerous dangerous men and it’s that third cohort of biky that we’re going to be talking about today because we’re talking about the Gypsy Joker Outlaw motorcycle club which in the 1990s and
2000s was one of the most feared secretive powerful and bloodthirsty organized crime institutions in Australia and they were dotted all over the state I mean there was obviously a a chapter in Perth but the one that we’re going to talk about today was uh you know B born out of um Red
Dirt uh skimpies and um you know live fast Die Young type of scenario really that’s right the goldfields the goldfields which also happen to be on the a juncture of highways that went from the east coast to the West Coast Highway that are used to transport various things Tim those things not
Always being yeah cuddly toys not just nappy SN that’s right so as we say it was in the heart of Western Australia’s historic go fields that this story came out of and the Tiny Town site of oranda that town emerged from the Red Dirt in around 1893 when gold was miraculously pulled
Up from that red dirt hence the the name the Spanish for Band of Gold Banda De Oro within years more than 2,000 Prospectors and those prospering from them lived in that little place which had gone from one horse to two stores two butcher shops a town hall a post
Office a police station several churches boarding houses dining halls and Billiard saloons and of course a hotel a pub the Banda in which was built from stone and brick in 1911 that square Hotel dominated the township standing Sentry for those passing through and socially Central for those who stayed who included Robert
Hancock and his son Leslie whose toil at the Wentworth deposit at nearby Grant’s patch produced hundreds of ounces of precious metal and opal Leslie son Don was also put to work in the Heat and the dust after he left school until he joined the wa police force in
1959 and went to work locking up those intent on stealing some of cul’s Fields of Gold years in the gold stealing detection Squad prepared Hancock for his move upwards to the criminal investigation Bureau from the suburbs into the city with the fatality Squad investigating motor manslaughters then on to the stock
Stealing Squad the consorters the break and Enter Squad and freemantle CIB and as the jobs got bigger so Hancock’s hair got whiter earning him the nickname The Silver Fox who caught his biggest prey when he was assigned the job of finding those who swindled the Perth Mint out of
$650,000 of gold in 198 to the police said the culprits were the melberg brothers Peter Ray and Brian they were Hancock’s prize scalp so far but the brothers insisted they had been set up framed by the coppers even during their appeal Don Hancock was insisting they
Were guilty and given the job he had always craved chief of the CIB The Silver Fox Now the top dog haves give us your memories Impressions uh of Don Hancock the copper I don’t get to say this very often but he was before my time he had actually
Retired as a police officer by the time I became a a Cadet reporter in the late 1990s uh but you actually didn’t need to meet Don Hancock to know about Don Hancock because this was a man who whose reputation preceded him everywhere he went you felt like you knew the man
Because you’d seen him so often in newspapers magazines on television he was straight out of casting for a 1970s 1980s cop show tall broad shoulder as you said that shock of silver hair he had fists the size of CIF flowers his commanding presence one of those guys
That should have his own theme tune as he walks into a room right very much that was that was him it was the personality that he developed and he just reveled in it he was a hero cop to thousands of serving and and and past serving police officers as was often the
Case in the 1970s and 1980s a lot of his best work was done in the shadows and we didn’t realize just how much work he did in the shadows until we heard about that Perth Mint Swindle the circumstances of which you just described yeah as much as he built a lot
You know the second half of his of his career on on that collar and the all the publicity that came with it the gold that started turning up at various public TV studios to sent to sent to a certain reporter who we both know and very much respect there was still it
Still smelled a bit the m works all like you couldn’t really scrub away the the the stain of the of the original inquiry it wasn’t a clean cut investigation by any stretch of the imagination this was before uh wholesale CCTV it was before DNA it was before we had uh telephones
That could put you in to within a meter of a certain place at a certain time but you had telephone books that could help you maybe get a you still use telephone books to get confessions back then it was a happier time yeah for a cop not so
Much for a Crim no exactly and you know eventually what what happened with the melbergs and and what came out about what had happened in the melberg investigation was you know it eventually brought Hancock’s career to quite a bruising end in terms of his time in the
Police force uh it became very evident that Don hanock fitted up the mckel brothers for the crime everyone says that the melbergs probably did it and he just couldn’t quite get the case over the line so he just filled in a few blanks which was often the case so Hancock’s passing out parade
