The Gangland War

by John Silvester

  ‘I was surprised, because I knew that Carl was behind Thompson’s murder but it appeared that Tony had no idea of that.’

  The Runner, who later pleaded guilty to the hit, told police he was paid $50,000 in advance and had three meetings with Mokbel where the murder was discussed. The Driver pleaded guilty and a Supreme Court jury found Carl as guilty as sin.

  ANOTHER man who used his nightclub connections as a front for his drug activities was George Germanos.

  George was a crowd controller with a reputation for losing self-control. While the venues varied, the story was always the same. The victims of his wrath were invariably smaller and helplessly intoxicated patrons.

  There were complaints, and the former champion power lifter would be quietly moved on, but there were still enough Melbourne nightclubs keen to employ the big man with the bad attitude.

  Even though the former national title-holder had retired from competition, had slimmed down and was now aged 41, he remained a menacing sight and continued to involve himself in violent clashes with paying customers.

  One of those was on 21 October 2000 when a loud, drunk young man was taken outside a St Kilda nightclub, led around the back and flogged by Germanos.

  The reports of the injuries suffered by the victim vary. According to some, the young man was left unconscious and badly hurt. Others say he recovered from the beating with few ill-effects.

  But what is known is that the young man was the son of an influential member of the underworld — and the serious criminal was left seriously unhappy.

  The man does not have a criminal record involving violence, but some of his friends do. His associates include well-known gangsters and one equally well-known former detective. He also has many friends in the outlaw motorcycle world.

  For decades, the father has been successful in criminal endeavours and has influence in a world where anything can be done for a price. Of course, this might have had nothing to do with what happened to Germanos, who was involved in plenty of other things that could prove bad for his health.

  For whatever reason, Germanos was in the cross hairs, and in the months following the beating he seemed to sense that time was running out. But, despite knowing he was a target and taking precautions, he was eventually set up.

  And as in many of the Melbourne gangland murders, the victim was so busy trying to outflank his enemies he didn’t see that a so-called friend would betray him.

  After the beating, a man well-known to police became a friend of Germanos.

  The friend is a major drug dealer and much older than the former power lifter. Despite the difference in ages and backgrounds, the two became inseparable and spoke almost daily.

  The older man was later interviewed by police and has told them that while he would love to help, he has no idea why his new best friend was murdered.

  Police remain unconvinced.

  Germanos was more than a power-lifter on the wrong side of 40. He was ambitious, ruthless and determined to make money. But his best efforts to legitimately acquire wealth had routinely ended in tears — for his creditors.

  His ultimate plan was to run a restaurant in Brighton, but his chequered business history suggested his ambitions often exceeded his abilities.

  He had been in a partnership in a coffee shop but lost $30,000 and an automotive business where he lost $36,000.

  But like many in the nightclub business, he had found a lucrative side interest — drugs. Germanos wasn’t just a nightclub bouncer but a drug dealer, selling to patrons and selected staff at some of the nightspots where he worked. He also used his bulk and belligerence to intimidate other drug dealers.

  Informally, he was blackballed from working at some nightspots but remained a favourite at three Melbourne nightclubs — although his reputation as being heavy handed was well known.

  ‘He had been involved in some significant physical altercations . . . Some owners liked him, others didn’t,’ according to Detective Senior Sergeant Rowland Legg, who would head the investigation into Germanos’ killing.

  In the weeks before his death, Germanos confided to members of his family that he was convinced ‘something is coming.’

  ‘He feared for his life and had become cautious,’ says Legg.

  Police found that on 21 March 2001 someone visited him at his parents’ home in the late afternoon. The person was driving a late model, light coloured Toyota sedan, possibly a peach or apricot shade. The driver and Big George were seen having a discussion near the Toyota. The crowd controller was animated, possibly angry, while the other man remained calm.

  On 22 March, about 9.30 pm he made a phone call. As far as police can tell, the call was to set up to confirm a meeting for later that night.

