GRAEME Slater makes it crystal clear the Gypsy Jokers would like to get their hands on supergrass Sid “Snot” Reid — but only if their former comrade still has a pulse.
“He’s not much use to us dead,” Slater tells The Sunday Times in an exclusive interview at his suburban home.
“In our minds, I suppose he might be dead to us, but we want him alive — for Whitey’s sake.”
Whitey is Gary White, an associate of the notorious bikie gang now into the 15th year of a 22-year life sentence on the say-so of Reid.
Reid, who also accused Slater of taking part in the 2001 car bombing murder of top cop Don Hanco*ck and his mate Lou Lewis — a charge Slater beat — is now a free man, as revealed by The Sunday Times two weeks ago.
He is believed to have assumed a new identity through the WA Police’s witness protection program after serving 15 years for the shocking Hanco*ck-Lewis murder.
Reid reduced his sentence after agreeing to break the bikies’ code of silence and turn State’s evidence against Slater and White in two separate murder trials.
The Slater jury did not believe Reid and Slater was acquitted, but the White jury did, and despite there being no overwhelming forensic evidence, White, a close friend of Jokers’ WA founder Les Hoddy, was convicted of the murder of small-time drug dealer Anthony Tapley.
However, there is growing unease about White’s conviction, and following the recent decision by Attorney-General John Quigley to refer the Scott Austic murder conviction back to the Court of Appeal, White’s legal team has again filed a petition to get White back into the courts.
Even Mr Quigley, when in Opposition, said there needed to be a “high-level inquiry” to test Reid’s evidence to examine whether the former bikie lied to gain special privileges.
Having met in the early 1990s when Slater was sent to the Goldfields to open the Kalgoorlie chapter of the Jokers, Reid and Slater got on well after a mutual mate, Billy Grierson, brought Reid into the bikie fold.
“Billy was a top bloke. He was always laughing, even at his own bad jokes. Sid was a man of few words. But I got on all right with him,” he said.
Fast forward to October 2000 and on the second night of a Jokers’ “run” they set up camp about 600m from the historic Ora Banda Inn outside of Kalgoorlie, owned and operated by the retired former CIB boss and legendary detective Hanco*ck.
“I’d never heard of Don Hanco*ck until that night,” he says. “Didn’t know who he was.
“We had a few beers at the pub, and then most of us went down to camp. Billy and another bloke were watching the closing ceremony (of the Sydney Olympics) on the television.
“One of the people had a Sorry T-shirt on and Billy said, ‘F--- that s---’. Then Hanco*ck came in and kicked them out.
“Billy came back to the camp and said, ‘The old bastard, he shut the pub on us’. We didn’t care because we had plenty of piss.
“We were playing some music, having some beers, bullsh*tting, and then about 6.15 the first bullet came through and hit the fire, into the wood. I said to the boys, ‘Get behind the ute’.
“Other boys thought it was the wood in the fire cracking, but I knew it wasn’t. I said, ‘Get behind the ute out of the firing range’.
“Billy said, ‘He’s probably just trying to scare us’, and I said, ‘Well, he’s doing a bloody good job’. Anyway, about 15 minutes goes past and Billy then says, ‘F--- this,’ we went back to where we were and the next shot went straight through him (Billy).
“They never found that bullet. It went straight through him.
“I tell you one thing, He was a bloody good shot ... it must have been 600m away in the dark.
“Billy said, ‘I’ve been shot, leave me alone, I’m dying’, and I was saying, ‘No, you’re not, you’re just winded’, but when I picked him up he was heavy and knew then he was gone.”
Slater said he could see a “tiny little hole in his back with a tiny little bit of blood”.
“I picked up Billy and put him in the ute (to take him to the nearby Cawes Nickel mine nursing post), he was still alive, but then he went limp and his weight doubled and I knew he was dead.
“We then went back to the pub, I said to the boys, ‘Don’t upset anyone, they may want to help’. Two women at the bar said they saw a man walking through the bushes with a gun and I said, ‘You just tell the coppers what you told me’, and they did.”
But nothing happened and the “piss poor” investigation into the Grierson murder slowly went nowhere.
The lack of action “pissed us right off — some of the coppers were even telling us that they knew what had happened but no charges were laid — he outfoxed them again”.
“Reid was pissed off — we all were — but Reid was more pissed off than anyone else.”
After Reid rolled over and fingered Slater as his partner in the Hanco*ck bombing 11 months later in September 2001, Slater was arrested in March 2002 by heavily armed tactical response group officers and charged with the murders. He had an alibi.
“I was at my mum’s place in Northam, 100 miles away, and couldn’t be in two places at once, with my brother, sister and Mrs Wallace, and she’s a church-going lady, but cops didn’t want to believe that. They wanted to believe Reid.
“Reid had to give them someone to get his reduction (in his sentence) and he knew that. Reid wasn’t an idiot despite what people say. Cops reckoned he wasn’t smart, but he pulled the wool over their eyes.”
Slater says he does not know if Reid did the job on Hanco*ck by himself or with the help of others outside the club.
So why would he implicate you in something like that?
“Dunno. I had no idea he was going to do it. I was in Northam when I first knew about it.
“As soon as I found out (that Hanco*ck and Lewis had died) I thought, ‘I’ll be blamed for this’, and every member of the club will be a suspect.”
He said it was then outright war.
“Cops then declared war on us,” he said. “They even bugged Billy’s grave. Pretty smart, really, if you’re going to open up, I suppose you’ll open up there.”
The security around Slater was unprecedented. Police helicopters — complete with snipers — circled the prison as Slater, in both ankle and wrist chains, was taken daily to court via a heavily fortified prison van with blacked-out windows.
“Escorted in, escorted out. Different route to the court every day. Complete overkill. I heard the whole exercise, security, lawyers, the whole lot, cost taxpayers $22 million. Didn’t get a lot for their money.
“Anyone would think I was Hannibal Lecter,” Slater snorts.
“I was always confident I would be acquitted. You could see the jury were on my side, you know. I was relieved, no worries about that, but I was pretty confident I would get off.”
So who helped Reid murder Hanco*ck and Lewis if it wasn’t you?
“Dunno, could have been someone from outside the club. Got no idea. What I do know is that all of his statements pointing at me, from the first one to the last one, about six statements, changed that much and kept getting bigger.”
Surely, you must wonder where Reid is?
“A lot of people ask me, but I don’t care. Not one bit. I just hope his life is a miserable one.”
Really, I ask him? You don’t think some of the boys would like to get their hands on him?
There is a long pause.
“I’ve never heard it spoken about. Maybe a few might think like that. He’s got to live his life now as best he can.
“We need him alive, because if Gary White has any chance of getting a retrial, we need Reid alive so he can take the stand and tell the truth for once in his life.
“We had him on the stand for four days in my trial. I got off, and Whitey, who had him in the stand for four hours, went down. Cops portrayed Reid as a hard-working man who was an angel until he joined the Jokers then turned to crime.”
So where would you think Reid might be?
“I’ll tell you one thing, he won’t be working. He’s bone lazy. But as a club, we need to keep him alive to get Whitey clear.”
So are the Jokers looking for him?
“Not that I know of,” he says, not that convincingly.
He’s says he determined to get Reid back into the stand. How, he is either not saying or does not know.
“If Reid dies, then Whitey dies, only he will die in jail, and that’s wrong.”
Slater’s animosity towards his old mate bubbles away just under the surface.
But he says it doesn’t consume him. At 52, he jokes that he’s starting to think about retirement.
“One day I might write a children’s book and call it Snot the Dog.”
