The Gangland War (14 page)

It was just before 11pm Melbourne time when Kizon rang Gangitano from a Chinese restaurant in Perth. They talked about how the court proceedings had gone that day. Gangitano chatted easily and sounded confident. He had a visitor who took the phone for a brief conversation. It was his long-time friend Graham ‘The Munster' Kinniburgh.

The phone call lasted less than ten minutes. Kizon said he would ring back. He didn't get the chance.

Earlier that evening, Kinniburgh had had a drink with Carlton identity Lou Cozzo at the Laurel Hotel in Ascot Vale. Around 10.30pm, he drove his red Ford across town to visit Gangitano.

‘The Munster' was one of the few men in Melbourne who could drop in on Gangitano without an invitation. According to Kinniburgh, the big man was on the phone when he arrived and told him to clear off for about 30 minutes as he was waiting for another visitor to arrive for a meeting. But those who knew them say the younger man would never be so dismissive of ‘The Munster'.

Kinniburgh gave that version to write himself out of the house at the time of the murder. It didn't work.

So what really happened?

Gangitano was sitting downstairs at a round kitchen table. From this spot he could see down the hallway to the wooden front door, which was open to let in the cool night breeze. Through the mesh of the second security door he could see out but no one could see in.

It was eighteen degrees at 11pm and Gangitano hadn't bothered to change from his pyjama top and blue underpants. Judging from the time of Kizon's phone call, Kinniburgh was already in the house.

When Gangitano opened the door for a second visitor he didn't bother to put on clothes. It was a casual meeting with a man he knew well — his old mate and partner-in-crime, Jason Moran.

What was said in those few minutes will never be known as the three men present have now all been shot dead. But forensic evidence suggests Moran was standing in the kitchen to his victim's left and Gangitano ran towards the laundry to his right as shots were fired from close range. He was shot in the back, nose and head, before collapsing.

Kinniburgh said he had slipped away to a Quix convenience store in Blackburn Road to buy a packet of Benson & Hedges cigarettes. He was recorded on the store's security camera at 11.45pm and left a minute later.

Coincidently, Gangitano's wife stopped at the same shop eight minutes earlier to buy the children ice-creams and drinks on the way home. Kinniburgh said he was gone for 30 minutes. He has not yet explained what he did for the other 25 before he returned to his friend's home.

When he pulled up at the house, Gangitano's wife was already inside. She had found the body and dialled 000. The emergency tape recorded her call as she desperately tried to keep her children from seeing their dead father. Kinniburgh attempted to help, rolling the body over and trying to administer first aid, but Gangitano had already bled to death.

Kinniburgh must have known the big man was already gone. Did he go through the masquerade of trying to revive him to strengthen his alibi, or was it to ensure there was a logical reason for his DNA to be found on the body?

Those who knew the Munster say he placed himself back at the crime scene because he would not want the dead man's family to have to deal with the horrendous scene alone.

Police believe Moran and Gangitano argued, then Jason pulled a gun and shot his best friend three times. They think Kinniburgh was shocked, ran to the closed front security door and tried to burst through, cutting his hand on the strong mesh.

But the Munster didn't become a great underworld survivor by panicking. Even though he was in a mess not of his making, he coolly weighed up what to do. Police deduced that he immediately slipped upstairs to check the security video system, which would explain why blood matching his was found on the upstairs banister.

Gangitano was slack when it came to his security system. He sporadically used it when he was out to see if police had broken in to fit listening devices or telephone taps. He would leave one tape in the machine and re-record over it. But when police checked, the machine was off and the tape was gone and was nowhere in the house. They believe the Munster grabbed the evidence before he left.

RUSSELL Warren Smith was a dangerous man until the drugs beat him. In 1988, when he was more than half way through a ten-year term for killing a man, he noticed a tough youngster who turned up in Geelong jail.

The new kid was Jason Moran, born into a crime family and brought up with gangsters. When gunman Brian Kane was shot in the bar of a Brunswick hotel in 1982, the teenage Jason placed a respectful death notice in the paper to his ‘Uncle Brian' from ‘Your Little Mate'.

