AROUND Australia police have become increasingly aware of a sinister new trend in murder cases.
Thirty years ago Homicide Squads were sneeringly known as the ‘domestics’, because most murders involved family members or close friends.
In simpler times the offender often rang the police minutes after the killing, filled with remorse, to report the crime and then confess.
Even in cases where the offender tried to cover his tracks, it was usually too late. Most murders were not premeditated, alibis could not be fabricated, forensic evidence was left untouched, offenders would panic and police would identify likely suspects within hours. In short, most killers were inexperienced in criminal matters, and had no idea how to avoid detection.
In the murder business it is planning, combined with ruthlessness, that can create the perfect crime. In the underworld, there is no shortage of gangsters who will kill … for a price.
Victorian police know of at least ten recent unsolved murders which they believe were contract killings, carried out by paid hitmen.
A recent study has confirmed detectives’ worst fears. Not only career criminals, but lovers, former wives and husbands, fathers and greedy business partners are looking for hired killers to do their dirty work.
Police know cases of seemingly respectable men who have tried to organise the murder of their former wives. They will sit and calmly talk through the details of the crime with the hitman as if it were just another business deal.
Some even agree that the mother of their children should be raped and possibly tortured before being killed, to further push suspicion from them. Some practice their ‘grief-stricken’ response ready for when they are told of the untimely death.
In a Melbourne case where police thwarted an attempt by a businessmen to get a hitman to kill his former wife, they moved in at the last minute. Police arrived at the man’s house a short time after the woman was supposed to have been murdered.
The husband’s lips quivered and his eyes filled with tears. He had practised for this moment. Unfortunately for him, so had the poker-faced policeman at the door. ‘I have terrible news for you, sir,’ the policeman said. ‘Your wife is alive — and I am arresting you for conspiracy to murder’.
The husband, all set to ‘break-down’ with the news his wife had been killed in a unexplained attack, suddenly found he didn’t need to fake emotion. The shock real enough when he realised his scheme had failed and he was heading to jail for many years.
In some cases, men have been prepared to orchestrate circumstances so that their children find their mother’s dead body as a way to keep police looking in other directions.
In one case in England a father persuaded his two sons to beat their mother to death while he set up his alibi by sipping beers and playing darts at the local pub. He promised his boys an overseas trip and a jet-ski as a reward.
The cold-bloodedness of some of the plots are disturbing. In one case a husband demanded a body part, such as a finger, be provided by the hitman after the killing as proof that the contract had been carried out.
The husband brought his wife and child to a meeting with a supposed killer so that he would recognise the woman when he went to kill her. The husband, who had an injured wrist, had his wife drive him to the meeting even though she was unlicensed. He told his wife he was meeting the man because he wanted to buy a car from the stranger.
He manipulated his wife to pass within metres of the would-be killer by taking her and their child to a nearby shop to buy them chips.
To fight back against the spate of contract killings, police have begun to use undercover operatives to short circuit the plots before they are carried out.
In the first major research project carried out into contract killings in Australia, Detective Chief Inspector Ron Blackshaw has found that killers have been offered between $5000 and $50,000 to carry out murders.
‘Victoria Police records indicate individuals are prepared to pay a contract killer up to $50,000 for their services,’ Mr Blackshaw said.
He said police knew of several criminals prepared to kill for a price. Blackshaw, a former homicide investigator who has completed the research paper for his Masters Degree in Criminology, said some paid hits could go unreported.
‘One cause for concern, is the possibility of a major “dark figure” of homicide.’ Blackshaw, who also tutors in psychology and crime, said the person most likely to pay for a murder is a lover or spouse rather than a business partner or crime figure.
He said two undercover operatives had to be relocated after their identities were disclosed in court. One had received a number of death threats before being moved.
In one case, a paid hitman confessed to police that he killed a Melbourne man for $12,000 but as he had not been cautioned and the interview was not taped the statement could not be used in court and he was not charged.
