‘You are a killer,
and a cowardly one who
employed others to do
the actual killing.’
CARL Williams spent years successfully avoiding an assassin’s bullet only to commit legal suicide while giving evidence in the days leading to his final sentencing in the Supreme Court.
Stubborn to the end, the baby-faced killer turned his back on a sweet legal deal by ignoring his lawyer’s advice to shut up and at least pretend to be sorry for launching a bloody vendetta that cost more than a dozen lives.
Williams was found guilty by a jury of the murder of Michael Marshall in October 2003. When he finally realised that the prosecution case was overwhelming, he pleaded guilty to the murders of Jason Moran (June 2003), Mark Mallia (August 2003) and Lewis Moran (March 2004). He also pleaded guilty to the 2004 conspiracy to murder Mario Condello.
In agreeing to plead guilty, Williams cut a deal that literally meant he got away with murder — many times.
He also killed or was connected to those who killed Mark Moran (June 2000), ‘Mad Richard’ Mladenich (May 2000), Willie Thompson (July 2003), Nik Radev (April 2003) and Victor Peirce (May 2002). He was directly responsible for the death of Pasquale Barbaro, who was shot dead by one of Williams’ hit men while murdering Jason Moran.
Williams is also suspected of ordering the murder of Graham Kinniburgh, who was shot dead outside his Kew home in December 2003, and has been linked to several more gangland killings.
Paranoid, frightened and self-deluded, he survived and prospered by surrounding himself with a gang of soldiers whose loyalty he won with a combination of drugs, money, power and women.
But once he was in jail, his trusted subordinates began to waver. One by one they broke the code of silence and became prosecution witnesses. Key members of the Williams camp crossed the floor leaving the man who called himself ‘The Premier’ without the numbers to survive.
So why then did the prosecution accept a plea and do a deal with the multiple killer? Why didn’t they convict him again and again for the murders he committed?
Because it would have taken up to ten years and cost millions of dollars.
It would also have given Williams the public platform and the media attention he craved. By locking him away they condemned him — as he declared himself — to a life of ‘Groundhog Days’. As it turns out — 12,783 of them.
Williams first made noises that he might be prepared to do a deal as early as November 2006. He implied he had information that could help crack the murders of police informer Terence Hodson and his wife Christine, shot dead in their Kew home in May 2004.
Detectives believed rogue police were responsible for the double murder so if Williams could provide information he would have been able to demand a big discount on his sentence.
But he was teasing. Williams did end up making a statement that seemed to implicate a former detective, but later he deliberately destroyed his own credibility so he could never be called as a prosecution witness.
During the long pre-trial process before Williams was due to face the court for murdering Jason Moran and Pasquale Barbaro, his lawyers asked Justice King: If he pleaded guilty, would the sentence be ‘crushing’?
While no promises were made, they were told Williams could expect to see some light at the end of the tunnel.
Justice King is no bleeding heart. She is a common sense judge who made her ruling on the basis of hard legal precedent. The former hard-hitting prosecutor and senior member of the National Crime Authority was well aware of the case law surrounding guilty pleas.
Some examples. Paul Charles Denyer is a serial killer who stalked and murdered three women in Frankston in 1993. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life with no minimum by Supreme Court Justice Frank Vincent, but on appeal he was given a minimum of 30 years on the grounds he should receive a discount for his guilty plea — no matter how reprehensible his crimes.
Leslie Alfred Camilleri, who killed two Bega schoolgirls in 1997, pleaded not guilty and was given life with no minimum. His partner, Lindsay Hoani Beckett, pleaded guilty and received a minimum of 35 years.
Justice King knew that if Williams pleaded she would be required to set a minimum sentence. The maximum of life was never in doubt.
Williams said he wanted a sentence that would give him some chance of getting out by the age of 70. Purana Taskforce police said they would push for a lighter sentence if he was prepared to become a witness in subsequent trials.
They wanted him to turn on his former role model, multimillionaire drug boss Tony Mokbel, who fled Australia in March 2006 only to be recaptured in Greece in June the following year.
