The Gangland War

by John Silvester

  Next day, Williams told one of the authors he was not involved.

  NINE days after Kinniburgh’s murder three edgy men met at Crown Casino. They were Carl Williams, Andrew Veniamin and Mick Gatto. It was an open secret that Gatto was on Williams’ death list and this was a last chance to stop the killings.

  ‘It’s not my war,’ Gatto warned the two upstarts from the western suburbs. His words, later deciphered by a lip reader from security footage, were carefully chosen but the meaning was clear: if anything happened to Gatto or his crew, retribution would be swift. ‘I believe you, you believe me, now we’re even. That’s a warning,’ the big man said.

  For perhaps the first time Williams wavered. Later, he went to see The Lieutenant for a second opinion. Should he trust Gatto and declare a truce?

  The Lieutenant advised him to ask Veniamin because he knew Gatto better. Veniamin had no doubts. ‘Kill him,’ he said, thereby effectively passing his own death sentence.

  Gatto would shoot Veniamin dead in a Carlton restaurant just three months later, on 23 March 2004, and subsequently be acquitted on grounds of self-defence.

  And eight days after Veniamin died, Williams hit back.

  LEWIS Moran was shattered by the death of his stepson, Mark, and his natural son, Jason. But it was the death of his best friend, Kinniburgh, that destroyed his will to live.

  Lewis, a former skilled pickpocket, tried carrying a gun after Mark and Jason were murdered, but arthritis meant he couldn’t handle it properly. Moran had little formal education but, as an experienced SP bookmaker, he could calculate odds in a flash. After Kinniburgh was killed he knew his own survival was a long shot.

  Williams denied the existence of a death list and told the author: ‘I’ve only met Lewis once. I haven’t got a problem with Lewis. If he thinks he has a problem with me I can say he can sleep peacefully.’ Not only was Williams a murderer but he was also, it would seem, a terrible fibber.

  Police knew Moran was a sitting duck and they successfully applied to have a court-ordered bail curfew altered so his movements would not be easily anticipated by would-be hit men.

  Detective Senior Sergeant Swindells gave evidence at the bail hearing in the forlorn hope he could save Moran’s life.

  He said Moran’s ‘vulnerability relates to a perception by the taskforce that if the curfew remains between 8pm and 8am … it is possible for any person to be lying in wait for Mr Moran to return to his home address’.

  But Lewis no longer cared. He knew that if he stuck to a routine he was more vulnerable but he continued to drink at the Brunswick Club — where he was shot dead by two contract killers on 31 March 2004. The killers were allegedly paid $140,000 cash. They were supposed to be paid $150,000 but were short-changed.

  As a friend said, ‘Lewis died because he loved cheap beer.’

  POLICE knew they needed a circuit breaker and that the best way to do it would be to jail Williams. It was the self-styled ‘Premier’ himself, always so cautious about phones, who handed them the damning evidence. He told his wife in one call that if Purana Detective Sergeant Stuart Bateson raided their house she should ‘grab the gun from under the mattress and shoot them in the head’.

  In a prison phone call The Runner complained of his treatment and Williams talked about chopping up Sergeant Bateson’s girlfriend.

  Bateson was not one to be intimidated. He received the Valour Award in 1991 after wrestling a gunman to the ground and disarming him after the offender had forced another policeman to his knees at gunpoint.

  The tape of Williams’ threats was the break police needed. On 17 November 2003, the Special Operations Group grabbed Williams in Beaconsfield Parade, Port Melbourne.

  The arrest was captured brilliantly by ace Age photographer Angela Wylie, who snapped an image of the man who thought he was beyond the law lying helplessly on the ground with detectives standing over him. It was a sign that times were changing.

  Purana police believed they had enough to hold Williams, but he was bailed for a third time. It meant he was able to organise at least another three murders, police suspect.

  In the two weeks before he was bailed, Williams befriended another would-be tough guy who was keen to be fast-tracked when he got out of prison. He was an alleged heroin trafficker and amateur boxer with a big mouth and he would finally bring the big man down.