In another case, a hitman was briefed on a victim and given details of the type of weapon to be used and the time and place for the murder. Police said he decided not to take the job, but a week later another man carried out the killing.
At least three women who had contracts taken out on their lives by their husbands have moved and been given new identities for added protection. In two cases the offenders have been released from jail after each served less than five years.
The law on incitement to murder was changed in 1993 so that an offender can be sentenced to life. Previously the maximum was five years jail.
In one case where police charged a man with plotting to have a hitman kill his wife, detectives believe another killer from Europe was flown in to complete the job. Police put the woman under protection and the suspected contract killer later left Australia.
Of the ten suspected unsolved contract killings all the victims were males, three were drug-related, one gambling, and one involved a struggle for power in organised crime.
The head of the homicide squad, Detective Chief Inspector Rod Collins, said once a hitman had struck successfully he was likely to continue to accept contracts.
‘We know there are criminals who will kill for money. There a number of major rewards on offer for information on murders which look as if they may have been professional hits,’ he said. ‘These people know the law and become more difficult to prosecute as they become more proficient,’ he said.
In the twelve cases detected over two years where undercover police posed as hitmen the proposed victims were wives, daughters, brothers, a former lover, a son-in-law, a business partner and a drug rip-off.
In one case a man charged with murder actually offered an undercover hitman money to kill him, in a bizarre ‘suicide’ plan.
His name was William James Robinson. He was charged, and later convicted, of paying $40,000 to a contract killer — actually an undercover policeman — to murder his lover’s husband, Robert Purvis. After he was charged Robinson also wanted his lover killed, as she would be a key witness against him.
Realising that he would be convicted of the first murder, Robinson withdrew the contract against his lover and asked the ‘hitman’ to kill him (Robinson) as he did not want to spend years in jail. In the end, Robinson had to do the job himself. He was convicted and committed suicide in Pentridge in 1996.
Blackshaw found, not surprisingly, that criminals found it easier to find a hitman than non-criminals, who were more likely to be duped by an undercover police officer because they could not tap in to the network of ‘Murder Inc.’
He concluded that using undercover officers posing as hitmen saved lives by stopping murder plots. ‘Otherwise there is a presumption that the procurer will persevere until a willing killer is found.’
In England a man became so desperate to find a hitman to kill his wife he put an ad in the local paper. ‘An opportunity to earn 250 pounds in a few minutes. A man of average intelligence with a tearaway disposition willing to take chances wanted for out-of-the-ordinary job which can be performed only once.’
When non-criminals tried to find killers they were usually thwarted but criminals, on the other hand, found it disturbingly easy to find killers without conscience who will murder strangers.
FOR the first time Homicide Squad detectives have ranked a series of ten recent murders as probable contract killings. A rating of ten indicates a certain hit, based on an off-the-record confession or ironclad evidence deemed inadmissible in a court. Less conclusive cases were given a lower rating.
CASE ONE
INVESTIGATORS rate this case ten out of ten as a professional hit.
Stuart Lance Pink was a 26-year-old drug dealer and thief. He was a street-level heroin dealer who could make plenty of money but, according to police, his ambitions exceeded his abilities.
Pink was, in criminal terms, ‘overdue’. He had begun failing to pay his suppliers. In the drug world such failures can be fatal.
Despite warnings, he continued to run his own race and began to rip off fellow drug dealers, organising ‘run throughs’, forced entry raids on other sellers’ homes, bashing them and stealing their drugs and money.
Crime syndicates don’t like wild cards. If everyone stays in his place, there are profits for everyone. But Pink was greedy and treacherous, and this could not be tolerated.
About 1 am on 11 March, 1995, Pink was walking down Park Street, St Kilda, unaware that behind him were two paid killers, one in a car, the other on foot. The latter moved up to Pink and fired three shots from a .22 pistol, one to the back of the head and two to the left temple.
The gunman stepped into the waiting car and the two drove off. The whole incident took less than 30 seconds.
