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former boxer of Maltese extraction. Like most bikie groups, the Rebels have members who specialise in making and distributing illegal drugs, mainly ecstasy and methamphetamine.
    The two oldest Perish brothers found places for themselves in this world. Andrew, who left home at seventeen and became a plumber, joined the Rebels in 1991 and would later become president of their Campbelltown chapter. Anthony never joined, but he associated with them and became a skilled cook of amphetamines, which he sold to the Rebels and other bikie gangs. In this way he came under their protection and gained a distribution network, but did not have to suffer the annoyance of walking around with club colours, a target for police, on his back. Anthony was always to be extremely effective at avoiding police attention, and it seems his thinking on this began at an early age. Until he was convicted of murder in 2011, his only adult conviction was for using offensive language in 1990.
    The Perish brothers (when I use this term I am referring to Anthony and Andrew only, and not their younger brothers) and their criminal associates adopted their style from the surrounding society. They wore shorts and drove utes, and their approach to business reflected that of the many tradesmen in the burgeoning building industry of the area,where in the 1990s a new suburb seemed to be created each year. The business model for the building of thousands of new brick bungalows was not corporate, but based on contracting and sub-contracting arrangements made possible by the fact that Australia was a prosperous place where many young men could afford a house on a block of land, with a big ute and a shed in which to store the tools and materials of their trade. Supported by changes to the law that made it easier to be an independent contractor, this created a world in which the small businessman could flourish. Independence and flexibility were important qualities, which Anthony Perish possessed to an extreme degree. He’d never done well at school, but by the early nineties he’d worked out there was more money in drugs than in eggs, and was cooking in a shed on the family farm.
    He didn’t just sell to the Rebels. On the evening of 5 August 1992, an associate met a woman in her car near McDonald’s in Bondi Junction. The woman had $92,500 and was keen to buy some drugs. The associate counted the money and told the woman to drive to Fairfield railway station, where two more accomplices got in the car. They then motored out to Leppington, onto a property that from the smell housed a lot of chickens. Anthony was waiting out front, next to his Holden ute. When they drove through the gate, he locked it and showed them a bag of speed. At that moment a car came roaring up the road outside and the woman declared herself to be an undercover police officer. Anthony took off into the night and would stay on the run for the next fourteen years.
    It was a traumatic event for the Perish family, which despite its problems was still close-knit. But it was nothing like what happened less than a year later, when someone came to thehome of Anthony and Frances Perish on a Monday evening in June and shot the old couple dead in their backyard. Anthony died from a .22 bullet in the front of his chest, while Frances was shot in the back, possibly while lying on the ground.
    The day before, at 2 pm, Anthony called his son, Albert, who was then fifty-nine, and asked if he would come around, as there was something he wanted to talk about.
    â€˜Is it important I see you now?’ asked Albert, who’d just got back from a trip out west to buy some grain. ‘I’m behind on the feeding.’
    His father said it could wait.
    Two days later, on 15 June, when his parents did not answer the phone, Albert drove around to their house with his wife, Thea. It was about 5.15 pm. There was no answer to his knocking, so he forced an entry and found his parents’ bodies. Anthony