After a three decade career in the wa police was was pretty quiet uh no headlines um unlike a lot of things that he’ done while he was in the force no exit interviews with certainly with any media and then in 1995 it emerged he’d actually returned
To his golden Roots he’ bought the aura bander in with a view to restoring it to its former luster um his ambition was to revive his ancestral home um and it stretched to a plan to basically bring the place back to life bring the prospector’s Hall of Fame to the tinely
Hamlet um and while that plan was foiled a centinary celebration was planned and hoped for to bring thousands of visitors to the town drawn by um the revived and formerly famous Ora Banda race weekend which had last been run in 1948 such was Hancock’s determination that he literally shifted rocks by hand
Himself to make that racetrack in that tiny Hamlet acceptable to horses from all over the state the rudimentary R racetrack was actually carved into the dirt directly opposite his lovingly restored Inn uh Straits on either side um of top and bottom bends which stretched around a track uh the length of about 600
MERS um a long way and a previous lifetime away from Perth where in 1999 the surviving melberg Brothers failed in their appeal they were eventually cleared in 2004 but just for that day back in 1999 Hancock swapped his boots and shorts for a suit and tie and went
To court to see his old mates he actually tried to slip quietly out of that old Supreme Court building as he had his old job but reporters spotted him and asked him for a comment go and talk to your scumbag mates he uh initially said referring to the
Melbergs and and with Peter melberg in Hot Pursuit um he said he just called me a scumbag um and Mr Hancock added and a criminal for 200 Paces the peer faced off um exchanging insults and Barbs before Hancock disappeared again in a puff of gold dust back to the inn and his
Kin so on the day of the Sydney Olympics opening ceremony in September 2000 Ora Banda had its major event the fifth picnic race organized by Hancock attracting thousands through his proud little town two weeks later the rough Hune racetrack was again occupied but this time by some less than welcome
Visitors haves outlin for us what happened in or abanda on the night of October the 1st 2000 a handful of gypsy Jokers had rolled into town in the early afternoon they’d started drinking I think there was about six of them they had a few and they started getting Lippy
As byes do when they’re been drinking and there was an argument between Don Hancock and these Gypsy Jokers and the cause of the argument was one of them had mouthed off about a waitress or bartender who happened to be Don’s daughter now you just don’t do that not
To Don Hancock they had words the apparently said fair cop and they walked out they set up camp a couple hundred meters away and they continued drinking night fell it was around 7:30 at night so it was completely pitch black they heard a crack and they thought it was
Actually coming from the fire so they didn’t think anything of it then they heard a second shot and they knew that they were actually being fired upon so they all hit the deck Billy gon caught that second bullet in his torso and he started bleeding they rushed him onto a
Ute I think it was or maybe a flatbed truck that was in the area and they drove him to a nearby nickel mine um it was the cause nickel mine I think and by the time they got there he’d actually bled out and he was dead at this point
Um in Aranda’s history there were less than 30 permanent residents so the pool of immediate suspects was was pretty small it was very very very small Don hanock being the man he was couldn’t stay quiet for long insisting in public that he had not shot Billy gron but he did confirm
There had been an altercation with the group of jokers before the retired big dog detective asked the group of bearded gentlemen to leave Hancock along with every single other resident of Aranda subsequently left town as a fear of reprisal attacks by the gang simmered and Billy Grayson’s funeral a
Week after his murder shut down the center of culi on a busy Saturday afternoon As the funeral cores of chrome and black followed his coffin through town towards the cemetery at nearby Boulder those gathered at that funeral heard of a funloving affable man who was the youngest of 14 children of a
Victorian War veteran gron was a mechanic who worked on Minds sites around calgi a father of two and divorced from their mother which had prompted the connection with the Gypsy Jokers and a father to be with his partner Nicole 22 weeks pregnant a week after that funeral and
10 minutes after the aaand in had shut its doors on a smattering of Friday night clients a bomb went off off two in fact one resting on a window of the pub and another near the front entrance the historic Inn was decimated and the message had also been sent the Jokers
Were not joking about revenge this time Don hanock could not ignore the risks and after being told by his detective successes that his safety could not be assured if he stayed in town he packed up and left along with his wife and son never to return haves he sometimes become so immersed in
