Kill or Be Killed
debby
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NATIONAL
Kill or be killed
Jacqueline Hinchcliffe and the
man she murdered, Michael
Wright.
Jacqueline Hinchcliffe
was in thrall to her
husband, a committed
Coffin Cheater. Neil
Mercer tells their story.
Both Michael Wright and his
dad heard the knock at the
front door. "Don't burn me
eggs," Wright called to his
father in the kitchen, as he
went to see who the visitor
was. His mum wasn't home -
she'd gone to bingo. His
six-year-old nephew played
nearby. When he opened the
door on that warm summer
evening, it was 8.28.
Wright's last words were exactly as follows:
Wright: Hello.
Visitor: How are you going, mate, not too bad?
What do you want?
You.
Seven shots were then fired at 30-year-old Wright, a
mechanic by trade who had never been in trouble with the
law.
The first struck him in the chest, mortally wounding him,
but he managed to close the wooden door and stagger to
his bedroom. Despite his father's frantic calls for help, it
arrived too late. He was dead within minutes and the killer
had fled.
We know precisely what happened on that February
night last year - and not because the events were pieced
together later by painstaking detective work. We know
what happened and who killed him because his execution
was taped by a video camera and the conversation
recorded by two microphones in the roof near the door.
After watching the video later that night and listening to
the audiotape, the West Australian police were in no
doubt who the killer was.
It was a woman and the next day they arrested Jacqueline
Margaret Hinchcliffe, 33, and charged her with wilful
murder. In June this year, she was found guilty and is now
serving a 15-year sentence.
Wright, the court heard, was her ex-lover - and by her
own tragic account, the only man she had ever really
loved. A psychological analysis shown to the jury
suggested she had been driven to carry out the killing by
her violent husband, Mark Hinchcliffe, a member of a
notorious motorcycle gang, the Coffin Cheaters.
While the murder was a relatively straightforward case,
the story of Mark and Jacqueline Hinchcliffe is so dark,
so bleak, and at times so vile, as to be almost
unimaginable. What's extraordinary is that we know it
from their own mouths, because in the months leading up
to the killing of Wright, Perth detectives were legally
intercepting calls on Mark Hinchcliffe's mobile phone.
He was a target in Operation Gallipoli, which was
investigating the October 1998 murder of Coffin Cheater
Marc Chabriere and other acts of violence between the
Cheaters and a rival gang, the Club Deroes.
The intercepts, put into evidence as part of Jacqueline's
defence, not only paint a chilling picture of a violent,
drug-fuelled jealous husband, they also provide a rare
glimpse into the mind of a bikie and an insight into the
gang culture.
Mark Hinchcliffe, now 39, became a Coffin Cheater
"nominee" about 1996 - a "nom" being something like an
apprentice. It appears he was suitable material: according
to a psychological report shown to the jury, his father left
home when he was young, and he came to despise his
mother, who locked the little boy in a bedroom while she
entertained sailors. Delinquent by the age of eight, he had
a criminal record, had been to jail (for a 1984 bashing of
a woman) and, by his own account, took large amounts
of drugs starting with alcohol and progressing to cocaine,
amphetamines, LSD and ecstasy. Of the latter, he told a
psychologist he had taken more than 1000. One of the
reasons he joined the Coffin Cheaters, he said, was
because he was concerned where his drug abuse was
leading - and the gang had a strict ban on intravenous
drug use.
Eventually, he would refer to the Coffin Cheaters as "me
brothers".
Evidence in her murder trial reveals Jacqueline
Hinchcliffe's mother left home when she was four. Placed
in care for one "horrifying" year, she returned to live with
an emotionally distant father and an abusive, alcoholic
stepmother.
She was in her teens when she met Mark Hinchcliffe. She
was "enthralled" at his authority and independence, and
even though he belted her a couple of weeks after they
started going out, she thought this "was an indication of
how much he cared ..."
It was, the jury learned, "a precursor to 16 years of
physical and sexual abuse ...", the former including
beatings and picking her up in a "death hold" that would
render her unconscious; the latter including her husband
demanding she have sex with other men while he
watched. By the late '90s her subjugation was total, down
to the large tattoo on her back, "Property of Mark
Hinchcliffe".
For a few years they ran a tow-truck business with
Jacqueline driving the trucks after her husband lost his
licence, but that ended when a dispute between rival
companies with bikie connections made it too dangerous.
She turned to office work, became computer literate and
was soon spending hours on the Internet, visiting
chatrooms, and it was there fate led her to Michael
Wright, who was also into computers.
With her husband frequently absent on duties for the
Coffin Cheaters, a dangerous liaison was born. For the
first time in her life, the psychologist reported, she began
to appreciate the nature of a loving relationship. Their sex
life was "great ... astonishing, wonderful ..."
Wright was caring, "the only person she had truly loved".
Of course, the inevitable happened. On September 18,
Mark Hinchcliffe learned that his wife was having an
affair.