An investigator said there was no doubt it was a contract killing paid for by a drug syndicate. He said organised crime used the same principles as modern companies. ‘Stick to the business you are in to make money, and if you have a crisis hire somebody with the expertise to fix it.’
Rating: ten out of ten.
CASE TWO
TOUGH Tony Franzone was a bad salesman, a would-be gangster and a big gambler with a history of minor crimes. He was well known around the illegal card games in Carlton and gave the impression of being ‘connected’ to organised crime. He like to pretend that he was a major player in the world of violence and gambling, but he was tolerated only while he paid his way.
He was given many chances to buy his way out of trouble but he kept gambling, hoping for the big win. By 1992 he owed $35,000 to legitimate gambling institutions and substantially more to criminal networks.
He decided to pull out of the peripheral crime world and married a woman he had known for eleven years. He hoped the criminal network would forget him and wipe the debt.
He was wrong. They wiped him instead.
Franzone started to get threats at work and an unidentified man started looking for him at his old Clayton address. Police believe the illegal gambling network decided to make an example of Franzone.
By killing him, they knew, they would not get the money back. But others would be encourage to pay their debts.
Franzone was shot dead outside his Mt Waverley home at 8.45 pm on 29 May, 1992. He got out of his car and was about to take his eleven-week-old baby from the rear seat when he spotted a lone gunman walking out of the shadows.
Police believe he knew the stranger was there to kill him. Franzone immediately began to run but was felled with two shots from a .32 handgun in front of his wife, who was in the driveway. The killer then walked up to the victim, who was on his knees, leant over him and fired two more shots into the back of the head, killing him instantly.
Police said the killer then calmly walked to a waiting car, believed to driven by a second man, and drove off.
There is a $50,000 reward for information on the murder.
Rating: ten out of ten.
CASE THREE
QUOCK Cuong Dwong, alias Alan Young, of Braybrook, 25, was a drug dealer on the make. According to police, he was two levels above the street in the heroin chain. Police believe he was killed by a rival heroin dealer who wanted to take over his distribution area.
‘What was abundantly clear to investigators from their analysis of the crime scene was that Dwong died as a result of a cold-blooded execution. On 30th January, 1992, DC (Dwong) was taken to the Sandringham beach. Between 2 am and 4 am he was made to kneel on the sand and was then shot to death with three bullets from a .38 handgun at point blank range,’ Detective Chief Inspector Ron Blackshaw wrote in his Masters research.
The letters IAN were scrawled in the sand near his feet. Police still don’t understand the significance of the message.
There is a $50,000 reward for information on the murder.
Rating: seven out of ten.
CASE FOUR
CHARLES Francis Caron was looking forward to watching highlights of the 1990 soccer World Cup when there was a knock on the door of his house in Kendall Street, Hampton, a bayside Melbourne suburb.
Caron’s wife, Sally, and ten-year-old son, Marcelle, had left the house and braved the Melbourne winter about an hour earlier to visit a friend recovering from heart surgery.
Police believe Caron must have been suspicious of whoever knocked on the door around 8.30 pm, because he walked up the hallway armed with a kitchen knife.
Detectives now know that the man at the door was a paid hitman armed with a shotgun and the knowledge that Caron was the only person in the house. He fired a single blast into Caron’s chest at point blank range.
Caron was dead before he slumped forward and hit the ground.
About 9 pm his wife and son arrived home. The boy opened the front door, walked in and turned left into his bedroom. He saw the room had been disturbed and told his mother. She turned on the hall light and saw her husband lying face down.
Police examined the house and found two rooms had been ransacked with drawers pulled out and the contents dumped on the floor. There was no sign of forced entry.
Caron was a 53-year-old engineer who lived in a respectable suburb, but he had a reputation for violence.
The Coroner, Iain West, said, ‘Inquiries by the police established that the deceased was a difficult, lonely and violent individual who was possibly mentally unstable. Family members stated he kept a knife beside his chair in the lounge room, it being readily available in that position for protection, with his wife stating that she believed he had been previously threatened.’
