‘He became the most dangerous gangster in Australia.’
MELBOURNE’S bloodiest underworld war began with both a bang and a whimper in a tiny park in the outer-western suburb of Gladstone Park near Melbourne Airport.
Gunman, drug dealer and notorious hothead Jason Moran made two decisions – one premeditated and the other off the cuff – that started the war that would wipe out his crime family.
Moran and his half-brother Mark had arranged to meet amphetamine manufacturer Carl Williams to discuss their mutual business interests. Williams liked to talk in parks and public places to avoid police listening devices, and the Morans were happy to meet in an open space where they believed they could not be ambushed.
The Williams and Moran families had trafficked drugs for years and while they were sometimes associates, they were never friends. They often did deals and begrudgingly co-operated when it suited, but they were also competitors for a slice of the incredibly lucrative illegal pill market.
While there were many reasons for their hostility, none was big enough to go to war – business was booming. Demand had increased tenfold as amphetamines became a mainstream leisure activity. All dealers had to do was keep a low profile, source their pills and count the cash.
But the niggles remained and the Morans, always quick to take offence, began to stew. At first it was a simple domestic matter: Carl Williams’ wife Roberta had previously been married to Dean Stephens, a friend of the Morans.
The next was competition. Williams was undercutting his rivals, selling his pills for $8 compared with the Morans’ $15.
The third was business. Williams had supplied the Morans with a load of pills. But he had not used enough binding material and they were crumbling before they could be sold.
The fourth niggle was greed. The Morans claimed ownership of a pill press and said Williams owed them $400,000. Carl disagreed.
The problems could have been settled but the Morans, notorious for their short tempers and long memories, often relied on unreasonable violence to achieve what they believed were reasonable outcomes.
The meeting at the Barrington Crescent park, no bigger than two suburban blocks and surrounded by brick veneer homes on three sides, provided the Moran brothers with the perfect opportunity to remind Williams where he stood – before they shot him off his feet.
It was October 13,1999, Carl Williams’ birthday. He had just turned 29.
Williams was unlikely to have felt in danger – the mid-week meeting was to be held in the afternoon in the open – hardly the ideal place to pull a double-cross. But soon after they arrived Jason Moran pulled a gun, a .22 Derringer. A woman near by heard a man cry out, ‘No Jason’ and then a single shot.
It showed the typical arrogance of the Morans. It was daylight in middle Melbourne. Not a dark alley or an isolated spot in the bush. They simply did not believe they could be stopped.
But this time the gunman showed uncustomary restraint. Mark Moran urged his half-brother to finish the job but Jason replied they needed the big man alive if they were ever to get their money. That decision would destroy the Moran clan, and many who were close to them.
If they had killed Williams he would have been just another dead drug dealer and the case would almost certainly have remained unsolved. Instead, Williams became an underworld serial killer determined to exterminate every real or imagined rival he could find.
Williams, who prided himself on being an old-school crook, refused to co-operate with police after he was ambushed. When detectives interviewed him in hospital, Williams said he had felt a pain in his stomach as he was walking, and only then realised he had been shot.
Much later Williams told the author he did not see his attacker. ‘I have no idea who shot me and I’ve never asked … I don’t know who did it. Police told me who they think did it but that’s their business.’ When the author suggested they had nominated Jason he smiled and said, ‘You better ask them.’
Roberta Williams gave more away in a later conversation but denied the shooting was drug related. ‘Mark was yelling “shoot him in the head”, and Jason then shot him in the stomach,’ she said.
If the Morans thought that shooting Williams would frighten him, they were horribly wrong. The wound soon healed but the mental scar remained.
The drug dealer began planning his revenge, setting off a very public underworld war that would leave police, the legal system and politicians struggling to cope.
Williams, with his plump, pleasant face, his shorts and T-shirts, did not look like an influential crime boss who could order a death with a phone call.
As a strategist he would appear more a draughts man than a chess man.
Perhaps that is one of the reasons he flew just under the police radar – until he became the most dangerous gangster in Australia.
Police knew he was part of his family’s drug business but they assumed the former supermarket packer was a worker and not the foreman.
Like the Morans, police underestimated Williams and his power base. He was ruthless, cashed-up and had recruited a loyal gang of reckless young drug dealers driven by pill money, wild dreams and illegal chemicals.
His team seemed to move from underworld try-hards to big players in a matter of months. Guns, drugs and rivers of cash can do that.
Williams’ reputation and power grew with every hit. He began to refer to himself as ‘The Premier’ because ‘I run this fucking state’. But to detectives, he was still ‘The Fatboy’.
Police say Williams was certainly connected to ten underworld murders and would have kept killing if he had not finally been jailed.
He will never face charges over many of the murders he arranged after cutting a deal with police that gives him some chance of release one day. His only remaining hope is that he will die a free old man.
Williams’ rise from middle-ranked drug dealer to heavyweight killer should never have happened. His plans for revenge and controlling a major drug syndicate should have collapsed when he was arrested in slapstick circumstances six weeks after the Morans shot him.
For Broadmeadows police it began as a low-level fraud investigation and ended as a $20 million drug bust. The fraud involved a local family accruing credit card debts with no intention of repaying, then changing their names to obtain new cards to repeat the scam.
On the morning of November 25, 1999, police arrived at a housing commission home in Fir Close to serve arrest warrants, but no-one was home.
Later that day Detective Sergeant Andrew Balsillie was passing, and noticed two cars at the house. He recalled his team to issue the warrants and, after bursting in, found a pill press, 30,000 tablets (almost certainly the Moran pills that had been returned to be re-pressed) and almost seven kilograms of speed valued at $20 million.
Williams was found hiding in a bed upstairs (his bed attire suggested he was not having a quick snooze – he was wearing a loud, red Mambo shirt).
His father George was found hiding between a bed and the wall in another room, in which a loaded Glock semi-automatic pistol was later found.
Local police rightly chose to run the investigation but called in the amphetamine experts from the drug squad. They were not to know that the two detectives, Malcolm Rosenes and Stephen Paton, were corrupt and would later be jailed.
While there was no suggestion they interfered with the investigation, the Supreme Court later decided that several drug cases, including Williams’, should be delayed until the detectives’ prosecutions were completed.
It was while Williams was on bail for those (and other) drug charges that he organised the underworld murders.
If the drug cases had not been delayed, Williams would have been jailed for at least four years, unable to carry out a homicidal vendetta.
WHILE inside jail for almost two months on remand, Williams began to plan his first attack, and recruit the team of men he believed would kill for him.
One of the first to join was Andrew ‘Benji’ Veniamin, the former kickboxer and gunman who once idolised Carlton identity Mick Gatto, a man who for decades has cast one of the biggest shadows in Melbourne’s underworld. Williams saw Gatto, who was affiliated with the Morans but not involved in the squabble over drugs, as a potentially powerful enemy.