  ONE of the most boring jobs in a long investigation is to monitor police bugging devices. The Purana taskforce virtually dominated the technical capacity of the entire crime department with many detectives in other areas quietly grumbling that their investigations were put on hold because Simon Overland had ordered that the gangland detectives get first priority.

  During the investigation Purana would log half a million telephone conversations — most consisting of the inarticulate ramblings of would-be gangsters. They used listening devices to bug suspects for 53,000 hours and conducted 22,000 hours of physical surveillance.

  Police on the case found that listening to the Williams family was cruel and unusual punishment. ‘It was like being subjected to the Jerry Springer Show 24 hours a day,’ one said.

  At one stage Roberta was talking to Carl when the son from her previous marriage distracted her. ‘Put it down,’ she said, and then told Carl in a matter-of-fact voice what ‘it’ was. ‘He’s got the tomahawk,’ she said.

  In another conversation she was talking to Greg Domaszewicz, the ‘babysitter’ accused of killing Jaidyn Leskie at Moe in 1997.

  Roberta was complaining how difficult it was to look after the children while Carl was in prison. Domaszewicz suggested he could pop around and look after them if she needed a break. After a pause, she responded: ‘You’re fucking joking, aren’t you?’

  Carl Williams always assumed his phone, house and cars were bugged. When he wanted a business discussion he chose open parks or noisy fast food restaurants. This also suited his appetite, as he had a weakness for chicken and chips.

  For police, trying to trap the Williams crew through bugging operations was like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack.

  But in late May 2004 they found it. Two of Williams’ soldiers, sitting in what they thought was a clean car, discussed killing a close friend of Mick Gatto and key member of the so-called Carlton Crew, Mario Condello.

  The two men in the car reminded each other of the importance of their mission. ‘We’re not just doing a burg,’ one said to the other.

  Williams saw Condello as the money man of the team he was determined to destroy. He also thought the lawyer-turned-gangster would find the money to take out a contract on him if he did not move first.

  Condello and Gatto were close, so close that when Big Mick was in jail waiting for his trial over the Veniamin killing, he told Mario to keep one eye on business and the other in the back of his head.

  The Williams’ team had done their homework. They knew Condello was a creature of habit and took his small dog for an early morning walk past the Brighton Cemetery most week days.

  It was the perfect place for an ambush. Police agreed, but their plan was to ambush the hit team before they could strike.

  It was the beginning of a secret police high risk/high reward operation, codenamed Lemma. Detective Inspector Gavan Ryan was in charge of the 170 police needed to surround the area without spooking the hit men.

  The would-be killers might have been committed but they weren’t punctual. Twice when they were supposed to kill Condello they slept in. The second time, one of the team had chatted up a woman and preferred a hot one-night stand to a cold-blooded early morning killing.

  Finally, they moved. They were still using the car that police had bugged and detectives could hear them preparing for the murder. But police also knew Condello had left the family home and moved into a city apartment. He also had heard he was on the hit list and moved out of his house to protect his family.

  But then Ryan heard one of the team spot a big man walking his small dog near the cemetery. One
of the gunmen was clearly heard asking, ‘Is that the man, is that the man?’

  By coincidence, another local with a similar build to Condello was walking a small dog on exactly the same route.

  ‘He shouldn’t bother buying Tattslotto tickets. I think he used all his luck that morning,’ the then Director of Public Prosecutions Paul Coghlan said later of the dog walker.

  With would-be hit men getting jumpy, Ryan knew it was time to move. Police arrested two men at the scene. They also seized two pistols, two-way radios and a stolen getaway car.

  They then arrested Williams at his mother’s home in Primrose Street, Essendon, and Williams’ cousin Michael Thorneycroft in an outer eastern suburb.

  Thorneycroft would later tell police he had been offered $30,000 to be the driver in the hit team and the shooter stood to make $120,000.