Mokbel allegedly paid Williams to organise the murder of Michael Marshall and police claimed he was also linked to the murder of Lewis Moran. They wanted Williams to become a star prosecution witness.
While Williams may be many things, he remains an oldschool crook who believes in the code of silence. And while many of Williams’ old pals turned on him, he remained determined to stay staunch.
After he decided to plead guilty he pretended to co-operate, but anything he said was carefully crafted to lack real evidentiary value. He made sure no-one would do jail time on the basis of what he said.
So, without a promise to become a Crown witness, Williams’ negotiating position was weakened. The final deal struck was that prosecutors would not demand a crushing sentence and would not oppose a move for Williams’ father, George, to receive a suspended sentence for pending drug charges.
In effect, sentencing was to be left to Justice King without the prosecution lobbying for the longest jail term possible.
When Williams finally agreed to the deal on 28 February 2007 — just days before the jury was to be selected — the prison van taking him back to jail was called back so the papers could be signed and the plea formally entered before he changed his mind again.
In the minutes before the court was convened, his mother, Barbara, urged him to abandon the deal and take his chances before a jury. He would have been stupid to listen. With the open and shut case against him, it was virtually certain he would have been convicted and given life with no minimum. George, whose own legal fate rested on his son’s decision to plead, remained silent.
Once he pleaded, the rest should have been easy. He was to attend court for a public showing of mea culpa. He was to sit behind glass with a sad face and moo-cow eyes while his lawyers said how sorry he was. They would say he thought the Moran family was out to kill him; that he would leave jail as an old man and would miss seeing his daughter Dhakota grow into an adult; and that he should receive a hefty discount because of his remorse.
But, against legal advice, Williams insisted on giving evidence. The move was so stupid that his own legal team made him sign a waiver that he was doing it against their expert advice.
For just about an hour he gave ridiculous testimony contradicting known facts. He denied ever being paid money for the Marshall hit by Mokbel and tried to discredit Crown witnesses who were to give evidence against some of his mates.
Perhaps Williams’ attempt to protect Mokbel was motivated by more than mateship. The runaway drug boss had been paying his daughter’s private school fees after Williams was locked up. He also knew that when Mokbel was caught, the convicted drug dealer would still be a major influence in the prison system. Carl knew Mokbel could be a good friend and a bad enemy.
Williams’ testimony could not remain unchallenged. In the 90-minute cross-examination, prosecutor Geoff Horgan, SC, filleted him to protect the integrity of future Crown cases. Certainly, Justice King questioned whether Williams was showing any remorse for his actions.
Williams left the court smiling. His lawyers weren’t. But the self-confessed killer was fully aware that his two hours in the sun would probably cost him another two years in a dark cell. He told friends later he was ‘proud’ of his performance.
He wanted his fellow prisoners to know he didn’t dob anyone in to save himself.
Williams is not stupid. A psychiatric report declares him of ‘high average intelligence’. He is not mentally ill. The report declares him to be broadly normal. He was educated to Year 11 at Broadmeadows West Technical School and had a series of short term labouring jobs before being employed as a supermarket packer. He acquired a minor criminal record but soon aimed higher — by 1994 he had embarked on a career as a full-time drug dealer. By the time he married Roberta in January 2001 he had dreams of dominating the underworld.
He plotted revenge against the Morans and then felt he had to keep killing anyone connected with them to remain alive. It was always going to end with him dead or in jail for most of his life.
So where to for Williams, who at 36 can only hope he lives long enough to be released as an old man?
After the brief excitement of the sentencing, he returned to the maximum security Acacia Unit in Barwon Prison where he socialises with a few loyal henchmen.
The minimum sentence will help prison officers control him. If he behaves badly in jail his eventual parole would be threatened, leaving him facing life in jail. Prison officers say indefinite sentences destroy inmates because the dream of release is taken from them.
Eventually, when threats die down, Williams will be transferred to the mainstream and, if he behaves, he will eventually move to a more comfortable jail.
But he will always be a name. As he gets older and physically weaker he will become a target. Even the toughest long-term inmates end up at risk of being bashed or stabbed.
