The Gangland War (33 page)

Virtually unknown until his very public murder, Radev was shot next to his luxury Mercedes in Coburg in April 2003. Shortly before his execution he had paid a dentist $55,000 in cash to whiten and crown his teeth, turning them from basic Bulgarian to glitzy Hollywood. It was a waste of money: he was shot up to seven times in the head and body. Fittingly, he was later buried in a gold casket with what was left of his million-dollar smile.

Usually, Melbourne's main players in the criminal world watched the flashy ones like Radev come in full-on and go out feet first. But this time it was different.

First, the war was public and embarrassing. The police force, which had long fancied itself the best in the country, was beginning to look silly.

The then Assistant Commissioner (crime) Simon Overland would later admit police had dropped the ball in investigating organised crime. This meant — as police hate to look silly — there would be a major reaction. They would form a taskforce called Purana, and it would prove to be more effective than many thought possible. The taskforce would crack the gangland code of silence and charge 157 offenders with 485 separate offences including 25 counts of murder.

The war had also made the state government look silly. Politicians seen as ‘soft on crime' can imagine themselves losing their seats, so the government gave police new powers to call suspects to secret hearings and seize hidden assets. All of this was bad for business in Mick Gatto's circle.

It had long been a standing joke that for decades Gatto had spent a fortune on flowers and death notices as friends and foes lost their lives in violent circumstances. Some cynics suggest he had the death notice number of the
Herald Sun
classifieds on speed dial, often ringing before the latest victim's name had been made public. In the early 1970s and '80s he paid his respects as gangsters such as brothers Brian and Les Kane were gunned down. But by the 1990s many of his own network were targeted.

Alphonse Gangitano was a close associate of Gatto's and police often saw them together. Both belonged to the Carlton Crew. Of Italian origin, but raised in Australia, they had some of the mannerisms of the so-called mafia but would spend their Saturdays like many other Aussies, sipping a drink, watching the races and having a punt. When invited to the Collingwood President's Room at Victoria Park, Gatto spent more time out the back watching the races on television than the football in front of him. Gatto and Gangitano both had an interest in Italian food, imported suits, gambling and boxing. In fact, Alphonse was a fight promoter and boxing manager for a short time, although his form for negotiating deals bordered on the eccentric. Heavily in the
camp of local boxer Lester Ellis, he once attacked, bashed and bit champion Barry Michael — an Ellis rival — in a city nightclub in 1987. Even a shark like Don King didn't chew on his opponents. He left that to Mike Tyson.

While Gatto and Gangitano were friends, they were not as close as many thought. Gangitano liked his reputation as the Black Prince of Lygon Street and spent a decade in the headlines. Gatto preferred to remain out of the glare of media attention. Gangitano was the show pony, Gatto the stayer. Repeated police investigations found that while Gangitano was a professional criminal he did not have the asset base to justify his reputation as a Mr Big. More style than substance, they believed. But that didn't mean he wasn't dangerous.

IT has become part of gang war lore that on 6 February 1995, Gangitano was at a party in Wando Grove, East St Kilda. And that at 4.40am, he went outside with another colourful Melbourne identity, Gregory John Workman. There was an argument, and Workman was shot seven times in the back and once in the chest, which meant he lost both the debate and his life. After Gangitano persuaded two key female witnesses to change their stories and then rewarded them with long overseas vacations, the murder case against him collapsed. But he didn't take his second chance and continued to participate in high-profile criminal activities until his own violent death. He was shot dead inside his Templestowe home on 16 January 1998.

Present, but not directly involved in the shooting of Gangitano, was Graham ‘The Munster' Kinniburgh — a father figure to Mick Gatto. The shooter was said to be Jason Moran, himself soon on the list of gangland murder victims.

Some say Gatto and Gangitano had grown apart in the years before the shooting. Alphonse drew the attention of the media and police to business matters that people like Gatto felt were
best left private. However, in a rare interview, Gatto said later they were still friends at the time of the murder but he had grown tired of his name always being linked to the dead gangster. ‘Why can't they let him rest in peace?'