Details of a story like this that he actually lose sight or become a little bit immune to the bigger picture so we’ve got a biky shot in Cold Blood in the dark and a former CIB Chief being quietly accused of his murder who then as his beloved old Hub blown up and then
Burned down by Bandits I mean I’ve just read it out and I’ve just written it last week but you couldn’t write it and and and and sometimes it stops in your mouth because you can’t believe what you’re saying it is something out of the Wild West um and this was in the early
90s the severity of the situation was driven home to me I wasn’t actually in Calia the time but during Billy gon’s funeral there was a very strong rumor that a police officer was going to get shot in the spine that’s what we were talking about uh and the hundreds of cops that
Had flooded the streets of Kuli because there were Gypsy Jokers drinking everywhere there were bikes drinking everywhere often shoulder-to-shoulder with cops I might say it was a very very tense tense situation and nothing like we had seen in modern Western Australia this kind of thing didn’t happen cops or
Retired cops just didn’t get shot they didn’t get blown up no one messed with the boys in blue this was the kind of thing you’d see in Mexico in in Colombia not in a first world country like in Australia and reading through the paper archives to prepare for today it did
Make me chuckle that in one of the stories I think one of the um certainly the opposition police minister at the time was questioning the why should they shut Cal gy just for a bikey funeral and then literally the next day this picture of Grayson’s coughing in
The hearse and all you could see like to the distance were Chrome and black and leather and helmets and goggles and it’s or you can just imagine you know Grandma Johnson from Boulder coming in to get her turnips and they turning around and seeing these like clowns just driving
Down the center of the street imagine what imagine the Carnage that could have happened if they hadn’t closed the absolutely it was public safety the cops don’t like the idea of of allowing this to happen but it was public safety number one and to be completely honest
Back then short of bringing in the Army there is no way they could have properly secured cow gy without a little bit of give and take with the bikers there were just too many bikes uh and not happy bikes either no no they would obviously I mean but don’t
Know B are happy they particular very very unhappy very suspicious um and these are these are people who revenges in their blood this is it’s it’s part of their code so uh I can’t blame the cops for allowing this procession and allowing them to ride without helmets
It’s a tradition called I think it’s called dipping the lid or something like tipping the lid or dipping the lid um because they just needed to get through this to maintain Law and Order because no one knew what was going to happen next no and on his departure from oranda
Hanock was actually offered a place in the witness protection program and a new life um somewhere but um being the the big dog Silver Fox he uh he said no well why would you you’re the Silver Fox 6’2 bulletproof and he’s got the biggest gang in Western Australia behind him I
Mean you got 100 or so Gypsy Jokers he had 5,000 cops better armed better trained he actually felt safe in the coming weeks more incend actions explosions at Hancock’s oranda home the General Store the gold battery that he’ um restored and a caravan property by property Ora band was
Literally being blown off the map the premier and the police commissioner at the time were obviously outraged vowing unlimited resources to crack down on the crime spree even Billy Grayson’s sister pleaded for the violence to end and pleaded for police to find her brother’s killer but she also didn’t want her name
Published silence upon silence police at the time had revealed very little about the circumstances of the execution of Billy Grayson they said all angles needed to be investigated they would hinted at they talked to every one of the 30 locals and there was also even a whisper whether it was an inside
Job but it was obvious who the Gypsy Jokers believed had done it even though they were also refusing to cooperate with the police and the state coroner in the investigation that’s their official line that they were refusing to cooperate there was an incident out at oranda involving former Channel 7
Reporter Howard greton Howard was out there covering uh the the explosion and the death of Billy gon uh and he had chanced upon a meeting of police and bikes and he had obtained footage of the Gypsy Jokers cooperating with police talking to police at the crime scene when the Gypsy Jokers realized that
Howard had this footage they went after him and on a very lonely Highway between Cully and oranda how greton and his cameraman were pulled off the side of the road by a half a dozen Gypsy Jokers who started kicking the crap out of the car demanding the tape and saying that they
