The truth is that Moran
was born into a life
of violence and crime
and revelled in it.
EVERYONE in the underworld knew Jason Matthew Patrick Moran was a dead man walking.
Too erratic to be respected and too violent to be ignored, the drug dealer and suspected killer was always the popular tip to become a murder target in Melbourne’s crime war.
At the funeral of Jason’s half-brother, Mark Moran — murdered outside his Aberfeldie home on 15 June 2000 — a well-connected crime figure gave a friend a two-word warning that he should distance himself from the younger Moran. ‘He’s next,’ he whispered.
Not that underworld identities and a select group of police were the only ones to suspect that Moran’s name was on a death list. It was Australia’s worst-kept crime secret.
Standover man turned author, artist and renowned after-dinner speaker, Mark Brandon Read, released his tenth book, The Popcorn Gangster, in November 2001. On the back cover Read stands in an old Tasmanian cemetery near three weathered gravestones. The photograph has been digitally altered to show one headstone with the name, ‘Mad Charlie’ (a murdered gangster friend) and the date of death; on the second is, ‘Big Al’ (Alphonse Gangitano) with the date of his murder. On the third is simply, ‘Jason’ with a question mark. The message was clear. The fact that Moran was to be murdered was no longer an issue. It was simply a matter of time.
Less than two years later that date was filled in — 21 June 2003. And so it had come to pass: Chopper Read was not just making a crime-writing profit, he was a crime-writing prophet.
But there were no jokes about the way the murder was carried out. It was unusually brutal, and smacked of a South American drug-cartel killing in Miami or Colombia rather than the old painter and docker way of doing the business. For, while Moran’s murder came as no surprise to police, criminals or true-crime devotees, the nature of the double execution shocked almost everyone — making him more famous in death than in life.
The details are now well-known: Moran was with a group of children after a game of junior football when he was gunned down with his friend, Pasquale Barbaro, at the Cross Keys Hotel car park in Essendon North.
Murdering two men in front of hundreds of people might seem reckless, but to the killer it made perfect sense.
Moran was no easy target. He had carried a gun since he was a teenager and was considered an expert in counter-surveillance. For added security he had repeatedly changed addresses in the previous year.
After selling his luxury home in Grosvenor Street, Moonee Ponds, he moved into his sister-in-law’s, before relocating to the large house of a friendly hotel owner. He made sure he had a bodyguard with him when he did business at night.
Months earlier, there had been an incident where shots were exchanged near a pizza parlour. In James Bond style, Moran had flicked the boot of his car to act as a shield as he sped away.
Three weeks before being shot, Moran was again warned he was a target. Never short of guns, he made it known he wanted fresh stock and was prepared to pay $3500 per handgun — well over the going rate.
The killer would have found Moran’s unpredictable movements hard to track. But Moran did have a habit he was reluctant to break: he loved football and regularly took his children to the local Auskick clinic.
On Saturday mornings he would park his pale blue Mitsubishi van at the Cross Keys Hotel overlooking the reserve.
To the killer, it was ideal. Moran was at his most vulnerable at the children’s football: more like an average suburban dad than a gangster in survival mode, although associates say he always carried a gun, even there.
The gunman knew no-one would notice him in the crowd. A stranger in a quiet street sparks interest. A man in a busy car park is anonymous.
The spot also gave the killer a clear escape route — across a footbridge over the Moonee Ponds Creek to a waiting car. The killer had to be confident in his running ability — relying on his pace and the shock of the gun blasts — to be sure no one followed.
He pulled a balaclava over his face and blasted Moran through the closed driver’s side window with a shotgun. He then used a handgun to shoot Moran’s mate Barbaro, in the passenger seat.
At least five children, including Moran’s twin girl and boy, aged six, and Mark’s fatherless children, were in the Mitsubishi van when the gunman fired. Several other kids were playing near the vehicle. ‘I have just seen my uncle shot,’ one of the girls from the van told an Auskick umpire moments after the attack.
Barbaro, known as ‘Little Pat’, was a long-time friend and a low-level crook. His criminal history included nine convictions for possessing cannabis and one for trafficking and using heroin. A big drug syndicate once used him as a trusted courier.
West Australian organised crime squad detectives arrested him at Perth Airport on 11 May 1999 with a bag holding 367 grams of amphetamines.
His choice of lawyer said much about his criminal connections. Andrew Fraser, who later that year was arrested in Melbourne and charged with cocaine trafficking, defended him. Fraser was also the Moran clan’s lawyer of choice.