In prison, there are few loners. You team up with a gang, known as a crew, or you can be picked off.

‘When Jason came into the jail he joined up with the crew I was running with,' Smith would later tell police.

‘I found him to be a good bloke, but he was wild. He was always big-noting himself and I remember his big line, “Do you know who the f… I am?”

‘Jason was only a young kid and nobody in jail had heard of him (but he) could look after himself. Jail is a very violent place and Jason had to fight to protect himself.

‘Jason would always be threatening people, it was his nature.'

They lost contact when they left jail, but six years later they met again, through mutual friend Lou Cozzo, son of Melbourne furniture identity Frank.

In 1995, the three had been drinking in the Depot Hotel in Richmond. Cozzo and Smith were on day leave from the Odyssey
House drug clinic and were not worried that a bellyful of beer would be a problem on their return — ‘we always found it easy to get through the tests they would give'.

It was just after 11pm on a Saturday when Moran generously offered to drive them back to the clinic to beat the midnight curfew.

Like his long-time associate, Gangitano, Moran was a hothead who would act first and think later. Consequences were for others to worry about.

Another driver cut in front of Moran without using his indicator. The lights turned red and so did Moran. At one of Melbourne's busiest and best-lit intersections, the corner of Bridge and Punt Road, Moran grabbed a wheel brace, smashed the other motorist's windscreen, dragged him from the car and beat him severely. No one stopped to help.

‘Jason got back in the car and was laughing,' Smith said later.

‘Lou and Jason were part of the Lygon Street crew and that is where I met Alphonse Gangitano. Alphonse would have been the leader of this crowd, some people called him the Lygon Street Godfather. All that crowd wanted to be known as gangsters. They all cultivated tough reputations. I don't know why they did this. It was just in their nature.' Smith said that Gangitano ‘always seemed to keep his family separate from the Lygon Street crowd.'

On 16 January 1998, Smith was drinking at a hotel in Campbellfield and watching the lunchtime strip show when he saw Moran. The two talked and smoked some marijuana.

They went back to Smith's Preston flat to smoke some more. Moran promised to return that night to pay $500 for a marijuana debt.

He returned at 9.45pm. They smoked, talked and then Moran suggested a drive. Moran threw him the keys of his late-model green Commodore sedan.

Moran was no longer the new kid on the block and Smith was no longer the more experienced man. The pecking order had changed. When Moran suggested something, it was done.

The car had a no-smoking sticker on the glove box. Smith believed it was a hire car.

‘I didn't know where we were going and I didn't ask.'

It was about 10pm when they left Preston and Moran told Smith where to drive — ‘Jason was talking and seemed calm.'

They pulled up in Templestowe. One of the first things Smith the career criminal noticed was that ‘most of the houses had alarms or sensor lights on them'.

Moran opened the passenger door and said, ‘You can't come in. Just wait here and I'll be back in five or 10 minutes.'

But Moran didn't walk in to the double-storey house next to where they had parked but behind the car and down the street. Smith knew too much curiosity could be fatal, so he ‘lost interest'.

After about fifteen minutes, Moran jumped back into the car and told Smith to drive. They went to a 24-hour McDonald's drive-through in South Melbourne.

Moran told him to drive to Williamstown. As they crossed the Westgate Bridge in the left-hand lane Moran picked up the McDonald's bag and threw it out the passenger window. Smith saw it clear the railing and fall towards the water far below. It was only later, he said, that he wondered how a paper bag didn't flutter behind a car travelling at more than 80kmh and instead went almost straight over the railing.

And it was only much later that he thought that Moran may have slipped his gun into the bag and thrown it into the river. Or so he was to say.

‘I knew Jason always carried a gun. I don't know why he carried them, but he seemed to like guns.'

More than three months later, police divers spent a week trying
to find the gun. Police threw paper bags with weights about the size of a .32 handgun off the bridge.

