It was an ordinary night with such extraordinary consequences. It was October 1 2000, the closing ceremony of the Sydney Olympics was in full swing and a bunch of blokes were sitting around a Goldfields campfire having a beer and a laugh — a scene that is in so many ways part of the fabric of being an Aussie bloke.
But they weren’t any ordinary bunch. They were the Kalgoorlie chapter of the Gypsy Joker bikie gang and they were perched on the racetrack at the small settlement of Ora Banda, about 70km north of Kalgoorlie and made up largely of prospectors and sandalwood cutters.
This article was first published in October 2010 and has been republished in 2019 after the Ora Banda Inn was burned down.
The bikies, including William Joseph “Billy” Grierson, Graeme “Slim” Slater and Sidney John Reid, had been drinking at the historic Ora Banda Inn. Witnesses to that night said they used crude language, some of which was directed towards barmaid Alison Hanco*ck, whose father Don Hanco*ck owned the pub and was a retired police commander who used to run the Perth CIB.
Mr Hanco*ck ejected the bikies and shut the pub and, about 7.45pm, a sniper’s bullet rang out across the Ora Banda racetrack, striking the campfire where the bikies were sitting. Minutes later, a second bullet thudded into Mr Grierson’s back, killing the 39-year-old within seconds.
That night changed forever relations between the bikies and police and shattered the lives of so many people.
The sniper’s shot stunned investigators. They believed the shooter used a high-powered rifle from a range of up to 300m in dark and difficult conditions. It is not known whether the sniper meant to hit Mr Grierson or if the shots were a warning to get the bikies to leave the small settlement.
Nobody has been charged over Mr Grierson’s murder and technically the case, dubbed Operation Sandalwood, remains with the police cold case unit. But Mr Hanco*ck was long regarded as the prime suspect.
There had been tension between Mr Hanco*ck and Mr Grierson inside the pub. At a coronial inquest into the death, the head cook at the inn testified that she saw Mr Hanco*ck rev his car and leave the premises shortly after closing the doors and ejecting the bikies. She also testified that Mr Hanco*ck’s wife Elizabeth told her that he had gone to get his gun from Grant’s Patch, Mr Hanco*ck’s mining lease.
Mr Hanco*ck was also described as being uncooperative with officers investigating the murder and there were suggestions he might have tried to neutralise any gunshot residue from his hands by eating an orange as citrus juice is widely believed to affect gunshot residue.
The sniper’s gun was never found and Mr Hanco*ck had an alibi — Mrs Hanco*ck told detectives her husband was home watching the Sydney Olympics closing ceremony. Mr Hanco*ck, who was known as the Silver Fox, was never charged and he and his family consistently denied he had any involvement.
“The evidence against Don was completely hearsay,” Mrs Hanco*ck told The West Australian. “There was no real evidence against Don. The man didn’t do it for a start. If he was guilty I would not have been there defending him as I always have.”
Mrs Hanco*ck said her husband was treated unfairly over Mr Grierson’s murder. A string of agencies had investigated and cleared her husband of any wrongdoing during his 35-year police career.
“None of us have got over it because we knew the kind of man Don was. To have all of that, all the time, is just so hard,” she said.
Within days of Mr Grierson’s murder, the Hanco*cks left Ora Banda amid safety concerns. In the days and weeks that followed, their Ora Banda properties were firebombed.
Assistant Commissioner Stephen Brown, who was a detective senior sergeant with the major crime squad when Mr Grierson was killed, said this week that police had been trying to urgently get the case heard in the Coroner’s Court because a number of witnesses, including the bikies and Mr Hanco*ck, were uncooperative and the coroner had the power to compel witnesses to testify.
But time ran out. There were rumours that the bikies had a 12-month deadline to avenge Mr Grierson’s death, and on September 1, 2001, 11 months after the murder, Mr Hanco*ck and his mate Lou Lewis were killed in a car bombing that shocked Perth.
“It was a scene of devastation,” Mr Brown said. “The explosion was such that the materials, debris and other items were strewn over dozens of houses, to neighbouring streets.”
The forensic examination took six days to complete. In the weeks that followed cracks started to form around Reid.
Nicknamed “Snot”, Reid eventually rolled over on his bikie comrades, confessing to his role in the bombing and providing testimony that led investigators attached to Operation Zircon to charge Mr Slater over the double murder. Mr Slater was acquitted by a Supreme Court jury in 2003.
Reid’s testimony also led police to charge a Gypsy Joker associate over the previously unknown homicide of a man who was regarded as a long-term missing person. Zircon also led police to charge then-president of the Gypsy Jokers, Len Kirby, over a multi-million dollar drug haul.
While Reid’s confession was the high point in the unprecedented police investigation, Mr Brown conceded the low point was the acquittals over the car bomb assassinations.
Within days of the car bombing, the State government flagged the possibility of introducing Australia’s toughest anti-bikie laws — including legislation to tear down fortifications from bikie gang strongholds. To date, the Gypsy Jokers remain the only WA bikie gang to be hit with a fortification removal notice.
Mrs Hanco*ck said her family took some comfort from the anti-bikie laws that were introduced following her husband’s death. “Don said to me that if anything happened to him at least something will be done about the bikies, but he never for one moment thought they would take an innocent person along who had nothing to do with any of it. Lou was such a lovely man, he was a wonderful, loyal friend to Don, that’s the way he was.”
Mr Lewis’ son Brad said the tough anti-bikie laws provided cold comfort to his family.
“They say time heals but when your father or anyone so close to you is taken so quickly and without any reasoning at it, it’s something you never recover from,” Mr Lewis said. “With the passage of time, some people say that you get over these things, but you don’t. When there was absolutely no reason to involve my father in it, it’s particularly hard.”
Relations between the bikies and police have always been frosty but they reached new lows following the Hanco*ck-Lewis murders.
In December last year, representatives from most of WA’s main clubs joined forces to form the United Motorcycle Council of WA. The UMC’s role is purely to fight proposed laws that politicians claim target bikies and that bikies claim will affect everyone.
Mr Brown said it was difficult to reconcile all the devastation that came as a result of that one trivial dispute at the Ora Banda Inn.
“How many times is there a disagreement between someone on one side of the public bar and the people behind the bar?,” he said. “It happens every day of the week but never leads to the death of a number of people who would otherwise be with us.”
That leaves one woman, Mr Grierson’s widow Nikki Skerry, facing the prospect of never being able to explain to her son exactly what happened to his father.
Mr Grierson used to carry ultrasound images of Iszaack in his wallet. Ms Skerry was five months pregnant with Iszaack when Mr Grierson was murdered.
Ms Skerry said the pain of her lover’s murder still hurt, and she still could not explain the death to Iszaack.
Ms Skerry fought for a public inquest. She hoped State Coroner Alastair Hope might be able to name Mr Grierson’s killer in an open court. In 2006, Mr Hope found there was strong evidence against Mr Hanco*ck but not enough to conclude he was the sniper.
“There will never be any truth. I will never know the truth, but in my heart at least I know I fought for some kind of truth about Billy,” Ms Skerry said. “The pain of losing him will never go away.
Ms Skerry’s letter to Mr Hope urging him to hold an inquest into her lover’s death rings true today.
“Remember, without Billy’s murder none of the events that followed Billy’s murder would ever have happened,” she wrote.
“All of the shocking and tragic events only happened after and as a result of Billy’s murder. William Joseph Grierson is the main, major and whole point of this epic saga. William Joseph Grierson was murdered, shot in the back and killed. And this is the whole and major point I am trying to make to you. And I believe nobody else wants to or cares to think or remember this fact.”