Williams thought that if he killed the Moran brothers, established underworld figures, including Gatto, would seek revenge. He decided his best chance of survival was not to jump at shadows but cast a bigger one, so he launched a hostile takeover.
Initially, Williams was outnumbered and in no position to take on the Moran brothers, let alone contemplate plans for gangland domination.
Then in a stroke of perfect timing Williams was finally bailed on his drug charges on January 22,2000. Three days later Jason Moran was jailed for affray and sentenced to twenty months jail. Mark Moran had lost his closest ally and was now hopelessly exposed.
Five months later, on June 15, Mark Moran was killed outside his Aberfeldie home. More driven than Jason and less erratic, he had managed to keep a lower profile.
Until then.
When his death was reported he was referred to as a local football star rather than underworld identity. But police immediately knew it was a gangland hit.
They also knew Mark Moran was entrenched in crime every bit as much as the rest of his family who considered honest work a personal affront. Moran lived in a house valued at $1.3 million. His occupations had been listed as personal trainer and unemployed pastry chef.
Four months before his murder, on February 17,2000, police noticed him driving a new luxury car. When they opened the boot of the rented vehicle, they found a hi-tech handgun equipped with a silencer and a laser sight. They also found a large number of amphetamine pills that had been stamped through a pill press to appear as ecstasy tablets.
His days as a battling baker were long gone.
In the hours before his death, Mark Moran had been busy. First he had given drugs to a dealer at the Gladstone Park Shopping Centre, 800 metres from where he and his brother had shot Williams the previous year.
The dealer was short of cash and Moran agreed to give him credit. It was not a difficult decision. Few people were stupid enough to try to rip off the Morans.
Moran drove home, received a phone call and left for a second meeting. On returning he was blasted with a shotgun as he stepped out of his Commodore. Williams was the gunman and his getaway driver would later be implicated in another three murders.
Police later established that Williams had only been waiting ten minutes when Moran returned. It smelled of an ambush.
Moran’s natural father, Leslie John Cole, was shot dead in similar circumstances in Sydney – ambushed outside his home eighteen years earlier.
But Mark’s stepfather, Lewis Moran, was very much alive and drinking in a north-western suburban hotel when he first heard of the shooting.
Immediately he called for a council of war at his home.
The Moran kitchen cabinet discussed who they believed was responsible, and how they should respond. The Morans, never short of enemies, narrowed the field to three. Williams and his team were by no means the favourite. ‘We still didn’t know we were in a war,’ a Moran insider later said.
For Williams it was the beginning, and for the Morans it was the beginning of the end.
Much later Lewis Moran, said to still hold the first dollar he ever stole, tried to take out a contract on Williams but he would offer only $40,000. There were no takers.
There were seven men at the meeting at Moran’s home. Five are now dead.
In the case of Mark’s death, police suspected Williams from the start, so much so that his house was raided the next day. But internal police politics terminally damaged the investigation. Members of the drug squad, who had worked on the Morans for years, deliberately concealed information from the homicide squad because they believed their investigation was more important than a murder probe they thought would fail.
Their prediction was self-fulfilling.
At the packed gangland funeral (an event Melbourne would see repeatedly for several years) Jason Moran was allowed day leave from prison to speak at the funeral. Mourners said the brother spoke with real emotion but his death notice worried police. It read: ‘This is only the beginning; it will never be the end. REMEMBER, I WILL NEVER FORGET.’
Nor would Carl Williams.
Police and the underworld expected that when Jason Moran was released he would make good his implied promise. Williams. But when he was freed on September 5, 2001, Williams was back inside on remand, having been charged in May with trafficking 8000 ecstasy tablets.
The parole board let Moran go overseas because of fears for his life, while Williams continued to recruit from a small area filled with potential killers – Port Phillip Prison.
AS is customary when important business deals are sealed, when the man we will call the Runner decided to accept Carl Williams’s offer they decided to celebrate with a quiet drink. What made it unusual was it was inside Swallow Unit of Port Phillip Prison and they were drinking smuggled alcohol in the top-security jail.
According to the Runner, it was there that Williams first asked him to kill Jason Moran. Moran had been spotted in London by one of the Williams team (the ‘Lieutenant’) and, unwisely, decided to return, even though he must have known his life was still in danger.
Williams was not content with one hit team and continued to recruit inside and out of prison. While he was not a great student of history he knew that in a war there would inevitably be casualties and prisoners. He looked to relatives, close friends and hardened gunmen whose loyalty he thought he could demand, or at least buy.
Williams knew that the Runner, no pin-up boy for prisoner rehabilitation programs, was soon to be released after serving his sentence for armed robbery. He was good with guns, and ruthless.
In March 1990 the Runner had escaped from Northfield Jail in South Australia, where he was serving a long sentence for armed robberies. The following month he was arrested in Melbourne and questioned over four stick-ups. As he was being driven to the city watchhouse the detective next to him fell asleep.
When the unmarked police car slowed in traffic the Runner jumped from it and bolted. He was arrested in Queensland in January 1991.
Police claim the Runner carried out 40 armed robberies in Victoria, SA and WA over seven years. In 1999 he was again arrested after he tried to rob a Carlton bank.
Why the Runner? His trademark was to run into a bank, pull a gun, demand large denomination notes and then run up to 500 metres to his getaway car. His gun-and-run method meant that to police and criminals he was known as a long-distance runner.
Williams believed this running talent would prove useful in ambushes that would probably have to be carried out on foot.
When Williams popped the question the Runner did not hesitate. ‘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.’
On July 17, 2002, Williams was bailed, despite having twice been arrested on serious drug charges. But the courts had no choice; Williams’ case (and those involving six others) was indefinitely delayed while prosecutions against corrupt drug squad detectives were finalised.
Five months later the Runner was released and within week she was going out with Roberta Williams’ sister, Michelle. He may not have been blood family but he was the next best thing.
The Runner and Carl Williams met daily, and Williams asked his new right-hand man to find Moran. He said Moran was aware he was being hunted and had gone to ground.
‘Carl told me that he still wanted Jason dead and that he wanted me to locate Jason so he could kill him. We did not discuss money at this point but I was to start surveillance on Jason Moran.’
Williams’ ambitions and his desire for revenge were growing. No longer did he just want to kill Jason. ‘Carl developed a deep-seated hatred of the Moran family … there is no doubt it was an obsession with him. Carl told me on numerous occasions that he wanted everyone connected with the Moran family dead.’