Mr West found; ‘Several motives for the deceased’s death have been canvassed at the inquest, these being:
i) a desire by an admirer of Mrs Caron to protect her from further abuse and assault;
ii) robbery, it being alleged that the deceased didn’t trust banks and left large sums of money in the house, although several hundreds of dollars in his pocket was not taken.
iii) as a result of a reprisal by a disgruntled tradesman, it having been alleged by the deceased that the tradesman had performed faulty workmanship on the extension being built at the house.’
‘There is insufficient evidence before the inquest upon which to conclude which of these motives, if any, is the reason for the deceased being killed.’
But, in a bizarre twist, police have actually found the killer, who has admitted to the crime but is unlikely to be charged. ‘He admitted off the record to investigators that he was hired to kill (Caron)… for a fee of $12,000. According to Victorian law, evidence of oral confession obtained in circumstances such as these is inadmissible at trial, and DK (the killer) was well aware of that,’ Blackshaw wrote. Police believe that a third person with an extensive criminal network paid DK the $12,000 for the hit to protect Mrs Caron from possible domestic violence. There is nothing to indicate she knew anything about the killing.
The State Government has offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer.
Rating: ten out of ten.
CASE FIVE
CHRISTOPHER Philips was a civil engineer with the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works. He lived with his wife and children in Cheltenham, in the outer southern suburbs.
According to Coroner, Louis Hill, Philips ‘was respected as a professional and family man.’
He had worked at the board’s Spencer Street office but, on 1 May, 1989, the day of his death, he started work at the Mount Waverley office and was home by 5.30 pm, earlier than his previous routine.
After dinner his wife, Stella, and two children, aged eight and ten, left the house to go to music lessons. Philips, 42, was dressed in a blue tracksuit ready to go for a run.
When the family returned they found him dead on the kitchen floor. ‘His head was found in a pool of blood and there was a pillow on his face and two kitchen knives lying next to his body,’ the Coroner found.
An autopsy revealed he had been beaten around the head with a blunt instrument and his throat cut.
Police believe the killer tried to make the attack look like a burglary gone wrong, but they believe there was another motive for the murder.
‘The family room of the house was in a disturbed condition, furnishings and books had apparently been strewn about. However, there was no evidence of theft and according to police the condition of the family room was inconsistent with an attempted burglary and theft,’ the Coroner wrote. Police said Philips was a quiet man who was hardly known by his colleagues, even though he had worked for the Board of Works for 17 years.
Mr Blackshaw said police had interviewed two suspects who gave them false alibis and lied about certain known facts. They believe the suspects paid to have Philips killed, but detectives do not know the identity of the hitman. They are still investigating and have interviewed 250 people in connection with the murder.
‘It was proved conclusively that (the suspects) conspired to mislead the investigation in several areas, and established false alibis … investigators suspected their involvement as procurers of a third party killer.’
Rating: eight out of ten.
CASE SIX
GEOFFREY Engers was a teacher who met his wife-to-be on a trip to Thailand. They settled in Melbourne but later he dumped his wife and formed a relationship with her sister.
On 15 December, 1989, Engers, 42, was shot dead with a .22 rifle as he walked towards his car parked in the driveway of his house at 7.30 am. Four shots were fired, one hitting him in the head.
Seven days earlier, a man with an extensive criminal record had approached another man and asked him to kill Engers for $15,000. He said a .22 rifle would be supplied and the target should be shot as he walked to his car in the driveway of the house. The criminal said he knew that Engers always went to his car at 7.30 am.
The man who wanted Engers dead actually took the potential hitman to the Endeavour Hills house and briefed him on the target’s movements. But the prospective killer shied off and police believe another hitman was recruited for the job. ‘There is conclusive evidence that the recruit did not proceed to kill (Engers). Investigators believe that following the refusal, conspirators successfully procured an unknown assassin to kill (Engers) using the same plan. This case is still open and the investigation is active,’ Blackshaw concluded.
Rating: ten out of ten.
