‘Diamond’ Jim Shepherd ran the money side of the Mr Asia gang and was no 2 to Terry Clark.
‘Diamond’ Jim Shepherd ran the money side of the Mr Asia gang and was no 2 to Terry Clark.
The six-part podcast series Mr Asia: A Forgotten History tells the inside story of New Zealand’s most infamous drug syndicate. In episode 3, hosts John Daniell and Noelle McCarthy explain the role of “Diamond” Jim Shepherd, the gang’s money man in Australia.
“Diamond” Jim Shepherd grew up in Ponsonby before the bungalows were worth multiple millions of dollars. In 1958, at the age of 16, he was sent to Invercargill borstal for beating up a man. But by 1978 he had risen to become the effective number 2 in Mr Asia’s Sydney operation. He was determined to enjoy himself with champagne, women and the good life.
Shepherd was the most senior of a bunch of Kiwis Terry Clark brought across to Sydney because he didn’t trust Australians.
He understood how to run the money side of the operation and he wasn’t just an accountant. Violence was instrumental in setting up the Mr Asia gang’s territory in Australia and Shepherd had earned a reputation: as he put it, “you don’t get to the top by being nice.”
While Shepherd could be ruthless, he was smart enough to be disturbed by a series of brutal killings ordered by Clark and detailed in episode 3 of Mr Asia: A Forgotten History.
Former policewoman Glenda Hughes got to know Jim Shepherd well. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Former policewoman Glenda Hughes met Shepherd in prison in the late 1980s, where he was serving a long sentence for his involvement in Mr Asia. The pair developed a friendly relationship based on mutual respect, to the point where Hughes wrote the foreword to his 2010 book Mr Asia: Last Man Standing.
“He was very smart. Jim had the general good upbringing, but somewhere in the mix, he lost his moral compass. He was an entrepreneurial criminal who was highly thought of within the criminal scene, came up through the old-school, and did criminal activities, but was very different [from Clark] in the way he treated humans. He was always very charming, gave everyone their dignity.”
Shepherd had always been wary of Terry Clark. He says from the moment Clark detailed a string of murders to him over a long lunch at a high-end Sydney restaurant, it felt like the situation was always going to spiral out of control.
Drug equipment used in police training in the 1970s.
As the Mr Asia syndicate fell apart in late 1979, Shepherd fled to the US where he continued his criminal activity but was captured and extradited to face trial in Australia.
He was released from prison in 1998 and is now – in his 80s - understood to be in Indonesia, having had to leave Australia once again for fear of being deported under the 501 policy, which forcibly returns convicted criminals to their countries of origin.
Mr Asia - A Forgotten History is a six-episode true crime series. Follow the series on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes are released on Wednesdays.
The series is hosted and produced by John Daniell and Noelle McCarthy of Bird of Paradise Productions in co-production with the New Zealand Herald.