Some time in the future, a violent young offender might attack him just for the bragging rights.
As the years pass, he will become institutionalised. His wife Roberta will have moved on (several times), his parents will have passed away, his daughter grown up and the glamorous blonde Renata Laureano, who pops in to jail to visit him, will have found a life.
Carl Williams may have got away with murder but there is one thing no one can beat — time. It eventually wounds all heels.
DURING underworld murder hearings in Melbourne’s Supreme Court, we saw many sides of the no-nonsense Justice Betty King. We saw compassionate Betty, scholarly Betty and stern Betty. But for underworld killer Carl Williams when he was finally sentenced on 7 May 2007 it was definitely a case of Ugly Betty.
Justice King cuts a far more elegant figure than most on the bench but by the time it came to handing down a sentence, she had clearly had enough of Williams, who sat behind bulletproof glass looking by turn relaxed and bored as he listened to the reasons why he could not be released from jail until he was a pensioner.
Williams still hoped for a minimum sentence of around 33 years in exchange for his guilty plea, so he would be released before his 70th birthday.
He was being optimistic. His evidence during his plea hearing was so clearly bogus that any chance of that discount collapsed.
Purana Taskforce police believe Justice King had no choice but to revise her sentence upwards by at least two years after he showed no signs of remorse.
At law, a guilty plea is rewarded with a discounted sentence, and that discount can be increased if the accused shows sincere regret.
When addressing Williams as she sentenced him to life with a minimum non-parole period of 35 years, Justice King said: ‘I find that the evidence that you gave in the main was unbelievable, even incredible at times … I find that the manner in which you gave evidence was arrogant, almost supercilious and you left me with a strong impression that your view of these murders was that they were all really justifiable and you were the real victim.
‘You are a killer, and a cowardly one, who employed others to do the actual killing … you should not be the subject of admiration by any member of our community.
‘You were indeed the puppet master, deciding and controlling whether people lived or died.’
Minutes before the court convened, Williams showed no sign that he understood he was about to lose the best remaining years of his life. He laughed and chatted with his mother, Barbara, who sat in the back row with Williams’ father, George, and Carl’s new blonde friend, Renata Laureano. It was as if Barbara Williams was farewelling her son on a ten-day Mediterranean cruise rather than three decades down the river. She will never see him as a free man again.
A photographer was given access to take a picture of Williams behind the glass. He smiled as if he had just won the blue ribbon for growing the biggest pumpkin at the Show.
As he sat, flanked by seven big security guards, the woman whose family he had destroyed stared at him. Williams was pleading guilty to killing Judy Moran’s son, Jason, and husband, Lewis. He had faced a charge of killing her other son, Mark, but it was dropped in exchange for his guilty plea.
The Moran matriarch stood and glared from the front row at Williams for four minutes before Purana detective Senior Sergeant Stuart Bateson persuaded her to sit down: ‘Don’t fire them up,’ he gently advised.
She then sat and chatted with Purana detectives, who had spent years investigating her sons and husband.
Most Purana investigators in court wore their squad tie, which carries a small Hindu motif. It was a reminder of the ancient Indian proverb from the words of a Purana: ‘For the salvation of the good, the destruction of the evil-doers, and for firmly establishing righteousness, I manifest myself from age to age.’ Judy Moran was dressed head to toe in black — complete with an extraordinary cowboy hat and Darth Vader style wraparound sunglasses she wisely removed inside the court. But despite her apparent fashion hints, lynchings have gone out of style.
Judy Moran and Roberta Williams had their routine pre-court spat where they sniped at each other on issues of etiquette, dead relatives and fashion tastes. On this day Mrs Williams contrasted Mrs Moran’s black look with a white beanie, as she had recently shaved her head.
Their robust discussions were limited to the court foyer, as Mrs Williams was banned from the court after previous outbursts.
She waited outside for the final sentence.
Mrs Moran said repeatedly the death penalty should be returned and Williams executed. She was not such a strong advocate of capital punishment when her Jason had been accused of the murder of Alphonse Gangitano a few years earlier.
