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Hunted bikie's parole officer quits
By Les Kennedy and Kate McClymont
April 26, 2006
A PAROLE officer has resigned amid an investigation into her relationship with a
former jail inmate who is now on the run, wanted for the killing of a Bandidos
bikie gang leader.
Corrective Services confirmed to the Herald that the prisons internal affairs
unit began an investigation into the parole officer after it was revealed her
involvement with the fugitive, 39-year-old Russell Oldham, was linked to an
internal split in the Bandidos' city branch, known as the Uptown Chapter.
Last Thursday night, Oldham, a former science and medicine student, allegedly
shot dead the chapter's president, Rodney "Hooks" Monk, 32, in a lane near the
Bar Reggio restaurant in East Sydney.
Oldham is a former Bandidos national sergeant-at-arms, while Monk was the
brother of a senior NSW police officer, Detective Inspector Brad Monk.
But Oldham's relationship with his parole officer contravened the gang's rules.
Monk and other bikies had met him at the restaurant to tell him he was being
expelled from the club. Monk's killer fired three shots, two of them hitting him
in the head. A police taskforce has been hunting for Oldham since.
Oldham was released on parole last year after serving six years of a nine-year
sentence for the manslaughter of two men shot dead in a Bankstown house in 1998.
A condition of his parole was that Oldham, who worked at the Illinois Hotel at
Five Dock, not associate with any known criminal. It was beholden on his parole
officer to ensure this. The Herald has learned that she tendered her resignation
on Monday.
Police are expected to provide extra security at Monk's funeral in Sydney
tomorrow. They will post officers to control traffic and escort several hundred
bikies among the mourners, including members of other outlaw gangs.