Manager cleaned up site of shooting at exclusive strip club
From 12.44am to 3.52am, she and Pickard were in constant contact via text. He was outside the building and she was inside, telling him what the police were up to.
While inside Femme Fatale, the manager cleaned up the room where the shooting happened, wiping up blood and throwing out rubbish, “thereby tampering with evidence that police could obtain from the scene”, according to a summary of facts.
The evening after the shooting, the manager denied to police that she had cleaned the scene after officers had arrived and secured the premises, claiming she did not have any information that could support the investigation.
Police raided her Pakuranga home about month after the shooting.
When officers arrived she admitted she had a black taser in her handbag, a restricted weapon, which she said she used for self defence.
Both the manager and Pickard were charged with being accessories after the fact by allegedly actively suppressing evidence against a person who used a firearm to wound with intent to cause grievous bodily injury, to help him evade arrest.
Pickard pleaded not guilty and his charges were later dropped.
The manager later pleaded guilty to the more minor charge of intentionally obstructing police, carrying a maximum penalty of three months in prison or a $2000 fine.
She was sentenced to 40 hours of community work.
Pickard told the Herald this week he had done nothing wrong.
“We’ve moved on, we’ve forgotten about it,” he said.
He did not believe the incident could or should affect his operation or liquor licence.
Pickard said plenty of other venues in Auckland had experienced shootings in recent years, including Dr Rudi’s bar, Strip club Calendar Girls and the Sofitel
Viaduct Harbour.
Police are understood to have had a suspect for the shooting — a Head Hunter — but were unable to bring charges due to a lack of evidence.
No one was talking.
The Mongols, one of the world’s largest and most violent outlaw motorcycle clubs, was formed in California by Vietnam veterans in 1969.
They have a long history of involvement in the transnational drug trade, have spread to several countries and are designated as an organised crime group by authorities in the US, Australia and Europe.
The Mongols burst on to the New Zealand gang scene in 2019, when Jim “JD” Thacker set up a chapter in the Bay of Plenty after he was deported from Australia under the controversial 501 legislation.
Like the Comancheros, who had arrived in New Zealand the previous year, they brought a new level of sophistication to the drug trade, and a greater willingness to use firearms and extreme violence to achieve their aims.
The arrival of the Mongols sparked a turf war with rival gangs, including a shooting where 96 rounds were fired into a house.
Thacker was arrested in June 2020 as the primary target of Operation Silk, a police investigation into the Mongols’ drug crimes and violence.
He was jailed for a little over 22 years in 2023 after he was convicted on 40 charges including unlawful possession of firearms, participating in an organised criminal group, possession of methamphetamine, cocaine and MDMA for supply and money laundering.
The Mongols, bolstered by the arrival of more 501 deportees, continued to be a disruptive and violent force in New Zealand’s gang scene after Thacker’s arrest.
In 2021, they became embroiled in a titfor-tat shooting war with the Head Hunters sparked by the Mongols taking over a North Shore motorcycle repair shop formerly used by the Heads.
They gave it the name “Northside Power Sports”, seen as an insult by the Head Hunters, who at the time used the term Northside to refer to their crew on the Shore. The previous year, an Auckland Head Hunter had defected to the Mongols.
Shortly after midnight on April 6, 2021, a car outside the repair shop was torched in a fire-bombing attack. Over the next few days the feud escalated.
The conflict culminated in a broad daylight shooting on April 15 at the fivestar Sofitel hotel in the viaduct, when two Head Hunters and a prospect targeted their former comrade.
A couple of days after the Femme Fatale shooting, the Head Hunters pad at 232 Marua Rd was again shot up.
The bad blood remains.