The Runner began to track Moran. With every report Williams would peel off between $500 and $1000 for the information. His former prison buddy was also paid to deliver drugs and collect money, and set up in a Southgate apartment that Williams sometimes used as a secret bachelor pad.
He may have been prepared to wage war in the underworld but he was still frightened of Roberta.
The Runner would tell police that he was not the only one spying on Moran. Williams also received information from convicted millionaire drug trafficker Tony Mokbel, and soon-to-be-deceased crime middleweight Willie Thompson. But more of them later.
Williams and the Runner regularly swapped cars, from a black Ford, silver Vectra, grey Magna and Roberta Williams’ Pajero.
But finding Moran was one thing. Killing him quite another. They began to discuss how they would kill their target – the schemes ranged from the imaginative to the innovative and the simply idiotic.
One was to hide in the boot of Moran’s silver BMW, remove the lock and spring out to kill him. A simpler version involved lying beneath shrubs outside the house where Moran was believed to be staying. Williams considered hiding in the rubbish bin next to Moran’s car, then popping out to shoot him.
It would have had to be a big bin.
Another plan was to lure him to a park and the Runner, dressed as a woman and pushing a pram, would walk past and shoot him. He and Williams bought a shoulder-length brown wig before abandoning the plan. Just as well. The Runner didn’t have the legs to carry it off.
Killer? Yes. Drag queen? No.
But finding Moran proved more difficult than first believed. Moran was an expert in counter-surveillance and teamed with a man who appeared to be a bodyguard. He ditched his flamboyant lifestyle, rented a modest house in Moonee Ponds and kept on the move.
Also, the Runner had never met Moran and Williams did not provide him with a picture. Once the Runner saw a man matching the description leaving Moran’s brother-in-law’s home in Gladstone Park. ‘I am pretty sure (it) was Jason.’
They finally spotted him in late February at a Red Rooster outlet in Gladstone Park. Williams was not armed. They followed him and an unidentified female who was driving a small black sedan.
As a surveillance operative Carl made a good drug dealer. He grabbed a tyre lever and a screwdriver from inside his car and followed at a distance of only twenty metres. According to the Runner, ‘about 40 or 50 metres down this road (Johnson Street) the rear of the hatch of the car opened up and Jason shot several shots at us from the back of the car.’
Williams lost interest, saying, ‘We will get him another time’.
Williams and the Runner went to pubs and clubs where they might find Moran. They may have ended up full but they came back empty. They thought about a hit at the Docks where Moran was said to occasionally work, but terrorist fears had resulted in a massive security upgrade that made it impossible.
Williams started to get desperate. If he couldn’t get to Jason he would kill those close to him. He told the Runner to start surveillance on Moran’s oldest family friend, Graham Kinniburgh, and another associate Steve (Fat Albert) Collins.
Kinniburgh was a legendary, semi-retired gangster, one of those rare, successful criminals hardly known outside police and underworld circles. But he was a close friend of Jason’s father, Lewis Moran.
Williams then figured that even an erratic man like Moran must have a routine that centred on his family. He and Moran were linked by more than greed, drugs and hatred; their children went to the same private school in the Essendon area.
Williams finally put a bounty on Moran’s head in April 2003. Veniamin and the Runner would get $100,000 each. The pair, armed and masked, hid in the back seat of a rented car outside the school expecting Jason to drop his children off. But he did not show. Later, Roberta Williams picked a fight with Jason’s wife Trish outside the school in the hope she would call her husband to come to support her. Still no Jason.
Williams wanted Veniamin (who was still associating with Gatto and the Carlton Crew) to set up Moran for an ambush but Benji was frightened Big Mick would realise he was working for Williams.
‘Carl was becoming wary of Andrew and told me that he was concerned that Andrew was more in the Moran camp than in ours,’ the Runner later told police.
In fact, Williams believed Moran was trying to persuade Veniamin to become a double agent and kill Carl.
When Benji failed to deliver Moran to a planned ambush at the Spencer Street taxi rank near The Age building, Williams started to doubt his number one killer.
‘From then on Carl would only meet Andrew on his own terms. That way Carl could be sure of his own safety. He did not trust Andrew any more,’ the Runner said.
Certainly Williams was jumpy. An interstate AFL spy wanted to check out the Essendon team at Windy Hill but as it was a locked training session he drove to one end of the ground where he hoped to use his set of binoculars to learn about the opposition’s game plan.
He lost interest in sport when Williams, whose mother lived nearby, fronted him, believing the spy was trying to follow him.
The spy waved a Football Record at him telling him his only interest in sharp-shooters was to judge the fitness of Essendon’s star full-forward, Matthew Lloyd. The Williams team learned that Moran took his children to Auskick training every Saturday morning in Essendon North, near the Cross Keys Hotel. Williams had eased Veniamin out of the hit team and replaced him with the getaway driver from the Mark Moran murder.
The Runner and his new partner, the ‘Driver’, inspected the football oval and planned an ambush. On June 14,2003, armed and ready, they watched the football clinic but did not see Jason. They agreed to try again the next week.
Williams had another plan. He wanted not only to kill Moran, but also to make a statement that no-one could mistake. He told the Runner he wanted Jason ambushed on June 15, the anniversary of Mark’s murder at the grave-site at the Fawkner Cemetery.
‘Carl decided though that if we were not able to kill Jason on Sunday (June 15) then we would try again at Auskick next week.’
It was too late to do the necessary homework and on the assigned day it took the hit team more than an hour to find the grave. By then the window of opportunity had shut. When they arrived they found a card signed by Jason. They had missed their mark, but only just. As they left they saw a car fly through a red light. It was probably Moran.
During the following week the team repeatedly went to the Cross Keys ground to fine-tune their planned hit. 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.
At the precise moment of the hit Williams was committed to spilling blood but in an environment far more sterile than the grubby murder scene. He organised a blood test for that morning, giving him an alibi he would need for the police.
On the Saturday morning they collected guns from the Pascoe Vale house of Andrew Krakouer (brother to former footballers Jimmy and Phil), which Williams used as a safe house, and placed stolen plates on the white van that would be used in the getaway.
Williams’ lieutenant, a man who could source chemicals for amphetamines and who cannot be named, then advised the Runner to ‘get Jason good and get him in the head’.
The Lieutenant later disputed this when he became a police witness. He claimed he told the Driver to do the killing away from the kids at the Auskick – ‘Hey, I’m no monster.’
They sat near the park when the Runner spotted a man he believed was the target. ‘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 the Lieutenant drove past and nodded to confirm they had seen the target then headed off for their blood tests – proving you can get blood from a stone killer.
As the clinic was about to wind up the hit team watched Moran head back to the hotel car park to hop in a blue van. Williams’ men drove to the rear of the car park. ‘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.
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.
