With tattoos covering nearly every inch of his body, draped in heavy gold chains matching his gold-plated teeth, there was no mistaking bikie boss Brent Reker.
He brought Rock Machine Motorcycle Club from North America to Australia. He later took it upon himself to clean up the shattered reputation of Finks MC.
Though, after mounting legal troubles and struggling with his mental health, Brent’s life came to a sad end.
This is the tragic story of Melbourne bikie boss Brent Reker. Brent grew up in Victoria.
Unlike a lot of other young lads his age, he enjoyed playing footy and being with friends.
He attended Carringal High School before completing year 12 in Perth. By his teens, his interest in footy had begun to dwindle and he developed a taste for the bikie life and began hanging out at clubhouses and tattoo parlors.
At the age of 16, Brent got his first tattoo, flowers on his left shoulder for his sisters Lauren and Caitlin.
This taste of the bikie life inspired Brent and he decided he wanted to set up his own motorcycle club in Perth.
Brent called the Canadian chapter of the Rock Machine MC and asked if he could set up an Australian chapter.
After some back and forth, they gave him the nod. This was the beginning of Brent’s life as a bikie.
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It really helps me out and helps the channel grow. The Rock Machine MC was founded in Montreal, Canada in 1986.
The club has a colorful history and has seen its fair share of trouble and violence over the years in various bikie wars.
In December 2009, Australian authorities officially announced that the Rock Machine Motorcycle Club had opened a chapter in Perth.
Though the news didn’t go down well with other clubs, this was seen as an act of aggression by the already established Rebels Motorcycle Club.
Threats and verbal exchanges online between the two clubs soon occurred. Though, it didn’t take long before things heated up and went past just online threats.
In 2010, there was a spat of tit-for-tat violence between the two clubs. In July 2010, a brawl broke out at a nightclub between members of both groups, which led to several people being injured.
Several months later, in October, members of Rock Machine MC firebombed a vehicle belonging to a member of the Rebels.
The firebombing continued in November when members of Rock Machine set ablaze a tattoo parlor and another vehicle belonging to the Rebels.
The police knew they needed to clamp down on these clubs to try and stop the escalating violence.
On the 29th of November 2010, a member of Rock Machine was charged when police uncovered a stash of high-powered firearms in his car boot during a traffic stop.
The weapons seized included an automatic rifle, a 12-gauge sawn-off shotgun, and a .44 magnum lever-action rifle along with ammunition.
During this war with the Rebels, Brent was serving as the Rock Machine’s sergeant-at-arms and didn’t shy away from getting his hands dirty.
Though Brent’s involvement ultimately led to him going to jail for extortion, it was reported that Brent gave two lads a bash or cash ultimatum.
The ultimatum was given after the two victims had supposedly boasted about their association with the club, an accusation both lads denied.
It was reported that Brent either wanted the cash or video footage of the two lads bashing their friend.
They were also told they would be killed if they went to the police. As the lads were unable to pay the $2,000 and didn’t want to attack their friend, they went to the authorities.
Brent was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison. It was during his time behind bars that his 21-year-old brother, Tyrone, took his own life in Melbourne on New Year’s Eve 2011.
Brent’s mother told reporters in an interview, “He was forever haunted by this.” After being released from prison, Brent moved back to Melbourne, and it was here he patched over to the Finks Motorcycle Club.
The Finks MC were founded in Adelaide in 1969 and are easily recognizable by their bold black and white colors.
Their iconic logo is of Bung, the court jester from news comic strip The Wizard of Id, where the line, “The king is a Fink,” is often shouted.
The Finks are a tight-knit group, known as much for its rigorous membership process and demand for security as its notorious criminal reputation.
In 2014, the Finks decided they need to redesign the patch. The drunk character of Bung was given a new look, a harder and more aggressive look.
A senior member of the club said at the time that this was done partly to send a message.
Back in 2001, Finks MC were named as one of the targets for the police operation Avatar, a law enforcement task force which aimed to take down 1% motorcycle clubs.
In 2010, members of Fink MC and members of Coffin Cheaters MC were attending the Harley Street Bike Drag Racing event where it’s claimed that one club member spat on a rival.
This led to a bloody brawl which resulted in one Fink’s member being shot in the leg and another having three fingers sliced off.
In 2015, the club came up against heavy pressure from the police which nearly caused the club to collapse after police raided 20 Fink’s properties and arrested 17 members, charging them with everything from drugs and weapons offenses to extortion attempts and planning a kidnap.
This led to the club struggling financially under the weight of mounting legal fees and had a bad boy reputation across Melbourne.
Though Brent believed he could change this and turn the club around. After joining Finks MC, Brent began to rise through the ranks and eventually became the Finks National President.
Brent’s mother said, “He was fearless and one of the hardest riders in town. He could ride like no one else.
It was like a movie. He would rev his bike and everyone would move out the way.
It was better than sex going for a ride with my son.” Brent wanted to send the message, “The Finks have returned to Victoria.”
In an interview with the Daily Mail, Brent stated that the club sees Victoria as an important place to hold territory as it’s one of the few states where bikies are afforded their human rights without tough consorting laws to drive them underground.
