UPDATE: Police have charged three men over the death of Michael Strike, whose body was found near Keilor cemetery in May last year.
Werribee man Luke Paul Maybus, 27, appeared briefly before Melbourne Magistrates Court on Thursday, charged with the murder of Mr Strike at Keilor East on May 24.
Maybus was also charged with arson and theft of a motor vehicle.
Brunswick man John Walker, 32, was charged later the same day with a single count of murder, and 40-year-old Boronia man Joseph Girgis was charged with being an accessory to murder.
Walker and Girgis appeared in Melbourne Magistrates Court on Friday.
Police allege that the day after killing Mr Strike, Maybus stole a white Ford transit wagon from Doherty’s Gym, next door to the Bandidos’ bikie clubhouse on Weston Street, Brunswick, and set it alight in Footscray.
The charges follow a second raid on the Bandidos’ clubhouse last week, when homicide squad and Echo taskforce detectives seized a couch for forensic testing.
Police had also searched a landfill site at Wyndham.
Mr Strike was found propped up against a tree and in a pool of blood by a passerby in Thor Court, Keilor, about 11.30am on May 25.
Homicide investigators have spent the past eight months trying to determine the circumstances surrounding the 38-year-old Dandenong man’s death, which was deemed suspicious.
Investigators have established that Mr Strike arrived in Brunswick about 4.15pm on Saturday, May 24, and spent some time by himself at a hotel in Weston Street before leaving just after 5.20pm.
He can then be seen on CCTV walking east along Weston Street.
But investigators have not been able to account for Mr Strike’s whereabouts after this time.
Police seized security footage and computer hard drives during the first search warrant carried out on the Bandidos clubhouse last year.
