Antonio Bagnato, known in Thai kickboxing circles as Tony Bang, was a feared enforcer and debt collector from Sydney. Once a rising star of the city's fight scene, he ended up on the run in Thailand after a murder at home, and then at the centre of a second killing there, of a Hells Angel who had once been his friend. The film pulls the story together from court records, press archives and statements from the Australian Embassy in Thailand, and it is, as the narrator says, very complex.
The fight club
Bagnato was a member of a secretive group known as the St Michael fight club, or more fully the St Michael Christian Brothers fight club. It had religious roots, but sources told the narrator that its rules and activities came to resemble those of a bikie club. At its peak it is understood to have had between 20 and 30 members, most of them Catholics of Italian heritage from Sydney's inner west who shared a love of Muay Thai.
It had no formal hierarchy, but it did have a code, like an outlaw motorcycle gang's. Members swore loyalty to the club. They were not to have petty internal disputes or argue over women. Bagnato and his cousin, Diego Carbone, held significant influence.
Bradley Dillon
A junior member, Bradley Dillon, fell into a conflict with a senior member over an unpaid debt of two thousand, allegedly owed to Dillon's sister. He went to Bagnato and Carbone for help. He respected the two seasoned fighters and believed they would help him settle it.
What the dispute really turned on remains unclear. It may have been that Dillon had broken the rule against fighting fellow members over relationships, or it may have been the cousins' friendship with the man Dillon was at odds with. Either way, it escalated. It is alleged that the cousins arranged a meeting with Dillon. An argument broke out between Dillon and Carbone, and Dillon suffered puncture wounds as he fled. He was shot three times in the back and died.
Bagnato and Carbone tried to get away to Thailand. Carbone was arrested at the airport. Bagnato made it.
Pattaya
From Bangkok, Bagnato went to the resort of Pattaya and joined a gym with friends from home. One of them was Wayne Schneider, a member of the Hells Angels, whom Bagnato had worked for as a bodyguard and with whom he held shares in a boxing gym. Bagnato claims he left Australia to further his fighting career. Sydney police say it was because of the Dillon murder.
Thai authorities alleged that Bagnato and Schneider were key players in a large international drug operation. A deal went wrong, there were heavy losses, and Schneider appears to have been held responsible. With a group of accomplices, Bagnato organised Schneider's abduction from his home. He was taken to a leased property in Pattaya and badly beaten, with head injuries, and left bound to a metal wheelchair fitted with a commode. A detective sergeant from the New South Wales Gang Squad said Schneider had been held for a long period. When his abductors came back, he was dead. They stripped him and buried him in a shallow grave near a road. Thai police found it using GPS data from the vehicle used in the abduction.
Bagnato fled to Cambodia with his wife. He was arrested, found guilty of murder and sentenced to death.
The men around him
The case pulled others in. Luke Cook, an Australian, was found guilty in 2015 of helping Bagnato escape to Cambodia and at first received a suspended sentence. Cook, Bagnato and Schneider had once shared a flat. In 2018 Cook and his Thai partner faced the death penalty for smuggling 500 kilos of ice. Police sources said the drugs were bought from a Chinese supplier in international waters and stashed on her boat; when a patrol boat appeared, the couple threw them into the sea. More than 50 kilos washed up on a beach in Rayong. An American, Tyler Gerrard, was also convicted and sentenced to death. He had earlier been tried alongside Bagnato and received three years over the disposal of Schneider's body.
In circumstances that are still unclear, Bagnato was released while appealing his death sentence, and re-arrested the same day on separate charges. Eventually Thailand and Australia agreed his extradition to Sydney to face trial for the murder of Bradley Dillon. Detective Superintendent Danny Doherty praised years of work by several agencies, and said Bradley was a father who was killed, and that those responsible would be pursued.
Where it stands
The film is clear that there is no evidence or suggestion the Hells Angels had any part in Schneider's murder. The club, it says, still pays homage to him from its bar in Pattaya, and its members appeared at Bagnato's court case, where extra guards were brought in.
When the film was made, the latest information the narrator could find was from July 2022, and Bagnato was awaiting trial for the murder of Bradley Dillon. It is a Sydney gangland story that crossed into Thailand through business and deals.
Update, since the film was made: Bagnato pleaded guilty to the murder of Bradley Dillon and was sentenced in the New South Wales Supreme Court. His cousin, Diego Carbone, was found guilty of the murder in December 2021.