Gypsy Joker Graeme Slater, one of Australia's most high-profile and controversial bikies, appears on ABC's Four Corners tonight in an exclusive interview with reporter Quentin McDermott.
The interview forms a part of a long-running Four Corners investigation into the case of Gary White, a friend of the Gypsy Jokers, who is serving a life sentence for the murder of an acquaintance called Anthony Tapley in 2001.
White was tried and convicted in 2003. He lost an appeal in 2006, and a subsequent application for leave to appeal to the High Court was also turned down.
Tonight's program examines the evidence presented at Gary White's trial, and calls into question whether his conviction was safe. The report includes a fresh appraisal of the forensic evidence, and fresh eyewitness evidence which has not yet been tested in court.
In the opinion of a senior barrister who represented White at his appeal, this fresh evidence casts reasonable doubt on the convicted man's guilt.
White's legal team will soon make an application to Western Australia's Attorney-General, inviting him to exercise the Royal Prerogative of Mercy to send the case back to the Court of Appeal.
White denies that he murdered Mr Tapley. No body has ever been found, nor have the gun or bullets allegedly used to shoot Mr Tapley.
There was only one eye-witness to the alleged shooting - a former Gypsy Joker-turned-police supergrass called Sid Reid. Doubt is also now being cast on the forensic evidence that was used to corroborate Reid's story.
Reid is currently serving a life sentence for the murders of a former WA chief of detectives, Don Hanco*ck, and his race-going friend Lawrence 'Lou' Lewis, who died in a car-bombing outside Mr Hanco*ck's Perth home in September 2001.
Reid admitted planting the bomb that killed the two men, but claimed that Graeme Slater was the mastermind behind the assassination. Largely on Reid's evidence, Graeme Slater was charged with the murders of Don Hanco*ck and Lawrence Lewis, but acquitted.
Eleven months before the car-bombing, bikie Billy Grierson was shot dead by a sniper at Ora Banda, a small mining settlement north-west of Kalgoorlie. The person who shot Billy Grierson dead has never been formally identified, but the finger of suspicion pointed at the former head of the CIB, and the then-owner of the local pub at Ora Banda, Don Hanco*ck.
Mr Hanco*ck was one of Western Australia's most senior detectives but also one of the state's most controversial policemen. His death was widely seen as an act of revenge by bikies intent on avenging the death of Billy Grierson.
Graeme Slater has spoken to Four Corners about the night that Billy Grierson died.
It is the first time he has openly commented on the murders of Don Hanco*ck and Lawrence Lewis, and on the actions of Sid Reid in 'rolling over' to become a police supergrass.
In doing so, he has technically breached the traditional bikie 'code of silence' that prevents members of outlaw motorcycle clubs from speaking to the police or the media. Mr Slater says he has done this with the agreement of his fellow Gypsy Jokers in order to speak up for Gary White.
In return for giving evidence against his fellow bikies, Sid Reid received a discount in his sentence, from a potential minimum of 30 years imprisonment, to 15 years imprisonment without parole.
But two of the three major trials in which Sid Reid subsequently appeared as the star witness for the Crown resulted in acquittals because the jury did not believe him. In only one trial, the trial of Gary White, was he believed.
Graeme Slater has alleged that detectives from Operation Zircon, the taskforce investigating the murders of Don Hanco*ck and Lawrence Lewis, were hoping that Gary White would 'roll over' in the same way that Sid Reid had done. But White refused.
No-one from the WA Police would agree to appear on the Four Corners program but the report includes an interview with former WA Police Assistant Commissioner Tim Atherton, who is critical of aspects of his own force's investigation into the death of Anthony Tapley. He says he now believes that serious consideration should be given to Gary White being given an opportunity to put his case again to a court of law.
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