Spacey Rider

This morning’s Sydney Morning Herald ran a front page story on a murder that appears to be the result of a dispute between two Sydney biker gangs. Police believe that Russell Merrick Oldham fired three shots at Rodney ‘Hooks’ Monk at close range, and then fled the scene.

The paragraph that caught my eye, though, came further down in the article where Russell Merrick Oldham is described:

“Oldham is the Bandidos’ former sergeant-at-arms (he lost the post when he went to jail for five years for the manslaughter of two men at Bankstown in 1998)… He has a passion for astronomy and a history of violence.”*

Ha! My coffee went through my nose and all over the crossword. I wish I’d been scanning police radio last night…

“All cars are advised to be on the lookout for Russell Merrick Oldham, wanted in connection with a fatal shooting in Central Sydney. When approached, suspect may attempt to engage in debate over the existence of zero-point radiation at black hole event-horizons and whether NASA should spend money on repairing the Hubble telescope’s failing gyroscopes. He is believed to be armed, violent and highly philosophical. Advise extreme caution.”

The history behind the nickname of Rodney ‘Hooks’ Monk is unfortunately not covered in the article.†

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*Not that I’m supposing that a biker, or anyone, shouldn’t have a variety of hobbies and interests. It’s just the juxtoposition with his other hobby…

† I wish it had’ve been spelt ‘Hookes’ and then we might have speculated that Rodney’s hobby was microbiology. That would give us the unparalleled opportunity to suppose that the disagreement between Rodney and Russell was over some point of scientific procedure. Oh, the joy!

I am a little disappointed to see that Russell Merrick Oldham doesn’t have a nickname.‡ If ever there was a bike gang member that deserves one, it has to be Russell. Maybe I’ll run a competition and we can send it to him in the slammer.

‡Unless he is named after Joseph Merrick, the ‘Elephant Man‘, and I really don’t want to think too deeply about that…