Written on the wall of the Head Hunters’ gang pad is a quote from classic film The Godfather that says: “Real power can’t be given. It must be taken.”
For the best part of the past two decades, the motorcycle gang had real power in Auckland’s criminal underworld. It was once a rag-tag bunch of teenage misfits with humble beginnings in Glen Innes in 1967, but over time built a reputation for never taking a backwards step.
If the likes of the Hells Angels were respected by other gangs, then the Heads became feared.
This propensity for violence allowed the Head Hunters to muscle their way into the methamphetamine trade, which exploded in the early 2000s, with members of the gang enjoying the fruit of their ill-gotten gains: money, power and influence.
In particular, the East chapter based at 232 Marua Rd in Mt Wellington began to grow. Once a tight-knit group of about 30, more than 300 East members now wear the flaming skull patch.
They spread across the country by muscling into rival gang territory in Northland and the Bay of Plenty, to the Wairarapa and Wellington, and even as far south as Christchurch.
The Head Hunters were the heavyweights of the criminal underworld, and the police National Organised Crime Group responded with a series of targeted covert investigations between 2014 and 2016.
Some of the top-ranking members of the East chapter, like Dave O’Carroll and William “Bird” Hines, were convicted of running commercial methamphetamine enterprises and given long prison sentences.
Perhaps the most ambitious investigation was a financial one. The alleged president of the East chapter, Wayne Doyle, had not been convicted of anything for more than 20 years.
But evidence gathered in Operation Coin led to the High Court granting freezing orders in September 2017 over five properties linked to Doyle, including the gang pad on Marua Rd, worth $10 million.
No charges were laid against Doyle and although not alleged to be personally responsible for the criminal activity of other Head Hunters, the thrust of the police case is that Doyle received significant financial benefits because of his status as the alleged leader of the gang.
The case has dragged on for nearly five years already, with a High Court date set for October next year.
Regardless of the outcome, the sustained pressure from the police has not been the only threat to the Head Hunters. New challengers are rolling around Auckland on customised Harley-Davidsons, with a brash Aussie twang and confidence to match.
Real power can’t be given. It must be taken.
In the early hours of a Sunday morning, April 11, 2021, an estimated 30 semi-automatic rifle rounds were fired at the Head Hunters pad on Marua Rd.
The bullet holes punched through walls and windows, as well as two cars parked out front. And although no one was hurt, the bold statement would have injured their pride.
Even five years ago, no one would have dared to attack the gang’s stronghold. But recent arrivals from Australia had a different attitude.
New gangs established themselves after senior members were deported from Australia - the so-called 501s - where shootings and firebombings are commonplace between rivals.
The likes of the Mongols and the Comancheros, while small in number, had no fear and little respect for the longstanding motorcycle clubs in New Zealand like the Head Hunters.
To rub salt into the wound, the Australian gangs - with their deep pockets and even deeper international connections - were recruiting hard from other gangs into their ranks.
Even some members of the Head Hunters, in once unthinkable acts of disloyalty, were handing in their patches to wear the colours of the Comancheros and Mongols instead.
And it was one such “patching over” that was the catalyst for the spiritual home of the Head Hunters to be sprayed with semi-automatic gunfire, and in turn, an even more shocking act of gun violence.
A Head Hunter, who can’t be named for legal reasons, switched sides to the Mongols sometime during 2020.
In the eyes of the Head Hunters, he was a traitor and also linked to the gang losing access to one of their favourite haunts.
The North Shore faction of the gang’s East chapter were regular customers at Outdoor Power Sports, a motorcycle repair shop in Silverdale.
But in March 2021, the business changed hands and was renamed Northside Power Sports.
This was a problem for two reasons.
The new owner was a high-ranking member of the Mongols, so Head Hunters were no longer welcome.
The second issue was the new name of the business.
“Northside” was how the Head Hunters living on the North Shore referred to their crew, and they took exception to a rival gang setting up shop under a name they considered they owned.