  For police, it was a major breakthrough. But for Mario Condello it was only to be a delay. After the attempt on his life he was interviewed on Channel Nine and publicly addressed the Williams team: ‘My message is stay away from me. I’m bad luck to you people. Stay away. Don’t come near me, please.’

  He also expressed a poetic wish that the violence stop ‘and everything becomes more peaceful than it has over the last however many years, because after all we are not going to be here forever.’

  He was right.

  Mario Condello was shot dead as he returned to his East Brighton home on 6 February 2006. He was on bail charged with, among other things, incitement to murder Carl Williams.

  But the arrest of the hit team outside the Brighton Cemetery was the beginning of the end of Melbourne’s underworld war. It meant that after five years of trying, police were finally able to put Williams inside jail on charges that guaranteed he would not be bailed.

  For Gavan Ryan, the arrest was the moment that police finally seized the initiative — four years after Williams declared war with the murder of Mark Moran. ‘For us (Operation Lemma) it was the turning point. It was the first time we were in front of the game.’

  CARL Williams had previously done jail time easily. But this time he was in the highest security rating and locked up 23 hours a day. In one video link to court his lawyers argued that Williams had not been able to hold or touch his young daughter since being in maximum security.

  No-one mentioned the feelings of the children of the men he’d had murdered in the previous five years.

  Williams knew he was in trouble. He knew some of his troops were starting to waver and the wall of silence was starting to crack. He started to threaten and cajole his team to keep them staunch, working on those he thought most susceptible.

  But he always assumed that The Runner, the career armed robber and willing killer, was unbreakable. This was a man who had never co-operated with police. When forensic experts took a swab from his gums in prison after the Marshall murder they were disgusted to find a ‘brown substance’ in his mouth. The substance, intended to compromise the test, was not officially identified, but it was definitely not breath freshener.

  But the case against The Runner was compelling. Marshall’s blood was found on his pants and police had the bugged conversations and had positive identifications.

  At first The Runner wanted to fight. On legal advice, he put on 30 kilograms to try to beat eye-witness descriptions, and he wanted Williams to fund a Queen’s Counsel for his case.

  But Williams knew The Runner was doomed and decided to cut him free so Williams could save himself. He wanted his loyal soldier to plead guilty and cop a life sentence. The cash flow stopped and The Runner was left to the mercy of legal aid while his boss continued to employ the best lawyers drug money could buy.

  Williams didn’t want to be sitting in the criminal dock with The Runner as the evidence was put to a jury. He believed he still stood a chance if he managed to get a separate trial. The loyal hit man knew he was gone. He asked a lawyer to tell Williams and Mokbel to send The Runner’s elderly mother some money and he was assured she would be looked after. Yet again the hit man was short changed. The old lady got barely $1500.

  It wasn’t a smart move.

  IN early 2006 Crown Prosecutor Geoff Horgan, SC, returned from his summer break to find a letter from prison. It was The Runner and he wanted to talk. The note was non-committal but the message was clear. The soldier was ready to mutiny.

  ‘To us it was unbelievable. He was seen as one of the hardest men in the system,’ Horgan said.

  Gavan Ryan, who was by then the head of Purana, went to see The Runner. ‘He didn’t need persuading, he was ready to talk. None of us imagined he would roll over.’

  The Runner was removed from prison and for nearly 30 days exposed the secrets of Melbourne’s gangland murders, sinking any hopes for Williams in the process.

  Inspector Ryan, Detective Sergeant Stuart Bateson, and senior detectives Nigel L’Estrange, Mark Hatt and Michelle Kerley questioned him for weeks. A stream of Purana detectives questioned him on individual murders.

  Police guarded him, fed him and did his washing as he exposed all Williams’ dirty laundry. Crims who roll over often want rock star treatment but after he had completed his statements The Runner politely asked for one simple indulgence: a vanilla slice. Police immediately found the nearest bakery to satisfy his craving. It was the least they could do.

  He told them about the crimes they knew he had committed but also implicated himself in ones they didn’t know about.

