Thanks jury, says Headhunter

PATRICK GOWER looks at the life of gang member Peter Cleven, acquitted yesterday of supplying and dealing drugs.

A convertible Mercedes Benz sat outside the palatial, million-dollar Titirangi home with its pool and tennis court. The neighbours included a High Court judge.

An emerald green powerboat emblazoned with the name "Seahunters" and a prized Harley-Davidson motorcycle with the gang registration plate HHMC were part of the furniture.

And there was cash, thousands of dollars kept in the pockets of designer jeans.

This was "Pedro's" place - home to Headhunters gang member Peter Cleven.

On January 11, 1999, police smashed through the front door and dragged the then 36-year-old out of bed. They pulled the artworks off the wall, turning the place upside down.

At the same time, police accountants were raiding the books. They froze Mr Cleven's bank accounts and seized all the assets under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

Police accused Peter William Cleven of making his fortune from drugs.

Mr Cleven said his assets came from a lifetime of hard work and shrewd business investments ranging from angora goats to property development and his own kauri woodwork.

Yesterday, a jury in the High Court at Auckland found him not guilty of charges of supplying methamphetamine, or speed, over two years and of dealing cannabis for 12 years.

He and an alleged "prospect" in the gang, Darren John Simmons, then 32, also known as Darren Fussey, were also acquitted of a charge of possessing 7.7kg of cannabis on Christmas Day .

On hearing the verdict, Mr Cleven told the court: "Thank you, jury, for putting up with everything and doing the right job."

Outside the court, an elated Mr Cleven said the police wanted to destroy him because he was a gang member with money and they did not like it.

He said he was not involved with drugs and the Headhunters had "absolutely nothing to do with it". A restraining order on the assets seized when he was arrested was lifted.

"This has cost me not just in terms of loss of income but also in loss of life," he said after the verdict.

The police brought the charges against Mr Cleven after bugging him during an investigation called Operation Mexico. One intercepted snippet of conversation was central to the case.

In it, Mr Cleven bragged to a woman: "Over the years, I used to deal a hundred pound [45.3kg] of dak [cannabis] a week ... And I'll just tell you this to give you some idea, I've done a million dollars worth of 'this' a year."

Police said 45.3kg of cannabis could be worth up to $500,000, and that by 'this', he was talking about methamphetamine. Traces of the party drug were found on a set of scales in the kitchen.

Mr Cleven's defence was that this was a baseless boast to impress a "sexy" woman and he had foolishly put himself in the place of another person in the course of the conversation.

Mr Cleven's lifestyle - he described it himself as like that of a "movie star" - grated on the police.

So the Auckland organised crime squad set out to catch him.

Operation Mexico was headed by Detective Sergeant Darryl Brazier and called "Mexico" because its aim was to nail "Pedro".

The police bugged him for months. They broke into his home and put listening devices in the kitchen, recording him 24 hours a day, with shifts of constables monitoring every word.

They videotaped all those who came and went and shadowed him whenever he went out.

The accountants found hundreds of thousands of dollars in unexplained income - an estimated $290,000 over the past few years.

The police have rejected Herald attempts under the Official Information Act to to find out the cost of the investigation. The matter is now the subject of an appeal to the Ombudsman.

Mr Brazier said it was "substantial".

The West Auckland Headhunters' headquarters are at 12A View Rd, Henderson.

The gang's roots lie in 1967 Glen Innes. There were lots of young men members, there were big brawls with rivals such as Black Power; they were a gang.

They are now a tightly knit interracial group - they prefer the term motorcycle club - with about 25 patched members. Police say they have gathered more than 1000 criminal convictions among them, but now prefer a low profile, and are usually pulled up only in major drug investigations.

They have a history of violence - a 1984 stomping and kicking that disabled a young man, the 1985 murder of a King Cobras gang member in daylight on a Ponsonby street, the mysterious disappearance of Headhunters prospect Andrew Maaka in 1991.

Police say Mr Cleven is believed to have earned his patch in 1995.

In one of the recorded conversations Mr Cleven told his mate Mr Simmons: "There's no competition. No one can do what I'm doing ... We should have a Headhunter of the year, to see who made the most through the year."

Asked about his gang connections outside the court yesterday, Mr Cleven said: "I am a Headhunter. But this [trial] has nothing to do with the Headhunters."

His money came from legitimate business ventures - he took the witness stand and said so.

He told of his humble beginnings as a self-made man living in a caravan, bathing and doing his washing in a creek. He spoke of working from first light until dark, of hard graft, of calluses on his hands.

When he was farming angora goats in the 1980s, he developed a system of embryo testing that "genetically jumped a year ahead of the rest of the world", he says.

Then there was a series of successful property developments using free labour and discounted materials. There was also a series of investments in the sex industry.

One of these was a Fort St brothel called Executive Suite - he said the Eftpos machine had the name "Mercedes Bar" on it so it appeared that customers had been to a bar rather than a brothel - that was not very profitable.

Another was a bondage and discipline parlour called Salon Kitty. Mr Cleven says this also was not much of an earner, and he eventually gave it away to the manager, Irishwoman Kitty Cavanagh.

"She was an actor, a scholar and one unreal woman. It was intriguing to me, but it didn't make any money, although it was worth it for what I learned."

His Fort St peep show, called Three Wise Men, made the most money.

Mr Cleven came across in the courtroom as a charming and affable character. At times the trial judge had to tell him to "cool it" after he had sworn in front of the jury - "sorry, jury, but that was the best word to explain it" - and also asked his lawyer to rein him in.

Mr Cleven said yesterday his defence had proved his income to within $21,000 of the police estimates during the trial.

He had also described in the court how he operated in a commercial twilight zone, where deals were done in cash and favours, which included matter-the-fact descriptions of "taxing" - taking thousands from those who crossed him.

They might have drugged his girlfriend. That cost them $8000. They might have bounced a cheque. That cost them $1000.

Mr Cleven's testimony also included anecdotes about how he lay in waiting before wielding a bayonet in the face of an associate who had driven his car on to his property to give police the slip during a high-speed chase.

He also told the court that he was hung up and tortured in the 1980s. His attackers burned his back with an iron, threatening to inject drugs into him, and pointed a firearm at his head.

They thought he knew about a large-scale cannabis operation his former flatmate Lance Eavestaff had been involved in. Mr Cleven says he knew nothing of it.

Eavestaff was killed in 1989, shot in the face when a drug deal went sour.

Eavestaff was central to Mr Cleven's defence. It was from him that he said he got the knowledge of the large-scale cannabis operations he was boasting about when bugged.

He admitted sharing a few lines of speed with his mates, and attributed some of the sniffing on the tapes to hayfever, but rejected all allegations of being involved in drug dealing.

Outside the court Mr Cleven said he believed police had pursued him so vigorously because they did not like it that a Headhunter had money that was earned through legitimate means.

In one of the recorded conversations, Mr Cleven tells an associate: "None of us are angels, mate, none of us are bad either."