The Head Hunter-turned-Mongol was friends with the new owner of Northside Power Sports, and a regular customer.
With the Head Hunters already seething at the manner of his departure from their club, the motorcycle repair shop was an obvious target.
Shortly after midnight on Tuesday April 6, 2021, a car parked outside on a trailer was torched with a firebomb.
Security cameras captured footage of a Head Hunter ute driving past suspiciously at the time, and was abandoned 1.8km away and set alight.
Not that the Mongols needed any proof. The following night, gunshots were fired in retaliation into a gymnasium in Browns Bay owned by the Head Hunters.
“Gym got sprayed last night, fuck them,” one member texted to another.
Two days later, the Head Hunters hit back. At least 21 rounds were fired at Northside Power Sports at 5.15am.
That same day, the Head Hunters turned up at Sunrise Ave in Murrays Bay where a group of Mongols and a Comanchero were living.
There was a tense stand-off outside the property just after 5pm, in which one of the Mongols could be seen holding a pistol behind his back, before the Head Hunters drove away.
Someone came back later that night though, around 10.30pm, and sprayed the house with at least 21 rifle rounds.
The tit-for-tat feud was escalating.
Head Hunters torch the car, Mongols shoot the gym. Head Hunters shoot the motorcycle shop, then target the home of a senior Mongol.
There was always going to be a response, and it was a major provocation: at least 30 semi-automatic rounds fired into the Head Hunters’ pad at 232 Marua Rd.
“My brother, did our house get hit?” asked Hone Reihana in a text message to another patched member, who has name suppression.
There was a flurry of phone conversations between the pair, as well as Tyran Panapa, a so-called “prospect” who wanted to join the Head Hunters.
If the Mongols thought the Head Hunters would back off after such a humiliating slap in the face, they were mistaken.
What happened next would elevate their petty conflict out of the shadows and into the public consciousness, in a brazen display that turned a five-star hotel into a byword for gun violence.
Just before 9am on April 15, 2021, a Thursday, the Head Hunter-turned-Mongol exited a lift in the Sofitel Hotel on the Auckland waterfront in Viaduct Harbour.
He had stayed for a couple of nights in a room booked in the name of his girlfriend, with his friend - whose car was torched outside Northside Power Sports - joining the luxury getaway in a separate room.
The pair of gang associates were headed towards the lobby, and glanced just momentarily at another young man wearing distinctive red shoes and t-shirt, who was walking a few steps ahead of them down a ramp to their right.
They would have cared more if they knew who it was. It was Tyran Panapa, a Head Hunter prospect, and he had definitely recognised them.
Once he was around the corner and the Mongols were out of sight, Panapa went back up to room 324 where two patched Head Hunters were waiting inside. One of them was Hone Reihana.
It was no coincidence that members of rival gangs at war were booked into the same hotel on the same night. The Head Hunters weren’t at the Sofitel to enjoy a pamper session at the spa, or treat themselves to cupcakes for high tea.
They didn’t even try the buffet breakfast which was included in the $420 room bill (paid upfront in cash, of course). They were there to do a job, and very nearly succeeded.
A few minutes after racing upstairs to raise the alarm, Panapa returned to the lobby with Reihana and another Head Hunter, who has name suppression, close behind.
The trio wore hoodies and Covid masks to disguise their faces, with Panapa leading the way to where he last saw their enemies in the lobby.
The former Head Hunter was sitting at a desk in reception with the night manager to check out of the room, as Reihana and the other patched member walked past in the hallway.
In absolutely remarkable scenes captured on the hotel’s security camera network, Reihana stops and reaches into his shoulder bag.
Taryn Caulfield, a hotel employee, was about three steps away.
“I glanced down at my phone to see what time it was and looked up. The man pulled out a small pistol or handgun, and before I knew it I heard a shot,” Caulfield told the jury in the High Court trial this month.