  He left the house shortly afterwards. Police believe the meeting was scheduled for 10pm at Inverness Park in Armadale. The location was almost certainly picked by the other person, as Germanos did not appear to know the area well. His street directory was later found open in his car.

  It may have seemed the perfect place for a private meeting, but it was also the ideal spot for an ambush.

  The park intersects five streets, has several exit points, is covered with trees and is near a railway footbridge.

  This meant there was cover for the gunman and a choice of escape routes. ‘It was a perfect place for a hit,’ according to Legg.

  There is ample evidence that Germonos was expecting the meeting to go badly. He left his best jumper on the front seat, perhaps because he was anticipating trouble and did not want it ripped or stained.

  He left his mobile phone and wallet at home — an old watch was found in the car that he used to check the time.

  He was known to carry a gun, yet no firearm was found with his body. He either went to the meeting unarmed, or, more likely, his killer took the gun after Germanos was shot dead.

  He was wearing slacks, a dark sleeveless top and a jacket — regulation tough guy clothes.

  He was also carrying black gloves. He was still clutching one and the second was about a metre behind where he fell. Police say he may have been wearing gloves because he expected a fight and wanted to protect his fists or because he thought he may have to shoot someone and wanted to protect his hand from gunshot residue. Or maybe he was just cold. It had been an unseasonably wet autumn day, so much so that the Tullamarine Freeway had been closed earlier that day due to flash floods.

  Around 10.15 pm he was seen in a phone box in Wattletree Road near Glenferrie Road.

  He appeared animated and was speaking half Greek and half English. His distinctive brown Valiant car was seen parked nearby in Wattletree Road.

  Police believe he was talking to the man he was to meet, or an intermediary, perhaps complaining that there was no one at the park at the pre-arranged time. According to witnesses who saw him in the phone box, he seemed jumpy.

  He then went to Cafe Lavia in Glenferrie Road, near High Street. He ordered a coffee and sat alone until about 10.30 pm. Police suspect the meeting had been postponed until 11 pm and he was killing time before the gunman would kill him.

  Between 10.30 pm and 11 pm he was seen in Inverness Avenue, having parked 50 metres from the park in the dead end street, perhaps wanting to walk into the park in the hope that he would not warn the person he intended to meet.

  He left his cigarettes and lighter in the car and walked in along a narrow tan bark covered path. He headed towards a wooden park bench next to children’s swings and slides about ten metres away.

  But the killer was already there, almost certainly hiding under a bush just to the right of the entrance.

  Germanos walked in about five metres, and then turned, possibly hearing a noise or, just as likely, the killer called his name.

  He was then shot in his barrel chest, then twice in the head from point blank range.

  The killer then ran through the park and across a nearby railway footbridge. Legg says Germanos was the victim of a coldblooded assassination.

 
; ‘The killer was clearly forewarned about the victim’s movements. We suspect he may have been set up by someone he trusted. There are indications he was anticipating trouble, but was ambushed.’

  But who by? And why?

  Sometimes people with a motive for a murder they didn’t commit hint they might be behind it because they get the kudos with no prospect of being charged. Meanwhile, the real killer lies low.

  17

  QUARTER TO MIDNIGHT

  ‘I haven’t done anything.

  My conscience is clear.’

  GRAHAM Allan Kinniburgh was a modest man. Although considered the most influential gangster in Victoria by some, he was always shy about acknowledging his achievements.

  He preferred to conduct his business in private, though what that business was, few really knew.

  His criminal record understates his influence on the underworld. It lists offences of dishonesty, bribery, possession of firearms, escape, resisting arrest and assaulting police.

  But criminal records list only an offender’s arrest history — his failures. The definition of a successful criminal is one that tends not to get caught.

