What they lacked in honesty they make up for in insincerity.
PLANS, like all plans of mice and men, can go wrong. One of the three original thinkers, the man given the job of providing a smother of disinformation and providing psychological tactics and strategy, got himself locked up over yet another shooting charge in 1992, so a replacement was invited to sit at the table.
The list of 20 names provided by the man now in jail was quietly replaced with a new list, which was put up by the new man. After all, fair is fair.
The new man, being an Italian criminal, had his own personal agenda and at least four of the names on his list matched the list of the third original thinker, now in prison. So we have the third original thinker in prison in 1992 saying Via Con Dios amigos to his two old friends and the new man, who was also an old friend. He was not plucked out of the personal columns in the paper. Whatever role he could play from behind bars regarding psychological, tactical and strategic help and advice he would give. It would be invaluable, as sometimes you can see better from a distance, even if there are bars in the way. I did some of my best planning while inside and I could see the mistakes that others were about to make.
However, his ability to provide the massive smother of disinformation via his police and media contacts had been cut to shreds. You can hardly call a press conference from H Division, although I did come close.
A new tactic of ‘Chinese Whispers’, starting with one small truth along with one small lie into the ear of one small policeman and one or two crime reporters, had begun.
Being able to predict the deaths of underworld personalities shortly before their demise was a massive help in providing very believable disinformation. The crime reporters would believe everything you said if you gave them a tip on a murder about to happen. In the end you could guide them where you wanted them (which was usually up their own bottoms).
You would talk to them. They would buy you a beer and a bad Irish feed cooked by a Chinaman from Footscray. Then they would bodgie up their expense accounts to make a profit. I have found that what they lack in honesty they make up for in insincerity. And, as the great Groucho Marx should have said, if you can do that you’ve got it made.
I mean, if you can predict a man’s death a month before it happens then who will call into question the rest of your story? You then give former policemen and rival newspaper and TV reporters the same story knowing that they will then spread it for you.
You can turn a lie into the truth within a month. Police investigations are launched on the basis of one body and one lie. They then proceed to go no place. Into the valley of the blind and in any war it is always good to pop off for a few non-event bastards who have nothing to do with anything other than the fact that they knew a few of the real targets.
It is a totally one-sided war, but it must appear to look like a gang war. In a gang war both sides know who they are up against but, in this war, only one side is getting hit by an enemy they cannot see and do not know.
It creates paranoia and, in some cases, friends turn on friends and kill each other. Once that starts to happen within the criminal world, your enemy will actually begin to kill himself for you. It could be suggested that the death of Mark Anthony Moran in June 2000 was clear evidence that the psychology of fear and paranoia had forced the enemy to proceed to kill themselves the way that a wild animal caught in a trap chews off its own leg to escape, only to bleed to death later on. What has been set in place cannot be undone.
Forty more to go.
Whether they do it to themselves, which could be the case in some areas, or whether the men who drew up the original list do it, for them nothing can stop it now.
It’s like Dr Frankenstein’s monster: once something is created it is very hard to control it. The whole thing can take on a life of its own, leaving the original thinkers to sit and wonder about it all. Wonder or marvel at the monster they created and. But, like Dr Frankenstein, the creators must be aware that the monster can turn on them at any time.
So the best idea is to quietly withdraw, watch and wait and simply allow the game to continue, directing play from time to time with a good hit or two and a few good lies just to keep the players interested.
Fantastic, isn’t it? Quite simply outrageous and truly unbelievable. However, where are the revenge killings, where are the arrests and convictions. There are none. War, what war?
The police and the media all sense they are watching the biggest gang war in Australian criminal history but they can’t quite understand the logic of it. And, for the police and the media, if it doesn’t make sense they simply can’t accept it. They look at each death in isolation or as a small group – a spate of murders over months or a couple of years. None look at all of them. They can’t see the big picture, but only because no-one looks.
When the three original thinkers all got together, none of it was meant to make any sense – after all, when you allow your enemy to know what is happening you also allow your enemy to counter attack.
The three men with a small crew of helpers can’t stand in the cold light of day and fight 30 men and expect to win. It has to be a war of shadows and smoke fought in the valley of total bullshit and darkness.