The other man in the blue van with Jason was Pasquale Barbaro, a small-time crook who worked for Moran. The Runner later said he didn’t see Barbaro let alone intend to kill him. ‘I did not even know that I had shot Pasquale Barbaro until later … I regret that happening.’
Williams received news of the hit with the message that ‘the horse … had been scratched’.
Later, Williams and the Lieutenant congratulated the Runner on a ‘job well done’ and gave him $2500 cash. He was promised a unit in Frankston as payment but it failed to eventuate. The killer was short-changed and in business terms it would prove a short-sighted decision. But if it worried the hired gunman it didn’t show; hours after killing two men and scrubbing off gunshot residue he attended a birthday party at a North Melbourne restaurant.
Murder, it would seem, can sharpen the appetite.
Another person was clearly pleased with the news of Moran’s death. Roberta Williams was picked up on a bug shortly after the murders saying: ‘I’ll be partying tonight.’
EVEN though Williams was the obvious suspect his blood test alibi was standing up. The shotgun found at the scene had not been traced and those around the Williams camp said nothing.
There had been eleven underworld murders since 2000 and all remained unsolved. Police initially treated each crime individually, despite it being obvious that some (but not all) of the murders were connected.
Senior homicide investigator Phil Swindells was frustrated by the lack of results and began lobbying for a task force. He reported that Andrew Veniamin was suspected of three murders and a task force was necessary to target his group. Senior police finally acted and the Rimer task group (later renamed Purana) was established in May 2003, with Detective Senior Sergeant Swindells in charge.
Many believed it was doomed to fail. ‘We had no intelligence and we didn’t know anything about many of the major players,’ Swindells recalled. Assistant Commissioner Simon Overland would later admit that police ‘dropped the ball’.
Swindells knew there would be no early arrests and there might be more murders. He also knew police had to go back to the start and build up dossiers on all the players. Only then would they be able to try to isolate the weak links.
Politicians, self-proclaimed media experts and cynical old detectives thought Purana would self-destruct. A lack of success would result in bitter infighting and no results. The underworld code of silence would never be broken, they said.
To keep up morale during the years of investigation the task force called on Essendon coach and long-time AFL survivor Kevin Sheedy to motivate Purana investigators. Believe in yourselves and your team-mates and don’t worry about the scoreboard, he said. Do the planning and the results will come.
In October 2003 the task force was enlarged to 53 staff, including nine investigative groups, with Detective Inspector Andrew Allen in charge. From the start no-one really doubted that Williams was behind the killing but there was no hard evidence. Several names were nominated as the shooter, including the Runner, but names without facts were of little use.
The initial homicide squad team was convinced the Runner was the gunman and had identified others who would later be shown to be part of Williams’ hit squad.
The initial work of the homicide squad cannot be underestimated. But it was the better-resourced Purana team that was able to make a series of breakthroughs.
It was months before the first strong lead emerged from the double murder. Near the Cross Keys Hotel in Moreland Road is a public telephone and detectives eventually checked the calls made at the time of the murder.
On a long list a series of numbers stood out. On Friday, June 20, the day before the double murder, someone rang Williams’ mobile phone from the telephone box. Roberta Williams’ mobile had also been called, and then the Runner’s. It was clear to police that one of the hit team was checking out the layout for the ambush planned for the following day.
But the next call on the list was not a known suspect. When police tracked down the man who received the call he told them he had been rung that day by a mate. That friend was the Driver. It did not take long to find out that the Driver was a thief, drug dealer and close friend of Williams. He sold speed and had a lucrative sideline in stolen Viagra. He was still selling the remains of 10,175 sample packs he stole from a Cheltenham warehouse in April 2000.
Detectives drove to the Driver’s house. Sitting in the driveway was a white van, the same type as the one captured on closed circuit video depositing a masked gunman in the car park moments before Moran and Barbaro were killed.
It was a breakthrough – but not the breakthrough. It would take police fourteen months before they could lay charges. Meanwhile, the murders continued.
PURANA detectives knew that the Williams team would eventually make a mistake, but how many would die before they found the weak link?
In October 2003 police learned that the Driver, Williams’ trusted associate, had sourced an abandoned sedan rebuilt by a backyard mechanic – a perfect getaway vehicle.
Police placed a listening device in the car and waited. But the Driver, having collected the car and driven it a short distance, noticed the brake light was on. He checked it, and found the bug, which he ripped out. He immediately told the Runner ‘we’re hot’ and wanted to cancel the job. But the Runner had lost his sense of risk and suggested they push on.
‘(The Driver) mentioned to me that he had found what he thought was a tracker in the car. I dismissed the thought because my mind was focussed on doing the job … I decided to keep going without the clean car. In hindsight it was sheer stupidity that I didn’t take notice of the locating of a tracking device, but my mind was elsewhere and I was feeling the pressure of the job and that we had already wasted enough time’.
That night they met Williams separately in Flemington for new instructions but Williams’ growing sense of invincibility resulted in a massive misjudgment on his part. The one-time suburban drug dealer, with new-found ambitions of gangland domination, ordered his hit team to carry on.
Inexplicably the Driver decided to use his own car (a silver Holden Vectra sedan once owned by Williams) to drive to the scene. But it, too, was bugged with recording and tracking devices.
Police knew that the Runner and the Driver planned a major crime in a square kilometre block of South Yarra but did not know what that crime would be.
In the week before the major crime took place, the pair repeatedly drove around the block of Chapel Street and Malvern, Toorak and Williams roads. Police suspected the pair were planning an armed robbery and identified potential targets including the TAB at the Bush Inn Hotel and two luxury car dealers.
A week later, on Saturday October 25, the Purana chief, Detective Inspector Andrew Allen, was at work catching up on paperwork when he got a call from police monitoring the car.
The suspects had been talking about guns, getaways and something ‘going down’. But the tracker failed (they drop out in the same manner as mobile phones) so police could not identify the car’s location. Detectives could only sit back and listen as they still did not know the men’s intended target. They could hear muffled gunshots and the suspects driving off. Police soon received calls that a man was lying in Joy Street, South Yarra. It was Michael Ronald Marshall, 38, drug dealer and nightclub hotdog salesman.
Marshall had just got out of his four-wheel-drive, his five-year-old son still in the vehicle. The Runner later told police that he shot the drug dealer four times in the street before escaping.
‘I was jogging along the footpath towards Marshall’s driver’s side door as he hadn’t got out yet. Just before I got to his car I pulled the balaclava down over my face. I was about three metres away from the driver’s door, standing in the middle of the road when Marshall started to get out of the car.