Were going to kill him so it was a very confronting that’s that’s the environment that people were operating in back then so and the level or the or the passion for not to be seen to be talking with police at any level absolutely not so we we kind of forget
That with today’s Nike bikes where they are you know issuing social media posts about their latest you know driveby shootings in the suburbs this was a very different time bikes did not speak this was a time when you really had the Gypsy Jokers the coffin cheaters club daros
And God’s garbage the rebels were very very small n Force they were toy bikes at this stage of the game if you were a biky you did not speak to Cops and the Gypsy Jokers were speaking to detectives and it was on film and that’s how that’s how passionate they were about being
Seen to adhere to the biky code so obviously the murder investigation was continuing but there was an inquest uh into Billy gon’s death that was set down to start in September 2001 Mr Hancock was set to give evidence and be quizzed for the first time in public about what happened on that night
In his Pub the previous October but he would never get the chance to give that evidence again it’s I struggle sometimes to say these words a remotely detonated Car Bomb kills Hancock and his mate Lou Lewis as they were driving back from a SAT today at the races and basically all
Hell breaks loose something did expect to see in Belfast not in Suburban uh Western Australia and there’s a famous picture that that no doubt you’ll see on this video of the remnants of that car and it it’s it’s it still causes you to catch your breath it
Is it’s an extraordinary photo of the sheer Devastation that this explosive caused that afternoon a metal chassis torn apart by the force of the explosion the two men inside the vehicle that’s Don and L Lis had absolutely no chance of surviving there was shrapnel streets away and it was something that you’d
Expect to associate with the IRA in the in the 1980s yeah I I read somewhere that they were still finding debris weeks later um and there was a piece of a motherboard or or some you know some sort of electronic from the car that they found
Wedged in some tiles in a pool about 400 m away so that that’s that’s flown in and then G and like so the force of this explosion it could be heard kilometers away um and I mean God knows what it must have been like if you were in one
Of the Neighbors in that street that afternoon well the one thing that you can find in the goldfields pretty easily is explosives you walk into the front bar of the exchange hotel at the right time of day you can buy explosives for cash that was the case back in the day
And so obviously they had stockpiled an enormous amount of ordinance and there was enough there to kill Don Hancock five times and so Lou LS who was Don Hancock’s very good mate completely innocent never had anything to do with certainly any biky shooting in oranda his funeral Drew 1,000 mourners
Hancock’s funeral had 2,000 mourners and the public level of pressure meant that there was $500,000 reward offered by the government for any information about who might have put both these men in their graves which was at the time the highest reward ever offered and thus began the first biky Crackdown in Western
Australia so there have probably been two dozen since then the sum total of which has resulted in the number of bikes going from 200 to 700 the number of gangs going from 4 to 14 so I don’t know how effective said crackdowns have been uh but this was the first time we
Saw the dark underbelly of omcg activity up until then you kind of knew they existed you kind of knew who Eddie winner was you you knew bind dun Rock uh you probably were smoking some weed that had been supplied by a biky that kind of thing but in the days before meth they
Weren’t RIT large across headlines everywhere that changed the moment that car bomb was detonated in llane um and the architect of that first bike he cracked down was a chap named Jim McGinty he was the crusading attorney General in Jeff gallup’s government uh and didn’t really look like ell Elliot
Nest Jim but I think he fancied himself as a little bit of a maybe an older wiser Elliot Ness we have to be a little bit careful because Jim is a a sitting member of The Independent Media Council which adjudicates complaints against people like you and I so let’s let’s
Move on quickly very good man handsome and kind uh Jim’s brother bizarrely this is a three degrees of austral in Underworld Jim’s brother was a chap who was one of the original bikes in Western Australia believe it or not his brother went by the nickname the preacher very
Active in the early 70s which is when biky gangs first created themselves in Western Australia so there you go fun fact for the next Outlaw motorcycle gang quiz night that you might attend we’ve had a major Act of terrorism in our suburbs we’ve got to deal with it raids
On clubhouses and brick houses became an almost daily occurrence operation ziron was looking for Don Hancock’s killer or killers and Avalon was targeting bis and the Gypsy jokers in general one such visit discovered a secret room built into the Gypsy Joker maddington headquarters confirming to police the