I must also add that by the time this book comes out, the three young hitmen, code named the Beach Boys, will almost certainly be very much dead. However, the catchcry ‘Let’s Go Surfing’ will be very much alive. Killing the killers is a key part of overall protection, although of course you don’t tell the youngsters at the time. Too much information tends to destroy their enthusiasm for the task at hand.
You must remember that the three original thinkers spent their criminal lives in a never ending state of blood war, and blood war is the only reason they ever got involved in crime in the first place. Money and conventional power had nothing to do with it.
The original thinkers took criminal violence to an almost Zen level. They are the river, therefore they and only they will control which way the river flows.
For the original thinkers, it is a game of chess and they are the masters. They will either win the game or destroy the whole criminal structure as it stands. It is as simple as that. Either way they win.
You can believe this or disregard it as nonsense. I personally don’t give a shit. I’m Mark ‘Chopper’ Read. I’ve written nine best sellers and had a movie made about my life. Do you really think I give a shit who believes me or not? If you don’t, you can always buy a newspaper and read how the media know all and claim that police know who did this, that and the other and are hoping for an early arrest. And they reckon I’m the one who’s pulling people’s legs.
We have now jumped on our surfboards and are heading out to meet our first big wave. Don’t get seasick just yet.
*
SOMETIMES a story doesn’t start at the start or finish at the end. I will simply toss the name of Liu Szu-Po into the pot and say no more. If war funding has to be provided and the Asians and their various crews are not part of any criminal culture, other than their own, the total destruction of the established order can only benefit their own ends.
I will repeat that name for the doubters reading this: Liu Szu-Po, a gentleman from Thailand. One of the original thinkers in charge of funding visited Thailand. Let’s put it this way. I’m not the only man in the world with no ears and the fact that the chap in charge of funding also had no ears impressed Mr Liu Szu-Po to follow his way of thinking.
Any team of men who could carry out such savagery upon their own persons for reasons known only to themselves, were men to financially support in any conflict. Mr Liu Szu-Po is an international criminal thinker and is willing to fund criminal wars in cities all over the world between the various local factions if it means his own international network can slide into the play like a black snake on a dark night.
The original thinkers simply want to rid themselves of enemies made over decades, not to mention the relatives and friends and hangers on of those enemies.
If it takes 15 to 20 years it doesn’t matter. The original thinkers will be in their sixties and by then an Asian wave will dominate a vast section of the international crime scene anyway.
Why not silently team up with the Triads? They at least have a sense of honour and the rare ability to keep their word along with their silence. So while we start to surf, let us remember the name LIU SZU-PO and on that topic I think I’ve said quite enough. He may not be able to surf but he surely can hire the boards.
Let us now turn to probably the most two bob nothing murder in Melbourne in recent times, the shooting of Richard Victor Mladenich at St Kilda’s Esquire Motel in May, 2000.
This was a straight Beach Boys hit. However, within moments disinformation was put about that Mladenich was shot by error, in the wrong place at the wrong time.
His life as a standover man was nickel and dime stuff with street level junkies and whores. He couldn’t fight to save himself yet he had built up a violent and crazy reputation. In fact, he was a big heap of shit with the heart of a split pea – a homosexual rapist in prison who found himself on the wrong side of the Rumanians. It is not a good place to be. His name wasn’t even on the list. In fact, it was a case of someone having not a lot to do on the night in question, so they decided ‘let’s go and shoot him anyway.’
His death was a (very) red herring tossed into the pot to further bewilder and spin-doctor the minds of the already paranoid. Again, I don’t feel the death of such a wombat should warrant too much writing time.
It was rumoured that I once put the blade of a garden spade through the right side of his skull, nearly killing him in H Division at Pentridge in 1989, but Richard stuck staunch and told police nothing.
The two prison officers who witnessed it told police nothing either. That’s how H Division ran back then. Ah, the good old days.
*
THE murder of Mad Charlie was for me a great personal sadness. I even named my son after him. He was, in spite of fallouts from the past, an old and dear friend.
A cunning campaign of disinformation was set into place to smother details of his death – details such as who might have done it, for instance. And why. All the wider world knows is that Charlie copped it in the front yard of his home in South Caulfield in November, 1998, and that a .38 calibre weapon was involved. Apart from knowing that Charlie didn’t die in his sleep of old age, the police seem to have no idea what really happened. Either that, or they’re not that interested.
