Speaker 1: If you want to piss off local police, deal drugs
Speaker 1: and call your business cartel.
Speaker 2: They wheeled the fridge out, shifted that out of the way,
Speaker 2: and there was a secret wall, secret door, whatever you
Speaker 2: want to call it, and there was the entire stash
Speaker 2: of cocaine.
Speaker 3: It all seems very sons of anarchy, doesn't it. Just
Speaker 3: sort of the small town with their crew of family
Speaker 3: miscreants going about the place doing miscreant things. While Andrew's
Speaker 3: away on assignment. It's Johnny Burton, producer of the show,
Speaker 3: stepping in again as host. But with me today we
Speaker 3: have two of the finest crime reporters and the entire
Speaker 3: Herald's unused for that being Mark Butler and Reagan Hodge,
Speaker 3: and we're here to talk about the story of Josh Eddie.
Speaker 3: Who he is, what he did, and how he became undone.
Speaker 3: So start off Mark, who is young Josh.
Speaker 1: Josh Eddie is a former member of the Mongols. He
Speaker 1: grew up mostly in the town of Cobram, up on
Speaker 1: the Murray. He was known to be trouble, left school early,
Speaker 1: did a lot of different jobs, but probably wouldn't stand
Speaker 1: out as the kind of guy who would bring organized
Speaker 1: crime to a country center like his. So in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure whether he was with one of
Speaker 1: the feeder clubs prior to this, but in twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: he joins the Mongols, and obviously that's good for making
Speaker 1: connections in the world of organized crime, and clearly the
Speaker 1: Mongols see him as a conduit for selling drugs in
Speaker 1: a reasonably large market through the north of the state.
Speaker 1: I think some of these activities extended down to a
Speaker 1: chuker further south and drugs were being moved into state.
Speaker 1: There was evidence of activity extending to Queensland and a
Speaker 1: major bust of a ten kilo shipment heading to Perth
Speaker 1: involving these guys. So Eddie sets himself up. Suddenly he's
Speaker 1: got a lot of money. He's running a business called Cartel,
Speaker 1: which was basically a car wash we get your car
Speaker 1: details cleaning up in more ways than one. So he's
Speaker 1: cruising around town in a real fancy late model Mercedes.
Speaker 1: He's got the chunky jewelry. He's running this business called cartel.
Speaker 1: Some of the local folk have some most intimidating experiences
Speaker 1: with people wearing cartel hoodies. It starts to get to
Speaker 1: the local police they think we really need to do
Speaker 1: something about this. A detective sergeant called Marcus Boyd from
Speaker 1: up there, a local detective sergeant who was experienced in
Speaker 1: dealing with organized crime entities previously contacts the Echo Task Force,
Speaker 1: the Echo Task Forces, the Anti Organized Chronlin Task Force
Speaker 1: in Melbourne, yep. And they go from there.
Speaker 2: And for those who aren't familiar with Cobram, it's up
Speaker 2: on the Murray River. Population of just under six thousand.
Speaker 2: It's really a small country town.
Speaker 3: So let's just go through that. So you've got Josh,
Speaker 3: she's got his cartel, which you know, a great name.
Speaker 3: It's like Flowers by Irene from the Simpsons or something
Speaker 3: really in terms of a thing. They've got the hoodies.
Speaker 3: They're going around the locals of Cobram and making them
Speaker 3: feel a little bit upset about the world a little bit.
Speaker 3: And is this by intimidation or are they going into
Speaker 3: various businesses, you know, making them an off that they
Speaker 3: can't refuse. So there were a few.
Speaker 2: Dust ups around Cobram, and they occurred in some of
Speaker 2: the takeaway joints by some people wearing the cartel merchandise.
Speaker 2: So they would advertise their hoodies, T shirts all that
Speaker 2: sort of gear with the cartel merch and he'd have
Speaker 2: a handful of people getting around town wearing them after
Speaker 2: a few incidents of little bust ups, nothing major, but
Speaker 2: they were just little confrontations around town. That was one
Speaker 2: element to the police starting to raise their eyebrows at
Speaker 2: this crew who were growing and growing in this small
Speaker 2: country town.
Speaker 1: If you want to piss off local police, deal drugs
Speaker 1: and call your business cartel, I mean, it's really provocative
Speaker 1: branding which they probably would not be inclined to ignore.
Speaker 3: And also that point that you made before about driving
Speaker 3: around in a flashy Mercedes, Now I'm really going to
Speaker 3: understand you're a country lad somewhat. I'm also from the country,
Speaker 3: and I have to say, in my childhood, I did
Speaker 3: not necessarily see a whole bunch of late model Mercedes
Speaker 3: sticking around with the chains and everything, so I might
Speaker 3: have stuck out a little bit.
