The Gangland War (20 page)

He walked into the office of one of his former lawyers, locked the door and asked for money. At the same time he noticed the barrister's overcoat on the back of the door and started to go through the pockets. This was an outrageous breach of protocol — it is acknowledged in the legal fraternity that it is the barrister's job to fleece his clients, not the other way around.

One member of the underworld said many people would be happy that Mladenich was dead. ‘He was a hoon, a pimp and lived off everyone else. He never did one good job, but he would come around looking for a chop out.'

But the death notices in the week after his death included some from many well-known criminals, including career armed robbers and an underworld financier dying of cancer.

It is believed that Mladenich had run up drug debts with at least two major dealers who were prepared to write off the money. Neither was likely to order his murder.

Richard's mother, Odinea, said society should take some responsibility for the criminal her son became. She said he was bullied by his step-father and was eventually sent to a state institution.

‘They took my little boy and they gave me back a zombie. He was a victim of this rotten society.'

She said he was the second youngest inmate sent to the notorious top security Jika Jika section in Pentridge (later closed on humanitarian grounds). ‘He had to become like he was to survive,' she said.

Mrs Mladenich said many children who went to boys' homes had their lives destroyed — and there is evidence to support her claim. Many of the worst names in crime can trace their criminal beginnings to what happened in boys' homes, some of which were deservedly notorious.

Mrs Mladenich said that the same families she saw at boys' homes ‘I would see later at Pentridge.'

Elder brother Mark said: ‘He was 16 when he was in the hardest division in an adult jail. He wasn't allowed to be soft. He had to be hard to survive.

‘I know about his record, but when he was with his family he was different. He was good-hearted.'

Mladenich was released from prison only a month before his death and told friends and relatives he was determined to keep out of trouble. But as usual, Richard wasn't telling the whole truth.

Within weeks of his release he was trying to establish a protection racket by standing over restaurants in Fitzroy Street.

In May 2003, three years after the murder, Coroner Lewis Byrne concluded: ‘Richard Mladenich lived at the margin. He had friends and acquaintances who lived outside the law. He had quite an extensive criminal history and had only shortly before his death been released from prison. I only include this aspect of Mr Mladenich's personality to make the point that some of his friends, associates and indeed enemies are part of a subculture where violence and death are not unknown. Although comprehensive investigation undertaken by the homicide squad has been unable to identify the killer of Mr Mladenich, the file remains open and should it be warranted, if further information comes to light, this inquest can be reopened.'

Don't hold your breath. Carl Williams and Rocco Arico aren't talking because they don't want to and Dino Dibra isn't because he can't.

Carl Williams was to be involved
in at least eight murders and
have knowledge of another four
but this would be the only time
he pulled the trigger.

 

THREE generations of Morans have knocked around in Melbourne criminal circles and their reputation was not built on pacifism.

But Mark Moran, 36, had seemed to be the white sheep of the family, the one who stayed in the background and kept a low profile. However, as stock breeders will tell you, blood in the end will tell. Mark Moran was bred for trouble and it was only a matter of time before it found him.

His mother, Judith Moran, was attracted to gunmen all her life. Mark's natural father was one of them. His name was Leslie John Cole and he was ambushed and shot dead outside his Sydney home on 10 November 1982.

History repeats itself. Mark went the same way as his dad when he was shot dead outside his million-dollar home in the Melbourne suburb of Aberfeldie on 15 June 2000. He was the latest victim in the underworld war that had then claimed up to
nine lives in less than three years — and would rack up a death toll of more than 30.

Within 24 hours of the murder, the homicide squad's Detective Inspector Brian Rix said police were receiving little help from the Morans. The family might not have known then that they had been targeted and were to be hunted down by other crooks as if they were feral animals. They had built a reputation as criminal hard men but were to find out what it was like to be the intimidated.

But that was in the future. Back in June 2000 Rix would state the obvious when he said the Mark Moran murder had ‘all the hallmarks of an underworld slaying'.

‘The indications are that he was out of his car at the time of the shooting, which means that perhaps his killers laid in wait,' Rix said.

Sometimes you can guess more from what police don't say.

What Rix didn't mention was the reason why Moran had left his house for less than half an hour on the night he was killed.

He had gone to meet someone, but who?

Did the killer know Moran would go out and then come back that night?

It is fair to conclude that a killer would not sit outside a luxury house in an affluent street all night on the off chance the target would venture out. He had to have some inside knowledge.

In fact the killer only had to wait ten minutes for his target. That killer was Carl Williams — then a little-known drug dealer who would become one of the biggest names in the underworld. Williams would be involved in at least eight murders and have knowledge of another four — but this would be the only time he pulled the trigger.

Williams would also have known that his target was at his most vulnerable. Mark's half-brother, Jason, was behind bars and his minder, ‘Mad Richard' Mladenich, had been shot dead in a
seedy St Kilda hotel a month earlier. Carl had been close by during Mad Richard's shooting, but on that occasion a henchman had fired the gun.

So the real question became, who set up Mark Moran?

As Rix said, ‘Mark fancied himself as a bit of a heavy. I would think the underworld will talk about this to somebody, and I'm sure that will get back to us in some way.'

He was right, they did talk but the talk remained a long way short of admissible evidence. No-one knew then that Mark Moran's death would be just one in the most savage underworld war in decades.

For Moran that day had been like many others. As a self-employed drug dealer he would mix daily chores with lucrative drug sales.

He had taken his children to school, shopped with his mother, and had lunch with his wife. He also picked up his high-powered white Holden ute from a local panel beater. The car had been registered in the name of one of the Moran clan's most trusted insiders. Mark would not live to learn that the man was a police informer.

