Chapter 5

Morans – or Morons?

Jason was Lewis’s son of course, and a complete raving psycho when crossed. Also a slaughterman for a few years, at the same place his old man learnt to carve. He caused us a lot of unnecessary grief. He was also a cokehead – he loved to taste his own product, then going on wild sprees of violence. This was often on random victims, poor innocents who happened to be in his line of sight. When he and Alphonse Gangitano got together, they fed off each other’s violent energies and sometimes went into a frenzy.

It was sick, even in the case of Jason, for a father to be blown away in front of his young kids. But all the violence he put out had finally come full circle when he was executed at an Essendon North junior football clinic on 21 June 2003. His brains were blown out with a 12-gauge shotgun in broad daylight, as his kids watched on. And it was a real pity Paddy (Pasquale) Barbaro also copped it just because he was with Jason. Paddy was someone I had a lot of time for and enjoyed more than a few beers with. His murder was more than just a pity, it was a crying shame.

The fact Jason’s hit was done in front of his then six-year-old twins, a boy and a girl – now teenagers – as they sat in the van with him that day, just sent a chill through our whole crew. Fourth or fifth generation crime family children, bathed in their father’s blood from a young age. Poor kids. How do you think they might turn out? Well, it never stops for some families. Shit, I was only four when my uncle got knocked in Townsville.

I now drink at a small club, not dissimilar to the Brunswick Club where this tale of treachery, abandonment and killing reached a bloody showdown. My change sits stacked on the bar, right next to my membership card. In between a few lively discussions with mates, my beer gathers froth rings as I gaze into whatever remains of the amber brew, and wonder just how the fuck my whole world got as bad as it did.

Killings were ordered by totally ruthless individuals, willing to go to any lengths to further their insatiable lust for control of the lucrative Melbourne drug trade. The killings were carried out by various scumbags for money, drugs, women and the good life. Vendettas were launched under the guise of we’ll get in first, if we don’t, they will. Lives were ended in an instant. Pistol rounds were repeatedly emptied into what were once human beings, fathers, husbands and sons. The deep sounds of shotguns summarily ended the lives of men who would become naked pieces of meat on an autopsy table, to be dissected and probed, and discussed unemotionally by professionals who ply their trade with gay abandon.

Drug deals worth millions were casually done over a coffee at any convenient trendy café in Moonee Ponds or Ascot Vale, near the historic Mount Alexander Rd, the old dirt track to riches on the Victorian goldfields two centuries ago. But the Morans were no gold prospectors and Lewis and his sons lived life very large at times, and there is plenty of dirt. Still, having the backing of certain boys in blue and influence in very high places helped none of them to dodge a bullet in the end.

Jason Moran’s halfbrother, Mark, was killed outside his very well-to-do home in Combermere St, Aberfeldie, near Essendon, three years earlier than Jason. It was 15 June 2000, and hit me far harder than would the death of his hapless half-brained brother. Mark was someone I had great affection for, and admiration. Unlike Jason, he knew how to keep a cool head. But Mark’s genetics probably had him in line for a bullet from birth. Lewis was his stepfather, and while still a strong influence, Mark’s natural father, Leslie ‘Johnny’ Cole, was a Melbourne painter and docker with more than a few runs on the board. He was in Sydney to help underworld godfather Frederick ‘Paddles’ Anderson when he was executed himself on 10 November 1982, as the first casualty of the New South Wales drug wars of the early 1980s.

Mark also had the dual misfortune of having Judy Moran for a mother. So after his father copped it in Sydney, Mark moved into a life not far different from what he left. Poor bastard never had a chance. But at least he grew up to have some style. Like the time the coppers pulled him up a few months before his execution on 7 February 2000. He was cruising in his luxury sports car when the cops searched it and found a very slick hi-tech handgun and some amphetamine tablets.

It made sense that Mark was the first Moran to be hit in the Melbourne war. He was probably the biggest threat, the most level-headed, the smartest. Just not smart enough to get out of a high-risk family business in time to survive. Mark was the attack dog for Lewis from a very young age, threatened and coerced, forced to do his stepfather’s bidding.