His name was never on the original list. However, his friendship with the three original thinkers meant that Charlie was starting to figure certain things out.
Now Charlie was mad, but he was also smart. For the original thinkers the worry was that Charlie would put it all together and tell someone. He had some friends in the police force and the thinkers couldn’t take the risk that he would get chatty.
Charlie was killed by a friend, a man who didn’t want to kill him but could see no other way out of this particular problem.
Charlie had always said, ‘When my time comes, let it not be at the hands of a laughing enemy but at the hands of a crying friend.’ He got his wish. I can tell Charlie that the tears over what had to be done were flowing before his death and are still flowing. The same disinformation program was brought into play. No more need be said on that topic.
Via Con Dios Amigo
‘Rest In Peace’
Charlie Hegyalji
23/11/98
‘May God go with you’
*
THE Beach Boys acted as logistic support on that hit, but a killing of such a personal importance, not to mention sentiment, had to be carried out by a friend, not an enemy.
I had intended to name this book ‘Surf’s Up’ or ‘Let’s go Surfing’ but the Beach Boys crew are a team that I’m sure will be dead by the time this book comes out and therefore it would be poor taste. They were to be killed by the men who created them or they may even be simply added to the overall psychology of fear when their bodies are found.
If you give dogs the taste of blood you might have to kill them before they turn on you. So I’ve decided to call this part of the book ‘Psychology of Fear’, as basically the whole insane campaign relies heavily on this very psychology and the fact that the ordinary man will dismiss this story as the work of a madman, whose whole life and the stories he tells have all been quite unbelievable.
That is my defence. I can write it all down in the comic knowledge that none of you will believe a word I’m writing. The only safe way to tell the truth is when you know people are convinced you’re lying. Like when I told the police I killed Sammy the Turk, they just didn’t believe me. Sammy did. But, sadly, he was in no condition to corroborate my story.
It was the confession and the story that went with it and the fact that police did not act on a confession that ultimately helped the jury come to the wise decision that I was not guilty of murder.
But then, what would I know; after all, I am the greatest liar on earth. Would I tell anyone the truth?
So a wall of disbelief protects this whole story. Don’t you think these tactics have ever been used before?
Hitler once said ‘The greater the lie, the more people will believe it.’ Do you think that the truth is a weapon ever used in war?
John F. Kennedy. Martin Luther King. Do you really believe that disinformation wasn’t the greatest weapon used before and after their deaths? The list goes on and on.
Just read history, military history, political history, any sort of history.
The people either don’t want to, or simply will not believe the truth, so a lie must be created for them. When a writer writes about lies, how can he ever be sued or charged for telling the truth?
I feel I sit here writing this with a certain legal safety. I will repeat, you can either believe it or not, I will not confirm nor will I deny. You be the jury.
*
THE Beach Boys’ first real hit wasn’t about California girls or little red Corvettes. It was a Chinese gentleman who came visiting Australia and didn’t survive the trip. The less said about that the better, as even words smothered under the shadow of fiction from the pen of a self-confessed storyteller, leg puller and yarn spinner might be taken entirely the wrong way.
Their second job, acting as a back-up crew providing logistic support was the Gangitano hit in January, 1998. They were there to make sure the first crew went in and did the job.
Gangitano’s name was placed on the list by the Italian who replaced the third original thinker and as a personal favour to the same man. To have Alphonse Gangitano’s own friends carry out most of the mission by setting him up, took nearly three years of disinformation and inside spy work to convince the men closest to Alphonse that he had been acting as a Federal and NCA and DEA informer for the six years prior to his death. It was probably the greatest chess game played by the original thinkers, although by no means the only one.
At first, his friends would not believe the stories that he was an informer, but after the seed was sown the poisonous plant was always going to grow in the minds of the paranoid.
For the sake of this story I will call the Italian, who joined the original thinkers, ‘The Pizza Man’. Not very inventive, I know, but it will have to do.
Their third main hit was in 1999. The target was Dimitrious Bellas, nicknamed ‘Jimmy the Greek’. The Pizza Man himself, along with one of the original thinkers, Mr Blue Eyes, aided by the three Beach Boys went on to do Vince Mannella in January, 1999, and his brother Gerry or Gerardo Mannella in October 1999.