Three former heads of Purana — Inspector Phil Swindells, Superintendent Andy Allen and Inspector Gavan Ryan — were there to see the legal last rites delivered on team Williams.
A film producer and screenwriter slipped in, as did members of the public. One was quickly reminded that sunglasses perched on top of her head may be acceptable at the races but not in the Supreme Court.
Williams wanted the big finish. He planned to read a prepared statement he had in his blue folder. When he asked if he could address the court, Justice King firmly said ‘No’.
‘I expected nothing less of you,’ Williams told her. ‘You are not a judge. You are only a puppet of the police.’
Williams was taken from the court — his statement unread. He was already yesterday’s man. His departing words — ‘Aah, get fucked’ — were hardly a match for Ned Kelly’s exit line, ‘Such is life’.
It is unlikely even immature footballers would tattoo Carl’s words on their tummies. But you never know.
Superintendent Allen later spoke outside the court praising his team; pointedly reminding critics who had declared police would never smash the code of silence that they were wrong.
The Purana team and the prosecutors went for the traditional celebration meal that had seemed so unlikely in the dark days of the underworld war.
Justice King, out of her wig and gown and back in civilian clothes, wandered off for lunch. Her work was done and done well. Now she was just Hungry Betty.
Excerpts from Justice Betty King’s sentencing remarks, 7 May 2007.
Carl Williams, you have pleaded guilty to three counts of murder and one count of conspiracy to murder. The maximum penalty for each of those offences is life imprisonment.
These offences occurred during an extraordinary time in the history of this city, in that there was an almost unprecedented level of very public murders of known or suspected criminals. This was ultimately referred to in the media as the ‘gangland war’. The perception of these offences was that there was a distinct war being carried on between rival gangs, firstly, over control of the illegal drug trade, and also on what could be described as a ‘tit for tat’ basis, as reputed members of various gangs were executed in their homes or on the streets of Melbourne. The first of these recognised murders was that of Alphonse Gangitano in January 1998 and they continued on relentlessly with up to 29 persons murdered, although it is apparent that in respect of some of those murders there may have been motives other than gangland warfare.
On 13 October 1999 you were shot in the stomach by Jason Moran in a park in Gladstone Park. Mark Moran was present at the time that this occurred, and even upon your own evidence, one of the consequences of this occurring was a high degree of animosity between the Morans and yourself. It is also clear that you and Jason and Mark Moran were competitors in the selling of illegal drugs, which would have done nothing to decrease the animosity that you bore towards each other. I accept that you had a degree of apprehension in respect of the Moran brothers also, which once again is not surprising having been shot by them at close range, and undoubtedly with a warning of some description. I am unable to say whether that shooting and possible warning related to the drug trafficking business in which you were both competitors, or whether it was a more personal basis. It is unnecessary for me to determine that matter.
You went to hospital and were interviewed by the police as to your knowledge of the person or persons who were responsible for the shooting and you refused to provide any information to the investigating officers. You maintain that was because the Morans had told you that they had a police officer in their pocket, and you did not believe it would be investigated properly. I do not accept that was your reason for refusing to cooperate with police investigators, but rather your reasons related to the supposed code of silence of the criminal milieu in which you lived.
On 10 November 2000, shotgun damage was observed on the front door of your Hillside home and on a Mercedes Benz parked in the driveway. The prosecutor opened that you believed that the Morans were responsible for such shooting and it is apparent from your evidence that you did blame the Morans for that shooting.
There is no doubt, on the basis of your own evidence, that you were actively looking for Jason Moran so that he could be murdered, you equally did not dispute the role of your advisor in the Jason Moran murder by providing you with information to help locate Jason Moran and assisting you to plan the killing. In the ensuing months various plans were formulated by you and those you had recruited to assist you in the murder.
The driver in the Jason Moran murder and the shooter in the Jason Moran murder were ultimately recruited by you to carry out the murder together.
I heard you give evidence in chief and be cross- examined over a period of some hours. I find that the evidence that you gave, in the main was unbelievable, even incredible at times. It was, in my view, designed to ensure that it would provide no evidence against any person other than those who are already dead, convicted or have pleaded guilty to various offences. You denied any involvement or knowledge of involvement of Mokbel in the murder of Lewis Moran or Michael Marshall.
