The Gangland War

by John Silvester

  As he sat in his car, waiting for the meeting, two men in a stolen Commodore (hit men, like old armed robbers, prefer the home-grown Holden) pulled up. One was Veniamin, who walked over and shot Peirce twice from point blank range. A third shot missed, lodging in the pillar between the doors.

  At the last second Peirce used his right arm to try to block the shots as he sat in the driver’s seat. Both bullets travelled through his arm into his body, causing fatal wounds to his liver, diaphragm and lungs.

  ‘They revived him twice there but he was unconscious and they couldn’t save him,’ Wendy says with little emotion.

  He was taken to the Alfred Hospital — the same hospital where Steven Tynan and Damian Eyre were taken 14 years earlier.

  Detectives found that Peirce, 43, was unarmed. He clearly was not expecting trouble and must have thought he was meeting a harmless friend.

  They also found he had two mobile phones in the car — one rigged by a friendly technician from a telecommunications company so that it operated without charge. ‘He had one for home and the free one was for business,’ Wendy says.

  So who was the ‘bloke’ Peirce was supposed to meet when he was ambushed?

  It was Vince Benvenuto — Frank’s brother.

  Peirce was murdered one week short of the second anniversary of Benvenuto’s murder.

  GANGSTER. Drug dealer. Gunman. Cop killer. Victor Peirce was called all these things before he was shot dead in Port Melbourne.

  But when he was buried eight days later he was just someone’s father, someone’s son. The grief of those who loved him was as real as anybody else’s, a sobering thought for the most hardened observer.

  There were plenty of those at St Peter and Paul’s Catholic Church in South Melbourne, where mourners mingled with plainclothes police, reporters and at least one known gunman; a prime suspect in another, unsolved, gangland slaying.

  It wasn’t, however, a huge funeral by underworld standards.

  Whereas almost 1000 people had jammed St Mary’s by the Sea in West Melbourne to farewell Alphonse Gangitano four years earlier, perhaps a quarter of that many went to Victor’s.

  And whereas Gangitano — a ‘celebrity’ gangster known by his first name — cultivated a Hollywood image, Peirce lived and died on a smaller stage.

  Gangitano was a middle-class private schoolboy who turned his back on respectability to become the black prince of Lygon Street.

  Peirce, by contrast, wasn’t so much working class as underclass, condemned from birth to a sordid life cycle of crime and violence. The wonder was not that he died violently, but that he survived as long as he did.

  His mother, Kath Pettingill, once a notorious thief and brothel madam dubbed ‘Granny Evil’, had seven children by several men. With Victor’s death, she has buried three of her children and must wonder how many more family funerals she will attend. She herself narrowly escaped death years ago, when a bullet blinded her in one eye.

  The mourners gathered well before the service, under a sky the colour of lead. Most of them looked as sullen as the weather. The men tended to mullets or close-cropped hair, the women were mostly bleached blondes, tattoos half-hidden under dark stockings. Sunglasses and cigarettes were compulsory for both sexes, chewing gum and earrings optional.

  In the church, many shied away from the pews, preferring to stand together at the back of the church, as deadpan as the inmates of a prison exercise yard. Which many undoubtedly had been.

  Father Bob Maguire, whose inner-city flock has included many a black sheep, conducted a service, as he called it, ‘designed by the family’. Instead of hymns, popular songs were played. Instead of a formal eulogy, the dead man’s children and friends read out personal tributes that were clapped, like speeches at a birthday party.

  Katie Peirce said her father was a ‘strong, kind, family man’ who had hired a double-decker bus for her 16th birthday and taken her out to get her drunk as a treat. His pet name for her was ‘Pooh Bum’.

  His youngest son, Vinnie, named in honour of his honour Justice Frank Vincent after Peirce’s acquittal in the Walsh Street murders, said he would miss his dad picking him up from school, buying him lollies and driving around.

  ‘I remember when he used to go fast in the car with me,’ he said.