  Many wondered how he prospered. Sometimes even he struggled to explain. When he was interviewed soon after the 1998 murder of his friend and fellow gangster, Alphonse John Gangitano, he was uncharacteristically tongue-tied. Asked by homicide investigator Gavan Ryan what he did for a job, he responded: ‘Occupation at the moment? It would be — I’m a — well, I’m still, I’m still, I’m still a rigger. I’m still a rigger, yeah.’

  It could have been a Freudian slip. Whereas a lay person might assume he was referring to rigging in the construction industry, it was whispered that one of Kinniburgh’s talents was to be an extremely well-informed punter. Although it was never proved, or even widely alleged, that he was involved in rigging horse races, people on both sides of the law — including a former assistant police commissioner — loved to get a tip from the man they called ‘The Munster’. He was a great and good friend to more than one leading jockey.

  ‘Rigging’ had been kind to Kinniburgh, 62, right up until he was gunned down in front of his double-storey brick home in Kew just after midnight on 13 December 2003. Ryan — a member of the Victorian Police’s Purana Taskforce — was immediately assigned to investigate the murder.

  While Kinniburgh, a former shearer, had long given away paid employment, it didn’t mean he would let a lucrative opportunity pass him by. He was late to his own wedding in 1967, telling his wife that he ‘had to see a bloke’.

  The shooting of ‘The Munster’ is the most telling — and probably the most ominous — of the underworld killings committed in Melbourne since 1995.

  Nearly all the previous victims have been volatile and erratic men who saw violence as a weapon of first resort. There was an unspoken sense that they had it coming. But the older and wiser Kinniburgh was a tactician who saw gangland feuds as counterproductive.

  While police are looking at a number of motives, two stand out as the most obvious. The raging favourite is that Carl Williams was out to kill anyone connected with the Morans and anyone he thought had the power to order a revenge attack.

  What is known is that in 2003 Williams, frustrated at not being able to find Jason Moran, began preliminary work on launching a hit on Kinniburgh

  The second — and increasingly unlikely — motive is he was killed as a payback for the murder of Alphonse Gangitano. It was his relationship with Gangitano that first forced the reticent Kinniburgh from the shadows. He was a close friend of Big Al — a relationship senior police found hard to understand.

  Kinniburgh was wealthy, but tried to hide it — Gangitano was often struggling, but deliberately cultivated an image of affluence.

  Kinniburgh kept a low profile, while Gangitano loved the headlines, although that high profile meant he was always the target of police investigations. But Kinniburgh’s low profile was blown the night he went to visit the younger gangster on 16 January 1998, the night Alphonse was shot dead in his Templestowe home.

  Police believe Jason Moran was at the house and argued with Gangitano. They say Moran opened fire on Alphonse without warning, killing him instantly.

  The smart money says that a startled Kinniburgh ran to the front door of Gangitano’s house, injuring his hand on the security mesh in his haste to throw it open. He then went upstairs, the theory goes, to grab the security video that could compromise him, before going to a nearby convenience store ‘to buy cigarettes’ — but in fact to concoct an alibi of sorts — before returning to ‘discover’ the body.

  Some believe that Kinniburgh could have slipped away, but saw Gangitano’s widow and children driving past and could not leave them to deal with the horrendous scene alone. But he also knew that touching the body in front of a witness would enable him to explain at a later time why his DNA was on the victim. Kinniburgh didn’t become a gangster heavyweight by losing his head when others (literally) lost theirs.

  Either way, Coroner Iain West didn’t buy his hastily-built alibi: ‘I do not accept Graham Kinniburgh’s version of events, as I am satisfied he was present at the time the deceased was shot.’

  He said Kinniburgh went to the convenience store to be filmed on the security camera, ‘thereby attempting to establish an alibi of being absent from the premises at the critical time.’

  ‘I am satisfied that both Graham Allan Kinniburgh and Jason Matthew Patrick Moran were implicated in the death.’

  The difference between Moran and Kinniburgh could be seen at the inquest.