Speaker 2: It did, And there's some photographs still on the Carteil
Speaker 2: website which isn't in an operation anymore, but it shows
Speaker 2: two really fancy Mercedes being washed and featured in this
Speaker 2: promotional video, which is quite well done, to be honest,
Speaker 2: but Cobram, it's it's not really home to many Mercedes,
Speaker 2: and it's not AMG's no, no, it's not and.
Speaker 1: Not somebody with an apparently a fairly limited history of
Speaker 1: employment over the previous decade.
Speaker 3: Wondering where the chains have come from.
Speaker 1: Probably Eddie's biggest mistake was underestimating these local coppers. Marcus
Speaker 1: Boyd decides we're going to do something about this. He
Speaker 1: contacts Echo. Echo already have something of an interest in
Speaker 1: Eddie because Eddie is present when a man called Fardi
Speaker 1: Dab is shot by Australian Federal Police officers out of
Speaker 1: Greenvale in the early hours of September twelve, nine eight.
Speaker 1: So it's a serious matter. He shot at the cops
Speaker 1: and then they shot at him.
Speaker 4: He missed and they didn't.
Speaker 1: They were in a car with cloned plates, so it
Speaker 1: was evidence of high level activity.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: He was somebody that they were going to watch have
Speaker 1: an interest in.
Speaker 3: So Joshua has got Carte is his main business, but
Speaker 3: obviously he's got other business interests not necessarily above board,
Speaker 3: and he's not alone in that is. He's got some
Speaker 3: friends and family.
Speaker 4: He's got numerous family members.
Speaker 1: His father David is involved, his sister is involved, other
Speaker 1: relatives are involved. It was quite a network of people, associates, gophers.
Speaker 1: It was probably a large scale trafficking venture, which would
Speaker 1: be commonplace in Melbourne, but isn't so common in these
Speaker 1: sort of places.
Speaker 3: So that's one of the questions. We've got stories and
Speaker 3: some of your reporting has the dad going off to
Speaker 3: places on long drug runs and all sorts of shenanigans
Speaker 3: going up and down highways. Why are they doing this
Speaker 3: all in Cobram.
Speaker 2: Well, they thought it was a good place to set
Speaker 2: up business. You're away from the big smoke or the
Speaker 2: detectives in Melbourne or Sydney. It's a bit of a
Speaker 2: channel in between those two cities. They would think being
Speaker 2: out in Cobram, they've only got a handful of coppers
Speaker 2: that can probably fly under the radar, a bit that
Speaker 2: proved to be not true in the end. But there
Speaker 2: was a channel that isn't along the Hume, but it's
Speaker 2: a back highway. I'm not too sure which highway it is,
Speaker 2: but they call it the Smuggler's route and it is
Speaker 2: a off broadway sort of highway. There's no traffic cameras. Obviously,
Speaker 2: the coppers set themselves up on the Hume for sort
Speaker 2: of drug runs, but they would use the smugglers route
Speaker 2: the back way to move drugs out of Cobram up
Speaker 2: to Sydney.
Speaker 1: So these guys would probably think, you know, they're operating
Speaker 1: on encrypted apps, They've got very elaborate hiding places for
Speaker 1: their drugs and money. They're fairly well organized. They're probably
Speaker 1: thinking that this isn't the kind of enterprise that the
Speaker 1: local police are going to be able to deal with.
Speaker 1: They probably thought they were going to be operating for
Speaker 1: a long time under the radar.
Speaker 3: And it all seems very signs of anarchy, doesn't it
Speaker 3: The sort of the small town the crew of family
Speaker 3: miscreants going about the doing miscreant things.
Speaker 2: And having not actually seen that show. But there is
Speaker 2: your no you report on Barkis and you have not
Speaker 2: seen I know another none of us.
Speaker 3: But if you want.
Speaker 2: Reagan to watch Sons of Anarchary email in ass But
Speaker 2: the drug market in the Golden Valley and all along
Speaker 2: the Murray River border is it's huge. It extends all
Speaker 2: the way up to Mildura. And yeah, the drug issue
Speaker 2: in regional Victoria, not just along the Murray, is quite significant.
Speaker 1: There's money to be made in all of these towns,
Speaker 1: I mean, and you could go further north into Finley
Speaker 1: and Hay and all these places.
Speaker 4: They're not tiny towns.