The Beach Boys helped a Rumanian crew kill Danny Boy Mendoza and seven other Rumanians who remain on the missing list to date. Some of them were illegal immigrants and so there were no records of them being here in the first place. They could hardly be missed. Those who knew they were on the missing list were too frightened to say anything. There were wives who would never mention that their husbands had disappeared. Many knew the truth but would never tell any authorities.
All together, the Beach Boys crew, Mr Blue Eyes and the Pizza Man have carried out approximately 15 murders since 1997 and that does not include the deaths of helpers brought in to dig graves, mix acid, drive trucks and getaway cars and provide safe house locations.
They even killed one helper for arriving 30 minutes late to a meeting and using a taxi to get to the motel where the Pizza Man was staying. He was told to travel by train and then walk and to be on time.
You can’t run a top hit team with your staff not showing up for work or showing up late and not following orders.
To top it off, he didn’t have the money to pay the taxi, which brought the driver to the motel front desk. The whole operation had to be cancelled – all because of a sloppy employee.
You might read this and question why I’m dancing over the deaths of targets in such a light-hearted manner and not spending pages and pages on each one, filling you with boring detail regarding what a dark night it was and how the moon light shone on the gun barrel. What I can say is that the video camera was turned off but not the automatic garden sprinkler system, meaning everyone arrived back wringing wet.
Yet, by the time the police arrived, someone had turned off the sprinkler. No, I won’t go into detail, or I’d have to say that Mad Charlie always kept his front doorway light on so his front door and garden area was well lit when he arrived home. But, the funny thing was that on the night he died the light was off. This great piece of good luck helped hide the killer, who was under the front hedge. It was a tight fit but Charlie’s old friend was not a heavy fellow so he could slip in there quite comfortably to wait to deliver the death sentence to a mate.
I will say that in some cases even the best hit crew cannot carry out their work without a little inside help.
Let me put this argument to you. If a woman is told that either her husband is to die or her children, one or the other, which one would she pick? This is not what happened with Mad Charlie but it could have been used in other cases. There is always a way to get someone to help you. You just have to find the way in each case. In Charlie’s case, there were friends and also people who pretended to be his friends. The underworld is full of people who pretend to be your friends and others who pretend to be your enemies.
I do not intend to waste my time or yours writing about the life and times and deaths of any particular individual. This book is meant to be a psychological, tactical and strategic overall view of certain deaths.
Take Mark Moran … please. Sorry, couldn’t resist the old Henny Youngman gag. But seriously, to get Moran killed, a person close to him, a very powerful friend and business partner, had to be totally convinced that he was guilty of a grievous wrongdoing.
To convince an already paranoid man that he has been betrayed by a close friend isn’t as hard as it sounds, especially when the powerful criminal in question is married to a slut former junkie whore who has never told the truth in her life.
The very fact that she screamed her innocence while being bashed only proved her supposed guilt. Then, when she screamed in rage, ‘Yeah, I fucked him and I loved it. Why wouldn’t I?’ the fact that Moran wouldn’t touch the ugly old slag with a 40-foot pole was beside the point.
If either of the Morans was screwing the wife then they might have been behind a police raid that cost this particular gangster and his team millions in lost goods and legal fees. All of this, of course, was disinformation put out by Blue Eyes and the Pizza Man via the Chinese, a good 12 months before Moran’s death.
The gangster in question did big business with Chinese and Vietnamese. Why would they lie? They were making good money together. Well, they weren’t lying – they were simply repeating what they had been told by an Italian visiting Thailand on holiday
The disinformation about Moran originated in Thailand but was set in place in Melbourne. You see how a Chinese Whisper campaign works. Even if it’s not believed.
The named person has to be killed because there is simply too much at stake to risk. After all, these men aren’t running a charity and you can forget all the loving death notices in the newspaper. There were pages of death notices for Mark Moran and Alphonse Gangitano. Many of the mourners were sincere but there were as many who were as happy to see them dead.
Tears mean nothing when they are insincere. Even real tears can conceal a murderer. The deep thinkers who put Mad Charlie off still miss him greatly, but sometimes things have to be done. The sentimental gangster will die or spend his life in jail. Only the cool heads and the cold hearted survive.
None of these men really trust each other. The game is so easy it is almost child psychology. Add the use of cocaine to this mix and the psychology of fear, using death, paranoia and disinformation, is damn near foolproof.