LIKE Gangitano, Mick Gatto did not hanker for a nine- to-five job. He has been described over the years as a standover man (a claim he hotly denies) a landscape gardener, a professional punter and a gambling identity connected to Melbourne's once profitable illegal two-up school. These days he is a consultant for the building industry — a highly-paid problem solver. He also has an interest in industrial cranes. Combining business with pleasure his company, Elite Cranes, is a prominent sponsor of young boxers in Victoria.

Gatto has convictions for burglary, assaulting police, possessing firearms, and obtaining financial advantage by deception. He was also charged with extortion, blackmail and making threats to kill, but these annoying matters were struck out at committal.

Big Mick says such immature behaviour is all in the past. He maintains that these days he is as straight as a gun barrel.

In February 2002, he was invited, via a subpoena, to appear at the royal commission into the building industry to discuss his role as an industrial relations consultant on Melbourne building sites. The commission was interested in an alleged payment of $250,000 to solve some sticky industrial problems for a company that did not want extended labour conflicts. Inquiring minds at the commission found that $189,750 was paid to a company controlled by Mick Gatto and his business partner and good friend, Dave ‘The Rock' Hedgcock.

When he gave evidence, Gatto appeared offended that people could suggest he used threats of violence to solve problems. ‘I'm not a standover man. I'm not a man of ill repute. Fair enough
I've got a chequered past … but I paid for … whatever I have done wrong.'

Police who know Gatto say he is unfailingly courteous, slow to anger and always in control. He uses body language to ensure that people around him are aware that he remains a physically imposing man. ‘It is not so much what he says, but what he leaves unsaid,' one detective said.

His unofficial office was La Porcella, an Italian restaurant on the corner of Faraday and Rathdowne Streets, Carlton. Most weekdays he was there, often in the company of men with healthy appetites and colourful pasts. But he was rarely there at weekends. That was time for his family. It is said that people with problems were prepared to pay $5000 to sit at the table with Mick and discuss solutions. Sometimes he could help and other times he couldn't. But it would always be a pleasant and entertaining luncheon. The scaloppini was to die for.

Many police and criminals dine out on Gatto stories and it is hard to distil reality from myth because those close to the big man are staunchly loyal — and silent. Those not so close seem to believe it would not be wise to tell tales out of the old school.

But there are several stories to indicate that while Gatto is charming and does not use violence indiscriminately, he succeeds because people fear the consequences of not seeing his point of view.

In one case he was able to jolt the memory of a businessman who owed an associate $75,000. The debt was paid and Gatto was said to have kept $25,000 as his commission. Everyone was a winner. The man who owed the money is still able to walk without a limp, the businessman did not have to write off the entire sum as a bad debt and Gatto was handsomely paid for two phone calls.

One solicitor once used Gatto's name to threaten someone who owed him $15,000 and then asked Big Mick to collect the
debt. A policeman says Gatto did as he was asked, but pocketed the full amount as a fine for the lawyer using his name without permission. Again everyone was a winner — one man learned to pay his debts, another not to use people's names to make idle threats and Mick's bank balance received a healthy injection. That is, of course, if he put such a small amount in the bank. A detective said he knew a case of a man who was dancing at a nightclub when he had a nail punched into his shoulder. The reason? He owed Gatto $400.

Yet another policeman said he believed Gatto once shot a man in the leg in Carlton. When police tried to get a statement from the victim, the man not only denied that he knew who had shot him but denied he had been shot at all. When asked why he was sitting in casualty with blood seeping from the wound, he said he didn't know why his leg was ‘leaking'.

Another time a man came asking for help but Mick's advice was to deal with the matter rather than employ others who might lack the subtlety to solve the problem. This was not a time for the use of a sledgehammer to crack a walnut — or in this case two walnuts. Years later the man could see the wisdom of the advice. Many police had a grudging respect for Gatto as a man who did not go looking for trouble and saw him as ‘old school'.