CASE SEVEN
ALFONSO Muratore, 39, knew for at least a year that his death certificate had been signed. He just didn’t know who would deliver it.
Muratore was heavily connected in the Honoured Society, an Italian-based organised crime cartel with influence in the Victorian fruit and vegetable industry for more than 30 years. Muratore’s father, Vincenzo, was shot dead by the same group while on his way to the market in 1964. His son was killed in almost exactly similar circumstances in August 1992. Both were killed in Hampton, only a kilometre apart.
Alfonso carried an illegal .22 pistol for about a year after telling friends he knew a contract had been taken out on his life. He had left his wife, the daughter of alleged Melbourne godfather Liborio Benvenuto. Police believe this angered senior members of the Honoured Society. Muratore left his house with his friend and workmate, Ron Lever, the stepfather of his de facto wife. A lone gunman, armed with a shotgun, shot Lever in the legs to immobilise him. He could have easily killed the older man, but he was saving death for his real target. He stepped forward and fired four blasts into Muratore, who died instantly. The killer has never been found. There is a $50,000 reward for information on the case
Rating: ten out of ten.
CASE EIGHT
DIMITRIOUS Nanos was a well-known drug dealer who specialised in heroin and had progressed from street dealer to supplier in the narcotics chain. Police believe that on 6 April 1969 he was tortured, robbed and murdered after a tip-off from a rival drug dealer
His Hoppers Crossing house had been ransacked, consistent with a forced entry raid and drug rip-off. He had been bashed and tests showed he had been tortured before his death. He had severe head injuries, bruises covering his body, puncture marks to his left ankle, indicating a possible heroin injection, and his toe nails had been ripped off. He was beaten in several rooms of the house. A tooth was found in one room and blood in several others. Detectives believe three criminals went to the house for the rip-off. They think Nanos was tied too tightly around the mouth with tape and was beaten while taped to the cupboard doors in the hallway. It is possible he died too quickly as he had not told the gang he had $60,000 buried in the front yard of his house. Police believe one of the offenders actually rang the ambulance service asking for advice on how to resuscitate the victim.
Mr Blackshaw said there were six separate sources indicating that a notorious violent criminal and standover man accepted the job. Police said the killers stole jewellery valued at $45,000, including a $25,000 Rolex watch, and a ring with the number 69 set in diamonds, but they failed to find the stash of cash buried in the garden.
Rating: ten out of ten.
CASE NINE
SANTO Ippolito, a retired Italian fruiterer, was battered to death by a man who smashed his way into the victim’s Springvale home in December, 1991. There were no demands for money and nothing was stolen. According to police the man broke down the front door, walked into Ippolito’s bedroom and began beating him.
Ippolito’s wife turned on the light and saw the killer, but did not recognise him. She was also bashed. Police looked at the possibility that the murder was prompted by a political dispute involving the Italian Pensioners’ Club of Springvale where Ippolito, 71, was president.
Police believe the killer may have been a paid hitman because all known suspects who had a grudge or a motive to harm the victim had solid alibis. There is a $50,000 reward for information on the case.
Rating: seven out of ten.
CASE TEN
RAKESH Bhanot, 33, was helpless when he was stabbed at least ten times as he lay in a Parkville hospital bed on 8 November, 1993. Bhanot had been admitted to hospital after being found unconscious at the bottom of the Nunawading Swimming Pool two months earlier. He had been revived but suffered severe brain damage and doctors said he would never recover. On the night of the murder, a nurse on night shift at North West Hospital in Parkville saw a man wearing a balaclava.
Police and security were called but the man escaped. At 2.20 am, Bhanot was found dead in his bed. Police on routine patrol saw a red car, believed to be an early-1980s Toyota station-wagon, with P-plates parked in Poplar Road outside the hospital around the time of the murder. The two police underwent hypnosis to provide more information on what they had seen that night, but it wasn’t enough to crack the case.
The head of the Homicide Squad, Detective Chief Inspector Rod Collins, said: ‘This is a straight-out mystery. We don’t know why he was chosen.’ There is a $50,000 reward for information on the murder.