Telephone intercepts recording conversations between
him and his wife from that day tell the story.
September 18, 1999, 9.40am
Mark: Something's going to happen about this, hey.
Jacqueline: Yep, yep.
Mark: I'd say you might be ending up shaving your head,
hey ...
Jacqueline: Yeah.
In the early hours of September 20, while their three
children slept, Hinchcliffe beat his wife senseless and left
her on the floor for several hours.
These next lines are taken from intercepted telephone
calls to her in hospital.
September 22, 1999, 12.33pm
Hinchcliffe: What other damage have ya got done to ya?
Jacqueline: ... collapsed lung, and, um ... fractured ribs,
nose, cheekbone ... and uh ... broken perf, a busted
eardrum.
Hinchcliffe: Yeah, was ya, were you in pain?
Jacqueline: Yeah I am, I cannot get up at all.
Hinchcliffe: Well, do you think it was worth rooting those
guys, was the pleasure there for you, hey?
Jacqueline: No.
Same day, 12.48pm
Hinchcliffe: You know I let you off the other night, don't
ya?
Jacqueline: Hey?
Hinchcliffe: You know how calmly I was moving, hey?
Jacqueline: Yep.
Hinchcliffe: I wasn't angry baby, hey, I was just working
...
(Later in the call)
Hinchcliffe: All right, you shaved your hair off yet? ... You
know the deal, hey, women that sleep around, they
always lose their hair, don't they?
Same day, 1.04pm
Hinchcliffe: There are people, there are friends of mine,
right, and you know which of my friends are, who I'm
talking about, that believe ... that's mandatory, hey.
Jacqueline: Yep.
Hinchcliffe: Can you get it off now?
Jacqueline: Well, I can probably get some scissors.
September 23, 10.20am
Hinchcliffe: This will be your best hiding ever, hey?
Jacqueline: Yeah, I don't even look like me.
(Later in the same call)
Hinchcliffe: And you know what, you piece of shit c...?
Jacqueline: What's that?
Hinchcliffe: If I didn't actually love ya, none of this would
be happening ...
Same day, 10.51am
Hinchcliffe: When I came back to the clubhouse, hey, I
was so happy, hey.
Jacqueline: Yeah.
Hinchcliffe: I was laughing and smiling, they couldn't work
out what was wrong with me ... they kept asking me how
come I was so happy.
Jacqueline: Yeah.
Hinchcliffe: Yeah, I told them, hey, justice had been done.
The intercepted calls reveal Hinchcliffe's subsequent
terrorising of Wright and his family as he sought to extort
$50,000 from the hapless mechanic - $1000 for every
time he allegedly slept with Jacqueline.
Wright's father, Bruce, arranged a $55,000 loan, although
the money was never paid.
On January 11 last year, Hinchcliffe visited Wright at
work in Mandurah, south of Perth, and bashed him.
In the process a ring with a "1%" emblem on it came off.
Motorcycle gangs around the world proudly call
themselves the 1 per centers - the other 99 per cent of
riders being law-abiding citizens.
Hinchcliffe was arrested and jailed for a maximum six
years for the assaults. He was in jail when his wife walked
up to Wright's door in February last year and shot him.
Although Jacqueline never said as much, in a report
shown to the jury, clinical psychologist Bill Saunders said
he believed the Coffin Cheater gave his wife an ultimatum:
"Either Mick Wright or she could be alive when he got
out ... but not both."
In a letter to his wife, Hinchcliffe wrote: "Those last few
times you visited me in the clubhouse at night with the kids
for short periods I was happy, we were a happy family,
briefly, I thought ... we've had some really good times
together, Jac, more than most could ever imagine ..."
And tucked away in the court papers now collecting dust
in the office of the Perth DPP, a brief reference to the
other victims in this sad, awful story, the three Hinchcliffe
children. "Both Jacquie and I have come from broken
homes," their father said in August last year. "... [we] have
always sworn that that would not happen to you."
Chapter and verse
Mark Hinchcliffe is a member of the Coffin Cheaters gang
which is mainly based in WA but also has chapters in
Victoria, including in Melbourne.
As with other bikie gangs, members frequently travel
interstate. It's just one of 32 outlaw motorcycle gangs in
Australia, the biggest being the Rebels, with about 830
members around the country. In Sydney alone the Rebels
have 410 members, in some 23 chapters.
By comparison, the Hells Angels only have 16 members
in NSW in one chapter, but law enforcement sources say
in this case size doesn't always count.
"The Hells Angels has about 110-120 members nationally
..." a police source said. "They are not the biggest gang
here but amongst bikies they are considered the most
influential ... they have really good networks with
associates and smaller gangs they will work with."
In NSW the Nomads is the second-biggest gang, with
235 members, followed by the Gladiators, based around
the Hunter region, with 149. Then come the Black Uhlans
(142), the Commancheros (134) and the Bandidos (127).