EXCLUSIVE: Horrific assaults, torture, drugs: crimes of cop killer revealed

His family have asked that he not be remembered as just a career criminal, but Ricky Charles Maddison's list of previous offences is extensive.

He bashed a man in a nightclub so badly the victim had to have his eye socket bone surgically re-attached.

He fractured another man’s skull and punched him twice in the face.

He was accused of torturing his girlfriend and terrorised her and her family to the point that the 25-year-old woman fled Toowoomba for Mackay.

Yet for his trail of violence, Maddison, the Toowoomba plasterer who murdered Queensland Police officer Brett Forte in a cold blooded ambush on Monday, it appears he only ever saw the inside of a prison cell for 27 days while on remand for two separate violent crimes.

His incarceration ended when Maddison successfully applied for Supreme Court bail.

His penalties for two random acts of serious violence resulted in fines, restitution and a suspended sentence.

Court documents show Maddison’s first brush with the criminal justice system was in 1996 after being found guilty of producing a dangerous drug, with no conviction recorded.

For the next nine years he had a series of court appearances for bad behaviour and minor offences between Darling Downs and Roma, including wilful and unlawful damage and being at a house without lawful excuse.

He received fines but no convictions were recorded.

What the history didn’t reflect was allegations of Maddison terrorising his girlfriends and their families, or his controlling and relentlessly abusive personality that resorted to threats of suicide and murder when he didn’t get his own way.

In February 2005, Maddison was convicted for assault occasioning bodily harm after fracturing the skull of a man and punching him twice.

He appeared before the Toowoomba Magistrate’s Court and was fined $1000, ordered to pay his victim $5000, and banned from having contact with him for two years.

Two months later, Maddison was back before the same court for public nuisance offences.

His traffic record shows Maddison went from speeding to being convicted of drink driving in 2006 and 2007 where his blood alcohol level was three times the legal driving limit.

On the night of December 8, 2007, his propensity for violence played out again in a Toowoomba’s Toombas Nightclub when he randomly bashed a 22-year-old man as he left the club.

A police report of the incident shows the victim said he was walking when Maddison pushed his shoulder around 4am.

“The complainant states he looked up at the defendant (Maddison) and shook his head and the next thing he was being assisted down the steps of the nightclub after having been assaulted,’’ according to the report.

The victim had to get surgery for a “tripod” fracture to his right eye socket, during which doctors had to make an incision above his ear in his hairline to reconnect the fractured bone.

The victim also suffered nerve damage to his mouth, burst blood vessels in his eye and needed stitches to his head.

He appeared in the Toowoomba Magistrate’s Court charged with grievous bodily harm and was released on bail.

Maddison’s behaviour appeared to becoming more erratic. His girlfriend at the time, Karen, would tell police that after getting back with Maddison in late 2007, she found him to be an abusive, jealous man with a short temper.

His behaviour often left her feeling embarrassed in social situations and physically hurt.

After a poker game at his house, Maddison accused the 25-year-old hairdresser of flirting with his flatmate.

“Rick has grabbed me by my upper arms with his hands and has pushed me into the corner of the shower and I had bruises up my back from this," Karen said in a statement.

"Rick then smashed my phone, by throwing it against the tiles and it smashed, as he thought I had been texting someone……I was upset and Rick told me I wasn’t allowed to go home as I would tell my parents."

By March 2008, their relationship had “gone bad” and she ended it. While Rick took up with another woman, he continued to harass Karen. He turned up at the salon where she worked and abused her before following her to a local shopping centre.

“Throughout the next five or six weeks he contacted me on my mobile and was making comments about how fat I was and that I was a slut sleeping with everyone and that if I lost weight, I could go back out with him," she said.

The harassment continued until the end of May, when Karen and Maddison agreed to put the past behind them and resume their relationship.

In the months following, Maddison returned to his controlling and menacing ways – even dictating what foods Karen could and couldn’t eat. Karen ended the relationship in September.

For the next couple of weeks, Maddison harassed Karen with abusive texts and tantrums that escalated into threats of suicide.

In the meantime, Karen looked after Maddison after he had wisdom teeth out. She told police Maddison was able to manipulate her until she gave in to him.

On September 27, it came to a head, with Maddison still trying to control how Karen lived her life.