The enemy simply cannot afford not to take action – they have too much to lose. Fortunes, friends and family. The more you have, the more frightened you become of losing. There is an old saying that property makes cowards of us all. It’s true, even in the criminal world. The up-and-coming gangster is the most dangerous because he has nothing to lose. Once he has made a mark, settled down with a family and begun raking in the cash, he is terrified. Frightened someone will target him, take his spot, take his money, tell the cops, and ruin his party. Most of the time he is right.
In that world, you can’t afford to let a man live just because he might be a good bloke and might not be an informer. Might not means that he also might be. Only death will make sure he isn’t. Simple as that. You are the Weakest Link – bang! It takes the guess out of the guessing game.
We are riding the surf now, dear reader. Are you standing up yet, or have you lost your balance and fallen in? Be careful, the sharks are everywhere, and not just in the water.
It is also true that most of the top drug criminals in Melbourne and Sydney have some form of relationship with some police. So it is not hard to convince a paranoid drug boss that so and so is an informer because he thinks to himself, ‘Well, I’ve got my police that I talk to, why should he be the odd man out.’
The fire is already set, you just have to find the right match. It’s simply a matter of knowing thy enemy and know him very well. Are you seeing now how the original list of 60 men to be killed over a 15 to 20 year period wasn’t really so far-fetched at all?
Think of the murders that remain unsolved. Freddie the Frog lost half his head in the docks back in the 1950s. His mate, Big Normie, fell out of the sky not long after. The Ferret went swimming in his Valiant. It wasn’t roadworthy, or sea worthy. Painters and Dockers painted themselves into dark corners, drug dealers went on missing lists and crooks retired into shallow graves. The police didn’t try too hard. Many thought the crims got their right whack. The coppers, meanwhile, were trying to solve murders of innocent people. When they deal with crims who either won’t talk or talk bullshit, they lose interest pretty quickly. In fact, in the light of the psychology used, I think 60 was quite modest.
*
LET us now return to 12 November, 1979, and a man by the name of Raymond Patrick Chuck, head of the crew that carried out the Great Bookie Robbery on the Victorian Club in Queen Street on 26th April, 1976. The papers said between $1 and $12 million was believed taken. I have always believed it was $6 million but some very good judges, who know how much bookies were holding and how much they owed, calculate that it was a bit less than that. In any case, it was still plenty of money for those days, so who’s counting?
Ray Chuck was shot dead as he was escorted through the Melbourne Magistrates Court. The rumours put about were that the late criminal gang leader and standover merchant, Brian Kane, pulled the trigger as a payback for the death of his brother, Leslie Herbert Kane.
Whispers were then heard that professional hitman, Christopher Dale Flannery, nick named ‘Rent-A-Kill’, did the job, setting in place probably the greatest disinformation campaign ever conceived. If Ray Chuck was killed by Flannery then the answer to who killed Flannery is too fucking easy.
Who was Ray Chuck’s best friend in the world? I won’t name him, as he is still alive and remains one of the best crooks in Australia. He isn’t a bad bloke at all and certainly doesn’t deserve to do a life sentence over a maggot like Flannery.
To add punch to the party you had all these razzle-dazzle Sydney gangsters either bragging that they shot Flannery or that they knew who did. So the disinformation campaign put in place to protect the true identity of the man who did kill Flannery wasn’t hard, but it was massive, and went on for years.
It’s hard to come back and say, ‘Oh, by the way, to prove my point on the psychology of criminal gang warfare, fear and the sheer power of disinformation, I’d now like to confess that I invented 90 per cent of the crap people now believe to be fact surrounding the Flannery case.’ That would be stupid, wouldn’t it?
Now, it is true that the team carrying out the inquest into the death of sad old Chris did come down to Risdon Prison in sleepy Tassie to have a chat. They asked me many questions. I can understand why they would want my views on such a serious matter. After all, with due modesty, I do possess the greatest criminal mind of any (living) underworld identity. Which proves mainly that there aren’t that many heavy thinkers in criminal ranks.
Anyway, so they rocked down for a chat. I spoke for a great deal of time. They listened, took more notes and nodded gravely. I nodded gravely. They asked more questions and took more notes. Each one of them got more than a grand a day for asking questions. I got bugger-all for answering them. They went back to their five star hotels to mull over what I had said with the help of a cheeky Pinot and a local lobster. I had rissoles for tea washed down with some prison hooch. You work it out.