Desmond ‘Tuppence’ Moran was the brother of Lewis; got his nickname from the fact his father had announced that young Des would not amount to tuppence – that’s pre-metric for two cents. Old man Moran got the sentiment right – there was nothing all too special about Tuppence. And just like the old copper two-cent coin, he’s now out of circulation. Yet another gangland victim acquaintance of mine, executed in the Ascot Vale shopping strip in broad daylight on 16 June 2009, as he quietly sipped his coffee. But before he went, thanks largely to other Morans, Tuppence was worth a small fortune and hadn’t been short of a quid in a long, long while. I mentioned a little about the missing Moran millions to the marauding newshounds a few days after Tuppence’s murder, and they printed my suggestions faithfully in the Sunday Herald Sun on 21 June. Of course, there was also mention in the newspapers of a $3 million will from Lewis to Tuppence, to be kept in trust for his grandkids, the kids of Mark and Jason.

But, hell, I was the one who knew all the financial workings of the Morans, so I know where much of the Tuppence empire booty came from. Here’s how it would go. About once a week, I used to drop Lewis off at the top end of Bourke St, where he would go to socialise with some of the Carlton crew and others such as the Munster. I sat in the car as these characters met – sometimes the venue would be Florentinos, probably the most expensive restaurant in Melbourne. Either Fat Calamari or Virgin Joe, two accountants known to our associates, would wander over to my car, wherever I was parked, and a couple of envelopes would drop into my lap. Pay day for the Morans.

The first thing Lewis would say on his return to the car was: ‘You got them?’

‘Yeah,’ I’d say.

Sometime later, Calamari and Joe siphoned off almost everything Lewis owned to finance their insatiable lust for the riches at Crown Casino. They sold a house Lewis was going to renovate in Moonee Ponds. They also sold Judy’s BMW, after they had already welched on the repayments for a while. Lewis and I picked up an ex-Victoria Police car at Fowles Auctions for Judy to replace the BMW. Lewis said, ‘Jesus, don’t tell her it’s an ex-police car.’ Even the mechanic for the roadworthy, and who still does services on the car, said, ‘Christ, you can still see where the police transfers used to be.’

Lewis used to pay all the bills at Ormond Rd, Moonee Ponds, Judy’s home, and give her money to live on, $400 or $500 a week. It used to be nerveracking when he would say go there. Judy would get paid, but she also paid a big price – going by the screams that pierced the walls on many occasions. But when Lewis was shot dead, a friend of Tuppence who knows about these sort of things told him he was expected to help provide for the grieving widow.

Tuppence did shell out. He paid Judy $400 to $500 a week, albeit grudgingly, right up until Christmas 2007, when I advised him to stop the regular payments. That was when Judy decided to turn up at Tuppence’s house in Langs Rd, Ascot Vale, with a frightening gang of tattooed Maoris at her side. Seven foot tall one of these Maoris was, and there were another three, almost as tall, all built like brick shithouses and all tattooed around their faces and necks – the most gruesome sight you could ever see. At least that was how Tuppence relayed the incident to me. Judy fronted Tuppence and demanded $200,000. Obviously she somehow believed she was entitled to such a huge sum from what Tuppence now controlled. But he didn’t agree. He jacked up and with another word or two of advice from my good self, cut the bitch’s subsidy altogether.

Fortunately for old Judy, she still had a nice little stash to live on at the time. As she prepared her Moonee Ponds home for sale in October 2008, she had a windfall when a surprise stook (a secret nook) revealed $60,000. Nice little bit of compo for her having to dismantle her sick shrine of framed photos of all her dearly departed, and a nice cash kick start if she had sold the home. But the house was passed in at auction, coming nowhere near her $1 million plus price tag. It was later sold for $1.07 million before Judy was sentenced for ordering the murder of Tuppence. Justice Lex Lasry dismissed an application by the Director of Public Prosecutions for forfeiture of proceeds.

About six months after Lewis and I were shot, and I was starting to get around, Tuppence rang me and said: ‘Come up to Safeway in Moonee Ponds, I’ve got something for you.’ He gave me the princely sum of $1000 dollars. That’s what you get for loyalty and being gunned down and murdered, almost permanently. About $200 per bullet fragment. Someone had said to him that I was starving to death. I wished I could have thrown it back at him, but I had a plaster cast around most of my upper body. But just like a Moran, Tuppence was even extra generous after that, flinging me a couple $50 notes for a drink one night, a couple $50 for lends. He knew the $1000 had not helped much.