Gang not only had something to hide but actually someone to hide it they even bugged Billy Grayson’s grave and one man during this activity was scooped up in a very public arrest outside perth’s Law Courts in full view of public and gathered media Sydney snot Reed he could
Have come from The Outlaw motorcycle gang Central Casting agency beard flano siggies and dark mean eyes he was initially charged with a legal possession of an unlicensed f357 revolver that added to existing charges of gbh following a boulder bashing involving a hammer and a baseball bat but the police kept very
Very close track of Reed and his clubmates and on Valentine’s Day 2002 they came calling again and this time they weren’t carrying flowers and chocolates led by detective superintendent David Korn who had been moved off the hunt for the Claymont killer to head up operation ziron he led
The interrogation and it soon became clear to read that police had pinned him as the man who planted the bomb which Premier Jeff Gallop said had been an act of urban terrorism in a leafy Perth suburb what police were faced with though was the bik’s unbreakable Code of Silence
What Reed was faced with was 30 years plus in prison and so Reed did the unthinkable he confessed he admitted to planting the bomb and he also pointed the finger at fellow Jokers including one of his closest mates Graham slim Slater just days after that arrest in an entirely secret court hearing Reed
Pleaded guilty to the double murder and was sentenced to life with 15 years in prison to serve the minimum that could be delivered under Western Australian law that was on the Proviso he gives evidence against his former gang mates a deal which authorities touted as the first of its kind in Australia
Austa Western Australia had a biky supergrass harves big deal for wa police but a big deal for Sydney snot Reed as well well Sid put his life in the hands of police officers the people who’ been puring him for the best part of his adult life uh
And so he’d also put himself in the crosshairs of the Gypsy Jokers which had proved that they could get to anyone if you can get a retired CIB Chief you’re going to be able to get an ex gang member who’s in jail because B is know
People in jail and people in jail do things for bikes so it was a huge call for Reed to do this and it was out of sheer desperation he was facing 30 years in jail and then all of a sudden these cops came in with this sweetheart deal
15 years for a double murder and not just that it was 15 years in a prison pretty much of his choosing was on the East Coast his girlfriend was flown to visit him three or four times a year as part of this deal and when he finished
His sentence he was allowed to go into witness protection he was given money he was looked after etc etc but in the back of his mind the entire time he was serving in jail in the back of his mind every minute of every day subsequently he’s out there somewhere as we speak he
Is wondering when I turn that car on what’s going to happen yeah it’s not every day you sell your soul twice and it sounds like that’s what he’s done because talking to the cops no no giving up your mates no no admitting to a double murder I mean is a big enough
Conversation to have and uh it was it was all done after a long interrogation but um um I mean he basically just came to the conclusion I haven’t got a choice here he had some very convincing police officers in that interview room uh their police officers that had worked on him
For a long time one one officer particularly had become a a a close confident of Sid Reed um and I’ve spoken to that cop a few times he said that Sid knew when you were lying and you knew when Sid knew when you were lying because he would put his head back and
He’d close his eyes like this and you just take a deep breath and as soon as you did that you knew that you’re in trouble because that unbreakable sort of sense of trust that you need to get someone to confess like this was starting to get shaky but they they did
Get him over the line um and uh it was one of the great breakthroughs in wa policing and do you think when those detectives went home um to their wives or girlfriends or boyfriends or whatever they they they they could look themselves in the mirror and be think
Yes we’ve done we I’m happy that we’ve done this deal with this man they thought that Sid Reed was a total scumbag they thought the Gypsy Jokers at large on mass were far worse well Graham Slater still a member of that gang immediately denied anything to do with the Hancock car bombing after
Being fingered by his mate snot Reed he claimed he’d been at his mom’s house in northerm sleeping off a hangover when the bomb had gone off and he got to argue that denial one of Australia’s most argumentative but effective defense barristers Colin L QC hailed from Melbourne but his connections to Perth
And its legal fraternity were strong uh and affectionate at times he had represented a fellow lawyer during the elongated legal skirmishes through the mickelberg convictions which we know were secured by Don Hancock he’d got Cho hered off he got Greg doich off who was charged with the murder of toddler Jaden leki in