‘I had the gun in my right hand and Marshall was out of the car and noticed me. We looked at each other briefly and I started to raise the gun as he went to lunge at me. As he lunged I fired a shot but I am unsure if this hit him. As the gun fired, the kickback, along with the combination of me taking a step backwards from Marshall’s lunge caused me to fall over. I also think the ground may have been a bit wet. I quickly got up again and was face to face with Marshall. He was a large person, over six feet tall and I was aware he was a former kickboxer.
‘I was concerned that he might overpower me so I just began firing shots at him at close range to the head area. I am not sure how many shots I fired; I think it may have been three or four. Marshall started to fall to the ground and I think I fired one more shot into his head as he was going down towards my feet. At no stage during the altercation did I see or realise that Marshall’s son was still with him.’
On the way back the Driver said to the Runner: ‘Should I ring the Big Fella?’ Later the Runner rang Williams to tell him, again, ‘that horse has just been scratched’.
Again they were stupid. The Driver had found a police listening device in his house but decided to leave it there – working on the basis that if he knew its location he would avoid making incriminating statements within its range.
Perhaps he forgot but the ‘scratched’ comment was made around 5pm – after the last race of the day. Williams just grunted when told – but it was enough.
Within hours the Runner and the Driver were arrested. The walls were starting to close in on the Premier.
Police knew who killed Marshall and who ordered the hit, but it would be more than two years before they learned why. And it would support their long-held theory that behind the scenes millionaire drug dealer Tony Mokbel was attempting to pull the strings.
ON December 22, 2003, Williams and Andrew Veniamin met Mick Gatto at the Crown Casino in what were supposed to be peace talks. It was only days after Gatto’s close friend, Graham Kinniburgh, had been gunned down outside his Kew home.
Kinniburgh was an old-time gangster who made his name as Australia’s best safebreaker. For three decades he has been connected with some of Australia’s biggest crimes. Police say he was the mastermind behind the magnetic drill gang – Australia’s best safe-breaking crew – that grabbed $1.7 million from a NSW bank, a huge jewellery haul from a Lonsdale Street office and valuables from safety deposit boxes in Melbourne.
He had put his children through private school and was semi-retired but he was also a friend of Jason Moran’s father, Lewis, and therefore Williams saw him as an enemy.
Kinniburgh was a man who rarely smiled but in his final few months he became morose. The keen punter and expert numbers man could read the play and knew there would be an attempt on his life. He began to carry a gun and told a friend:’ My card has been marked. ‘He was shot dead on December 13, 2003, while carrying his shopping from his car to his house.
Williams told the author 36 hours after the murder that he was not involved: ‘I’ve never met him and I’ve never heard a bad thing said about him. I have nothing to profit from his death. It’s a mystery to me. I haven’t done anything. My conscience is clear.’
Nine days after the murder Williams and Andrew Veniamin met Mick Gatto at the Crown Casino. It was an open secret that ‘Gatto was on Williams’ death list and this was seen as the last chance to stop the killings.
‘If anything comes my way then I’ll send somebody to you. I’ll be careful with you, be careful with me,’ Gatto warned. ‘I believe you, you believe me, now we’re even. That’s a warning,’ he said. ‘It’s not my war.’
For perhaps the first time Williams wavered. He went to see the Lieutenant for a second opinion. Should he trust Mick and declare a truce?
The Lieutenant said: ‘Ask Benji. He knows him (Gatto) better than me.’ Williams already had and Veniamin had no doubts. ‘Kill him,’ was his answer. Veniamin effectively passed his own death sentence.
Gatto shot Veniamin dead in a Carlton restaurant on March 23,2004. Gatto was acquitted of murder on the grounds of self-defence by a Supreme Court jury in June 2005.
Eight days after Veniamin died, Williams hit back.
Lewis Moran was shattered by the death of his stepson Mark and his natural son Jason. But it was the death of his best friend, Kinniburgh, that destroyed his will to live. Someone who had known him for years said ‘Lewis loved money. He was rich but he didn’t know how to have a good time.’
He was introduced to the drug business by his sons and embraced the wealth it generated. Friends said he liked to watch cooking shows during the day, do a little business in the late afternoon and drink from about 6pm. He was notorious for hiding money, much of which has never been found.
Once he hid $14,000 in an oven and was shattered when someone turned it on – shrinking the notes to the size of Monopoly money. But there was a happy ending. Kinniburgh found a compliant bank manager in Sydney who would accept the cash.
Lewis, a former skilled pickpocket, tried to carry a gun after Mark and Jason were murdered but arthritis made him more a danger to himself. Once when he tried to load the handgun he fired a shot through the floor of a car.
Moran had little formal education but, as an experienced SP bookmaker, he was gifted when it came to numbers. He could calculate odds in a flash and after Kinniburgh was murdered he knew his own survival was a long shot.
When he was bailed on drug charges he saw his former lawyer, Andrew Fraser, who was in the same prison serving five years over his own drug conviction. Fraser said he’d see him later. Moran shook his head and said he wouldn’t. He knew what was around the darkened corner.
Williams denied the existence of a death list and told the author: ‘I’ve only met Lewis once. I haven’t got a problem with Lewis. If he thinks he has a problem with me I can say he can sleep peacefully.’
Not only was Williams a murderer but he was also, it would seem, a terrible fibber.
Police knew Moran was a sitting duck and they successfully applied to have a court-ordered bail curfew altered so his movements would not be easily anticipated by would-be hitmen.
Detective Senior Sergeant Swindells gave evidence in the forlorn hope he could save Moran’s life.
He said Moran’s ‘vulnerability relates to a perception by the task force that if the curfew remains between 8pm and 8am … it is possible for any person to be lying in wait for Mr Moran to return to his home address’.
But Lewis no longer cared. He knew that if he stuck to a routine he was more vulnerable but he continued to drink at the Brunswick Club – where he was shot dead by two contract killers on March 31, 2004. The killers were allegedly paid $140,000 cash (it is doubtful they declared the GST component). They were supposed to be paid $150,000 but were short-changed.
As a friend said, ‘Lewis died because he loved cheap beer.’
POLICE knew they needed a circuit breaker and this would best be achieved by jailing Williams. And it was the Premier himself, always so cautious about phones, who handed them the damning evidence. He told his wife in one call that if Purana Detective Sergeant Stuart Bateson raided their house she should ‘grab the gun from under the mattress and shoot them in the head’.
In a prison phone call the Runner complained of his treatment and Williams talked about chopping up Sergeant Bateson’s girlfriend.
Bateson was not a policeman to be intimidated. He received the Valour Award in 1991 after he wrestled a gunman to the ground and disarmed him after the offender had forced another policeman to his knees at gunpoint.
The tape of Williams’ threats was the break police needed and on November 17, 2003, the Special Operations Group grabbed Williams in Beaconsfield Parade, Port Melbourne.