They seemed happy. I was happy. Did I feed them some disinformation? Perish the thought. As a law-abiding citizen – not – I did my best to help, but no-one (including me) has done a day’s jail over Chris, who, rumour suggests, may have given a white pointer shocking heartburn.
The beauty of being a known killer and an alleged author is that you can have an opinion on any murder and people don’t know if it is a theory based on experience or the facts based on inside knowledge. Sometimes I don’t know myself. I prefer not to. It’s less complicated.
Take poor Alphonse. Some pretty young television thing wanted me to debate him when I got out of jail. I told the little vixen that it was not to be unless it was done through a ouija board, as Al was about to cop a couple of lead injections in his cranium.
As suspected, Alphonse ran out of breath rather suddenly just a few weeks later. Was that inside knowledge or just a lucky guess? Any fool could see that Alphonse was running red hot and couldn’t be allowed to keep going. But then again, I’m no fool.
Whether I had inside knowledge or just suspected what was going to happen doesn’t matter. He is dead and I am not. I can’t be blamed as I was inside Risdon, well out of harm’s way.
The same applies to the murder, still unsolved, of Tony Franzone, shot six times in May, 1992. His death is so long ago and so unsolved it has been forgotten. Shrouded in the mist of time and disinformation, but an important key to unlocking the coffin that Alphonse Gangitano finally went into.
Underworld hits are never solved unless, of course, your name is Billy ‘The Texan’ Longley and your hit squad is made up of mental retards with mouths like running taps.
But, in general, a professional hit will go unsolved forever, shrouded in a sea of bullshit, created by men who know psychology. What the police and media are willing to believe. The police and media are pretty black and white thinkers, so any red herring tossed their way must be big enough to catch and small enough to eat. Disinformation within the criminal world must be in the size of a fucking battleship as paranoid people eat, drink live and sleep on a never-ending diet of conspiracy theories. All you have to do is create a story that links their name into it all and they will believe anything.
They get on the phone to their own police and media contacts and within two days, my police and media contacts are telling me of a whole new line of investigation. I back down and reply, ‘Gee, I was sure my information was correct.’ They put the phone down, smugly thinking that fucking Read isn’t the fucking know it all he thinks he is. I put the phone down and simply smile. Gotcha! Ha, ha, ha!
Media and police rely on information received. All you have to do is create the information they receive, then control it and never rely on one story. Always give them several sources, then allow them to select the most tasty piece of flapdoodle from the menu. Never force feed them, allow them the pleasure of a la carte. If they pick their own they will believe it more.
I know of several investigations, still unsolved, where police scientific investigators mistook a gunshot wound from a .22-calibre magnum handgun as that of a 38-calibre.
The slug passed straight through the body and was never found, so the whole homicide squad is busy, busy, busy sorting out the disinformation on murders they will never solve, beginning with scientific evidence, sending the investigators in search of the wrong weapon. How do I know that? Maybe I made it up, or maybe I know the killer. Maybe I know the killer very well.
I won’t start on police scientific investigators. Remember the Azaria Chamberlain case. Blood spots, which turned out to be paint spots when they enter the courtroom. It’s a nice trip up the yellow brick road.
Scientific evidence doesn’t have to be 100 per cent spot on anymore. The introduction of DNA evidence means that all that is needed now is to be pretty close, not 100 per cent. But a fair chance and that’s that, you’re guilty. Add that crap to police evidence based on several years of disinformation along with police ballistic experts who can’t tell a 22-calibre magnum head wound from the head wound of a .38. I can think of several fellows, although very guilty of a hundred other unsolved crimes, who didn’t do the ones they are in prison for. Quite comic really, in a poetic justice sort of way. Life all seems to equal itself out in the end. Just ask Alphonse. His equalled itself out a little earlier than he’d hoped. Never mind, if he believed in reincarnation, perhaps he’ll get a longer tour of duty next time.
But I’m getting off the track.
Remember Victor Frederick Allard, a former painter and docker turned drug dealer? He was shot to death in February, 1979, in Fitzroy Street, St Kilda. And Michael Ebert, who was shot to death on 17th April, 1980, outside a brothel in Rathdowne Street, Carlton? Both unsolved. Police and media all think they know the answer but if they know so fucking much then how come no arrests or convictions?