Biky clubs are the last stand for human rights. In Australia, no one is allowed to do anything anymore.
We, like everyone else, just want to hang out with our mates and go for a drink on Friday night without being told we can’t.
Brent claimed the days of police pulling their members over to allegedly find a boot full of meth, steroids, and cash are over.
However, Brent’s ambition to clean up the club’s image wasn’t plain sailing. Along the way, he made enemies both inside and outside the Finks.
On the 31st of May, 2018, at 4:40 a.m., while Brent and his wife and their 2-week-old son slept, their home was shot at multiple times and Brent’s car was firebombed.
Bullets went through the house as well as the next-door neighbor’s house. Though Brent and his family were unharmed in the attack.
CCTV footage shows a parked car at the property burst into flames before a man runs back to the driver’s seat of a waiting vehicle.
As he starts the car, several shots are fired from the back driver’s side with a high-powered weapon.
10 minutes after the attack, the police found what they believed to be the getaway car set alight nearby.
The night of violence made front-page news and led to a large-scale police investigation. Police were also concerned they could have an all-out bikie war on their hands.
Eventually, Rebels enforcer Matthew Bruce was charged with the violent incident. Bruce held the position of sergeant at arms at the Rebels Motorcycle Club, and he was charged with a series of offenses including discharging a firearm up premises, reckless conduct endangering life, criminal damage by fire, prohibited person possessing a firearm, and theft of a motor vehicle.
However, from that point, Brent feared for his family’s safety and got a gun for protection.
His mother said, “He was always moving because he was told he was going to be shot.
At home, he would always be looking around. He would think he heard something, then go have a look.
He was mostly worried about Tess and their son.” The job of cleaning up the Finks’ reputation hit another bump in the road when 3 months after the drive-by shooting, Brent and a group of Finks allegedly beat up a man with a tire iron on September 9th, 2018.
Police alleged Brent gave the orders to bash Nicholas Gold as part of a revenge hit.
Brent believed Nicholas had released private photos of a female friend, Tara Egglestone. Covert listening devices planted as part of a drug trafficking investigation had recorded a conversation between Brent and Tara on September 8th, during which she claimed Nicholas and another man had posted nude photos of her on Facebook.
The two officers stationed outside the home on the day of the attack had been instructed not to intercept the group for their own safety, allowing the attack to go ahead.
Brent and another man were arrested by police, and Brent was locked up at Melbourne Assessment Prison over the alleged assault.
After being arrested, Brent had initially been granted bail. It’s reported during this time of freedom Brent had been trying to turn his life around and go legitimate.
A prison whistleblower stated, “He was doing really well on the outside. He started addressing his mental health issues, was trying to get out the club, and had got some legitimate work.”
It was reported that Brent was in talks with the Finks about leaving the club and had even started the process of having tattoos removed.
However, the director of the Office of Public Prosecution won an appeal in the Supreme Court that saw Brent’s bail revoked in February 2019.
The same whistleblower stated, “He hadn’t done anything wrong. The OPP were just gung-ho that he shouldn’t have got bail in the first place.”
On his return to prison, Brent was livid with his incarceration and his mental health started to seriously decline.
The whistleblower said, “He made it very, very clear that any chance he got, if he was on his own, that he was going to After several failed attempts to Brent was moved to Port Phillip Prison in Victoria in May 2019 and placed in a specialist unit aimed at assessing inmates with significant mental health issues.
However, in November that year, he was shipped back to Ravenhall Prison where he had previously attempted to The whistleblower said, “Ravenhall is great in theory, but a lot of staff are very young, very inexperienced, and it’s not very well run in comparison to what it could be.”
It was reported that Brent had complained of being frustrated and bored before warning prison staff he would over a canceled dental appointment.
He told a guard, “Do we have to get what we want?” He later told a prison doctor he and other inmates all planned to if their demands weren’t met.
It had been reported that Brent had been desperate to obtain a prison job and had threatened violence if he didn’t get his way.
Prison bosses agreed it was best to move Brent to a unit away from other inmates due to concerns he was wielding influence over other prisoners in the unit.
The proposed move saw Brent when guards came to collect him. Upon his move to the Forbes unit, he told staff he had no plans to He was placed under hourly observation, which quickly identified trouble was a foot.
Brent had covered his cell in toilet paper and had blocked the cell door with a mattress.
When guards rushed around to a rear window to see what had happened inside, they saw a chair wedged in his shower.
The guards then forced their way into Brent’s cell, where they saw him lying on the floor with a He couldn’t be revived.
The whistleblower said, “Reker should never have been moved to that unit given his fragile state of mind.
There are padded cells, no hanging points, no electrical points, none of that. He absolutely should have been in one of those.
He was a ticking time bomb, 100%.” Brent’s death raised a lot of questions about the prison system and if this could have been prevented.
The Victorian coroner is investigating the events leading up to Brent’s move out of the specialist unit, his mental health history, and risk assessment of him by the staff.
His mother said, “There are many things she misses about her son.” She said, “Like her, he had small ears and a big attitude.”
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