Speaker 1: Pretty much every country town, regional country center you'll go to,
Speaker 1: there'll be people wanting to buy drugs.
Speaker 4: There's good money to be made.
Speaker 3: And we kind of mentioned some of these runs that
Speaker 3: they went on. Can you describe one of those how
Speaker 3: they panned out?
Speaker 2: So there was an infamous one I think we can
Speaker 2: say now from David Eddie, so Josh's dad who left
Speaker 2: cop from forty eight hours later he's back in Cobram.
Speaker 2: But that included a drive to Townsville, a drug drop
Speaker 2: into the Gold Coast, another drop into Sydney and then
Speaker 2: back it sounds south to Cobram, so I think it's
Speaker 2: nearly five thousand kilometers in forty eight hours, so it's
Speaker 2: a very very efficient drug drop.
Speaker 3: You think he was sticking to the speed limit on
Speaker 3: that one, Reagan or no doubt, No doubt at all.
Speaker 2: But it was one that sort of blew the police
Speaker 2: away once they realized how far had actually gone in
Speaker 2: such a short amount of time. I'm not too sure
Speaker 2: there were too many rest stops along the way. We'll
Speaker 2: never know that, but that would be the beginning of
Speaker 2: the end for Cartel.
Speaker 3: So we've got Cartel, and we've got mister Reading, and
Speaker 3: we've got mister Edie's family, and we've got a bunch
Speaker 3: of annoyed townsfolk, and we've got a couple of local
Speaker 3: coppers that are keeping their eye on them. And as
Speaker 3: you mentioned before, Echo is taking an interest what happens next.
Speaker 1: They meet and they set up in operation, set out
Speaker 1: a strategy, a plan for how this is going to operate.
Speaker 4: So the way it's going to operate is.
Speaker 1: For the local police to keep an eye on things.
Speaker 1: Any contact to be had with them is to be
Speaker 1: through them. These people, some of these people, you know,
Speaker 1: contact with the police would not be unexpected to them,
Speaker 1: while Echo remain in the shadows and just watch, listen,
Speaker 1: watch get what evidence they can, because you're dealing with
Speaker 1: people at the top of this syndicate who if they
Speaker 1: find out Echo are involved, then they'll just shut up shop.
Speaker 1: And what they wanted was to stay in business. Well,
Speaker 1: evidence is accumulated. So they looked at them from I
Speaker 1: think it was up to a year and got a
Speaker 1: lot of evidence. They intercepted a bloke had just left
Speaker 1: Cartel with one hundred and ninety five grams of cocaine.
Speaker 4: They did a drug deal.
Speaker 1: With one of the syndicate's gophers, and undercover did a
Speaker 1: two hundred and twenty four gram deal with him. We
Speaker 1: saw a lot of things as they put this thing together.
Speaker 2: One bit of tangible evidence that the police could tell
Speaker 2: us about recently was that they were pretty much sitting
Speaker 2: opposite Cartel over the road. There were a couple of
Speaker 2: detectives watching yep, and they noticed a car go in
Speaker 2: to the car detailing.
Speaker 3: Joint, which would usually take.
Speaker 2: A couple of hours to get your car detailed, I'm assuming,
Speaker 2: but this car went in and out within fifteen or
Speaker 2: so minutes, and they thought something dodgy was going on.
Speaker 2: So that was one bit of intelligence that the detectives
Speaker 2: could share with us.
Speaker 3: Not a turbosh, then, I don't think. So you've got
Speaker 3: the two local detectives they're kind of overtly keeping an
Speaker 3: eye out on Cartel, and then you've got Echo, who
Speaker 3: are very much under the radar doing what they do
Speaker 3: to collect the information they need, and then it all
Speaker 3: comes to a head.
Speaker 2: It all comes to a head in the early hours
Speaker 2: of a really cold winter morning. David Eddie on his
Speaker 2: way back from Townsville, that really long five thousand kilometer drop.
Speaker 2: He's coming back into Cobram on the bridge connecting Cobram
Speaker 2: and Baruga and police pull him over. It was a
Speaker 2: routine traffic stop is what they called it. And they
Speaker 2: breath O David Eddie and they've got a search warrant
Speaker 2: for his car and they just take him out. They
Speaker 2: rip open the car and where the air bag is
Speaker 2: on the left passenger side, they lifted that out. There's
Speaker 2: no air bag, but there was a gun and a
Speaker 2: stack of cash in there. Eddie was arrested. The coppers
Speaker 2: on the street get on the phone to the other
Speaker 2: detectives and it's time to go. So they've executed five
Speaker 2: search warrants at the early hours of the morning all
Speaker 2: around Corpram and they needed to get it done really
Speaker 2: really quickly so that no one could dispose of any
Speaker 2: evidence or run away or hide their gear. So two
Speaker 2: three four in the morning the AFP as well working
Speaker 2: with the Victorian detectives and they just raid five houses
Speaker 2: and businesses around Colbram.