Fraser told the court Barbaro was paid $3000 for carrying the drugs and was financially ruined after losing $100,000 at Crown Casino. He said his client was an alcoholic who drank Scotch and smoked marijuana as soon as he woke up in the morning.
When Judge Alan Fenbury sentenced Barbaro to six years’ jail, he said the prison term ‘might even save your life’. In reality it just postponed his death.
When ‘Little Pat’ was released in 2001, he returned to Melbourne and quickly re-established his links with Moran.
The killer selected his weapons with care. He used the shotgun to blast through the closed window. In the crime world, the shotgun is considered perfect for close-range work. You don’t miss from a metre with a 12-gauge and don’t provide much for ballistics experts to work with.
The killer then dropped the sawn-off gun next to the van and used the pistol to shoot Barbaro up to five times.
The same types of weapons, a shotgun and handgun, were used to kill Moran’s half-brother, Mark, three years earlier.
It was no coincidence. The one man, Carl Williams, was behind both killings.
The 12-gauge shotgun used to kill Jason was a popular, and cheap, Miura model Boito brand imported from Brazil in the early 1970s.
An inscription engraved on the metal breech of the shotgun reads: ‘Mitch on your 21st … from The Boy’s’ with the date ‘22-4-56’, suggesting the gun had been originally bought in 1977.
One of the first on the scene that Saturday was, ironically, an ex-detective called Phil Glare, who was working at a scrap-metal merchant’s across the road. He found Moran and Barbaro already dead in the van.
Glare, an old-style detective from the disbanded consorting squad, is no stranger to gangland wars and public executions. He was escorting Raymond Patrick Bennett to an armed robbery hearing when Bennett, also known as Chuck, was shot dead by an unknown gunman inside the old Melbourne Magistrates’ Court building in November 1979. Bennett’s murder remains unsolved.
The court hit was a payback. Bennett had been one of three men who had walked into the Wantirna unit of well-known gangster Les Kane and shot him in the bathroom, using modified automatic rifles fitted with silencers. Kane’s body was never recovered.
Les had been married at least twice. His daughter from his first marriage, Trish, went on to marry a young Jason Moran. Police insist the bald facts are that Kane’s brother, Brian, was the gunman in the City Court who killed Bennett. In November 1982, Brian Kane was shot dead in the Quarry Hotel, Brunswick.
Days later the young Jason Moran placed a death notice in The Sun to ‘Uncle Brian’ from ‘Your Little Mate’.
But the Moran family connection to underworld murders does not stop there.
Jason and Mark Moran were half brothers. They had the same mother, Judy, but different fathers. Mark’s father was a Sydney gunman called Les ‘Johnny’ Cole, originally a painter and docker from Melbourne who became a standover man for NSW gangster Frederick Charles ‘Paddles’ Anderson.
Cole was gunned down outside his luxury home at Kyle Bay in November 1982, in what was the first of eight murders in a Sydney underworld war.
Jason’s father was Lewis Moran who, together with his brother ‘Tuppence’, was respected by Melbourne’s underworld. Both were well-known figures at the racetrack.
But Tuppence’s health had been failing for years and he had become less active than he once was. He indulged in breeding a few racehorses at a property near Melton, west of Melbourne. Tuppence was well-liked. So much so that he would be the only adult male Moran to survive the war.
Lewis had his own problems and was on remand over drug charges when Jason was shot. He was refused permission to attend his son’s funeral on security grounds and declined to share his thoughts on the murders with homicide squad detectives.
Besides crime and punting, the Morans’ great love was Carlton Football Club. Judy Moran’s father, Leo Brooks, was the club’s doorman and general assistant. Many star recruits, from rogues to Rhodes scholars, boarded with Brooks during the 1970s and ’80s.
For some, the bonds remained for life. Premiership star Wayne Johnston told a reporter he met Mark and Jason through Brooks. ‘In those days a lot of the players, myself included, used to come down from the country and stay with Leo and that’s where I first met the boys. I used to babysit them.’
For one of the Moran funerals, the club lent the family one of its treasured Premiership flags. It took years to get it back. Judy Moran insisted it was a gift. Perhaps she was confused.
JASON Moran came from a family of career criminals, but had many chances to break free. In the end, he loved the idea of becoming a gangster too much.
The deaths of his wife’s father and uncle, as well as the murder of his half-brother’s father, didn’t seem to show him that it was a career with clear limitations. In the underworld, fringe benefits can be tempting, but the redundancy package is distinctly unattractive. It is small, made of lead and arrives suddenly. You don’t even see it coming.