  The first line of the opening song (Soldier Of Love) began with the words ‘Lay down your arms’. The song chosen for the exit music was When I Die, by the group No Mercy. It sounded like a portent of funerals to come. Outside, it had begun to rain. A guard of honour, of sorts, lined the street, blocking traffic. It stretched about twenty metres. At Steven Tynan’s police funeral, more than thirteen years earlier, the honour guard stretched for kilometres.

  But there was real sadness. As the hearse took the outlaw Victor Peirce for his last ride, hard faces softened briefly.

  Under a tree in the churchyard, a homicide detective watched, wondering if the killer was in the crowd and how many more were destined to suffer the same fate.

  WENDY Peirce was convinced that police would not try too hard to solve her husband’s murder. After all, he had killed two of them.

  In police circles no name is more detested than that of Victor Peirce. Many openly rejoiced when he was finally shot.

  The investigation was handed to Purana and nearly five years after the ambush the head of the taskforce, Jim O’Brien, stood next to Wendy as he made a plea for new information.

  Years earlier, O’Brien had been a member of the Ty-Eyre task-force that had been betrayed by Wendy.

  In 2007 the Purana Taskforce arrested a man accused of being the driver of the getaway car. They claim the hit was ordered by a senior gangland figure connected to an established Italian crime syndicate.

  But Peirce was a man with many enemies. And Veniamin needed only half a reason to kill.

  13

  A HOLE IN THE IRON CURTAIN

  In each case they were set up,

  not by an enemy but a friend.

  It is the way of the drug world.

  Loyalty is a commodity to be

  bought and sold.

  NIKOLAI Radev, a young Bulgarian wrestler, arrived in Australia in 1980 without any assets, but was welcomed by his country-of-choice and granted refugee status. It would prove a fatal mistake.

  In 1981 he married Sylvia, a teenage hairdressing apprentice in Melbourne.

  He worked at a Doveton fish and chip shop owned by his in-laws and then opened a pizza shop nearby. But after about a year he decided there were better ways to make a crust than from pizzas.

  From 1983, until his death twenty years later, Radev did not work or pay tax, yet maintained the lifestyle of a millionaire.

  He was quick to collect debts but not so quick to repay them.

  ‘His attitude to personal accounting has always been cavalier,’said Mark Brandon Read, a keen observer of local criminal matters and manners.

  Soon after arriving in Australia, Radev made contact with-known members of Melbourne’s flourishing Russian organised crime syndicates. His reputation had preceded him and he was already known as a ruthless young gangster from his early years in Bulgaria, yet Australian authorities were not aware of his record before granting him refugee status.

  His former wife, Sylvia, says Radev always wanted to be a gangster. ‘He had no fear and no shame. It was just a power thing for him. He wanted to be like Al Pacino in Scarface.’

  When they were married he could be occasionally charming but more often brutal — and he would disappear for days. ‘He would say he was going to the shop and then not come back.’ She soon learned not to ask for an explanation.

  ‘He told me later that he married me just to get Australian citizenship. He ended up just wasting his life. It was really sad.’

  In 1985 he was first jailed in Victoria for drug trafficking. After experiencing prison in Bulgaria, Melbourne’s jails were like weekend retreats for the hardened gangster. It was just another place to pump iron and plan his next standove
r campaign.

  Radev’s criminal record shows his life-long love of violence. His prior convictions include assaults, blackmail, threats to kill, extortion, firearm offences, armed robbery and serious drug charges.

  A police report said: ‘He is a dangerous and violent offender, well connected within the criminal underworld. He carries firearms and associates with people who carry firearms.’

  In early 1998 Radev began a relationship with a Bulgarian woman twelve years his senior. She was financially comfortable, but that was not enough for Nik. Soon they were trafficking heroin in the St Kilda district.

  When Radev was again jailed in 1999 the older woman sold drugs to try to pay his legal fees. She was caught and sentenced to prison. When he was released, Radev was, in crime terms, upwardly mobile and began to flaunt his wealth. From 2000 he found a rich vein of crime and, according to associates, ‘went up in the world’.