Not only do I consider you a most unsatisfactory witness, virtually incapable of telling the truth, except for some minor and largely irrelevant portions of your evidence, I find that the manner in which you gave evidence was arrogant, almost supercilious, and you left with me with a strong impression that your view of all of these murders was that they were all really justifiable and you were the real victim, having been ‘forced’ to admit at least some of your involvement, by the statements of other members of your group who had cooperated with police.
You do not get to be Judge, Jury and Executioner. These were not vigilante killings, they were matters of expediency to you, these people were either in your way as competitors, or persons that you believed may be vengeful towards you because of other activities you had undertaken, or because of some animosity that you bore towards them. Your reasons for killing were not justifiable; you acted as though it was your right to have these people killed. That theme constantly came through in the evidence you gave before me.
In terms of the chain of command I find that you were at the top of the chain of command of that gang, and that is entirely consistent with you giving the orders for these people to be killed, whilst not taking an active part in the physical execution of these people. As the counsellor and procurer you were indeed the puppet master deciding and controlling whether people lived or died.
I sentenced you on 19 July 2006, for the murder of Michael Marshall, after a plea of not guilty and conviction by a jury, to a period of 26 years imprisonment; one year of the sentence you were then serving was made cumulative. Making a total effective sentence of 27 years, with a non-parole period of 21 years.
Your crimes occurred as I said during a time of what has been referred to as the “gangland” or “underworld” killings. All of those murders, whether charged or uncharged, carry similar hallmarks to these murders. They are invariably executions; a firearm is usually used; they are often in public places such as streets, hotels or places where ordinary citizens would be going about their normal business. Those murders invariably have significant connections with crime or gang-related activity and whilst no ordinary member of the public has been killed or harmed during these killings, those killings have clearly engendered a level of fear within our community as to potential harm of innocent persons, and equally, a concern relating to the degree of lawlessness into which Victoria, as a community, has been plunged. You were responsible to a very large degree for that fear.
There has been intense media coverage of these murders in Melbourne, and whilst you were considered a suspect by many, including the police, the evidence of your involvement was not able to be found, due to the fact that you distanced yourself from these crimes by using others to do the killings and arranging alibis. It was not until the criminal code of silence was broken that those who knew about your involvement began to talk to the police. The sentences imposed on those persons reflect the significant discounts that were given to them for the risks they took by making statements about your involvement. Whilst you were a suspect and being referred to in the media it was apparent that you were enjoying the game of ‘being famous’. You gave interviews outside court, and appeared prepared to give your views of a variety of matters, and unfortunately the media to a degree pandered to that.
I have a concern that some younger members of the community who are involved in petty crime may be looking to you as some sort of hero. You are not, you are a killer, and a cowardly one who employed others to do the actual killing, whilst you hid behind carefully constructed alibis. You should not be the subject of admiration by any member of our community. You have robbed families of people they love, of sons, brothers and fathers.
I just want to make it clear to all who may look at this sentence that you are not someone to be admired in any way.
I have taken into account the suffering that the families of these victims have endured, as well as the suffering of other innocent people such as Ms Sugars and the owners of the Brunswick Club, also the parents and children attending Auskick, but acknowledge that whatever sentence is imposed, they will probably feel aggrieved as nothing will return their loved ones and no sentence imposed will ever feel sufficient to them.
Your prior convictions are limited in nature and do not relate to any matters of violence. You were convicted in May of 1990 of handling stolen goods, failing to answer bail and possession of stolen property and you were fined a total of $400. In March of 1993 again, at the Magistrates’ Court, a charge of criminal damage and throwing a missile for which you were placed on a nonconviction community-based order with conditions of 150 hours of community work, which you breached, but no further action was taken as the order had expired. Finally, in the County Court in December of 1994, attempting to traffic in a drug of dependence, being amphetamine, for which you were ultimately sentenced by the Court of Appeal to twelve months imprisonment with six months suspended for a period of two years. I place no reliance upon the earlier two matters and I place limited reliance upon the latter matter only as indicating that at that stage an involvement in the criminal milieu in which this offence occurred.