Educated at a solid middle-class private school, Moran excelled at sport but was not interested in taking advantage of academic opportunities or tertiary studies. Why be a lawyer when you could buy one?
Never too concerned about blood, he worked at the City Abattoir near the Newmarket saleyards for three years before the business closed. He then worked at a duty-free shop and later in the jewellery industry. But as his tastes for an expensive lifestyle increased, his stomach for honest work declined.
He carried a handgun before he was old enough to drive and was always prepared to let people know he was armed. Regular drinkers at the Laurel Hotel in Ascot Vale tended to give young Moran a wide berth. He once followed a family friend into the toilet after a minor argument, pulling a gun and shoving the barrel into his head with the accompanying threat to blow it off. Lightweight criminals were frightened of him, while heavyweights did not react because of their respect for his father.
When Moran went to jail, his reputation for violence grew. One fellow inmate remembers the new boy in the (shower) block would tell anyone who bothered listening he was a force to be reckoned with. ‘Do you know who the fuck I am?’ he would ask. It was a rhetorical question.
Moran became a staunch ally of Alphonse Gangitano, selfproclaimed De Niro of Lygon Street. They shared interests: protection rackets, illegal gambling and violence.
Some of the violence was premeditated — some simply mindless. He bashed a stranger with a wheel brace in Punt Road because he believed the man had not used his indicator when passing.
No-one challenged him.
In 1995 police set up a video camera in the house of a family across the road from Moran’s. When he found out, he is alleged to have responded by telling the family he would bomb their house and harm their children.
They sold the house, allegedly at a hefty loss, and launched a writ against the police force.
After Gangitano shot standover man Greg Workman at a St Kilda party, Moran helped get his then friend off the hook.
But it all changed after December 1995, when Moran and Gangitano went berserk in a bar in Melbourne’s nightclub strip of King Street.
They were charged and the court case dragged on for years. Moran was caught on police listening devices saying Gangitano was out of control — a ‘Lulu’.
On 16 January 1998, Gangitano was shot dead in his home in Templestowe. Police say Moran was the gunman and the murder weapon was thrown from the Westgate Bridge. Police divers were never able to find the gun at the bottom of the Yarra.
The Morans always denied involvement in the murder and kept a cross in their front yard as a tribute to Gangitano. Crocodile tears from gangsters in crocodile shoes, police say.
Alphonse’s death should have shown Jason nobody was bulletproof. He failed to understand that his time would come.
In the underworld, the hunter can become the hunted overnight.
Moran was convicted of the King Street assault even though the judge remarked that his arrest, in which he received a fractured skull, was ‘remarkably heavy handed’.
One of the police with the heavy hands later wandered into a Moonee Ponds pub for a drink. Standing at the other end of the bar was Moran with a group of heavies. A drink arrived for the policeman, care of Moran, who then walked over and said there were no hard feelings over the arrest, but as this was his area the copper should have his free drink and then ‘fuck off.’ The policeman told Moran he would not accept the drink but would accept the advice. He left.
Mark was murdered while Jason was in jail. He was let out to attend the funeral. Many predicted he would plot the payback. A death notice he put in the Herald Sun strongly implied revenge.
But when he was released from jail in 2001, he applied to the parole board to travel overseas because of fears for his life.
Members of his family suggested he stay overseas, away from trouble.
He would receive regular payments from family enterprises, and could have lived a comfortable and somewhat anonymous life. But that would cramp his style. He wanted the notoriety of a gangster’s life, apparently unaware he was doomed to the infamy of a gangster’s death.
Against all advice, he returned to Melbourne within months.
FOR the homicide squad, all investigations start with looking for motive, means and opportunity. In most murder cases, the challenge is to find someone who wanted the victim dead. For homicide squad crew two, which was originally assigned the Jason Moran case, there were too many to choose from. It was a matter of trying to discount some of his enemies.
And in the Morans’ social and business circles, enemies don’t just cross you off their Christmas-card list.
There were many theories. One was it was a payback by Italian gangsters for Moran killing Gangitano.
Moran had many enemies, but the homicide squad quickly came to believe that Carl Williams was the most likely organiser. They certainly knew he was not the gunman — who was described as slim, fit and fast.
Police knew of Williams’ hatred for the Morans and he was the number one suspect for Mark’s murder. But who was the actual gunman this time?
Several names were mentioned and for once Andrew Veniamin’s was not among them: he had a rock solid alibi. But one career crook was mentioned: a staunch friend of Carl’s who had done jail time with him.
The former armed robber was known to be super fit, ruthless and violent. He became known as ‘The Runner’.
He was considered one of the hard men of the prison system and diagnosed by a forensic psychologist as a full-on psychopath.