  Radev told associates that he was now a businessman and involved in property development, a job description that covers a lot of ground. He started to deal with other gangsters on the move such as Housam Zayat, Sedat Ceylan and Mark Mallia.

  In 1998, Radev and Zayat were charged over a home invasion in which a 71-year-old man was bashed and his five-year-old granddaughter tied to a bed and threatened with a handgun. Radev’s friendship with Ceylan was short lived — and so might Ceylan himself have been if Radev had got his way.

  Ceylan falsely claimed to have bought electronic equipment worth about $10 million, resulting in a GST refund of almost $1 million.

  Radev thought it was an excellent scheme, but expected his cut. He abducted and tortured Ceylan, demanding $100,000. The GST fraudster fled to Turkey with his money and is still wanted in Australia.

  Certainly Radev loved violence. He once firebombed the car of rival drug dealer, Willie Thompson.

  Willie must have been delighted when he heard of Radev’s death, although his delight, like a lot of Radev’s friendships, would have been short lived. Thompson was shot dead in Chadstone just months after Radev’s murder in remarkably similar circumstances.

  Strangely, after his car was firebombed, Thompson went out and bought a soft-top convertible. Go figure.

  The Bulgarian even threatened police who had the temerity to arrest him. He intimidated one of the arresting officers, Ben Archbold, who eventually resigned because of the stress. Archbold later gained some notoriety himself when he became a contestant in the television reality program, Big Brother. He was evicted, therefore failing to win the Archbold prize.

  In 2001, Radev the standover man had become big enough to employ his own protection, using a professional kickboxer as muscle. He rented a home in Brighton and had no trouble finding the $530 weekly rent, paying promptly in cash.

  He showered his de facto wife and their child with expensive gifts, but chose not to live with them. He paid the rent on their flat and their substantial expenses.

  Just weeks before his death, he bought a 1999 Mercedes for $100,000. It was black, naturally.

  For the one-time penniless refugee, Australia was the land of opportunity — even if nothing he did appeared legitimate.

  He began to wear expensive clothes, preferring the exclusive Versace range. When he wanted his teeth fixed he paid a dentist $55,000 in cash for a set of top-of-the-range crowns.

  Life was good for the wrestler-turned-gangster — so why was he shot dead?

  Radev was well-known in the drug world and was an associate of Carl Williams and Tony Mokbel. He would sometimes buy drugs from the pair but, as always, the former wrestler wanted to be on top. He pestered Williams to be introduced to their drug cook — the man who made the pills and powders for the syndicate.

  But Williams knew that the introduction would lead to an abduction — and a messy one.

  He was told Radev would grab the cook, take him to an isolated farm and torture him to force him to work exclusively for the Bulgarian. Radev was said to have claimed he would have the speed chef ‘cook 24 hours a day.’

  It was time for the classic double cross.

  Radev met a group of drug dealers for coffee at the Brighton Baths not far from his home. It is believed Tony Mokbel was present at the meeting. It was 15 April 2003.

  As soon as Radev was told he could meet the drug cook across town in Coburg, the Bulgarian was keen to move.

  Radev and some others at the meeting travelled in at least three cars to Coburg.

  Radev left his car in Queen Street to talk to two men. He then turned and was walking back to his Mercedes when he was shot up to seven times in the head and body. He died next to the car he had bought with his hard-earned drug money.

  Police found a witness who saw a small red sedan, possibly a Holden Vectra, in Queen Street, near the intersection with Reynard Street. The car left the scene moments before the shooting.

  It was the same make, model and colour of a vehicle owned at the time by George Williams, Carl’s father and fellow drug dealer.

  Much later, the hit man known as The Runner told police that in 2003 he was introduced to Veniamin by a Williams’ adviser in a Coburg hotel. Only a short time later, he said: ‘I drove Veniamin to murder Nik Radev.’

  After the Radev murder, Veniamin refused to help police with their inquiries. He was so uncooperative on principle that he even warned his own parents not to help the police if he were killed. He must have had a crystal ball. He knew he, too, was living dangerously and stood a big chance of being killed — he just couldn’t tell when and where.

