As
gangland funerals go, the one we attended at Sydney’s Carlingford last
Thursday was pretty much par for the course. There was much cathartic
kissing of the cadaver in the open coffin, the de rigueur selection of
Frank Sinatra’s My Way to express the departed’s attitude to
life – and the obligatory lies told about how the corpse with two
gunshot wounds to the head had led an exemplary life devoted to the
selfless service of his fellow man.

This then was how “the
Bandido Nation,” as they call themselves, farewelled Rodney “Hooks”
Monk, the gang’s Sydney downtown chapter el presidente, who died in a
pool of blood in little lane off an East Sydney eatery area known as
Little Italy, the previous week.

Bandido Hooks was a 1%er – that
is a bad-ar$ed outlaw motorcycle gangster who had committed some act of
gratuitous violence that was sufficiently horrendous for him to be
granted “fully-patched” membership to one of the world’s most notorious
outlaw bikie gangs. The red and yellow-coloured patch is of a fat
Mexican bandit cartoon character brandishing a machete in one hand and
a pistol in the other. They are not generally known for their pacifism.

The gang
was founded in Texas in 1966 and it makes most of its money
manufacturing and selling methamphetamines. As global organised crime
statistics show, drug trafficking comes second in world economic terms
to arms dealing and ahead of the oil industry. That is why organised
crime figures and outlaw motorcycle gangs, like the Bandidos MC, are
increasingly forming unholy alliances to control the drugs trade and
are constantly engaged in turf wars.

The Kookas only have to look at this picture
of fellow Bandido Russell Oldham, whom the NSW coppers have named as
their chief suspect in Monk’s murder, to know that this execution was
drugs related. You don’t get eyes like that from drinking milkshakes.
Oldham is not availing himself of the opportunity to help police in
their inquiries and has done a “Fat Tony” Mokbel.

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