1997 but he hadn’t quite been able to get himself off a $10,000 fine for calling a Queensland magistrate a complete kettin in court away with words which he used with devastating effect as Graham Slater went on trial amid unprecedented security at wa’s Supreme Court in September 2003 prosecutors said the bombing was
Pure Revenge with Reed the planter and Slater The Detonator via a mobile phone in underbelly style Slater was alleged to have whispered rest in peace Billy as the Fatal button was pushed love it pushed numerous buttons of his own most of them surrounding the deal between the police and Reed he
Forced detective caporn to reveal what sweets and treats he was given in prison a TV an Xbox for his sale cash payments snacks cigarettes and these visits from his girlfriend paid for by the state and when Reed took the stand love it took him apart he got Reed to admit he lied to
The police he got Reed to say he had not told the whole truth he agreed he had admitted details of how the bomb was armed and detonated he admitted lying to police about Mr Slater giving him an ultimatum to kill or leave the Jokers he was even forced to admit there was
Tension between him and later that they had Angry Words and a push and shove before the bombing and in closing love it said the police had shamelessly discarded the rule book that Reed was demonstrably dishonest and his credibility was shot to Pieces ultimately the jury believed what Colin
L said and not Sid Reed and they acquitted Graham Slater of murder hares this trial uh was the first major one I covered um in Perth after I fell off the boat all those years ago uh the things that stick out in my mind still the tension um the security was
Unprecedented even and I and I covered stuff at the Old Bailey and all that but I’d never seen anything like this and I also remember the gasps in court and the tears from Don Hancock’s family and Lou Lewis’s family when Graham Slater was acquitted um what do you remember about
That trial anyone walking near the court at that point would have thought the Gypsy Jokers are more dangerous than a Mexican cartel you had TRG in helicopters buzzing the courtroom you had their star witness being transported in an armored van in a dedicated freeway lane all the
Way to court every day for weeks weeks and weeks you had more cops with more Firepower than the Ukrainian Army patrolling the streets so you walk in there and you’ve got to try and think of guilt versus innocence Etc you’re going to think the Gypsy Jokers did this they
Are dangerous dangerous people look at what the police have to do just to protect us from them these terribly violent Violent Men so I’m not at all surprised that the cops and probably the public thought this was a lock it was going to be guilty they had a rollover
Witness they had so much evidence I mean there was I can remember Tim Aon the former deputy Police Commissioner telling me once that when the bomb went off and the cops were expecting something to happen so they had everyone’s phone ready to go they were up on every Gypsy Joker’s phone they did
Something called a ping where they basically work out where the owners of those phones are and a lot of the owners of those phones happened to be in and around llane even though they had no connection to the suburb so the second the bomb went off there were Gypsy
Jokers everywhere even with all that Colin love it still managed to get the walk they also had a camera uh hidden camera outside or stationed around in and around Don Hancock’s home which actually recorded the bomb going off and I I remember watching that footage in court and being being you know quite
Fearful of what we were going to see but as I explained like it was just it just the whole I mean you know we’re not talking the 4K highd you know your Ultra HD stuff we have today it was you know pretty rudimentary back in 2000 but you
You clearly see the the car pulling in you could clearly see the trailer behind you could clearly see the two Sil the Silhouettes of the two men inside and then it was just a flash it just and and it was just just flash it was it was it was
Like the whole world went white for for those for those seconds and it quite clearly the work of someone who is into some deep criminal [ __ ] yes and someone with access to some high powered explosives um and the the other abiding memory for me is waiting outside court
For um as as we have to do and people don’t like us doing what we have to do to try and get a quote or a comment from the family of of those men which we we did and Elizabeth Hancock um Don’s Widow uh did stop and tearfully told us
How devastated she was again um by this loss and in the background whether he knew that what we were doing or not whether he knew we could hear him or not graem Slater was in the back of a police fan ready to go back to his cell and he
Was whooping in delight and so gra graah Slater slats yeah he is one of the most ferocious bikes in Australia certainly was back then he’s getting on a bit now of course uh he at that point was the sergeant-at-arms for the Gypsy Jokers and you mentioned previously that he had
A bit of a runin with um Sid snot Reed well it was more than a runin sid had been using drugs intravenously and using the needle is Taboo in the Gypsy Jokers you just can’t do it and they found out about this and it was it was slat’s job to deliver a