The arrest, captured by The Age’s photographer Angela Wylie, was the image of the man who thought he was beyond the law lying helplessly on the ground with detectives standing over him. It was a sign that the times were changing.
Purana police believed they had enough to hold him but he was bailed for a third time. On the outside police suspect he was able to organise at least another three murders.
In the two weeks before he was bailed, Williams befriended another would-be tough-guy in prison who was keen to be fast-tracked. He was an alleged heroin trafficker and amateur boxer with a big mouth who would finally bring the big man down.
ONE of the most boring jobs in a long investigation is to monitor police bugging devices. The Purana task force virtually dominated the technical capacity of the entire crime department with many detectives in other areas quietly grumbling that their investigations were put on hold after Simon Overland ordered the gangland detectives were to be given priority.
During the investigation Purana would log a staggering 500,000 telephone conversations – most of them consisting of the inarticulate ramblings of would-be-gangsters. They used listening devices to bug suspects for 53,000 hours and conducted 22,000 hours of physical surveillance.
Police on the case found that listening to the Williams family was cruel and unusual punishment. ‘It was like being subjected to the Jerry Springer Show 24 hours a day,’ one said.
At one stage Roberta was talking to Carl when the son from her previous marriage distracted her. ‘Put it down,’ she said, and then told Carl in a matter-of-fact voice what ‘it’ was. ‘He’s got the tomahawk,’ she said.
In another conversation she was talking to Greg Domaszewicz, the babysitter accused of killing little Jaidyn Leskie who died in Moe in 1997.
Roberta was complaining how difficult it was to look after the children when Carl was in prison. Domaszewicz suggested he could pop around and look after them if she needed a break. After a pause she responded to the offer. ‘You’re fucking joking aren’t you?’
Carl Williams always assumed his phone, house and cars were bugged. When he wanted a business discussion he chose open parks or noisy fast food restaurants. This also suited his appetite as the big bloke had a weakness for chicken and chips.
For police trying to trap the Williams crew through bugging operations was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
But in late May 2004 they found it. Two of Williams’ soldiers sat in what they thought was a clean car and discussed their plan to kill a close friend of Mick Gatto and key member of the so-called Carlton Crew, Mario Condello.
The two men in the car reminded each other of the importance of their mission. ‘We’re not just doing a burg,’ one said to the other.
Williams saw Condello as the money man of the team he was determined to destroy. He also thought the former lawyer turned gangster would find the money to take out a contract on him if he did not move first.
Condello and Gatto were close, so close that when Big Mick was in jail waiting for his trial over the Veniamin killing he asked Mario to keep an eye on business.
He also advised Condello, ‘Keep your eyes wide opened; you can’t trust any of these rats. I would hate to see anything happen to any of ours.’
The Williams’ team had done their homework. They knew Condello was a creature of habit and took his small dog for an early morning walk past the Brighton Cemetery most week-days.
It was the perfect place for an ambush. Police agreed, but their plan was to ambush the hit team before they could strike.
It was the beginning of a secret police high-risk, high-reward operation, codenamed Lemma. Detective Inspector Gavan Ryan was in charge of the 170 police needed to surround the area without spooking the hitmen.
The would-be killers may have been committed but they weren’t punctual.
Twice when they were supposed to kill Condello they simply slept in. The second time one of the team had chatted up a woman and preferred a hot one-night stand to a cold-blooded early morning killing.
Finally they moved but were still using the car police had bugged and detectives could hear them preparing for the murder. But police also knew Condello had left the family home and moved into a city apartment. He also had heard he was on the hit list and moved out of his house to try to protect his family.
But then Ryan heard one of the team spot a big man walking his small dog near the cemetery.
One of the gunman was clearly heard asking, ‘Is that the man, is that the man?’
Incredibly, another local with a similar build to Condello was walking a small dog on exactly the same route.
‘He shouldn’t bother buying Tattslotto tickets. I think he used all his luck that morning,’ the Director of Public Prosecutions, Paul Coghlan, said.
With the would-be hitmen becoming jumpy Ryan knew it was time to move.
Police arrested two men at the scene. They also seized two pistols, two-way radios and a stolen getaway car.
They then arrested Williams at his mother’s home in Primrose Street, Essendon and Williams’ cousin Michael Thorneycroft in an outer eastern suburb.
Thorneycroft would later tell police he was offered $30,000 to be the driver for the hit team and the shooter stood to make $120,000.
For police it was a major breakthrough. But for Mario Condello it was only to be a delay. After the attempt on his life he was interviewed on Channel Nine and publicly addressed the Williams’ team: ‘My message is stay away from me. I’m bad luck to you people. Stay away. Don’t come near me please.’
He also expressed a poetic wish that the violence stop ‘and everything becomes more peaceful than it has over the last however many years, because after all we are not going to be here forever.’
He was right.
Mario Condello was shot dead as he returned to his East Brighton home on February 6, 2006. He was on bail charged with, among other things, incitement to murder Carl Williams.
But the arrest of the hit team outside the Brighton Cemetery was the beginning of the end of Melbourne’s underworld war. It meant that after five years of trying police were finally able to put Williams inside jail on charges that guaranteed he would not be bailed.
According to Ryan the arrest of the hit team was the moment that police finally seized the initiative – four years after Williams declared war with the murder of Mark Moran. ‘For us (Operation Lemma) it was the turning point. It was the first time we were in front of the game.’
CARL Williams had previously done jail time easily. But this time he was in the highest security rating and locked up for 23 hours a day. In one video link to court his lawyers argued that Williams had not been able to hold or touch his young daughter since his placement in maximum security.
No-one mentioned the feelings of the children of the men he murdered in the previous five years.
Williams knew he was in trouble. He knew some of his troops were starting to waver and the so-called wall of silence was starting to crack. He started to threaten and cajole members of his team to stay staunch, working on those he thought were the most susceptible.
But he always assumed that the Runner, the career armed robber and willing killer, was unbreakable.
This was a man who had never co-operated with police. When forensic experts took a swab from his gums in prison after the Marshall murder they were horrified to find a ‘brown substance’ in his mouth. The substance, designed to compromise the test, was not identified. But it was definitely not breath freshener.
The case against the Runner was compelling. Marshall’s blood was found on his pants and police had the bugged conversations and positive identifications.
At first the Runner wanted to fight. On the advice of his lawyer the fit-looking Runner put on 30 kilograms to try to beat eyewitness descriptions, and he wanted Williams to fund a Queen’s Counsel for his case.
But Williams knew the Runner was doomed and decided to cut him free so Williams could save himself. He wanted his loyal soldier to plead guilty and cop a life sentence. The cash flow stopped and the Runner was left to the mercy of legal aid while his boss continued to employ the best lawyers money could buy.
