One spring afternoon, in a small suburban park near Melbourne airport, three men met to discuss their mutual interests in drug dealing. What no one knew, not even the men involved, was that this would be the start of a Melbourne gangland war that led to more than twenty murders, most of them payback.
The two Moran brothers, Jason and Mark, were there to discuss amphetamines. The third man, Carl Williams, had been supplying them with pills that were crumbling and useless. But more than that, Carl had been selling his own pills and undercutting the Morans. Carl wasn’t about to knuckle under in an argument, until Jason Moran pulled out a gun and shot him.
Luckily for Carl, the .22 bullet didn’t kill him, and Jason didn’t finish him off. That was their biggest mistake, because Carl began planning his revenge.
Carl didn’t look like an underworld gangster. He was plump, a bit baby-faced, and wore shorts and T-shirts a lot. He looked like a supermarket packer, a job he once held. Even the police called him “Fatboy”. But he was ruthless, had plenty of money and had gathered a gang of loyal, violent young dealers who were happy to carry out his orders.
Six weeks later, police arrested Carl in his home, along with pills, the pill press and a large amount of speed valued at $20 million. That would have been the end of it, but the two drug squad detectives called in to assist with the case turned out to be corrupt, and their prosecutions meant Carl was allowed out on bail while the police court cases took place.
While on remand waiting for bail, Carl had gathered a team that included killer Andrew ‘Benji’ Veniamin, and started planning to knock off the Morans. Not wanting to get in the bad books of Mick Gatto, a powerful figure associated with the Morans, Carl waited until Jason was conveniently jailed for affray, putting him out of the way, before arranging the shotgun murder of Mark outside the man’s suburban home.
Mark’s stepfather, Lewis Moran, immediately called a meeting at his home but nobody really knew who was responsible. Still, Lewis was determined to get revenge. So was Jason, who probably had a better idea of the person responsible, but by the time he got out of prison, Carl was back inside again for trafficking ecstasy. The prison seemed to have revolving doors!
This time inside, Carl teamed up with a guy called The Runner, who was happy to take on the job of killing Jason. Jason had gone overseas for his own safety but now returned, despite the risk. The Runner had Jason under surveillance but was having no luck with finding opportunities for a hit, so Carl called on Veniamin, only to suspect he was doublecrossing the team and planning a Moran-paid hit on Carl instead. Paranoia was running high.
Things finally came to a head on a Saturday morning at a children’s football game. Jason Moran was sitting in the family van with his friend and bodyguard, Pasquale Barbaro, and a bunch of kids in the back seat, when The Runner employed by Carl ran up to the van and shot Moran and Pasquale through the driver’s window.
Until this point, most of Melbourne barely knew of the war going on – probably a lot of the local gangsters didn’t either. But a bloody shooting in front of the kids made front page news for days.
Carl made sure he had a good alibi and never paid his hired killer the $100,000 he promised him, and this stinginess would come back to bite him.
The police suspected there would be more murders and set up a task force that later became called Purana. Early investigations couldn’t find enough evidence to prove Carl and The Runner were responsible, but the number of detectives was increased, phones were bugged and investigations continued.
Next to die was a drug runner called Michael Marshall. Again, he was killed as he got out of his car in his driveway, but nobody knew why. Then it was the turn of long-time gangster and friend of Mick Gatto, Graham Kinniburgh. Gatto was angry and arranged to meet Carl and The Runner at Crown Casino. The meeting was a chance to call a truce, which was agreed to, except Carl had doubts and asked the advice of Veniamin who apparently said, “Kill him.” But Gatto wasn’t stupid – Veniamin was the one to die when he tried to knock Gatto off in a Carlton restaurant.
Meanwhile, Lewis Moran, gutted by the death of his stepsons and his friend, Kinniburgh, guessed he would be next, but that didn’t stop him keeping up his routine and going to his favourite Brunswick Club for a beer every day. He died after being shot in the Club.
Police had been bugging Carl’s phones and house for months, and when they caught him making threats against a top Purana detective, there was evidence to arrest him. Carl was taken down in the middle of the day in a Port Melbourne street – not so invincible after all. Yet he was bailed again, and three more murders ensued.
The turning point was the murder of Mario Condello, a close friend of Gatto. Police had collected more than 53,000 hours of bugging recordings and 22,000 hours of surveillance, and picked up recordings of Carl’s men planning Condello’s murder. It meant police could finally arrest Carl and keep him inside, although Condello still died in a hit two years later.
This arrest of Carl and his hit men signaled to police the end of the gangland war, but it wasn’t to be so clean and tidy. More people died. Tony Mokbel, who isn’t mentioned in this account but turned out to be a major player, ran away to Greece but was finally arrested in a very bad wig and extradited to Australia and then jailed for his own crimes, including a massive drug empire. Other payback murders have also happened.
Perhaps the most tragic was the murder of Jane Thurgood-Dove in her driveway, a total mystery killing that is now considered to be an error amongst the many gangland paybacks. It seemed at the time that anyone who needed “fixing up” was a target, as were their families, and possibly Thurgood-Dove was mistaken for the wife of a gangster who lived nearby. It was another killing that horrified the general public who felt “that could have been me”.
In 2019, Mick Gatto is still running a perfectly legal, successful industrial crane business. Carl Williams was beaten to death in prison after the level of gossip about him turning police informant got so hot that he needed to be eliminated.
Police in the Purana task force are being targeted and questioned about their operations and processes during that time. Even now in 2019, there is a royal commission going on in Melbourne that is looking specifically at Police Informant 3838, who is an ex-barrister by the name of Nicola Gobbo, and who represented many gangsters including Tony Mokbel. Anyone with an interest in the gangland wars is waiting to see if the commission findings will lead to retrials or conviction dismissals.
When I first wrote Trust Me, I’m Dead, it was at the end of the gangland wars. At that point, there were few arrests which would stick. Death has taken more gangsters off the streets in the end than the police. In the past ten years, the repercussions of the wars have not gone away. Killers such as The Runner and The Driver have either died or turned police informants – Carl should have paid The Runner what he was owed… Hatreds so deep-seated don’t fade, especially when family is involved. This forms the basis of my novel. And it’s still being played out on Melbourne streets. New gangs, new families, same old shootings and payback.
(I owe a lot of my background inspiration in Trust Me, I’m Dead to the true crime accounts written over the years by journalists John Silvester and Andrew Rule – their best-known book is Underbelly: The Gangland War.)
Trust Me, I’m Dead is published by Verve Books
