The Gangland War (15 page)

Authors: John Silvester

He was representing Anthony Farrell, one of four men charged with, and ultimately acquitted of, the Walsh Street ambush murders of young police constables Steven Tynan and Damian Eyre.

Fraser said to Farrell: âAll you've got to do is fucking keep your trap shut. So say fucking nothing. And don't consent to anything.

âSo just keep your trap shut, mate. This is the rest of your life here, because, don't worry, if you go down on this you're going to get a fucking monster, and we all know that, right?'

Fraser's tough-guy talk and his 24-hour-a-day availability made him popular with some of Victoria's best-known crime families. Drug dealer and killer Dennis Allen always used Fraser and the Moran family swore by him.

But by the late 1990s Fraser was battling his own drug demons. He ignored his own advice to keep silent and by 1999 he was reduced to cocaine-fuelled rambles in his city office. In December 2001, Fraser was sentenced to a minimum of five years' jail for his part in a cocaine smuggling scheme.

A key piece of evidence was a conversation secretly recorded in his office by police on 16 August 1999, when he discussed with his usual supplier a plot to import cocaine valued at almost $3 million. But five days earlier, drug squad police from Operation Regent recorded another fascinating conversation.

Fraser told a colleague that one of his clients, Jason Moran, was âcrazy'.

The colleague asked the lawyer entrusted with many of the criminal secrets of Melbourne, who had killed Gangitano.

Fraser responded with one word: âJason.'

THE fact and fantasies of Gangitano's life and death will never be separated.

He gave the impression of wealth, but he had serious debts; he appeared unworried by constant police investigations and court appearances, yet his autopsy showed traces of the prescribed anti-anxiety drug â Diazapam.

He owed his lawyer George Defteros $100,000 and had about $2000 in a bank account. He was a paper millionaire, with assets valued at just over $1.1 million, but with debts of more than $300,000. Most of his wealth was in his late parents' property in Lygon Street that he and his sister had inherited. Most crooks use dirty money to invest in legitimate business. He used good money to try and build a crime empire.

There were more than 200 death notices for Gangitano. As has become an underworld tradition, hundreds packed St Mary's Star of the Sea church for the funeral. It made the headlines and led the television news. He would have liked that.

Gangitano referred to himself as a property developer, although the occupation listed in his will was âgentleman'.

But the myth did not die with his murder and he proved to be more famous dead than alive.

The theatre continued at his inquest, four years later. Deputy Coroner Iain West heard that a musician had composed a song to Gangitano and the crime boss wanted Hollywood star Andy Garcia to play his role in a proposed movie. He would have been chuffed with the choice of local star Vince Colosimo in Channel Nine's $10 million series
Underbelly
.

Kinniburgh and Moran attended the inquest but both chose not to give evidence on the grounds of self-incrimination. Kinniburgh wore casual clothes befitting a man who didn't want to be noticed. Moran wore an expensive pinstripe suit and a flash diamond ring.

Observers noticed a large scar running down the side of his head, legacy of having his skull broken by police when he was arrested a few years earlier â an action which the trial judge said was âremarkably heavy handed.'

Coroner West found that both Kinniburgh and Moran were in Gangitano's house and âimplicated in the death' but he did not have sufficient evidence to conclude who fired the gun.

Now Kinniburgh and Moran are also dead. The case is closed â dead men tell no tales.