Now, back when I was released from prison I was due $30,000 from the Morans, but it wasn’t there. Jason copped the blame for that. I never saw a cent of it. Naturally, I took these $50 top ups after the shooting, a fraction of what I was really due. Then one night Tuppence tells me that he lent me $200, and I hadn’t paid it back.

Late in 2007, when I was on the bones of my arse and contemplating putting pen to paper, I had to sell my refrigerator to live. I decided to call Tuppence first. I said, ‘Tuppence, I’m going to write a book, but can you give me a couple of thousand so I can get started? Things are that bad I’ve had to sell a $1000 fridge for $200.’ All that dumbarse could say was ‘Ooh, I would have given you $200 for it.’

I saw red and said, ‘Fuck you, Tuppence.’ And hung up. It was then, at that very moment, I decided to really get stuck into the book and tell a few tales about what the Morans were really like.

It’s around here I should apologise to those of Tuppence’s staunch and true allies who loved him, and will no doubt will take umbrage at some of what follows. Among them are some I believe to be honourable individuals, each remembering Tuppence for different reasons. Of course I was shocked, more so than most, when I heard the news of his murder, as I myself had been threatened with the same fate only four weeks earlier. Having been on the front line, I’m not going to sanitise my story. My usual bravado was in tatters. Having survived one attempt on my life, I would be the greatest liar in the world if I denied that I was scared shitless. The apprehension and knowledge that I could easily be next was an enormous burden, but one thankfully shed with charges laid against alleged participants in Tuppence’s execution within 24 hours.

As I recall him, Tuppence was the most bombastic know-all that I have ever met. He would boast long and hard how the Royal Melbourne Showies, who parked their utility vans and caravans each year at his Langs Rd home, near the show grounds, paid for everything. Their parking fees for a few weeks covered the year’s council rates, electricity, water and the like. As Tuppence told it to me, one of Melbourne’s biggest family fun events had unwittingly helped to finance one of the city’s biggest family drug businesses for decades. Tuppence used to cram cars on the block as well. As many as he could. And part of the proceeds of course would also go to feeding his beloved race horses, which he also kept until the end. He had one trainer at Flemington, looking after about half-a-dozen horses that he kept on his mate’s property out Gisborne way, and another trainer in NSW, who kept a few more.

Fred the Freeloader, as Tuppence was also known by some, even took apples from the fruit shop, expected the best steak from the butcher’s back fridge, and free food and drink at the Flemington TAB. He was just another tolerated aging standover man. He was such a dill in earlier years he had to be pulled up and told, ‘For Christ’s sake, stop calling Graham “the Monster”. It’s the Munster.’ At the Waterloo Hotel one night, Tuppence even pulled his index finger out of his belt, and believing he had a gun there, said, ‘Cop this!’

He was totally pissed of course and had forgotten he’d given his gun to Lewis.

Dennis ‘Greedy’ Smith, another notorious criminal, knocked them both out cold one night at the Ascot Vale Hotel. They didn’t know what hit them. Lewis had king hit Gary ‘the Nose’ over some silly comment, and Greedy promptly knocked Lewis unconscious. Things had been tense between Greedy and the Morans for many years, so Smith needed very little provocation. Almost twice the size and twice as hard fisted, Greedy had seemed to barely flinch but levelled Lewis to a lump of lard on the bar floor. An incensed Tuppence Moran stepped forward.

‘You can’t do that to my brother!’ he shouted, raising his fists like John L Sullivan. So Greedy, a bloke who loved his jewellery and wore huge rings that would have hurt like hell, promptly put Tuppence to bed on the bar floor as well. Tuppence was a little tougher though. This time it was like whack, whack, whack…it took three blows to put him down, but the result was the same. The Morans and Greedy would never drink at the same pub ever again.

Another time Lewis came off the worse for wear was an incident he would hide with lies for the rest of his life. And it also inspired one of the worst acts of cowardice I have ever known. Lewis would tell people that the starburst-shaped scar across his right eyelid and upper cheek was the result of reconstructive surgery after a car accident. But the reality was that a good friend of mine, Joe ‘Chisel’ Fava, had taken a chunk of flesh from Lewis’s face.