Maddison started threatening to kill himself and “shoot his brains out” in front of Karen’s young nieces.

“He said, ‘you only care about yourself and I’m hurting so bad and I’m going to make you hurt the way I am. The only person you care about is yourself and your Dad, so I’m going to shoot your Dad so you that you hurt, just like me’,’’ Karen wrote in her statement.

Maddison became intoxicated throughout the day and under pressure of Maddison’s barrage of threats to kill himself and her family, Karen agreed to meet with him.

She drove back from the Gold Coast to Toowoomba and in one phone call, Maddison promised to take her away for a weekend to spoil her. However, he had returned to his angry self when she arrived at his house that night.

Karen tried to leave and Maddison got in her car with her, demanding she just drive. At one point he grabbed the handbrake, forcing the car up a gutter.

He ranted and raged as they drove down the Toowoomba range and kept threatening to grab the steering wheel and drive over the edge.

He punched and shattered her windscreen. Then Maddison turned on Karen, spitting in her face three times and punching her repeatedly all over her body with a clenched fist.

Eventually, she got away from Maddison but he stole her contact list and threatened any male listed, including her clients and new boyfriend, to stay away from Karen.

He then called her family and demanded they get Karen to contact him or tell him of her whereabouts.

Karen finally went to the police after Maddison texted her friend and told him he was going to send Rebel bikie gang members around to his house to kill him.

Police charged him on October 1, 2008 with torture, deprivation of liberty, assault occasioning bodily harm, stealing, dangerous operation of a car and breaching bail for not living at his court-approved address.

He was also charged with drug offences after police found animal steroids including testosterone hidden behind a mirror in his house.

As Maddison was already on bail for the 2007 nightclub attack and the seriousness of the charges laid, police objected to bail.

According to the police objection, Maddison was also being investigated for contacting the victim from the nightclub attack and offering him $20,000 to withdraw the complaint.

Police also expressed concern over Maddison’s close ties with two brothers who were on drug trafficking and stalking charges. They also said Karen was so scared of Maddison she had fled her home to live in Mackay.

The magistrate denied bail and Maddison was remanded to the Arthur Gorrie Remand and Reception Centre at Wacol on Brisbane’s western outskirts.

Twenty-seven days later, the Brisbane Supreme Court granted Maddison conditional bail to live with his brother in Toowoomba with a $20,000 surety and the requirement that he enrol in an anger management course within a week of his release.

The judge also imposed a curfew of between 10pm to 5am and requested that Maddison report to local police every Monday.

In January 2009, the charges did not go ahead as no evidence was provided. It is understood the victim did not want to go ahead with the complaint.

Weeks later, Maddison was convicted of the 2007 nightclub attack in the Toowoomba District Court. He was given six months jail, suspended for three years, and ordered to pay his victim $10,000 in compensation.

At the time, the Toowoomba Chronicle reported that Judge Michael Forde said to Maddison: “It is clear you have a very thuggish element about you".

Maddison came to the attention of police again in 2015 when another woman complained to police that he poured petrol over her and threatened to set her alight.

While police were searching for Maddison he called investigating police, taunting them. The woman later withdrew the charges.

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Then in March this year, three arrest warrants were issued for Maddison – two for domestic violence and one assault occasioning bodily harm.

A woman - the same victim who complained to police in 2015 – told police Maddison verbally and physically assaulted her in home on March 12.

She had told police Maddison then produced a gun and fired it into the air.

At one point, Maddison pointed the gun at his head and under his chin for some time before pointing the gun at the woman while she was holding her child.

A police profile on Maddison, seen by Seven News, included warnings for weapons and outlaw motorcycle gang links but not for “violence caution”.

Maddison knew he was wanted and while on the run was suspected of hiding out on several properties including an area on his friend’s property.

As police would later discover, Maddison had stockpiled weapons, including a Russian assault rifle, a semi-automatic weapon and several firearms as well as a large amount of ammunition. He was holed up on a friend’s property on Waller Road at Helidon.

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He made no secret of the hatred he harboured towards police.

A police officer said like many domestic violence offenders, Maddison’s resentment of police partly stemmed from their acting on complaints from women he had abused and terrorised.

What made his anger turn into a murderous plot on Monday, May 29, when he executed a highly respected Queensland police officer and fired on his courageous colleagues, will be examined in the police and coronial investigations.