“I kind of ducked because I wasn’t sure where he was aiming and pretty much turned in the other direction and started running.”
Two bullets narrowly missed the intended target and the night manager, both of whom dived to the floor and scrambled into a corridor that led to a back office.
His colleague Georgina Grey was in that room and mistakenly thought the “very loud bang” was a large painting that had fallen off the wall.
“I was walking out of the room and at that point my colleague, he was basically sprinting into the room I was based in,” Grey told the jury, and explained that Caulfield also ran in.
“She was incredibly distressed. She was running and said, ‘There’s a gunman!’ or ‘There’s someone shooting!’”
They locked the door and turned off the lights, before calling 111 in quiet distress.
While this was all happening, Hone Reihana - pumped up on adrenaline - jogged out of the Sofitel to escape in a black Nissan Navara waiting outside. There was no room for Panapa and the other Head Hunter, so they walked to the Lacoste store on Queen St to change into new clothes.
The pair then had a burger for breakfast, before Panapa hired a Beam e-scooter and returned to the Sofitel to surrender. Later, he told detectives there was no planned hit job.
He had booked the hotel room to relax with his mates, whom he refused to name, and watched the movie Glass while eating a chicken sandwich.
While leaving the hotel in the morning, Panapa admitted to police that he “heard something behind him” but had no idea that anyone was carrying a gun.
But if the Head Hunters thought the New Zealand police would back off after a slap in the face, they were mistaken.
Members of gangs shooting at businesses or homes in the middle of the night was one thing, but firing a gun in downtown Auckland in daylight was on another level entirely.
“They’re treating this like the Wild West,” Phil Goff, the then mayor of Auckland told the New Zealand Herald in an interview.
“It really is important that New Zealand not go down the track of gangland America and zero tolerance is now shown to gangs employing firearms against each other or anybody else.”
There was always going to be a response to such a blatant disregard for public safety, and over the next two months Operation Nicole went around locking up as many members or associates of the Mongols and Head Hunters as possible.
They charged 19 in total for drug dealing and firearms offences, and found two homemade bombs at the Mongols’ address in Murrays Bay.
Of course, the main prize was the man who pulled the trigger in the Sofitel and, after six weeks on the run, the police caught up with Hone Reihana who was hiding in a rural property in Kerikeri.
The 27-year-old refused to say anything other than stating he was the “most wanted man in New Zealand”.
A week before his trial in the High Court at Auckland in November 2022, Reihana pleaded guilty to discharging a firearm with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. The offence carries a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison.
Patched Head Hunters Fred Tanuvasa, Marcus Nielsen and the man with name suppression, prospect Tyran Panapa and gang associate Paraire Paikea maintained their innocence.
While Reihana pulled the trigger twice, Crown prosecutor Robin McCoubrey argued there was enough evidence to show that the remaining defendants had concocted a plan to shoot their former colleague.
Each had played their role, and they knew there was a good chance the Mongol would be seriously hurt if they were successful.
Defence lawyers for the accused urged the jurors to put aside any prejudice against gangs, and described the Crown case as a “conspiracy theory” without evidence of a shared plot.
They blamed Hone Reihana as a lone “numbskull” who acted impulsively to “be the man of the moment” to impress his mates.
But the jury’s verdicts were effectively split into two camps. Those who were inside the Sofitel at the time of the shooting, and those who were not.
Paikea and Nielsen were in the black Nissan Navara waiting outside the hotel, while Tanuvasa was a guest at a different five-star hotel at the SkyCity casino. They were acquitted,
Panapa and the Head Hunter with name suppression who were with Reihana in the Sofitel were found guilty.
The trio will be sentenced together in the High Court at Auckland in February next year.
Tensions between the two gangs are still simmering, however. In April this year, a Mongol was shot inside the Femme Fatale strip club. The next day, the Head Hunters’ pad at 232 Marua Rd was peppered with gunfire.
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