Chisel had walked into the Victoria Hotel in Brunswick, at the time owned by football legend John Coleman, and was immediately king hit by Lewis Moran. Chisel retaliated and knocked Lewis to the floor, where his face struck a steel ashtray, tearing away a huge chunk of flesh. Lewis had several friends there who then attempted to clean up his face in the toilets. But Lewis burst free of them and ran out of the toilets with his gun raised, ready to shoot Chisel on the spot.

Fortunately for both men, Lewis’s friends took the gun from him and ushered him out as he screamed obscenities, before driving him to hospital. That was where Lewis stayed another two or three days as plastic surgeons fixed his ugly mug. Soon after they dropped Lewis off, his friends returned to the Victoria Hotel, minus the gun, but armed with baseball bats and looking to bash Chisel Fava. When they found out he wasn’t there, they took their venom and spite out on a well-known boxer Arthur Pearson, a light welterweight, and belted the poor bastard to a bloody pulp. It was kind of similar in sheer stupidity and cowardice to Jason Moran and Alphonse Gangitano at the Sports Bar.

In the six months or so before he was killed, Tuppence and I had hardly talked to each other either, so I can only imagine his thoughts as he was brutally gunned down. When I started to drink at the Union Hotel, Ascot Vale, three-odd years before Tuppence was shot, he said, ‘Now that you’re drinking back here, you may as well pick me up of a night on your way here.’

I’d already fallen for that trick with his brother and didn’t want a re-run. The yanks have a saying I find appropriate here: ‘If the away team don’t get you, the home team will.’ I would have been a sitting duck as a driver for Tuppence.

In 2008, Tuppence got a series of threatening phone calls, standovers wanting some of the money they believed he’d salted away for Lewis. So, for all those disbelievers, doubters and the like who bayed for my blood after I mentioned the Moran millions, here’s how it really was, how I continued to support the Morans in the wake of those calls. It was me who put a stop to those calls, without going into any finer detail, at some personal risk. And although I acted to preserve myself from being next as much as for Tuppence, I never even mentioned it to him. He remained blithely oblivious to what I had done.

All I can really add to the colour of Tuppence is the weird fact that he had an extensive collection of Lladro clowns, fine porcelain pieces worth up to $20,000 for a single figure, and more for the collector’s pieces. It’s interesting that, like Tuppence had done himself, the jolly clowns rollick and play in a pastel-washed world, oblivious to any possible consequence for their frivolity. His collection was a very expensive one. Just like the huge diamond rock he would wear in a ring on his right pinky. Not bad for a bloke who hardly worked an honest day in his life.

The way the Morans alienated people all around simply made it easier for the Williamses and others to assume control. Maybe the family name should have been the Morons, rather than the Morans. If anyone needed any proof, there was the suicidal offer Lewis put up for the hit on Carl, using Terence Hodson as a go-between. The heat was well on – Jason and Mark both dead – and the best he could squeeze out of himself was a miserly offer of $40,000. I just blew it when he told me at the club. ‘You’re fucken kidding aren’t you, Lewis?’

Loyalty and integrity were also not traits practised by the majority of the Morans. Mark was the only Moran who had any dash and he was only a stepson to Lewis. The rest of the family would feed you to the sharks if there was something in it for them. I was bent over good by Moran and co.

And Judy Moran herself. She is kind of special, in a sick way, so I’ve saved her for last. Who could possibly believe anything Judy Moran says? She is a known perjurer, convicted credit card fraudster, shoplifter, convicted murderer, give up informer and dog. She is terrified of what I will say and with damn good reason. Purana had to use any means possible to get on top of this very public battle going on in Melbourne’s streets. So why not her? Judy was an easy dog to put on a leash and she responded whenever they tugged on the lead. At least that’s what I reckon and that’s what I am sticking to as my story.

Judy has a wild psychotic streak devoid of any reason. After Lewis was shot, she tried to kill me with a knife in front of a dozen witnesses just outside the doorway of the Union Hotel in Ascot Vale. Mad as all shit, that bitch. It was about seven at night, and she comes charging at me from across Union Rd, shouting, ‘You fucken scum, Bert.’ Judy took a few wild silly swipes at me with this knife in her hand, and I was easily able to avoid her. The knife itself was only a Stanley box cutter but those two or three centimetres of razor-sharp steel could still leave a gaping wound across my neck and major arteries. The silly bitch deserves everything she gets. If I had kicked her that day, or even touched her, she would have run straight to her old buddies at Purana and told them all about it so I could be charged.