Little wonder, considering his past. Born into desperate domestic violence in the 1960s, he saw one of his sisters die young of heart failure. His mentally-disturbed father regularly beat him.
The young Runner came home from school to find his father stabbing his mother. He jumped in and saved her life.
He was first sent to Pentridge when he was 17, for assault. On his release he became one of Australia’s most prolific armed robbers, always running from the scene for hundreds of metres to his waiting getaway car. He was an underworld soldier and did not need to be asked twice when Williams approached him in jail to kill Moran — a man he had never met.
‘I said “yes” to show him my loyalty. I was aware of Carl’s hatred of the Moran family. Carl told me about an incident in 1999 where Carl was shot by Jason Moran,’ he later told police of the short-lived and murderous relationship that ended badly for all concerned.
Williams needed a new hit man, as he was becoming increasingly worried about Veniamin. While Williams and Benji appeared to be loyal to each other, Carl was beginning to have doubts.
He had wanted Veniamin to set up Moran but despite many promises had failed to deliver. Williams knew that Veniamin had once hero-worshiped Mick Gatto and began to think the hit man could be turned against Carl. He knew Veniamin had killed former friends such as Dino Dibra and Paul Kallipolitis, so why not Williams himself?
Williams had been shot once and had no intention of being shot again. So The Runner was ideal. Loyal, part mad and ruthless — the perfect CV for a paid killer.
Even before the bodies of Jason Moran and Barbaro were removed from the van, the dogs were barking: The Runner pulled the trigger.
He had a long and remarkable criminal history and was a former member of the ten most wanted by police.
In March 1990, he escaped from jail in South Australia where he had been serving a long sentence for armed robberies. The following month he was arrested in Melbourne and questioned over four armed robberies.
As he was being driven to the city watch-house, he jumped from an unmarked police car and escaped again. The sleepy policeman in the back seat did not have him handcuffed. (Many years later this detective was implicated for his alleged involvement in one of the underworld murders.) After his escape, The Runner was arrested near Kingaroy in Queensland in January 1991.
Associates of the Morans were to be dragged into the war as Melbourne gangsters were eventually forced to take sides. Some with no real interest in the feud would also end up as victims.
Ironically, the Williams and Moran children attended the same private school. It would have made for interesting parentteacher nights.
Once, Roberta Williams complained to police that Jason had harassed her outside the school. She considered seeking an intervention order but later withdrew her complaint. She didn’t mention Carl’s plan to lie in wait for Moran outside the school, nor the idea of her picking a fight with Trish Moran to lure Jason to come out of hiding.
Never mind that, if it had come off, he would be shot in front of the Williams and Moran kids. Collateral damage.
After Mark’s murder, Williams contacted one of the authors who had written that he was a suspect, saying ‘You could get a man killed writing things like that.’
The double murder at the Auskick Clinic looked like a perfectly planned hit but it wasn’t. For weeks, Williams and his partner had been trying to find Moran to ambush him.
Their efforts would have been considered laughable if not for their deadly intent. Much of it seemed inspired by bad Hollywood movies more than real cunning.
As mentioned earlier, they flirted with mad plans such as hiding in the boot of Moran’s BMW or lying beneath shrubs outside the house where he was believed to be staying.
One problem was they couldn’t find where he was living.
Of course, there was the idea lifted from The Untouchables, of The Runner dressing as a woman pushing a pram with a gun in it. He was many things but he was no Yummy Mummy.
Moran was on the move and hard to find. He knew he was hot, so he kept changing addresses. So when Williams and his sidekick spotted him at the Gladstone Park Red Rooster it was Jason, not them, who was armed. That’s when they followed him and he flipped the latch on the hatchback and fired shots at them.
Finally, Williams was tipped off that Moran took his children to Auskick training every Saturday morning in Essendon North, near the Cross Keys Hotel.
But it was not the hit of choice. Williams wanted Moran killed at Fawkner Cemetery on the anniversary of Mark Moran’s murder — but the hit team slept in and missed their Mark (or Jason).
It was then that the Auskick plan was set in stone for the following week.
During the week, The Runner and The Driver (of the getaway car) went to the Cross Keys ground to plan the murder. The Runner would be dropped at the hotel car park where Moran would be parked. He would run up, shoot Moran in the head and then run over a footbridge to the getaway van.
The hit men collected the guns stashed at the Pascoe Vale house of Andrew Krakouer, brother of former football champions Phil and Jimmy, and went to the Cross Keys carpark. Meanwhile, Williams had set up his blood-test alibi.