Williams didn’t want to be sitting in the criminal dock with the Runner as the evidence was put to a jury. He believed he still stood a chance if he managed to get a separate trial.
But in early 2006 Crown Prosecutor Geoff Horgan, SC, returned from his summer break to find a letter from prison. It was the Runner and he wanted to talk. The note was non-committal but the message was clear. The soldier was ready for mutiny.
‘To us it was unbelievable. He was seen as one of the hardest men in the system,’ Horgan said.
Ryan, who was by then the head of Purana, went to see the Runner. ‘He didn’t need persuading, he was ready to talk. None of us imagined he would roll over.’
The Runner was removed from prison and for nearly 30 days exposed the secrets of Melbourne’s gangland murders, sinking any hopes for Williams in the process.
Inspector Ryan, Detective Sergeant Stuart Bateson, and senior detectives Nigel L’estrange, Mark Hatt and Michelle Kelly questioned him for weeks. A stream of Purana detectives questioned him on individual murders.
Police guarded him, fed him and did his washing as he exposed all Williams’ dirty laundry.
He told them about the crimes they knew he had committed but implicated himself in ones they didn’t.
He told them he was the driver in the two-man hit team assigned to kill drug dealer and standover man Nik ‘The Bulgarian’ Radev, who was shot dead in Coburg on April 15, 2003.
Radev was a violent gangster who desperately wanted to meet the amphetamine expert who produced drugs for Williams and another well-known dealer. But Williams knew that if Radev discovered the identity of their production expert he would abduct and torture him to persuade the self-tutored drug chemist to become an exclusive Radev employee.
That morning Radev was told at a meeting in Brighton that he would finally meet the chemist across town in Queen Street, Coburg. According to the Runner, ‘I drove Veniamin to murder Nik Radev’.
As five of Williams’ closest allies turned on him and became police witnesses Purana discovered more about the crimes of the Premier.
They found that Williams had offered the contract to kill Jason Moran to others, including notorious killer, drug dealer and armed robber Victor George Peirce who was shot dead in Bay Street, Port Melbourne on May 1, 2002.
Peirce was paid $100,000 in advance and was to pocket a further $100,000 on completion when he killed Moran. But Peirce changed sides and warned Moran.
Another career criminal was shot after he refused to carry out a contract to kill Moran. Convicted murderer Mark Anthony Smith supposedly agreed and then refused to kill Moran. So Smith was shot in the neck in the driveway of his Keilor home on December 28, 2002. He recovered and fled to Queensland for several months.
So was Peirce killed because he refused to kill Moran? The trouble with criminals like Victor Peirce is they always have more than one set of enemies who want to see them dead.
His best friend was Frank Benvenuto, son of the late Godfather of Melbourne, Liborio. Peirce had worked in the fruit and vegetable market for Frank Benvenuto during a major power struggle in the business.
Peirce was not there to lug turnips. He once arrived at work armed with a machine-gun.
But for Frank, having Peirce on his side was not enough. On May 8, 2000, Benvenuto was shot dead outside his Beaumaris home. The shooter was Andrew Veniamin. But who paid for the hit and why?
Veniamin knew that Peirce suspected he was the gunman. The two killers met to try to establish a truce.
According to Victor’s widow, Wendy, ‘They met in a Port Melbourne park. He wanted to know if Victor was going to back up for Frank.’
According to Mrs Peirce her husband assured Veniamin there would be no payback.
Benji was not convinced.
Police say Veniamin was the gunman who shot Peirce in Port Melbourne and while Benji worked for Williams he also did freelance work.
So while Williams had reasons to detest Peirce for not carrying out the contract on Moran, Veniamin had his own reasons to want the target dead.
And whoever paid Veniamin to kill Benvenuto would also have been relieved when Peirce was no longer a living threat.
Jason Moran was a prominent mourner at Peirce’s funeral. The next year he would also be shot dead.
FOR Purana investigators to crack the underworld code of silence they needed to offer deals that were too good to refuse. In doing so they have changed the model of plea bargaining in Victoria forever.
Purana police previously refused to do deals with trigger men but senior police and legal strategists in the Office of Public Prosecutions decided it was more important to nail the underworld generals who ordered the killings than the soldiers who carried them out.
From early in the investigation police had two main targets, Carl Williams and Tony Mokbel. One they knew was behind the killings and the other they suspected.
Paid killers can expect life in prison with no chance of release. Their crimes are not based on passion or psychological problems but greed.
But under the Purana model some of Melbourne’s worst gangsters were offered a chance of freedom if they turned on Williams and Mokbel.
Men who had spent decades in jail and had never talked were courted. By now they were middle-aged and the thought of never being released was too much for them to contemplate.
The Purana task force used the proven US tactic of turning alleged hitmen into star witnesses. The most notorious was Salvatore ‘Sammy the Bull’ Gravano, a former underboss of the New York Gambino family.
The first to do a deal was the Driver. He was sentenced to eighteen years with a minimum of ten for his role in the murder of Michael Marshall and he was never charged with his involvement in the killings of Mark Moran, Jason Moran and Pasquale Barbaro.
It was a dream deal for a man who could have faced a life sentence but he was the domino who made the others fall.
‘Without him we wouldn’t have been able to move on Cross Keys (Jason Moran and Pasquale Barbaro),’ Horgan said.
But it was the confessions of the Runner that finally tipped the balance – implicating Williams in six murders and exposing Mokbel’s alleged role in the underworld war.
The Runner was moved from his prison in Victoria and is believed to be interstate. He was sentenced to a minimum of 23 years for the murders of Marshall, Jason Moran and Pasquale Moran. He will be in his early 70s when he becomes eligible for release.
Police were confident they could make a case against Mokbel for murder. So, it would seem, was Mokbel.
Days before he was found guilty of cocaine trafficking in March 2006 Mokbel jumped bail and disappeared overseas. But police say it was not the fact that he would be sentenced to a manageable term (a minimum of nine years) for drug trafficking that made him run.
In the week before he disappeared a lawyer gave him the Runner’s secret statements and Mokbel knew he was likely to be charged with murder.
On March 20, he fled. But the Purana task force was always confident he would surface and began to dismantle his financial empire.
In February 2007, Mokbel was charged with Lewis Moran’s murder.
In June he (and the bad wig he was wearing) was arrested in Greece and a few weeks later was charged with the murder of Michael Marshall. Despite his high-profile drug convictions and his decision to jump bail juries will judge his guilt or innocence on the fresh charges at a later date.
Once the Runner made his statements Williams knew there was no chance he could beat the mounting charges. Williams was convicted of the Marshall murder and sentenced to a minimum of 21 years.