But the underworld landscape was changing and Melbourne's criminal establishment was being drawn into a gangland war not entirely of their making. When the Moran boys shot Williams over a drug business, it was nothing to do with Gatto — whose colourful background does not include drug charges. But it would become his business by default as his friends and associates continued to be picked off.

Some of those who were shot seemed to become fatalistic. Lewis Moran and Kinniburgh knew they were on a death list, yet took few precautions. Gatto was different. A good friend but
a dangerous enemy, he was never going to let himself be stalked in the shadows.

It was the ambush killing of Graham ‘The Munster' Kinniburgh in late 2003 that hit him the hardest.

The death of an old and respected friend distressed Gatto and made him realise that the dominoes around him were falling and he could be next. Within hours of the murder the dogs were barking (wrongly as it turned out) that one of the men who killed ‘The Munster' was the hot-headed streetfighter turned hit man called Andrew ‘Benji' Veniamin.

VENIAMIN was a small man with a growing reputation for violence. Like Mick Gatto, he was a former boxer, although they were from different eras — and vastly different ends of the weight divisions. Any chances of Veniamin making a name as a boxer ended when at nineteen he badly broke his leg and damaged his knee in a motorbike accident. But all this meant was that he could channel his violent inclinations to activities outside the ring.

Heavily tattooed, with a close-cropped haircut and a bullet-shaped head, the brooding Veniamin looked like a man who could take offence easily and was only a glance away from yet another over-reaction.

According to Purana Taskforce investigators, Veniamin's criminal career could be broken into three phases. In the beginning, he was a street thug in Melbourne's west. He ran with two other would-be gangsters, old schoolmates Paul Kallipolitis and Dino Dibra, and specialised in run-throughs, ripping off and robbing drug dealers who grew hydroponic marijuana crops in rented houses.

Veniamin had a criminal record that began in 1992 with a $50 fine for the theft of a motor car. In 1993, he was convicted of intentionally or recklessly causing injury and sentenced to 200
hours of unpaid community work. Over the next decade he was found guilty of theft, robbery, false imprisonment, assaulting police, arson, deception and threatening to cause serious injury.

The nature of the modern underworld is that access to drugs — and drug money — means relatively minor players can become influential figures in a matter of months.

While Gatto tended to look for amicable solutions, Veniamin saw violence as the first resort. Pasquale Zaffina was an old friend of Veniamin but that didn't stop the gangster trying to move in on his girlfriend. When Zaffina objected, Veniamin responded with a surprising lack of contrition. He fired shots into Zaffina's parents' house and, apparently unimpressed with the results, left a bomb at the residence and threatened to kill Zaffina's sister.

To settle matters they agreed to meet for a fight in a park in Melbourne's western suburbs with seconds to back them up — as though conducting an old-fashioned duel. They agreed it would be fists and no guns. But as they shaped up, Veniamin produced a .38 calibre handgun and aimed it at Zaffina, who managed to push the gun towards the ground. Three shots hit him in the leg but he lived to tell the story — at Gatto's trial, as it would turn out.

The defence would make much of the Zaffina story, claiming it showed Veniamin could conceal a .38, would ambush and attempt to kill people and did not care if witnesses were present. But that would be much later.

Soon Veniamin saw himself as a man of substance (as well as substances) and felt he could associate with men with established reputations. These included members of the so-called Carlton Crew and Mick Gatto, in particular.

The younger gun exhibited all the signs of being starstruck and appeared to hero worship the man who was a household name in a certain type of household.

Gatto saw Veniamin as dangerous but extended his big hand of friendship, working on the principle that you keep your friends close and your enemies closer. He knew the new boy was vicious but Veniamin was a rising power in the west and Gatto thought that if he needed muscle in the Sunshine area ‘Benji' could be handy.

Gatto loved to build networks — some good, some bad. Veniamin — twenty years younger — was high maintenance and at times was only just tolerated by the Carlton blue bloods. He was said to have asked Gatto to provide him with firearms and on more than one occasion the older man had to intervene after Veniamin involved himself in mindless violence at nightclubs.