Senior Head Hunter member William “Bird” Hines (centre) was revered and feared inside the legal underworld till his demise.
A towering determine of the legal underworld has died after years of sick well being.
Better often called “Bird”, William Hines was some of the senior members of the Head Hunters bike membership
and revered in New Zealand’s gang world.
He was serving a 17-year jail sentence for operating a methamphetamine syndicate however was launched by the Parole Board late final yr on compassionate grounds.
Hines was residing with kind 2 diabetes, which required dialysis each second day and resulted in limb amputation, coronary heart illness and end-stage renal failure.
His demise was marked by household and pals paying respects to the “OG” (Original Gangster) on social media right now and his tangi is anticipated to be the biggest gang funeral in New Zealand historical past.
With an incoming National-led Government promising to crack down on gang convoys, Hines’ funeral shall be intently monitored by police bosses in Auckland and Wellington.
The esteem through which Hines was held within the Head Hunter fraternity is illustrated by an indication within the East chapter’s pad at 232 Marua Rd which merely states: “In Bird We Trust”.
The police are looking for for the premises, and different properties, to be forfeited to the Crown in a long-running case taken towards the membership’s alleged president, Wayne Doyle.
Advertisement
During the recent High Court trial, Doyle spoke warmly of his old good friend Hines when requested why he continued to affiliate with individuals who had been concerned in meth manufacture.
He described Hines as a “unique, amazing sort of a character”.
“How do you throw your friends out that have been beside you for years and years and years?” Doyle mentioned.
“You don’t just throw someone out because they get into trouble. You’ve got to stand by them.”
Hines was launched from jail shortly earlier than his seventieth birthday and had been residing with a member of the family who offered 24/7 care in his remaining months.
A earlier Parole Board choice famous that Hines wished to “make peace with his whānau as a consequence of his offending history on them”.
His legal historical past stretches again to no less than 1989, when Hines was caught with a loaded pistol within the lounge bar of a lodge. Pistols are prized within the legal underworld, a weapon of standing.
It was an indication of issues to come back for the then 36-year-old.
Advertisement
A couple of years later, he was convicted of kidnapping a person at gunpoint, then torturing him with pliers and an electrical drill in a storage, due to a supposed debt.
The responsible verdict got here regardless of the sufferer refusing to provide proof.
In sentencing Hines to 4 years in jail, Justice Robertson mentioned nobody was above the regulation.
“You just take the law into your own hands and use whatever is necessary to get what you perceive is your entitlement.”
Five years later, Hines and two different Head Hunters confronted an undercover police officer and held him at knifepoint.
“If you do not prove you are not a cop, then you are not leaving here,” was how Crown prosecutor Kieran Raftery recounted the dialog on the 1996 trial.
The undercover officer, whose cowl story was operating a scrapmetal yard, feigned fury on the allegation however was taken upstairs to his residing quarters the place Hines and the others searched by means of his belongings for proof of his id.
The officer managed to purchase a while however was unable to thoroughly fulfill his captors. “They let him know that he was not off the hook,” mentioned Raftery.
Again, Hines was convicted of kidnapping and jailed for 12 months.
But it was the profitable earnings of methamphetamine which took Hines from menacing standover man to the large time.
He was one of many ringleaders of a community who dubbed themselves the “Methamphetamine Makers Co Ltd”, alongside notorious financial institution robber Waha Safiti and meth cook dinner Brett Allison.
The trio was planning to separate a batch of methamphetamine to yield a whole lot of hundreds of {dollars}.
The business companions have been busy falling out when police swooped in 2000 following Operation Flower.
Bugged conversations have been performed on the trial through which Saifiti and Hines have been recorded speaking about “whacking” folks.
“Rest assured, we will not be made to look like fools here,” mentioned Saifiti. “We will just whack anybody who needs to be whacked… Whack him straight on the spot.’”
After the raids throughout Auckland, police discovered the remnants of Allison’s lab in Henderson.
The 2000 litres of chemical compounds concerned made it one of many greatest – and most explosive – drug laboratories ever discovered. It took officers carrying respiration equipment seven days to tug aside.
Its run-off waste alone contained 150 grams of methamphetamine claimed to be price $150,000.
Hines was sentenced to seven years in jail for conspiracy to produce.
At the time, police mentioned the Head Hunters community performed a big position in establishing the meth commerce in New Zealand: one thing that plagues the nation to this present day.
After serving seven years for the Operation Flower drug crimes, Hines managed to remain out of jail till changing into the principal goal of a brand new police investigation, Operation Sylvester, in 2015.
By this time, he sat on the very high of the Head Hunters hierarchy and was revered by gang members as a Godfather-type determine. Despite being in his 60s and riddled with well being issues, “Bird” was nonetheless feared within the legal fraternity.
Through surveillance and intercepted telephone calls, Operation Sylvester gathered sufficient proof to show Hines was in command of a bunch of Head Hunters and associates manufacturing methamphetamine.
Detectives covertly broke right into a van, hidden inside a storage unit, the place they discovered 136 grams of meth packaged on the market in ounce baggage and surrounded by rice to maintain it dry. There have been additionally 9 kilograms of iodine and 33 litres of hypophosphorous acid, each generally used within the meth manufacturing course of.
There was additionally sufficient unlawful firepower contained in the van to begin a struggle: an M1A Springfield semi-automatic rifle, a pair of Heckler and Koch military-style rifles, a Lapua tactical rifle and a Smith and Wesson pistol wrapped in a blue bandanna – with traces of Hines’ DNA on the material.
Hines and his co-defendants pleaded not responsible however have been convicted after a High Court trial in 2017, through which the decide was happy no less than 1kg of methamphetamine was manufactured by the group.
In sentencing Hines, Justice Mathew Downs made particular point out of the “sinister nature” of the firearms and medicines discovered contained in the storage unit.
“This careful packaging, the nature and collection of articles, and the rental of the unit on the same day as the manufacture of the methamphetamine imply this was the work of an organised criminal enterprise. You led that enterprise,” Justice Downs mentioned to Hines.
“And although you were careful to act from behind the scenes, I am sure you directed this offending… You sat atop an organisation which made a very large amount of methamphetamine and intended to make more.”
At the time of his arrest, the Head Hunters have been run by a committee led by Doyle and Hines, in keeping with Detective Inspector Kevin McNaughton , a former head of the police Motorcycle Gang Unit who gave proof on the trial.