As expected, Moran arrived — but there was a problem. Noone had given the hit man a photo of his target. He saw a man he believed was Moran. ‘I thought it might have been Jason because people were coming up to him, shaking his hand and generally paying attention to him. His behaviour was typical of a gangster.’
Williams and another member of the team drove by and gave the thumbs up — then headed off to the doctor’s appointment.
‘I then put on my balaclava and gloves and jumped out from the van, carrying the shotgun in my right hand. I had the two revolvers in a belt around my waist. I ran to the driver’s side window of the blue van, aimed the shotgun at Jason Moran and fired through the closed window,’ The Runner later told police.
Moran slumped forward and The Runner fired again. He dropped the shotgun, grabbed his long-barrelled revolver and fired at least another three shots. He then took off, running over the footbridge to the waiting van.
Moran was the target. Later, The Runner would tell police he was unaware there was a second man in the car and only learnt he had killed Little Pat when he heard it on the news.
‘I did not even know that I had shot Pasquale Barbaro until later…I regret that happening.’
He had been promised $100,000 for killing Moran. He was paid just $2500.
JOHN William Moran was a good man and an upstanding citizen. He joined the army in 1941 during World War II to fight for his country. He died peacefully with his family on 22 June 2003. He was 81.
There were only a handful of death notices for John William Moran from his family and the Glenroy RSL, where he was a respected regular. He was also a member of the Glenroy Lawn Bowls Club, having been a player, selector and coach for 30 years.
About 60 people attended the quiet and dignified service for the former bootmaker at the Fawkner Crematorium.
Jason Matthew Patrick Moran (no relation) died the day before John Moran. He also ‘passed away’ in the company of members of his family — his six-year-old twins and their young cousins. But it was not peaceful.
For Jason Moran — gunman, drug dealer, standover man and killer — there were hundreds of death notices. In death he was accorded qualities he did not readily reveal in life. In the notices he was described as ‘a gentleman … a lovable rascal … a special friend … a good bloke … a diamond’.
About 700 ‘mourners’ attended his funeral at St Mary’s Star of the Sea in West Melbourne — the same church where Gangitano had been farewelled. Police were required for traffic control. Floral tributes worth thousands were sent.
Moran’s mother, Judith, a big blonde woman compared in her younger days with the former film star Diana Dors, spoke at the funeral and gave a not-so-cryptic message to those present. ‘All will be dealt with, my darling,’ she said.
Judy Moran would be a regular face in the media in the years ahead as she attended court hearings related to the deaths of her two sons and husband. She always dressed to impress and spent hours on her makeup and hair. At times she appeared to be a parody of herself, caught in some fantasy world — always denying her family’s culpability while condemning others’ violence. She called for the return of capital punishment — side stepping the fact that her Jason was a gunman and suspected murderer.
But there was one image of her at the Cross Keys slumped on a fence with no make-up and no outlandish outfit. A real mother weeping real tears for a son she adored but could not control.
Jason Moran was loved by his family and their grief was every bit as real as anyone feels when they lose someone close.
But the assorted mates, associates, crime groupies and downright fools who have tried to suggest he was anything but a callous thug must have been sampling the amphetamine-based products Moran peddled.
He was described as a ‘family man’ — yet he pursued a violent criminal career that constantly placed him, his wife and children under threat, and he was always happy to wreck someone else’s family.
He was warned at least three weeks before his murder that his card had been marked, yet he still drove around with his children as though he (and they) were bullet proof.
The truth is that Moran was born into a life of violence and crime — and revelled in it. He showed no signs of wanting to change.
The tragedy is that the fascination exerted by gangsters is selfperpetuating. At one gangland funeral, two young children step from a funeral limousine. The boy, aged about six, is dressed in a little gangster suit and wears the mandatory gangster sunglasses, although the weather is bleak and overcast. The child looks directly at a press photographer and flips him ‘the bird’. This was the next generation on display.
Most people in Melbourne know the names of Gangitano and Moran, but few recognise the names of the detectives who originally headed the investigation into their murders (for the record, they were Detective Senior Sergeants Charlie Bezzina and Row-land Legg).
Ned Kelly may be Australia’s most recognisable name but few can recall the police killed at Stringybark Creek — Kelly’s fellow Irishmen: Michael Scanlon, Thomas Lonigan and Michael Kennedy.
American author Damon Runyon once wrote: ‘Legitimate guys are much interested in the doings of tough guys, and consider them romantic.’
But there was nothing romantic about Jason Moran. Beyond his own family and friends, he was no great loss. And he brought it on himself.