Beating to Sid Reed so there was a lot of bad blood there and I think that the combination of thinking he was going to go to jail uh grahan was probably convinced that he was done for the rage that he had that Reed had betrayed him
And his Club it all just percolated and he couldn’t stop himself from cele yeah and and the just the Jos of those two sounds um Elizabeth Hancock in tears and and and gra Slater obviously delighted um interesting you say how fearsome he was because in court I remember him just
Being quite funny uh amusing knockabout um he had the flano on um because you know it would be quite a brave move to do at any time but Colin L put his client on the stand to tell his side of the story um which he did and over those
Days I got the impression that the jury quite liked him which I I reckon love it had weighed up they certainly didn’t like Reed I mean no one liked Reed I mean he was the you could smell the Grime on him from you know from Slider looked like
And he was on video link that’s what I was about to say you can smell him but he was miles away somewhere else giving his evidence but Slater there did it in the court and it was a master stroke I love it he well Slater looked like Ned
Kelly he sounded like Ned Kelly and he had that kind of roughish kind of Outlaw yeah I’m a bit rough around the edges but we only keep it within ourselves and I you know I live my life according to a biky code and there’s some honor in that which is all crap
Obviously but he was a convincing convincing person um when he was up on on on the St yeah so the acquit of Graham Slater devastated the wa police but they had another problem the murder of Billy grayon still unsolved and they also had on oath evidence now given by police in that
Courtroom that Don Hancock had been a suspect in that murder senior police publicly urged the coroner’s office at this point to take up the cudgels and so they did eventually holding a triple inquest into not only Billy Grayson’s death but Don Hancock and Lou Lewis as well and that
Hearing provided some startling re Revelations Witnesses ready to testify about seeing an angry Mr Hancock leave the pub on that night to go and get his gun after his Running With The Jokers that the two detectives who led the initial investigation into gron shooting had been drinking with Don hanock and
His wife at the pub that afternoon and when they then spoke to Don Hancock after the shooting he had showered he was wearing fresh clothes his other clothes couldn’t be found and he just felt like eating an orange which did detectives of a certain era might know that
Citrus tends to wipe away gunshot residue funny that there was also in the inquest the extraordinary site of a string of senior bikes turning up to publicly recount sometimes in tears the moment they saw their friend shot dead in the dirt and ultimately there was a state coroner
Willing to go on the record to say that a significant body of evidence existed suggesting a senior retired police officer had shot dead A Stranger In Cold Blood because of a few curse words in front of his daughter but he didn’t have enough to conclude that Hancock was the killer
Haves according during the inquest more detail more Revelations but at the end of it nothing definitive and ironic Al the coroner ruled that the Revenge murder of Hancock had severely limited his search for the truth about the death of Billy grien well Hancock’s death had severely limited the search for the
Truth because hanock did it you don’t have to be Jimmy mcnalty from The Wire to put that one together let’s face it did I do you don’t have to be Matlock it’s pretty obvious the guy has an argument with some why he’s at his Pub after they abuse his daughter he kicks
Them out he then goes and gets a gun he then is seen freshly laundered having showered in new clothes he is eating an orange to get rid of some residue potentially off his hands he had motive he had the ability to to do the crime everyone knows Don Hancock killed Billy Gasson
And sitting in the inquest as I did that was the that was the only conclusion you could come to it it was it was the only logical conclusion um his son um I wouldn’t say sensibly but his son loyally after the inquest suggested that it might have this this suggestion of it
Being an inside job because Billy grion wanted to leave the gang because his wife was pregnant and he wanted to get out of the life and and blah blah blah so they’d done it themselves um it’ be a hell of a shot um it’ be a hell of a um
A good way to get out of orander on a motorcycle at that time of night without being seen um it didn’t really sometimes when it looks like a duck it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck it’s a duck yeah yeah so next year
Will Mark the 25th anniversary of the death of Billy Grayson and no one has ever been charged with his murder and it’s likely no one ever will be he never got to meet his son Isaac he also now has three grandchild who have never met him obviously Graham Slater was released
On bail after being quitted of hanco’s murder and later he was acquitted of the oranda firebombings as well and now he is a free free Man Too Sid Reed was released from prison in 2018 under a new identity and he living somewhere secretly a free man but as har