Did Shane Goodfellow really die of a drug overdose in 1992 or was it a hotshot murder? The same with Tony MacNamara – but, again, I digress. I tend to do this. The reader must forgive me.
Trying to write a book while stopping my 10-month-old baby son, Charlie, from smashing the remote control from the TV over the cat’s head, tends to distract one’s Thomas-the-Tank Engine of thought. Charlie is, as I said, 10 months old at the time of writing and two stone in weight, with four teeth already and walking, albeit with help. He enjoys chewing the skin off raw potatoes. As you do.
Anyway, I have to put the pen down to change Charlie’s nappy. From murder to nappies, life has indeed taken me on some strange twists and turns. Although, looking at it, I think he has committed GBH of the bottom. As often happens, I sit down to write thinking that I’m heading in a certain direction, only to find I have begun a literary U-turn. This, I guess, is my style. It was the same when I was full time in the underworld. I might pop around to someone’s place for a drink, then decide to shoot them in the guts or just burn their house down. Poor old Nick the Greek still whinges about that. He should remember that without me he would have been just another no-name drug dealer. With my help, free of charge, he ended up in the Chopper movie and is world famous. God help us all.
The fact that no-one knew whether I was coming around for a drink (as in Victoria Bitter) or coming around for a ‘drink’ (as in a sling) always added a tingle to your underworld social event. Will I have a Harvey Wallbanger, or just grab Harvey and bang him into the wall? These were the sort of questions which kept everyone interested in the social whirl.
There is much that I miss about the old days. The torture, the blood, the look in a drug dealers’ eyes over those few hours it takes them to remember where the stash is. The look of fear as they know there will be pain, the look of anger as they know they will lose their cash, the look of hope when they think that will be enough, the look of resignation as they hop in the boot and the look for their mother when they see the lime and the spade.
You could write a book about it, except I already have.
*
‘Mentally speaking, it’s pretty hard to pull your socks up when you’re only wearing fucking thongs.’ – Frankie Waghorn, H Division legend and the hardest puncher in the underworld.
I’M not the only one to use the psychology of fear or to weave a web of disinformation to conceal the truth.
Take the case of Santo Ippolito in December, 1991. Santo was bashed to death in his home in Springvale. Case unsolved. Disinformation claimed within underworld circles that a member of my crew hired through me was paid to do it. I’ve never heard of the bloke in my life. And if I did I wouldn’t tell you. I didn’t get all this way to lag myself back into jail. Twenty-four years is enough for anyone.
The case of Vietnamese drug dealer Quock Cuong Dwong, killed on 30th January, 1992. Story put about it was a torture job again. Again, baseless rumours that members of my old crew were close to the scene. There was even one yarn that had me actually involved. Again, never heard of the bloke. I am offended by these slanders against me.
But the best was when the dagos killed Rocco Medici and his brother Giuseppe Furina and dumped them in the Murrumbidgee River after cutting their ears off. I’m unsure of the date, but it was back in the eighties and it may have been 5 May, 1984, at a spooky guess.
It was during the height of the Pentridge overcoat gang war and a membership drive of the Van Gogh club, which is far more exclusive than the Melbourne club. Members of my crew, on the outside, were rumoured to have been paid by the Italians to carry out the murders, and the ears was a comic touch. A sort of Van Gogh signature.
In all of the history of the Italian criminal culture, ear cutting has never been a part of the play. That bit of disinformation lasted about two days until a few wogs were told that the next lot of ears to come off would be their own. End of disinformation program, but they are still unsolved murders.
And, now, if I may quote myself from an earlier work regarding these matters:
‘If you have a dead body in the bottom of your swimming pool and the police are on their way over to interview you about a missing wristwatch, then the only thing you can do is toss dirt into the pool and muddy the water. What people can’t see they won’t worry about. The police may remark on your dirty swimming pool but for the time being, that’s it until the next move, which is hopefully out of the fucking swimming pool.’
To which I would add a thought from Sherlock Holmes:
‘Ninety per cent of all criminal cases solved are the direct result of information received. The remaining 10 per cent belong to the investigating criminal detective and nine per cent of those cases are bungled by forensic fools. The impossible one per cent are totally unsolvable. The per cent remaining is then handed to us, my dear Watson.’