Rating: eight out of ten.
CLEVER undercover police work has foiled many murder plots. In 1993 a Melbourne man called Kemal Sahin started to plan the murder of his wife, Sevda. Through a go-between he was introduced to two undercover police who posed as hitmen.
Their first meeting was held at the Shell Service station at Kalkallo, on the Hume Freeway just north of Melbourne, on 13 June 1993. The two police met Sahin and the go-between. Their secretly-taped conversations give an insight on how cheap life can be and the callous nature of some people who appear to be normal citizens in a civilised society.
UNDERCOVER (1): ‘How are you, brother?’
SAHIN; ‘Thank you, I’m good. I want my wife cleaned.’ (Turkish expression for killed).
UNDERCOVER (2): ‘What does he mean?’
SAHIN. ‘Yes, I want her to be made non-existent, in other words, like, I don’t want her to live. At this stage my money is at Turkey.’
He said he would report his wife as missing after she was murdered.
SAHIN: ‘Nah, just that I want one, within 24 hours I’m going to report that my wife is missing to police, nothing else.’
He told the two hitmen he felt he had no choice but to kill his wife. ‘Because if I don’t do it to her she is going to do it to me.’
He said if the body was to be found there should be no evidence. ‘It’s not in an identifiable state.’
He said he was prepared to pay if she was left crippled but he preferred for her to be killed ‘Without suffering, whatever is appropriate, the shortest possible way.’
SAHIN: ‘The wife goes to school in the mornings. If you ran her over with a truck and killed her, I wouldn’t care.’
SAHIN said he was prepared to take his wife to a place where she could be killed. ‘I want to see her deceased … Once she is made non-existent my assets in Turkey like, I’m gunna go with my child … I don’t want her to live.’
Saturday, 19 June. Meeting at Kalkallo service station.
Sahin drew a map of the house for the killer.
SAHIN: ‘Do it but if you are going to do it like an accident, do it in my presence. I’ll bring her wherever you want whatever position you want. Because I could help in that regard like, no-one can say anything at me.’
Sunday 27 June, 1993 Kalkallo service station.
Sahin has been injured in a fight with his nephew. At a previous meeting the undercover police ask for a photograph of the proposed victim. Sahin goes one better and gets his wife to drive him to meet the would-be killers.
SAHIN: ‘My wife and child are at that car over there.’
UNDERCOVER: (1): ‘Did she drive the car?’
SAHIN: ‘Yeah, she drove the car, she hasn’t got a licence as well.’
He then organises for his wife and child to walk past the ‘hitmen’. ‘At this stage I will go to buy some chips with them.’
UNDERCOVER: (1) ‘What does she think you are doing?’
SAHIN: ‘At this stage she thinks that I am negotiating a car deal.’
Monday, 28 June, 1993. Kalkallo service station.
UNDERCOVER: (1): ‘Hello brother.’
SAHIN: ‘Has the task been done?’
UNDERCOVER: (2): ‘It’s done, mate.’
SAHIN: ‘So she’s gone?’
UNDERCOVER: (1) ‘It’s done, Yes.’
SAHIN: ‘Have you brought anything to prove that she is dead.’
UNDERCOVER: (2) produces eight gold bracelets and a gold chain with a pendant that reads ‘I love you’ and shows it to Sahin.
SAHIN: ‘Okay, thanks. You killed her with a gun. It’s finished in other words.’
UNDERCOVER: (2) Yeah, I shot her in the head. She’s dead.’
SAHIN: ‘Can you bring me a part of her … part of her hand, whatever?’
UNDERCOVER: (l) ‘Or part of a finger or something like that.’
UNDERCOVER: (2) ‘That’ll be hard for me to do, he wants me to chop off a finger.’
SAHIN: ‘Like he’s done it and it’s finished like no-one is going to be able to find her, is that right?’
UNDERCOVER: (2): ‘She definitely won’t be found.’
SAHIN: ‘I’m going to give $15,000 to you.’