Has alluded to probably not a comfortable one but one man is still in prison Gary White who was around the Gypsy Jokers at that time and whose name also came out of Sid Reed’s mouth he was charged with helping to destroy the main buildings in oranda but also charged with something
Else something police didn’t even know about before Sid Reed T started talking Anthony Tapley was a drug addict whose Disappearance in 2001 was not even reported in the media his family however were desperate for answers and then in March 2002 out of the blue police began digging at a property in Northern
Charred human remains were found they were those of ant Tapley and they were found because sidre had told them they were there and he claimed he knew who put them there Gary White based on that testimony given in court in one of wa’s fastest murder trials white was convicted of the murder
Of Anthony Tapley and all these years later he’s still in there based on the word of Sid Reed haves you’ve dug deep into the case of Gary White and many many people have serious reservations about that conviction many people think that Sid snot Reed killed Anthony Tapley
And pinned it on Gary White if you’re sitting there in a police interview room and the cops are sitting there saying Sid you got to give us more you got to give us more you’re at 30 years okay now you’re down to 25 years now you’re down
To 20 we need more Sid and then all of a sudden out of nowhere he says Ah I can solve another murder for you yeah if you go up to this place in northerm and have a scratch around you’ll find some human remains lo and behold the cops go out
There and they say yeah yeah you’re right uh who done it oh it weren’t me I was there yeah I was there I was kind of around there but it was it weren’t me it was this guy Gary White pin the blame on him perhaps gets out of an a murder
Conviction himself and then to add insult or injury potentially gets another reduced sentence for the murders he admits he did commit that’s Lou Lewis and Don Hancock so it was a smelly smelly conviction this bloke who was subsequently found out to be a liar Colin love it tore him apart in the
Bombing trial but this was before that the Gary White trial was held before the bombing trial and at that point in time Sid Reed had not been exposed as a serial liar he was considered to be a reasonably credible witness oh why would he lie he’s putting his life at risk
He’s given up all this everything everyone would agree now that if Gary White had gone on trial after hadn’t been the first person that put in the bin had been the second or third he would never have been convicted because by that stage sidre was not a credible
Witness you simply could not believe anything that was coming out of the man’s mouth now Gary White’s family have uh waged a long battle to have this conviction overturned looked at again there’s a very comprehensive website that people can look at that’s got a transcript of the whole trial on there
Which is you know even some of the stuff that was held in closed Court which probably shouldn’t be up there but it it’s there and it and it makes it’s it’s fascinating reading and made me again going through for this getting ready for today quite an easy about some of the
Stuff that that that went on so what’s happened with the case of Gary White in terms of appeal and what what could happen so Gary White was convicted he appealed and he didn’t even get into court with the appeal they chucked it out back then that’s all you had uh a
Little while ago the current attorney general of Western Australia um he passed laws that allow someone who has exhausted their appeal to Lodge a fresh appeal if they can prove there is fresh new compelling evidence about their innocence now Gary White’s legal team and supporters are in the process of
Doing that at the moment and they are at the the end of a very very long expensive project to put together an appeal which will be lodged at some point in the next few months and we could see this whole sorry corrupt violent tale replayed again in a West
Australian Court I wonder if Sid Reed would have to pop his head up at some point Sid Reed right now is without a doubt the most nervous man in Australia cuz Sid Reed if he’s alive that’s a big if if Sid Reed is alive he would know that Gary White is
Considering an appeal now think about this the only reason the Gypsy Jokers wouldn’t want to kill Sid Reed is because Sid Reed could potentially get Gary White out of jail if Gary White gets out of jail Sid Reed has no reason to be alive mate thank you for spending some
Time to talk us through take us through an extraordinary chapter in wa criminal history they don’t make them like that anymore do they it sounds like we might be just getting one bonus episode at the end I hope so and thanks again for the listeners and the viewers for joining us any
Questions or suggestions for court in the ACT please send them through to court intha wws.com . Au and remember if you want to know what’s going on in court don’t get caught short get caught in the act instead see you next Week
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