Speaker 3: Was cartel on the list as well? Or was it
Speaker 3: all houses?
Speaker 2: They were mainly houses. David Eddie's house, the family house
Speaker 2: was the main one. And it was a really interesting
Speaker 2: story that the detectives told us a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 2: which we wrote about in middle of July, that the
Speaker 2: Victorian detectives were searching the house and they couldn't really
Speaker 2: find anything, no evidence of a drug sort of stash
Speaker 2: or a drug making area. And the federal police just said,
Speaker 2: all right, hang on, look up there in the corner,
Speaker 2: look over there to your left, look there behind the wall,
Speaker 2: and sure enough, the pieces started coming together, and behind
Speaker 2: the fridge they found a They wheeled the fridge out,
Speaker 2: shifted that out of the way, and there was a
Speaker 2: secret wall, secret door, whatever you want to call it,
Speaker 2: and there was the entire stash of cocaine.
Speaker 3: Right, so that's kind of very Day of the Jack,
Speaker 3: or really pressed the button you have seen the Day
Speaker 3: of the Jack, I'll have you made. Unfortunately not if
Speaker 3: you would like. Reagan too watched over. So that's astonishing.
Speaker 2: Behind the fridge was a button and it was like
Speaker 2: you'd see in the movies. It slowly opened this wall
Speaker 2: and it opened what they'd previously heard been called the
Speaker 2: medicine cabinet. So they'd been listening to the phone calls
Speaker 2: for the past few years and references to the medicine
Speaker 2: the cabinet. Go grab it from the medicine cabinet, put
Speaker 2: it back in the medicine cabinet. And once they've moved
Speaker 2: this fridge and opened up the secret wall, there's the
Speaker 2: infamous medicine cabinet that they'd heard so much about. And
Speaker 2: that was the pinnacle of it for those detectives. And
Speaker 2: it was still the early hours of the morning, like
Speaker 2: in the middle of the night really, which.
Speaker 3: Is quite unusual.
Speaker 2: Usually raids would occur six in the morning, just as
Speaker 2: people are waking up unsuspecting.
Speaker 3: But this one they had to move really quickly. Yeah, right,
Speaker 3: And presumably as soon as they see the medicine cabinet
Speaker 3: and all of its various unguents and powders, they say,
Speaker 3: thank you very much, son, you're nicked pretty much. And
Speaker 3: who did they take away in cuffs?
Speaker 2: So David Eddie was arrested on the bridge connecting Cobraum
Speaker 2: and Baruga. They arrested Josh's sister, so David's daughter, Jade
Speaker 2: Josh was also arrested that night. Slash early morning, and
Speaker 2: I think a handful of his associates as well.
Speaker 3: And Josh is sent away and has gone up in
Speaker 3: front of a judge and no longer walking the street.
Speaker 2: I think he's what did he get nine nine and
Speaker 2: a bit years, nine and six months, nine and six months,
Speaker 2: So he'll be away for a little while longer.
Speaker 3: At the time of recording.
Speaker 2: But the raids and subsequent charges and had a big
Speaker 2: flow on effect for the Mongols that he was a
Speaker 2: part of, and we'll.
Speaker 3: Talk about where that sets us up in the future.
Speaker 3: But these raids, they didn't happen like last week or something.
Speaker 3: There's been a while since the day happened.
Speaker 2: Yes, there has been a bit of time passed since
Speaker 2: the raids. I think they were in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: They were twenty twenty one, so we've had to wait
Speaker 1: to fully cover this until Josh Eddie went through the courts,
Speaker 1: which was some months ago.
Speaker 2: We were lucky enough that Marcus Boyd from Cobram had
Speaker 2: a chat to us I think in the middle of June,
Speaker 2: and Kieran Duret from the Echo Task Force as well
Speaker 2: had a little conversation with us to shed some light
Speaker 2: on the good work those two did so we published
Speaker 2: that story in the Herald Sun in July.
Speaker 3: So Josh is away and some of his associates are
Speaker 3: still away. Where does that leave us, you know, nature
Speaker 3: of bores, a vacuum doesn't sort of mean that these
Speaker 3: one percent motorcycle gangs are not still in central Victoria
Speaker 3: nor the Victoria. Pretty much all of these country towns
Speaker 3: tell us about that. Who are the players in these markets?
