Comanchero bikie dumped at Rockingham Hospital with gunshot wounds and burns revealed as Leslie Grantham

A senior Comanchero bikie who was shot, burnt and left for dead outside Rockingham Hospital is the gang’s one-time sergeant-at-arms Leslie “Lethal Les” Grantham. The bullet-peppered gangster, one of the WA underworld’s most prolific standover men, was found near the hospital’s emergency department on Thursday night. Grantham’s legs had been burnt during what police suspect was an attempt to remove his gang tattoos. The 51-year-old career thug was attacked by members of his own club after he told them he wanted out of the gang, which is growing fast courtesy of last year’s mass patch-over of disaffected Rebels. As Grantham clung to life in Royal Perth Hospital today, the gang crime squad raided the houses of several Comanchero members. One of their first targets was gang leader Wade Robert Hopes, who did time with Grantham in 2019 after the pair extorted a restaurant owner. Det. Sen-Sgt Anthony Thompson said Grantham’s burns were a “product of other people trying to remove his tattoos that are related to the Comanchero outlaw motorcycle gang”. He said police were investigating who left the former bikie enforcer at Rockingham Hospital around 9.50pm. “We believe he was dropped off and just left there, which is a rather callous way to deal with some of his life-threatening injuries, and further demonstrates the nature of these people and how they regard human life,” Det. Sen-Sgt Thompson said. Police said the incident was a “targeted attack” on the bikie, who is “very well-known to police in terms of his membership”. Grantham was one of 10 men jailed in 2015 over a plot by the Comanchero to extract protection money from the owners of a Northbridge karaoke bar. During the trial, the court was told hewas a foot soldier for then-Comanchero State commander Ronald Ernest Parr, who was the mastermind of the extortion attempt. “Lethal Les, with his facial tattoos and gold teeth, was his right-hand man,” was how prosecutor Carmel Barbagallo described him at the time. Grantham’s lawyer argued his client had deserted the club, surrendered his Harley-Davidson and planned to spend $20,000 to have his gang tattoos removed. At the time, Grantham was using his social media accounts to promote himself as “a proud dad and also a proud Comanchero”. The jury in the extortion case made him a proud member of Hakea Prison when he was sentenced to two years’ jail. Grantham won parole after claiming he had seen the light behind bars. His embrace of Christianity proved fleeting because in 2019 he was banged up once more over another extortion attempt. The heavy-set outlaw had swung into action after a sex worker complained to him that she was being “roughly treated” by a client. Grantham and Lyall Raymond Winmar — a former boxer — told the man that the sex worker’s father would “sort it out with a bullet to your head” if he did not hand over $10,000. The victim coughed up close to $3000, which caused Grantham and Winmar to chase him down in a car before going to his home and stealing his Ford utility. Grantham copped two years and 10 months and was ordered to pay the victim compensation of $2250. Hopes, who was targeted by police probing the shooting and butalisation of Grantham, was sentenced to five years for this role in the crime. In 2021, Grantham was charged as part of Operation Ironside — a worldwide sting where police infiltrated global drug syndicates by selling them an encrypted app to spy on criminals. Comanchero kingpin-in-exile Ray Cilli, who has been hiding out in Thailand for years, was also ensnared in the technical honeytrap. Cilli was this year captured by police in South-East Asia, six years after he fled the Australia. Also in 2021, the AFP fingered the Comanchero gang as the biggest distributor of illicit drugs in WA. Det-Sen. Sgt Thompson said Thursday night’s incident was “further evidence” of why WA’s tough anti-bikie laws were warranted. “We don’t want to have that culture that they own a tattoo, or own certain signs in the community that they can hurt people and demonstrate their power. We won’t tolerate it,” he said. He assured there was no ongoing risk to the public. “We will be monitoring more motorcycle gangs hard over the next few days to ensure that the community is safe,” he said. “This person has now been left with life-changing injuries, and this is solely because he was a member of an outlaw motorcycle gang. “We will continue to use a full suite of powers available to the police to disrupt outbound motorcycle gang and ensure that we enforce the law and protect.”