That evening he went to the nearby Gladstone Park Shopping Centre to meet a local drug customer but the deal fell through. The reason remains in dispute. The customer told police he wanted to buy marijuana and ecstasy tablets from Moran and was ‘surprised that Mark didn't have the smoke because when we make a meeting like this he usually had what I need.'

But police were also told that the customer did not have the money to pay and the deal was done on credit.

Either way, Moran arrived home around 7.45pm but told his wife he was going out for about 15 minutes shortly after 8pm.

Williams was waiting. But how did he know of the proposed meeting when Moran rarely left home at night?

Moran was a rarity amongst gangsters: he was no night-owl. Moran and his wife were normally in bed by 9pm and up at dawn for a daily exercise routine. Moran — who was a personal trainer before he found the drug business more lucrative — would do 100 sit-ups and then head to a local gym.

But this night he walked out the door and down the drive to where his car was parked outside in Combermere Street. He had become lazy and sloppy and hadn't bothered parking behind the house's heavy metal gates or inside the double garage.

As he went to step into the car, Williams emerged from the shadows and hit him with two shotgun blasts and at least one from a handgun.

The force knocked him into the car, killing him instantly. Police found amphetamines and cocaine on him, and wondered if he had been lured out on the promise of a last-minute sale?

It was no surprise when it became known that a Moran had been murdered. The surprise was that it was Mark and not his younger half-brother, Jason, then serving two years and six months over a nightclub assault in King Street.

While Jason Moran was seen as wild, violent and erratic, Mark was calmer and tried to keep a lower profile.

‘Jason was out of control, Mark was the brains,' said one policeman who has investigated the family.

But as Jason became increasingly restrained by court action and stints in jail, Mark began to take a higher profile. After Jason had shot Williams in the stomach in a nearby park in October the previous year it had been Mark who'd urged his brother to ‘shoot him in the head.'

Whether he started to mimic Jason's behaviour or just learnt to play the role of the gun-toting tough guy, Mark developed that fatal gangster swagger.

About 18 months before his death, he took offence when an associate made a disparaging comment about a female relative.

‘He went around to the guy's house, stuck a gun in his mouth, took him away and seriously flogged him,' a criminal source said.

In 1999, he was involved in the assault of a policeman at Flemington racecourse on Oaks Day — not a good business move. Neither was the Moran brothers' decision to shoot Williams in the guts.

The incident was a warning, not an attempt to kill. But sometimes it can be more dangerous to goad a snake, even a fat, slow one, than to leave it alone or kill it outright, as the Morans were to find out the hard way.

On 17 February 2000, police noticed Mark Moran driving a luxury car. When they opened the boot of the rented vehicle, they found a high-tech handgun equipped with a silencer and a laser sight.

They also found a heap of amphetamine pills that had been stamped in a pill press to appear as ecstasy tablets.

The day after Mark's murder, police raided an associate's home and seized another 5000 tablets similar to those found in the boot of the rental car.

Months before, Mark Moran had been ejected from the County Court after he tried to use a false name to get access to the plea hearing after his half-brother was found guilty over the King Street assault. AFL footballer Wayne Carey gave character evidence for Jason Moran, which was a case of history repeating itself.

A high-profile Carlton footballer of impeccable credentials once gave character evidence for Moran's maternal grandfather over a stolen-property charge.

Not surprisingly, the property had been stolen and hidden at the grandfather's place by the teenage Moran boys and the old man was obliged to shoulder the blame for his delinquent
descendants. The star who gave character evidence for him was doing the right thing.

Police described Moran as one of a new breed of drug traffickers known as the ‘Bollinger Dealers', who wore designer suits and associated with minor celebrities and the new rich.

MARK was a former professional chef and a ‘gym rat' often seen at the Underworld Health and Fitness centre beside the Yarra in the central city. But like so many of his class, he had not worked regularly for years and police say his high-income lifestyle and expensive home could only have been supported through illegal activities. He refused to speak about business on telephones and rarely spoke with associates in his house because he feared police had the place bugged.

He was proud of his fitness and physique and was described as ‘extremely narcissistic'. He liked to be well-dressed in a gangsterchic style. When he was shot, he was wearing a huge diamond stud in his left ear.

Mark Moran was young, good-looking, rich and fit. But in the months leading up to his murder, he was depressed and at one point was hospitalised when he told friends he was considering suicide. In the end, someone beat him to it.

The day before Moran's murder, police conducted a series of raids on a sophisticated amphetamines network and a number of criminals, including one known as ‘The Penguin', were arrested.

In the beginning there were several theories as to why he was murdered — people like Moran make many violent enemies in their business.

But the homicide squad knew of Williams' hatred of the family and within 24 hours was interviewing the suspect.

Williams claimed he could not have committed the murder because he was picking up a hire car from Melbourne Airport at
the time. But police say they have found a gap of nearly an hour in which Williams could have travelled to Aberfeldie for the killing.

Years later, one of Williams' key men we call ‘The Driver' told police he drove Williams to a street near Moran's home and drove him away after the shooting.

Another witness, not connected with the underworld, has been able to corroborate much of The Driver's story. A second criminal source also made a statement against Williams.

The case against Williams was good, but not great. And that is why it was dropped when Williams agreed to plead guilty to the three other murders (Jason Moran, Lewis Moran and Mark Mallia, having already been found guilty of killing Michael Marshall).

Mark's mother, Judy Moran, has always maintained Williams should have been prosecuted over the murder.

Within days of the murder there were reports of shots fired near a North Fitzroy home connected to the Williams syndicate.

‘It is not the right time to be taking sides,' a detective said after Mark's funeral. He was right, as the murders continued for years, with people who took sides getting killed.