  When Williams pleaded guilty to three murders in 2007 after being earlier found guilty of a fourth, he did so on the understanding that he (and his father) would not be charged over the Radev killing.

  When Radev was shot, he was wearing a watch valued at $20,000 and a complete Versace outfit — including shoes.

  His passing saddened not only friends and criminal associates. He owed one Versace outlet in Melbourne $8000 at the time, a debt that was never paid. One well-known legal identity also wrote off Radev’s substantial unpaid legal fees. But at least the legal identity knows he will have a steady income on retirement, as he is now a respected judge with a healthy superannuation scheme.

  Although Radev was known often to carry several thousand dollars in cash, his Commonwealth Bank accounts remained dormant for months at a time.

  He flew overseas five times in four years and always travelled business class. His last trip was to Israel, the year before his murder.

  He was a regular at some of Melbourne’s best restaurants and often stayed in five-star hotels. After his death, police found receipts for $400 bottles of Cognac and $50 cigars among his possessions.

  But what they didn’t find was cash. They believe his friends went to his Brighton home and took at least $200,000, claiming it was their share of the profits.

  But Radev was living, and later dead, proof that money can’t buy class. Apart from having the word ‘taxi’ tattooed on his penis — the ‘joke’ was that ‘it’s always available and goes everywhere’ — Radev loved his wealth so much he was buried with at least some of it. His casket was gold plated and said to be valued at $30,000.

  Most of his associates lived the same way. They spent up big on bling and baubles and drove Porsches, Jaguars and an Audi coupe.

  But like Radev, Gangitano and the Morans, they were to find too late that money doesn’t buy protection. Eventually the hunter becomes the hunted.

  Next to go was Mark Mallia, a close friend of Radev. Mallia, 30, was another standover man connected in the drug world.

  Soon after Radev’s death, Mallia went to Radev’s home to collect certain valuables, including the prized $20,000 watch, claiming that as the Bulgarian’s best friend he was entitled to the keepsake.

  It was a cunning move by a greedy man but he wasn’t smart enough to work out that for him, time was also running out.

  His close links to Radev meant that Williams saw him as a threat and increasingly Williams took to killing an
yone he felt may come after him.

  In 2007, Williams pleaded guilty to the murder of Mallia but, as with most of Carl’s killings, he did not act alone. This time he used several members of his gang to abduct and torture Radev’s good friend.

  Williams tried to organise a meeting with Mallia but he would not fall for the same trick as Radev. He knew that any meeting with Williams and Veniamin would end in tears — and blood. His.

  On 7 August 2003, a police phone tap recorded Williams ringing Mallia to try and set up the meeting. Mallia initially refused saying the ‘Safety issue is too much,’ and, ‘If I don’t see anybody, nobody can hurt me and I can’t hurt anybody.’

  But eventually he was persuaded, on condition the meeting was held where there could be no ambush. It would be done in the underworld’s version of neutral ground: Crown Casino, where security cameras would record any attempt at a double cross.

  The meeting at a restaurant at the complex was to assure Mallia that Williams and his team were not responsible for Radev’s murder. In fact, said Carl, he was furious with the hit and had the word out that he wanted to find who killed Nik so he could seek revenge.

  But Veniamin was to play the bad cop against Williams’ good cop.

  Benji, it is claimed, lent across the table and accused Mallia of plotting to kill him and Williams. He said he had spotted two men outside his house and suggested they were there to set up the hit.

  One of those at the table said Veniamin muttered in a low threatening voice that he would kill Mallia and his family if he didn’t back off.

  Mallia, understandably in tears, said he just wanted to find out who killed his mate, Nik. They parted, apparently with their differences sorted. For the moment.

  Later Williams found that Mallia had four heavies sit off the meeting and was still plotting his death. It was enough for him to move.

  Mallia would never agree to a second meeting so Williams knew the best way to lure his target to the ambush was to persuade someone close to the victim to change sides.