Detectives offered a bottle of malt whisky to the diver who could find the murder weapon. But tidal currents and the Yarra's permanent silt made it impossible.

A well-known underworld gun dealer lives in the Williamstown area. Police believe Moran made the trip to pick up a new gun after he threw the one used to kill Gangitano into the river.

Next morning, Smith was woken by radio reports that a ‘gangland figure' had been murdered in Templestowe. ‘I started to get nervous. I didn't know if Jason had anything to do with it but I started to think he may have.' When he found out the victim was Gangitano he become increasingly worried. ‘To say I was shocked was an understatement.'

Two days later, Moran turned up at Smith's flat at 7am. Despite the hour they shared a bong and, according to Smith, Moran said, ‘Alphonse has been put off … don't talk to any of the crew, especially Lou (Cozzo) and don't tell anyone you were driving me the other night.'

A few days later Cozzo rang and asked him if he knew anything about the murder and asked ‘if Jason was involved'.

Police arrested Smith for stealing cars more than three months after Gangitano's murder.

He then decided to tell them what he knew because he wanted a fresh start and was ‘sick of always looking over my shoulder for Jason Moran'.

His evidence may well have been compelling in any future murder trial but Smith committed suicide by hanging himself in jail — eight months to the day after Gangitano's death.

WITHIN 48 hours of the murder, a freshly-showered Moran arrived with his long-time lawyer, Andrew Fraser, to be interviewed by homicide squad detectives in their St Kilda Road office.

Some might expect a murder victim's friend to be visibly upset and keen to help detectives. But Moran feigned indifference and refused to answer questions.

Kinniburgh was also interviewed and while he also refused to answer questions the old head was unfailingly polite. When police said they were about to get a warrant to search his house, he quietly pointed out that his money and house keys had been seized by police at the scene. If there was gunshot residue on the money then it may have come from contamination from the crime scene and if there was any evidence of a crime at his house then it could have been planted.

He was clever, but not clever enough to avoid a bullet.

More than two years after Gangitano's murder, Jason's half-brother, Mark Moran, was murdered in the driveway of his luxury home near Essendon. Police say Carl Williams was the shooter but the charges against him were dropped when he agreed to plead guilty to three other hits. Mark Moran was a victim but no innocent one.

Some in the underworld believe that Jason was not the only Moran in Gangitano's home that night. They say Kinniburgh tried to organise a peace meeting between the Morans and Gangitano, assuring Big Al there would be no weapons.

The theory goes that one of the Morans produced a gun and killed Gangitano in an ambush that shocked Kinniburgh — hence his reaction to the murder.

There were two witnesses who were in the street that night having an argument in a car. One saw a man walk down the road into Gangitano's house and leave a short time later. The description fitted Jason, but the witness insisted he had tattoos and Jason didn't. The witnesses identified a ute in the street — a car similar to the one driven by Mark, who did have impressive tattoos.

Jason Moran was eventually sentenced to jail for the King Street brawl where Gangitano was a co-accused. In September
2001, Moran was granted parole and released from prison. In an unusual move, the National Parole Board allowed him to leave Australia with his family because of fears for his life. But he was too stubborn and arrogant to stay away. Despite advice from his own family he returned to Melbourne on 20 November.

On 21 June 2003, he was shot dead with his friend, Pasquale Barbaro, while they watched an Auskick junior football session in Essendon North.

On 13 December 2003, the man who wanted a low profile, Graham Kinniburgh, made headlines when he was murdered outside his Kew home.

Criminal lawyer Andrew Fraser knew many secrets. His clients believed they could tell him anything and their conversations would remain confidential.

A ready talker himself, Fraser knew the value of silence. His first advice to his many clients was that if questioned by police, refuse to talk. He would tell them to provide their name, age and address, but to respond to every further question with a standard ‘no comment'.

Private school-educated, Fraser prided himself on his ability to talk to his clients using the language of the underworld.

In September 1988, his private language became public knowledge when a conversation with a murder suspect was recorded in a city watch-house cell.