This year the Herald’s award-winning newsroom produced a range of first-class journalism, including Jacinda Ardern’s shock resignation, the Auckland anniversary floods, arts patron Sir James Wallace’s prison sentence, the election of Christopher’s Luxon government and the All Blacks’ narrow defeat in the Rugby World Cup final.
This summer we’re bringing back some of the best-read Premium articles of 2023. Today we take a look at New Zealand’s gang scene with Jared Savage and George Block’s investigative reporting.
How gangs get their guns
The suspect didn’t look like an arms dealer.
He was a 22-year-old landscaper with a clean criminal record who had passed police vetting checks to get his firearms licence. Not just the standard ‘A’ category, but also the more strictly regulated licences needed to own pistols, military-style weapons, and collector items.
So when Joseph Grond’s name came up during an investigation into an Auckland motorcycle gang, as someone selling guns to criminals, detectives from the Waitemata organised crime squad had to take a closer look.
At the time, firearms were a controversial topic in New Zealand.
The government had recently banned semi-automatic weapons following the Christchurch terrorist attack on 15th of March 2019, with more than 60,000 firearms surrendered in the $100 million “buyback” scheme.
Critics pointed out that criminals, however, were unlikely to hand back their illegal firearms and they were proven right when gang shootings escalated.
Jared Savage looks at how investigations into “straw buyers” reveal how guns end up in gang shootings.
Operation Silk: Inside a gang trial
In the early hours of a Sunday morning in October 2019, three vehicles parked in a quiet cul-de-sac in a Papamoa subdivision went up in flames. Blackened metal husks and burst tyres were all that remained of the destroyed ute, van and car.
The official line from police was the fires were considered “suspicious”, but you didn’t need to be a trained detective to figure that out. Three cars don’t just spontaneously combust.
The police didn’t need to look far to work out why the property had been targeted.
Living at the address were senior members of a new gang: the Mongols.
Established by a group of 501 deportees from Australia, this Mongols chapter was the first in New Zealand and had muscled in on territory long held by the Greazy Dogs gang.
For the most part, rival gangs in New Zealand exist side-by-side in relative peace. Conflict is bad for business. But the arrival of these 501s soon challenged the local pecking order.
In this case, the Mongols had ignored established boundaries in the Bay of Plenty without paying their dues. The Papamoa arson was the start of a tit-for-tat conflict involving three different gangs, in scenes more reminiscent of Sydney’s infamous turf wars than suburban Tauranga.
Watching this unfold was a small group of detectives running a covert investigation into the Mongols, Operation Silk, which led to one of the biggest criminal trials in New Zealand.
Jared Savage followed the trial.
Sick gang ‘godfather’ released from prison early
One of the “godfathers” of the criminal underworld was released early from prison this year on compassionate grounds.
William Hines was one of the most senior members of the Head Hunters but was convicted in 2017 of running a methamphetamine syndicate, after being targeted in a covert police investigation called Operation Sylvester.
Better known simply as “Bird”, Hines was sentenced to 18 and a half years in prison and despite his advancing years and ailing health, was ordered to serve a minimum of eight years before being eligible for parole.
The sentence was later reduced to 17 years by the Court of Appeal, which also quashed the minimum period of imprisonment because of his poor health.
Hines suffered from type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and end-stage renal failure which required dialysis every second day.
While he was able to manage his treatment from inside prison at first, according to previous Parole Board rulings, a significant deterioration in his health in 2022 meant Hines needed daily care for his basic needs.
At one stage, Hines was transferred to a hospital where he remained under the 24/7 watch of prison guards.
He was released from custody shortly before his 70th birthday.
Hines died in November and hundreds of gang members, family and loved ones gathered for his tangi in Foxton.
Earlier this year Jared Savage took a look back Hines’s criminal history.
Comanchero gang films haka inside maximum security prison
A notorious international gang managed to smuggle a video camera inside New Zealand’s maximum-security prison to film themselves for a slickly produced film recently posted on social media.
The Comancheros are an Australian motorcycle club which established a chapter in Auckland five years ago, after more than a dozen members were deported as “501s” by Australian authorities.
Law enforcement agencies were concerned about the gang’s connections to international organised crime groups, as well as their more brazen attitude to violence, and the Comancheros soon stamped their mark on the local underworld.
Even though most of their founding members have been imprisoned for drug or money laundering offences since then, the “Comos” have kept growing in numbers and influence.
One of those leaders - the gang’s national president Pasilika Naufahu - this year starred in a Comancheros’ video posted to YouTube, despite serving a nine-year sentence as an inmate at Pāremoremo.
In grainy footage titled Super max facility, the 35-year-old can be seen leading a group of fellow prisoners in a haka, as well as posing in photographs labelled: “Free the Comanchero”.
The rise and fall of radio star unmasked as gang’s money launderer
In March 2020, when New Zealand went into lockdown for the first time because of the Covid-19 outbreak, a former radio star in Auckland saw it as a business opportunity.
“White collar people [are] partying hard right now,” Nate Nauer said in a text message to his girlfriend three days into the lockdown.
“One of the boys visited a mansion party where they spent 12k,” he wrote in another message, adding an emoji of someone blowing their nose in a veiled reference to snorting cocaine.
“I exist in a different world,” Nauer told his partner. “Why do you think I get paid so much.”
Nauer, 40, once earned a six-figure salary as a member of Mai FM’s popular “Breakfast Crew”, but by 2020, he had turned to another line of work: laundering drug money for the Comancheros motorcycle gang.
Nauer’s involvement with the Comancheros - an Australian gang which quickly established itself in New Zealand’s criminal underworld - was revealed earlier this year when name suppression was lifted at a hearing at the Auckland District Court.
Jared Savage followed the case.
Inside the gang tensions that led to Head Hunter being shot dead
The sun was shining at Taurima Reserve one Saturday afternoon earlier this year, with trees casting long shadows over the grass.
With a modest playground, the park is small square of land boxed in by residential streets in the east Auckland suburb of Point England.
The peaceful weekend afternoon was punctured by angry shouting, then a more disturbing sound: gunfire.
Crack, crack, crack. Frightened residents called to their children, with some peering through their windows to watch as two groups of men, around a dozen on each side, bolted in opposite directions.
The gunfire keeps booming through the neighbourhood; at least 20 shots can be heard on a video seen by the Weekend Herald. In the middle of the park, just three men are left.
Two men can be seen punching and kicking someone on the ground, until a fourth man runs over to help. The pair scarper, shots still ringing out, while their victim gets to his feet and limps away.
Later that day, Charles Anthony Pongi took himself to Auckland City Hospital, where he later died from gunshot injuries. The 32-year-old was a member of the East chapter of the Head Hunters motorcycle gang.
Across town, a member of the Rebels motorcycle gang turned up at Middlemore Hospital also suffering gunshot wounds.
Close behind him was a platoon of balaclava-clad Rebels acting as bodyguards, should any Head Hunters turn up at the hospital to take revenge.
The death of Pongi is one of several fatal shootings around the country under investigation, fuelling concerns about ongoing gang and gun violence.
Jared Savage and George Block look at the simmering tensions between the outlaw motorcycle clubs.
At home with the Head Hunters: Exclusive look inside the pad police want to seize
For the better part of a decade, police have had the base of the Head Hunters East in their sights. It’s the inner sanctum of the Heads, with members stationed there around the clock.
In November the chapter opened its doors to Herald reporter George Block and photographer Jason Dorday.
See the full story and visuals here.