Your now ex-wife has three children from previous relationships, a son, aged around 18, and two daughters, approximately 13 and 14. Together with your ex-wife, you have a daughter, called Dhakota, who is aged approximately six, having been born on 10 March, 2001.
Your parents are separated. Your mother has never been in trouble with the law and your father has no convictions. Your father has had significant health problems, particularly in the last few years.
You were educated to Year 11 at Broadmeadows West Technical School and thereafter it was reported that you had a number of short-term labouring jobs. You had a series of labouring jobs, followed by opening a children’s wear shop with your wife, which became non-profitable and closed … You then were working as a semi-professional gambler from that period until being banned from the casino.
You were working as a drug trafficker up to and including the time of the murders.
The circumstances in which you have been held and will in all likelihood continue to be held for a substantial period are of relevance in mitigation of your sentence. You are currently held in the Acacia high security unit at Barwon Prison, which is the maximum security unit of the state penal system. The conditions at Acacia are quite different to those from mainstream prisoners. The visits from family are severely restricted, particularly in terms of contact visits, access out of cells during the day, mixing with other prisoners, and access to phone calls all are severely restricted. This is not what the average sentenced prisoner has to endure by way of conditions of serving a sentence. It is how you have been held, both as a person on remand and as a sentenced prisoner. It is equally evident that this will be the manner of your incarceration for some substantial time.
There are many reasons why persons are in that unit, and in your case, a major part of it is ensuring your safety. You have been in a gang war with other criminals and the issue of revenge being taken by those other persons is not far-fetched. Equally there are many within the prison system that may have a desire to make a name for themselves by causing you harm. Equally those persons who have elected to give evidence against you must be protected from you.
You have also made a statement to the police, which I have had the opportunity to read. You offered to give evidence in respect of that statement but the prosecutor has informed the Court that since you have given evidence in the manner that you have in this case, they would not consider calling you, as they do not consider you a witness of truth. That concurs with my own observations of your evidence. Accordingly, whilst there is some benefit to you by the provision of the statement, it is of little significance when compared to your criminality.
… You have uttered words of remorse in response to questions asked of you by your counsel but I find that you have no real or genuine remorse for the victims of your crimes, only remorse that you have been caught and lost your liberty.
However, I do intend to impose a minimum term, but that is on the basis of one significant factor only, which are your pleas of guilty to these offences. Whilst I find that you do not have any genuine remorse for the crimes, I am still obliged to take into account in your favour that you have entered pleas of guilty. It is pragmatic and utilitarian to give you a discount for entering those pleas, for by doing so you have prevented this Court from spending anywhere between five to ten years hearing your trials and the appeals from those trials. Equally you have released the police officers involved in this taskforce to move on to other pressing cases that need investigating, and enabled those in the Office of Public Prosecutions to pursue other prosecutions. The amount of money that has been saved as a result is considerable. That behaviour must be encouraged. It must be made clear to all charged with offences, of whatever type, that if they do enter a plea of guilty to the offences that they will receive a real and significant discount. Without your pleas of guilty I would not have imposed a minimum term for these offences, even allowing for the other mitigating material upon which your counsel relied.
Accordingly, I sentence you as follows: on
Count One, the murder of Jason Moran, you are convicted and sentenced to be imprisoned for life.
Count Two, the murder of Mark Mallia, you are convicted and sentenced to be imprisoned for life.
Count 3, the murder of Lewis Moran, you are convicted and sentenced to be imprisoned for 25 years.
Count Four, the conspiracy to murder Mario Condello, you are convicted and sentenced to be imprisoned for 25 years.
I further direct that you serve a minimum term of 35 years imprisonment before becoming eligible for parole. The sentence will commence from this day.
I have already taken into account the fact that you have been in custody since 2004 when determining the appropriate minimum and the sentence and I intend that the new minimum term that I have imposed commences from today. To make it absolutely clear: what I intend is that you are to serve 35 years imprisonment from today before you could be considered eligible for parole.