  The younger gangster wore a flash suit, while Kinniburgh dressed down for the occasion. He would do nothing to draw attention to himself.

  While Kinniburgh could afford imported suits, he mostly preferred the casual clothes of an off-duty dock worker, even if in middle age he had acquired some expensive tastes and was a regular at the exquisitely expensive Flower Drum restaurant in Melbourne’s Chinatown. At his funeral, his daughter, Susie, said, ‘Restaurants all over Melbourne will not only miss his patronage but they’ll be missing him. They used to fuss over him like he was a king. He didn’t ask for it or seek out special favours, it was just bestowed upon him.’

  A regular at Crown Casino, he also enjoyed trips to Las Vegas to try his luck at the spiritual home of The Mob. He also loved the atmosphere of old style pubs, where he would stand at the bar examining his form-guide and watching the races on television.

  Kinniburgh lived in a large house in a quiet street in one of the better blocks of the prestigious Melbourne suburb of Kew, the natural haunt of doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers and media executives. But he drove a second-hand Ford, the car he drove home on the night he was shot. While Kinniburgh didn’t flaunt his wealth, he managed to put his three children through private schools while not working in any legitimate job.

  He was also an expert in picking police; trainee surveillance police were often sent to the street in Kew to try to follow him. It was a sharp learning curve.

  In 1994, his son married a girl from a well-to-do Melbourne family. After the wedding, it was just a short walk from St Peter’s Anglican Church to the reception in Melbourne’s grand old established hotel, The Windsor.

  During the stroll, an alert observer might have noticed photographers taking pictures not of the wedding party but of the guests. The photographers were intelligence police looking to upgrade their files.

  As is the case in many weddings, the groom’s friends and family had little in common with the bride’s group.

  One friend of the bride was mildly startled when introduced to Kinniburgh, not so much by the man himself as by the four who were standing around him. ‘They were all wearing Ray-Bans and it was 10 at night,’ she said later.

  Dressed in a dinner suit, Kinniburgh welcomed his 100 guests with a speech that left an impression. One guest, who didn’t know the colourful background of ‘The Munster’, later said: ‘He reminded me of Marlon Brando.’

  Weddings are
emotional times and this one was no different.

  A guest of the bride, a millionaire property developer, was dancing with a woman invited from the groom’s side.

  A friend of the groom, released from prison days after completing his sentence for biting a man’s ear from his head, told the friend of the bride that he would be shot if he didn’t immediately become a wall-flower.

  The property developer lost interest in the music and retired to the bar. It was a sensible move.

  Only a few months before Kinniburgh’s death, his daughter married into a well-known Melbourne family with strong connections to Melbourne’s legal and political establishment. The reception was held at the National Trust showpiece property, Rip-ponlea. The story circulates that when a friend asked the groom’s mother how she had got along with the Kinniburghs in making the arrangements she just laughed and said: “No problems. We just agreed to everything they wanted.”

  For three decades Kinniburgh was connected with some of Australia’s biggest crimes. Police say he was the mastermind behind the magnetic drill gang — Australia’s best safebreaking crew — which grabbed $1.7 million from a NSW bank, a huge jewellery haul from a Lonsdale Street office and valuables from safety deposit boxes in Melbourne.

  He was alleged to have been the organiser of a gold bullion snatch in Queensland and was also once charged over receiving stolen property from a burglary on the home of the well-known and fabulously wealthy trucking magnate, Lindsay Fox.

  When police raided Kinniburgh’s home, they found $4500 in a drawer and a rare pendant owned by Mrs Fox in a coat pocket. He told police they could keep the money if they didn’t charge him over the burglary. This time he appeared to be out of luck. The detectives were honest and added attempted bribery to the other charges.

  But ‘The Munster’ was nothing if not innovative. While he was convicted of bribery, he beat the theft charges by having an identical pendant made in Hong Kong to raise doubt about the unique nature of the jewellery.