Oh, sinnerman, where you gonna run to?
Oh, sinnerman, where you gonna run to?
Oh, sinnerman, where you gonna run to?
All on that day.
– ‘Sinnerman’, traditional
For a day and a half the 27-seater Australian jet sat on the tarmac away from the main passenger terminals, guarded against interference by security cameras and foot patrols. If anyone was a candidate to attempt a brazen escape even this late in the game, Tony Mokbel was. Police were conscious he had accumulated hundreds of criminal contacts over the years and still had millions hidden to pay off any helpers.
In addition to those who would want to see Mokbel free rather than brought back to Australia there were plenty who would have preferred to see him dead. Criminals and bent cops alike who had dealt with Mokbel had everything to fear from a man facing a lengthy jail sentence who could decide to tell tales.
At 10.30 the night before he flew out, Tony had a short phone conversation with Danielle from custody. ‘I’m going. I love you,’ he told her. The next morning the prisoner was woken early and taken from Korydallos jail in a convoy of vehicles and driven fifty minutes to the airport. Industrial action by Athens air traffic controllers threatened to derail proceedings, but any hopes Mokbel might have harboured of a last-minute delay were dashed when the snap strike ended and normal flight times resumed.
After a final check of the plane’s fuselage, eight uniformed state and federal police escorted a casual Mokbel, dressed in a black T-shirt and khaki pants, on board. The jet taxied down the runway and took off, leaving Athens just before 9 am Greek time. Out the window was central Athens, the Parthenon, the mountain range where fellow fugitive Paleokostas had hidden out, and the little tram rattling out to Glyfada near where Danielle, Brittany and Renate remained.
The return voyage of Tony Mokbel was decidedly more luxurious than his furtive rough-seas departure. The fugitive was handcuffed and surrounded by burly men with machine guns. But he was also on a private $40 million Gulfstream IV jet hired just for him. The ‘con air’ flight cost the public $450,000, although authorities said Tony would later pay the bill with seized assets.
With his hands cuffed in front of him Mokbel spoke little during the 21-hour flight home. There were AFP agents and heavily armed Soggies on the Mokbel jet. But unlike at his arrest, there were few familiar faces from his lifetime of being pursued by the law. Sensitivities to the prisoner’s shameless ploys and lawyer-happy ways meant officers with close connections to his cases – such as Purana detectives – were left off the plane. ‘So there were no allegations: you unofficially promised me this or you pestered him,’ Purana chief Bernie Edwards said. ‘They were there straight out for transport.’
As on his departing trip Mokbel stopped between Greece and Australia at the Maldives. This time it was in more comfortable circumstances. Mokbel was not doubled over from seasickness and the stop was for refuelling rather than emergency repairs.
As the nation’s most notorious criminal winged his way back home plenty of gangland women who had personally known Mokbel were willing to savour his demise. Judy Moran, for one, had not forgiven him. Mokbel was charged with the murder of her ex-partner, Lewis, and Tony had been rolling with Carl Williams when Carl had arranged the deaths of her sons Mark and Jason. Mokbel’s capture had given the crime family matriarch a sudden reverence for the forces of law and order.
‘I always knew he’d be back here. The police were very strong in their thoughts of getting him back here,’ Judy said. ‘We must give all gratitude to them and the government. Why should he be over in Greece living the high life? He has to face justice and justice will be served and he won’t be out for the rest of his life. I will [celebrate] when he receives the right sentence – life for each murder, not just concurrent. He put my family and myself in a war zone. Justice will be served,’ she said. Capitalising on Mokbel’s most embarrassing moment she offered to send some of her blonde hair clippings to Tony’s jail so he could make himself a new wig.
Another underworld widow, Wendy Peirce, whose husband, Victor, was gunned down by Veniamin, pulled even fewer punches than Judy Moran about the homeward-bound fugitive. ‘Personally I think he’s a disgrace. He’s got kids of his own and he’s allegedly getting charged with the murder of Lewis Moran and he had a wife and kids,’ Peirce said. ‘I think he’s just an arrogant pig. That’s the impression I had when I first met him. People say he’s a gentleman in a suit and tie. Whether he’s in a monkey suit he’s still a pig. He came across as being arrogant, short and fat. A bald-headed fat arrogant person. And I hope justice prevails if he’s guilty of the murders,’ she said. ‘I hope justice is served then directed to life in prison.’
There were kinder words for incoming Tony from his would-be mother-in-law, Joan Madin, who he had kept moneyed from abroad. Danielle’s mum said her daughter had always been enamoured of Mokbel and would stand by her man. ‘My daughter loves him. She has always loved him and she will always be there for him – always,’ she told the author.
Roberta Williams also had kind words for the returning renegade. ‘Tony was a great bloke. He doesn’t put an act on, he’s just a great, kind, caring bloke,’ she said. ‘A very, very excellent bloke, top bloke, one of the best blokes you could ever meet. He’s the best dad you could ask for, the best uncle, brother. You can’t fault him. He’s honest, he’s upfront, he’ll just say it how it is – he won’t piss in your pocket.’