Judy also gave up Rodney Robertson and Robbie Gillick, two regular types, at the Brunswick Club, and claimed they were going to cut her head off. Both of those men also called her a dog and informer. And they got boob, courtesy of the bitch. She is little more than an evil Dame Edna in my eyes. I penned that last sentence long before Judy was charged in relation to the murder of Tuppence, as the then Sunday Age editor Andrew Rule could well attest from an email he was sent by my co-author Brett Quine on 17 December 2008. The email (see the picture section at the end of this book) contained an attachment titled ‘Don’t Copy 15Dec’, which was early sample chapters of our book. Of course, Brett sent those chapters to Rule as a prospective publisher and under an understanding of strict copyright agreed at an earlier meeting between the two, held at the Jawa Bar in West Melbourne. So some months later, on 21 June 2009, soon after Judy was charged with murder, I was more than a little taken aback to see a photographic match up between Judy and Dame Edna in the Sunday Age. Published with a cartoon penned outline and words to portray Judy as an evil Dame Edna, both Brett and I regarded this humorous insight montage as distasteful to say the least.

Judy Moran just loved to prance about in public with that oh-so-squeaky clean and innocent crap. And most of the mainstream media bought her hard done by bullshit right up until she was charged with murder. Take it from somebody who knows: Judy is a shallow, jealous, desperate woman, terrified of being given up herself – exactly as I am doing now.

You would always know when the Moran garage was packed with trestle tables full of dope: that was the only time Judy would park her red BMW in the street, to make room for some of the family business stock to be sorted. And from what I saw, Judy never had any real respect from Lewis or her two sons. Jason had not even spoken to her for 18 months up to the day he was shot. This crazy woman swanned about as the wife of Lewis, before as many media cameras as she could find with her salon-groomed hairdos, ridiculous glasses and designer label clothes. The clothes are probably third hand at that, from the Union Rd opportunity shop she likes to haunt in Ascot Vale. Well, the old scrubber was a de facto to Lewis, but nothing more than that – they were never married. Shit, Lewis wouldn’t waste good beer money to fund the stupid bitch’s fantasy. Told me so himself more than once, with a good rolling gut laugh.

But from the time of Mark’s murder, Judy was the poor grieving mother. With Jason’s death, she became a celebrity weeping gangster mother and grandmother. And since the execution of Lewis, well, it seemed there would be no end to her personal media machine. Forests were laid to waste to allow gossip columnists enough space to identify with their tragic heroine, incorrectly propagating the myth of a woman beset with a life of misery through no real fault of her own. Love and bitter circumstance my arse. But of course, those twits seemed to have wisened up and finally shut up once Judy went down for murder herself.

As I told one of the daily newspapers on the day Judy was sentenced to a minimum 21 years in jail, on 10 August 2011, she was an evil witch who deserved to die in jail then rot in hell. The timing of the murder, organised on the same day as her son Mark was killed nine years earlier, just showed how calculating the bitch really was. I was delighted to have been a participant in her downfall, giving evidence despite genuine protests of my failing health and at the behest of prosecutors and Purana detectives. Of course, I was the one who advised Tuppence to stop paying Judy any money at all, a few years after Lewis had died. Once Tuppence followed this advice, around Christmas 2007, it obviously pissed the bitch off no end, for that was when she first fronted Tuppence and tried to kill us both. The jury got to hear about my advice to Tuppence during our frequent drinking sessions at the Union Hotel, but certainly nothing about Judy’s attempt on my life.

When I testified at Judy’s trial at the Victorian Supreme Court on 10 February 2011, the prosecutor had asked me about the time Judy fronted Tuppence to demand a ‘significant’ sum of money. I agreed Tuppence had told me about the incident, and that the sum was significant but could not then remember the amount, suggested by the prosecutor to be $75,000 or $100,000. After further thought on the matter, my memory has improved and I can now say with some confidence that Tuppence said she had asked for $200,000. And she had been accompanied by three or four huge Maoris as her standovers. One was reputed to be seven foot tall. Judy went away empty-handed and we all know where it ended up.