Speaker 3: Where are they and what are they doing?
Speaker 1: Well, there's a long history of omcg's operating out of
Speaker 1: country areas. The Bandidos just further down the river were
Speaker 1: for many years enmeshed in Atchuka. They were patched over
Speaker 1: some years ago to the Mongols. Their national president was
Speaker 1: from Achuka at that point. That with the Banditos president,
Speaker 1: that is it is an important area for bikey gangs
Speaker 1: up on the river.
Speaker 3: And that's just so they can run drugs in and
Speaker 3: out of the state.
Speaker 1: Well regarded as strategically important. The Finks have a presence
Speaker 1: in Country Victoria.
Speaker 4: They're up at Wodonga.
Speaker 1: They had a cracker getting into Gippsland set up a
Speaker 1: chapter near Bansdale. Although the police in a similar probably
Speaker 1: in a similar not quite at the same level as
Speaker 1: the Cobram job. Ended up putting a stop to that.
Speaker 1: As one of them said, we canceled their East Gippsland visas.
Speaker 4: Ballarat, Bendigo have.
Speaker 1: Have always had, have traditionally had BIKEI presence.
Speaker 2: There are a couple of big jobs earlier in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five involving Mildur and Kolak, a couple of big
Speaker 2: drug busts. I know the Hell's Angels were caught up
Speaker 2: in at least one of them. But yeah, the country
Speaker 2: areas are really popular for the oemcgs. As we spoke
Speaker 2: about before, there is still quite a large market for
Speaker 2: drugs in the regional areas. Some of these places aren't
Speaker 2: just tiny country towns. There are some heavily populated areas
Speaker 2: still in Country Victoria, so there is quite a fair market.
Speaker 1: A place like Ballarat is important and I think the
Speaker 1: Bandidos have had two national runs there in recent years.
Speaker 1: That probably says something. At one of those runs, the
Speaker 1: sergeant at arms he got shot outside the clubhouse after
Speaker 1: some kind of argument broke out. Bendigo has always had
Speaker 1: the rebels fairly strong, although I think police have done
Speaker 1: a lot of work on them over the years. And
Speaker 1: I think they've had to pull their heads in a
Speaker 1: little bit.
Speaker 3: So that's the bigger picture. But in terms of the Mongols,
Speaker 3: with mister Eddie going away, what did that mean for
Speaker 3: them specifically.
Speaker 1: Well, we're not sure why this happened, but police believe
Speaker 1: that what happened up at Cobram and happened to the
Speaker 1: Eddy Syndicate basically caused a fracture in the Mongols which
Speaker 1: resulted in some senior members being asked to leave the club.
Speaker 1: Toby Mitchell, Mark Bellcilly, the late Sam Abel Rahim, Jason Addison,
Speaker 1: very senior people, well known people all left the gang
Speaker 1: in that period. Now I couldn't actually say why that happened.
Speaker 1: It'd be opened to speculation that maybe the failure of
Speaker 1: what went on up there caused this fracture, would have
Speaker 1: caused a lot of trouble for their networks, I would imagine,
Speaker 1: or somebody was operating outside the structures of the gang.
Speaker 1: And if you're with the Mongols, the people at the
Speaker 1: top of the tree want to get a lick of
Speaker 1: the icy pole and they don't appreciate people having a
Speaker 1: side hustle. Now I'm not saying that's the case, but
Speaker 1: we don't know what the reason was.
Speaker 2: It's also not a good look when your syndicate is
Speaker 2: busted and you've been all over the news for the
Speaker 2: best part of five years. It's not a good look
Speaker 2: for your outlaw motorcycle gang. So they would have had
Speaker 2: every right to be a bit pissed off with the
Speaker 2: Eddie Citicutt who brought them all into the spotlight.
Speaker 1: I think they probably would have become aware that maybe
Speaker 1: there were some mistakes made.
Speaker 3: Will probably naming it Cartel was potentially one of the
Speaker 3: first ones you would see, one of the biggest. And
Speaker 3: on that note, WHI shall get you the streaming link
Speaker 3: to Sons of Anarchy and we shall thank you both
Speaker 3: for coming on today. Thank you Mark, Thank you Reagan.
Speaker 3: Andrew will be back next week.
Speaker 2: Not Life and Crimes, Thanks Jobete, thanks for listening.
Speaker 5: Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun production for
Speaker 5: True Crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns,
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