  He told them he was part of the hit team that killed drug dealer and standover man Nik ‘The Bulgarian’ Radev, shot dead in Coburg on 15 April 2003.

  As five of Williams’ closest allies turned on him and became police witnesses, Purana detectives discovered more about his crimes.

  They were told Williams had offered the contract to kill Jason Moran to others, including notorious killer, drug dealer and armed robber Victor George Peirce, shot dead in Bay Street, Port Melbourne on 1 May 2002.

  Peirce was paid $100,000 in advance and was to pocket a further $100,000 if and when Moran was killed. But Peirce changed sides and warned Moran. And he didn’t return the $100,000 advance.

  Another career criminal was shot after he refused to carry out a contract to kill Moran. Convicted murderer Mark Anthony Smith supposedly agreed and then refused to kill Moran. So Smith was shot in the neck in the driveway of his Keilor home on 28 December 2002. He recovered and fled to Queensland for several months.

  So was Peirce killed because he refused to kill Moran?

  The trouble with criminals like Victor Peirce is they always have more than one set of enemies who want to see them dead.

  His best friend was Frank Benvenuto, son of the late Godfather of Melbourne, Liborio. Peirce had worked in the fruit and vegetable market for Frank Benvenuto during a heavy power struggle in the business. Peirce was not there to lug turnips. He once arrived at work armed with a machine gun.

  But for Benvenuto, having Peirce on his side was not enough. On 8 May 2000 Benvenuto was shot dead outside his Beaumaris home. The shooter was Andrew Veniamin. But who paid for the hit and why? Certainly not Carl Williams.

  Veniamin knew that Peirce suspected he was the gunman. The two killers met to try and establish a truce. According to Victor’s widow, Wendy, ‘They met in a Port Melbourne park. He wanted to know if Victor was going to back up for Frank.’

  According to Mrs Peirce her husband assured Veniamin there would be no payback. But Benji was not convinced.

  Police say Veniamin was the gunman who shot Peirce in Port Melbourne but why he shot him is not so clear. Because although Benji worked for Williams he also did freelance work for anyone that would pay.

  While Williams had reasons to punish Peirce for not carrying out the contract on Moran, Veniamin had his own reasons to want him dead.

  And there was a third possibility: whoever paid Veniamin to kill Benvenuto would also have been relieved when Peirce was no longer a living threat.

  Perhaps the key to the mystery rests with whoever it
was Peirce planned to meet at Bay Street when he was shot dead — a man who had known Frank Benvenuto all his life. Also of interest to police is the man who rang Peirce to tell him of Frank’s murder shortly after the ambush. The question is, how did he know so soon?

  Jason Moran was a prominent mourner at Peirce’s funeral. The next year he would also be shot dead.

  FOR Purana investigators to crack the underworld code of silence they needed to offer deals that were too good to refuse. In doing so, they have changed the model of plea bargaining in Victoria forever.

  Purana police had previously refused to do deals with trigger men but senior police and legal strategists in the Office of Public Prosecutions decided it was more important to nail the underworld generals that ordered the killings than the soldiers who carried them out.

  From early in the investigation police had two main targets, Carl Williams and Tony Mokbel. They knew one was behind the killings and they suspected the other.

  Paid killers can expect life in prison with no chance of release. Their crimes are not based on passion or psychological problems but greed.

  But under the Purana model some of Melbourne’s worst gangsters were offered a chance of freedom if they turned on Williams and Mokbel.

  Men who had spent decades in jail and had never talked were courted. By now they were middle-aged and the thought of never being released was too much to contemplate.

  The Purana taskforce used the proven US tactic of turning alleged hit men into star witnesses. The most notorious of these was Salvatore ‘Sammy the Bull’ Gravano, a former underboss of the New York Gambino family.

  The first to do a deal was The Driver. He was sentenced to eighteen years with a minimum of ten for his role in the murder of Michael Marshall and he was never charged with his involvement in the killings of Mark Moran, Jason Moran and Pasquale Barbaro.