The Gangland War (2 page)

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.

All of which means that police corruption led, at least indirectly, to the underworld war that shocked Australia.

WHILE in jail on remand for close to two months, Williams began to plan his first attack. First, he recruited the team he believed would kill for him.

One of the first to join was Andrew ‘Benji' Veniamin, the former kick boxer and gunman who once idolised Carlton identity Mick Gatto, who has cast a giant shadow in Melbourne's underworld for years. Williams saw Gatto, who was loosely 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 immediately, it meant established underworld figures, including Gatto, would seek revenge. He decided his best chance of survival was not to jump at shadows but to cast a bigger one, so he launched a hostile takeover.

Initially, Williams was outnumbered and in no position to take on the Morans, let alone contemplate plans for gangland domination. Then, by a stroke of perfect timing, he was finally bailed on his drug charges on 22 January 2000. Three days later, Jason Moran was jailed for affray and sentenced to twenty months jail. That meant Mark Moran had lost his closest ally and was now dangerously exposed.

Five months later, on 15 June, Mark Moran was killed outside his Aberfeldie home. More driven than Jason, but less erratic,
Mark had managed to keep a lower profile than his half-brother — until then.

When his death was first reported, he was referred to as a local football star rather than an underworld identity. But police immediately knew it was a gangland hit.

They also knew Mark Moran was entrenched in crime as much as the rest of his family, who had always considered honest work a personal affront.

Moran lived in a house valued at $1.3 million at a time when most western suburban houses were worth much less than half that. His occupations had been listed as personal trainer and unemployed pastry chef, neither of which would explain how much dough he had.

Four months before his murder, on 17 February 2000, police noticed Moran driving a new luxury hire car. When they pulled him over and opened the boot, they found a high-tech handgun fitted with a silencer and a laser sight. They also found a heap 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 passed drugs to a dealer at the Gladstone Park shopping centre, a few hundred 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 no problem. Few people were stupid enough to try to rip off the Morans.

Moran drove home, but soon decided to leave again for another meeting. He was blasted with a shotgun as he stepped into his Commodore.

Police later established that Williams had been waiting only ten minutes for Moran to leave the house. It smelled of an ambush based on inside information.

Moran's natural father, Leslie John Cole, had been shot dead in eerily similar circumstances outside his Sydney 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.

He immediately called 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, first at $40,000 and later at $50,000. Lewis's idea of a hit fee hadn't kept up with inflation. There were no takers.

There were seven men at the meeting at Moran's home. Five are now dead.

Police suspected Carl Williams from the start for Mark Moran's murder, so much so they raided his house 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 long-term investigation was more important than a murder probe they thought was doomed to fail in any case.

Their prediction was self-fulfilling.

Jason Moran was allowed special leave from prison to speak at Mark's packed gangland funeral (one of many repeated in Melbourne in the following few years). Mourners later said he spoke with real emotion, but the death notice he placed in the
Herald
Sun
worried police. It read: ‘This is only the beginning; it will never be the end. REMEMBER, I WILL NEVER FORGET.'

But nor would Carl Williams.

Police, and the underworld, expected that when Jason Moran was released he would make good his implied promise of vengeance. But by the time Moran was freed on 5 September 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 his private recruiting drive from a small area filled with potential killers — Port Phillip Prison.

AS is customary when important business deals are sealed, the main players celebrated with a quiet drink. But when the man we will call ‘The Runner' decided to accept Carl Williams' offer, the drink was smuggled alcohol and the venue was the aptly-named Swallow Unit of Port Phillip Prison, Victoria's top security jail.

According to The Runner, it was there that Williams first asked him to kill Jason Moran. Moran — who had been spotted in London by one of the Williams' team (‘The Lieutenant') — had 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 outside 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 buy.

Williams knew that The Runner, no pin-up boy for prisoner rehabilitation programs, was soon to be released after serving a 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 had been 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 watch house he jumped from the unmarked police car and bolted, much to the chagrin of the sleepy detective escorting him. He wasn't caught until January 1991 — in Queensland.

Police claim The Runner carried out 40 armed robberies in Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia 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 earned him a reputation as a long-distance runner among police and criminals.

Williams believed this running talent could prove useful in ambushes that might have to be carried out on foot. When he popped the question, The Runner did not hesitate.

On 17 July 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 weeks he was going out with Roberta Williams' sister, Michelle. He may not have been blood family, but he seemed 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 want only to kill Jason. ‘Carl developed a deepseated 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.

The Fatboy may have been prepared to wage war in the underworld but he was still frightened of Roberta, whom he had married the previous year when she was heavily pregnant with his baby.

The Runner would tell police 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.

Williams and The Runner regularly swapped cars — a black Ford, a silver Vectra, a grey Magna and Roberta Williams' Pajero.

But finding Moran was one thing, killing him quite another. They began to discuss how — and the schemes ranged from the imaginative to the innovative to the idiotic.

One was to hide in the boot of Moran's silver BMW and spring out, another involved lying beneath shrubs outside the house where Moran was believed to be staying. Williams even considered hiding in a rubbish bin. It would have had to have been a big bin.

Another plan was to lure Moran to a park so The Runner, dressed as a woman and pushing a pram, could walk past and shoot him. They even bought a shoulder-length brown wig before ditching the idea. Just as well. The Runner had a distinct five o'clock shadow and hairy legs.

Killer? Yes. Drag Queen? No.

Finding Moran proved difficult. He was an expert in counter-surveillance and teamed with a man who appeared to be a bodyguard. He quit 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.

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 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, ‘The rear of the hatch of the car opened up and Jason shot several shots at us from the back of the car.' Which is when 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 work occasionally, but fears of terrorism had prompted tight security that made it impossible to hang around without attracting suspicion.

Williams started to get desperate. If he couldn't get to Jason he would kill those close to him, he thought. 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 semi-retired gangster, well-known in police and underworld circles and close to Jason's father, Lewis Moran.

Williams finally figured that even an erratic man like Moran must have some family routine. He and Moran were linked by more than greed, drugs and hatred — their children all 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. Next time, Roberta Williams picked a fight with Jason's wife, Trish, outside the school in the hope she would call her husband to come and 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 because it was a locked training session he had to drive to one end of the ground where he hoped to use binoculars to study the opposition.

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, stuttering that his
interest in sharp shooters was limited to Essendon's star full forward, Matthew Lloyd. It is thought to be the only time the
Football Record
has been used to save a life.

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.