Bikies made me do it

A teenager told police he killed two Thai prostitutes as a "favour" for the Hells Angels outlaw motorcycle gang, a Darwin court heard yesterday.

Ben William McLean said he owed the gang $50,000 and they'd threatened to kill him unless he removed the two women from Darwin's streets.

"They said that they will knock me off unless I do them a favour, to repay the money," McLean told police after his arrest, in an interview played to the court yesterday.

"What was the favour?" police asked in the tape. " They said I had to kill them."

McLean and friend Phu Ngoc Trinh, both 19, are on trial in the NT Supreme Court over the drowning murders of the two women in the crocodile-infested Adelaide River southeast of Darwin last year.

The floating bodies of 58-year-old Phuangsri Kroksamrang and 27-year-old Somjai Insamnan were found by crocodile-spotting tour operators in the river.

The court was told McLean told police Trinh had agreed to help him kill the women after he was approached in a Darwin pub by two Hell's Angels bikies two months earlier.

The men had shown him photos of the women and told him their names.

"I was using speed and I ripped them off," McLean told police, explaining why he did what they wanted.

However, prosecutor Rex Wild, QC, has previously told the jury to disregard any suggestion the Hells Angels had anything to do with it.

He told the jury in his opening that the defence had admitted it was an "untrue story".

The court heard yesterday McLean told police Trinh had brought the women to his parent's farm in rural Darwin, where Trinh then had sex with both women and McLean had sex with the younger of the two.

The teenagers then bound their ankles and wrists with cable ties.

McLean said neither screamed but one resisted and he held her in a "hug" before both were placed in the back of Trinh's family's van.

McLean said he drove to the Adelaide River while Trinh strangled or suffocated the women in the back, the court heard.

"We pulled over and went to dump them off the bridge ... they were already dead," he said.

The trial continues.

Newshawk: http://www.napnt.org
Pubdate: 26th February 2005
Source: Northern Territory News
Author: Karen Michelmore
Website: http://www.ntnews.com.au
Email: ntnmail@ntn.newsltd.com.au
Copyright: 2005 Northern Territory News