The verdict was suppressed because he had multiple trials pending, including the murders of Mark Moran and the murders of Jason Moran and Pasquale Barbaro.
For months Williams was secretly trying to negotiate a deal that gave him some chance of release and in February 2007, on the eve of his trial for the murders of Jason Moran and Barbaro, he finally pleaded guilty.
It was around August 2006 that the man who once had teams of hitmen prepared to kill for him knew he was facing the rest of his life in jail. Several of his trusted offsiders had cut deals with prosecutors leaving him increasingly isolated.
He knew if he pleaded guilty he would be entitled to a discount. Aged 35 he wanted a chance to be out of jail by the age of 70.
But the first tentative approaches were not encouraging. His team floated a prison sentence of around twelve years. ‘They were looking for a ridiculous bargain-basement sentence,’ said Paul Coghlan, QC.
But as the trial date came closer so too did the negotiators. In February the two sides spent ten days talking. Then what had appeared promising collapsed.
According to Coghlan. ‘We were very cross. We thought Williams had been fooling around and was never serious. He was wasting our time because they came up with various proposals that were absolutely laughable.’
On Wednesday February 28 at midday the court process began before Justice King with pre-trial discussions.
It was legal tent-boxing with a few slow punches thrown without any landing.
First Williams’ team asked for an adjournment because of pre-trial publicity but the same argument had been tried before and failed.
Next was a move to suggest there was judicial bias – another move doomed to fail.
Then it was agreed the star protected witnesses could give video evidence for security reasons. By 1pm the court was adjourned for the day.
There would be a few more pre-trial details to be cleared up and then a jury would be selected.
On Monday, March 5, Geoff Horgan was scheduled to rise to his feet to begin his opening address to declare that Williams organised the murders of Jason Moran and Pasquale Barbaro, who were shot dead on June 21, 2003, while watching an Auskick junior football clinic.
Once the jury was empanelled any chance of a deal for Williams would be over.
It was 2.10pm on February 28 when Horgan received a call in his chambers from Williams’ barrister, David Ross, QC. The message was brief: ‘We may have a deal.’
A message was passed to Justice King’s associate Helen Marriott and a decision made to reconvene the court that day.
But Williams had left the court and was heading down the Princes Freeway to Barwon Prison. Then Justice King intervened and ordered the bus back.
This was no sweetheart deal. The prosecutors agreed they would make no recommendations on a jail sentence although they acknowledge Williams should be set a minimum due to his decision to plead. ‘His sentence will be totally up to the judge,’ Horgan said.
The charge sheet was quickly typed, documents signed and Williams led back into court.
But the crime deal of the decade that resulted in Williams pleading guilty to three murders was teetering on the point of collapse when Justice Betty King reconvened her court after being told of his decision.
While it took nearly seven months of secret negotiations to bring Williams to the point where he was prepared to admit his guilt the final deal was nearly derailed in the final minutes.
The man linked to ten underworld killings had just told his relieved lawyers he would plead to the murders of Lewis Moran, Jason Moran and Mark Mallia and conspiracy to murder Mario Condello. (He did not plead over Barbaro, arguing he had not ordered his death and the victim was killed accidentally. The Mark Moran murder charge was dropped.)
But his agreement was worth nothing. He had to say the words ‘I plead guilty’ when his presentments were read to him in the open court.
Backroom deals don’t count.
He had been brought up from the court cells to sign a document instructing his defence team of his intentions to enter guilty pleas.
Outside the court members of the police Purana task force stood waiting. One nervously said, ‘I won’t believe it until I hear him say it.’
Williams’ mother, Barbara, and father, George, were also there and were then allowed in to see their son before the hearing commenced. While George remained quiet, Barbara was animated.
She pleaded with her son not to plead.
George didn’t apply any pressure. Still facing drug trafficking charges, part of the deal was that Williams Senior would plead guilty but the prosecution would not demand a jail sentence.
According to an insider Carl began to waver as his mother begged him to change his mind.
The observer said the deal was ‘within a hair’s breadth’ of collapsing. ‘If we had lost him then maybe we would have lost him forever.’
But the court convened in front of Justice King and three times Williams admitted his guilt.
Then despite his mother’s concern Williams nodded his head, a decision, Coghlan said, that saved millions of dollars and sent a message to the underworld that no-one is above the law.
Before Williams would agree to any deal he wanted to pass a message to a man on the outside. He desperately wanted him to know that no matter what, he wished him no harm. That man was Mick Gatto.
THE Runner, the Lieutenant and the Driver cannot be identified by name as they have been given protected witness status. All are in jail.
WILLIAMS’ cousin, Michael Thorneycroft, 32, also became a protected witness but he couldn’t grasp his second chance in life. He was the first to turn on Williams and tell police he was prepared to give evidence against him.
He was arrested with three others on June 9, 2004, and charged with conspiracy to murder former lawyer and gangland identity Mario Condello.
Soon after he turned against Williams, agreeing to plead guilty and make a prosecution statement. In return he was given’ a three-year suspended sentence.
He was offered a new identity but decided to live with his mother in Melbourne’s east and although he was given a new name he always knew that Williams could have reached out if he wished.
Police urged him to move and start a new life but he told them he was determined to stay in the area where he lived but maintain a low profile.
He sought and received assurances from a relative of Williams that there would be no payback.
Thorneycroft returned to playing suburban football under his new name but began to lose his battle with drug addiction.
He was found dead in his Boronia home in May 2007 of a suspected drug overdose. Police say there were no suspicious circumstances.
PHIL Swindells has been promoted to Inspector and works in the Ethical Standards Department. Andrew Allen was promoted to Superintendent and is in charge of the Geelong district. Gavan Ryan is a Detective Inspector in charge of task force 400 and in 2007 was awarded the prestigious Australia Police Medal in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.
Stuart Bateson was promoted to work as a crime strategy expert and Assistant Commissioner Simon Overland was promoted to Deputy Commissioner.
MEMBERS of the Purana task force, initial homicide investigators, Special Operations Group, bugging experts and surveillance police received commendation awards from Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon at a private dinner in 2006.
Ryan sang a duet with Chief Commissioner Nixon and the police showband at the function proving beyond reasonable doubt he is a better detective than nightclub crooner.
MICK Gatto lost 30 kilograms while in jail. On his release he put the weight back on and runs his successful crane company. He has been painted for the Archibald Prize.
ROBERTA Williams split from Carl Williams and was seeing someone else. She says she considered converting to Islam and was dubbed for a short time Roberka. Carl Williams’ new girlfriend was in court to see him plead guilty. Wearing a new engagement ring she is called a ‘glass-widow’ – a woman who visits her partner in prison but never has to touch him, although taped prison phone calls indicate their conversations can be quite risqué.