Court in the Act: The terrifying fallout after the murder of Gypsy Joker Billy Grierson in Ora Banda

On October 1, 2000 two shots rang out in the darkness in the middle of nowhere.

The handful of Gypsy Jokers sitting around a campfire near the pub in the tiny Goldfields town of Ora Banda hit the deck.

One wasn’t so lucky. Billy Grierson caught a bullet in the chest and bled to death.

The owner of the pub, former CIB detective Don Hancock, insisted he had nothing to do with the death.

The Jokers were not convinced. Hundreds of the bikies flooded the streets of Kalgoorlie for Grierson’s funeral.

The West’s chief reporter Ben Harvey tells this week’s episode of Court in the Act that it was like something out of the Wild West.

“There was a very strong rumour that a police officer was going to get shot in the spine,” he says.

“There were bikers drinking everywhere, often shoulder to shoulder with cops, I might say.

“It was a very tense situation and nothing like we had seen in modern Western Australia.

“This kind of thing didn’t happen. Cops or retired cops just didn’t get shot. They didn’t get blown up. No one messed with the boys in blue.

“This was the kind of thing you’d see in Mexico, in Colombia ... not in a first-world country like Australia.”

Bombing after bombing followed Grierson’s death. Hancock was offered witness protection. He refused.

And then came the act that rocked the State and changed WA forever.

Up Late host Harvey joins Tim Clarke on Court in the Act to dissect the murder of Billy Grierson, and the terrifying fallout that followed.

Listen now.