At 6 am on Saturday 17 May 2008 the jet landed in Australia at Port Hedland on the north-west coast. It cleared customs before beginning the final cross-country leg to Victoria. Tony was retracing in reverse his escape route – flying over the transcontinental road trip he had made seventeen months earlier with the Reservoir dogs. Once Mokbel landed on terra firma it was Victoria Police’s job to get him into prison without incident.
Despite the massive interest, the details of Mokbel’s return were kept a tightly held secret. There was a series of diversions and false alarms as Mokbel’s hometown press scrambled desperately to establish where Fat Tony would land. Speculation was rife that the jet could land at Avalon airport, not far from his ultimate destination of Barwon prison near Geelong. Rumours also circulated that on Saturday morning Soggies had been seen training at Point Cook, which suggested the RAAF base was another possibility. One school of thought predicted Mokbel would land in Adelaide then be taken by road more than seven hours to his cell.
By early afternoon Essendon Airport firmed as a late-breaking smokie after a prison van was spotted pulling out of a hangar. In the end mysterious van sightings were red herrings and all the chatter was just white noise filling the vacuum of a frustratingly well-kept secret.
After 15,000 kilometres and twenty-one hours in the air, Fat Tony finally landed in his hometown in rain on the outskirts of the city’s main airport at Tullamarine at 1 pm. It was a bleak, gunmetal-grey, bitter, wet Melbourne day. Six Soggies walked the handcuffed crim from the jet to a waiting helicopter. A second helicopter took off as a decoy. Authorities were nervous that until Mokbel was safely behind bars at Barwon, he might still pull off another dangerous stunt. ‘There were concerns about him escaping, people getting at him and the safety of the police involved,’ said Edwards.
An armoured van travelled south from New South Wales. In the back was another crew of Special Operations Group officers and Purana chief Bernie Edwards. They met the whirlybird in a paddock near Barwon and Mokbel was escorted from the chopper to the van.
It can be frustrating being a straight cop, following the rules to the letter and restraining your dislike of lawyered-up millionaire criminals. But there are some small pleasures. There was a leak in the roof of the armoured vehicle and the grisly weather was manifesting itself inside the van in a constant cold water drip onto a seat. ‘That’s where Tony got to sit,’ Purana chief Edwards said. ‘Because he was the last one in.’
Mokbel was given his paper warrants and told a bail justice would visit him later in prison. ‘Documents had to be served on him prior to him being in custody. Everything was planned down to the most minute detail so there wouldn’t be an argument – “You should have served documents on him before prison,”’ Edwards said. He said the secrecy of the operation was to protect those bringing Mokbel back. ‘If I was sitting on that plane and every man and his dog knew every detail, I would be fuming,’ he said.
Barwon maximum-security prison rises out of flat paddocks in Lara near Geelong. A nondescript driveway leads into a haphazard carpark in the shadow of a stone building that looks more like a medieval castle than a modern jail. Not long after the helicopters hit the air, the armoured van containing Mokbel followed by a blue four-wheel-drive rolled up the drive and straight into the jail compound. And with that Mokbel’s wet, confusing, rumour-filled, anticlimactic homecoming was over, and the fugitive was banged up back home.
A bail justice held an out-of-sessions hearing in the prison to avoid risks associated with taking Mokbel into the inner-city courts. Never one to shy away from an unreasonable request, Mokbel no doubt raised, as he said he would, the prospect of bail. But with the fugitive’s excellent adventures still fresh in everyone’s memory, the court official remanded the prisoner in custody.
Inside the jail his new neighbours included his long-time friend Carl Williams, a number of their gangland acquaintances whose names are suppressed, and Muslim terror plotters. If the weather was a comedown from Greece it would be hard to describe what Barwon’s culinary offerings must have looked like compared to fresh seafood, souvlaki and dolmadikia. The prison kitchen’s chicken slop with bun would struggle to keep Fat Tony in the manner to which he had become accustomed.
Tony had lasted two years and two months on the run since failing to show at court. ‘Getting him back was great but we knew all the trials were going to follow,’ said Jim Coghlan. ‘The absolute exhilaration for me was the arrest over there. Going to Greece and those three weeks.’ Now that he was back behind bars the police job was over. Officers would still have to give evidence at Tony’s trials but the rest was down to the prosecutors.
Inspector Edwards: ‘It’s a fantastic story for the people involved and the previous management of Purana. Jim O’Brien left before Mokbel was brought back. Pity he wasn’t here for that.’
Edwards, O’Brien and Coghlan have all been coppers for about three decades and the bringing to justice of the Mokbels was likely to remain the pinnacle of their careers. ‘We’ve been in the job for what, twenty-eight years, nearly thirty years,’ Detective Sergeant Jim Coghlan said. ‘Nothing I can do from here on in can compare to this.’