The Gangland War (53 page)

There has been intense media coverage of these murders in Melbourne, and whilst you were considered a suspect by many, including the police, the evidence of your involvement was not able to be found, due to the fact that you distanced yourself from these crimes by using others to do the killings and arranging alibis. It was not until the criminal code of silence was broken that those who knew about your involvement began to talk to the police. The sentences imposed on those persons reflect the significant discounts that were given to them for the risks they took by making statements about your involvement. Whilst you were a suspect and being referred to in the media it was apparent that you were enjoying the game of ‘being famous'. You gave interviews outside court, and appeared prepared to give your views of a variety of matters, and unfortunately the media to a degree pandered to that.

I have a concern that some younger members of the community who are involved in petty crime may be looking to you as some sort of hero. You are not, you are a killer, and a cowardly one who employed others to do the actual killing, whilst you hid behind carefully constructed alibis. You should not be the subject of admiration by any member of our community. You have robbed families of people they love, of sons, brothers and fathers.

I just want to make it clear to all who may look at this sentence that you are not someone to be admired in any way.

I have taken into account the suffering that the families of these victims have endured, as well as the suffering of other innocent people such as Ms Sugars and the owners of the Brunswick Club, also the parents and children attending Auskick, but acknowledge that whatever sentence is imposed, they will probably feel aggrieved as nothing will return their loved ones and no sentence imposed will ever feel sufficient to them.

Your prior convictions are limited in nature and do not relate to any matters of violence. You were convicted in May of 1990 of handling stolen goods, failing to answer bail and possession of stolen property and you were fined a total of $400. In March of 1993 again, at the Magistrates' Court, a charge of criminal damage and throwing a missile for which you were placed on a nonconviction community-based order with conditions of 150 hours of community work, which you breached, but no further action was taken as the order had expired. Finally, in the County Court in December of 1994, attempting to traffic in a drug of dependence, being amphetamine, for which you were ultimately sentenced by the Court of Appeal to twelve months imprisonment with six months suspended for a period of two years. I place no reliance upon the earlier two matters and I place limited reliance upon the latter matter only as indicating that at that stage an involvement in the criminal milieu in which this offence occurred.

Your now ex-wife has three children from previous relationships, a son, aged around 18, and two daughters, approximately 13 and 14. Together with your ex-wife, you have a daughter, called Dhakota, who is aged approximately six, having been born on 10 March, 2001.

Your parents are separated. Your mother has never been in trouble with the law and your father has no convictions. Your father has had significant health problems, particularly in the last few years.

You were educated to Year 11 at Broadmeadows West Technical School and thereafter it was reported that you had a number of short-term labouring jobs. You had a series of labouring jobs, followed by opening a children's wear shop with your wife, which became non-profitable and closed … You then were working as a semi-professional gambler from that period until being banned from the casino.

You were working as a drug trafficker up to and including the time of the murders.

The circumstances in which you have been held and will in all likelihood continue to be held for a substantial period are of relevance in mitigation of your sentence. You are currently held in the Acacia high security unit at Barwon Prison, which is the maximum security unit of the state penal system. The conditions at Acacia are quite different to those from mainstream prisoners. The visits from family are severely restricted, particularly in terms of contact visits, access out of cells during the day, mixing with other prisoners, and access to phone calls all are severely restricted. This is not what the average sentenced prisoner has to endure by way of conditions of serving a sentence. It is how you have been held, both as a person on remand and as a sentenced prisoner. It is equally evident that this will be the manner of your incarceration for some substantial time.

There are many reasons why persons are in that unit, and in your case, a major part of it is ensuring your safety. You have been in a gang war with other criminals and the issue of revenge being taken by those other persons is not far-fetched. Equally there are many within the prison system that may have a desire to make a name for themselves by causing you harm. Equally those persons who have elected to give evidence against you must be protected from you.

You have also made a statement to the police, which I have had the opportunity to read. You offered to give evidence in respect of that statement but the prosecutor has informed the Court that since you have given evidence in the manner that you have in this case, they would not consider calling you, as they do not consider you a witness of truth. That concurs with my own observations of your evidence. Accordingly, whilst there is some benefit to you by the provision of the statement, it is of little significance when compared to your criminality.

… You have uttered words of remorse in response to questions asked of you by your counsel but I find that you have no real or genuine remorse for the victims of your crimes, only remorse that you have been caught and lost your liberty.

However, I do intend to impose a minimum term, but that is on the basis of one significant factor only, which are your pleas of guilty to these offences. Whilst I find that you do not have any genuine remorse for the crimes, I am still obliged to take into account in your favour that you have entered pleas of guilty. It is pragmatic and utilitarian to give you a discount for entering those pleas, for by doing so you have prevented this Court from spending anywhere between five to ten years hearing your trials and the appeals from those trials. Equally you have released the police officers involved in this taskforce to move on to other pressing cases that need investigating, and enabled those in the Office of Public Prosecutions to pursue other prosecutions. The amount of money that has been saved as a result is considerable. That behaviour must be encouraged. It must be made clear to all charged with offences, of whatever type, that if they do enter a plea of guilty to the offences that they will receive a real and significant discount. Without your pleas of guilty I would not have imposed a minimum term for these offences, even allowing for the other mitigating material upon which your counsel relied.

Accordingly, I sentence you as follows: on

Count One, the murder of Jason Moran, you are convicted and sentenced to be imprisoned for life.

Count Two, the murder of Mark Mallia, you are convicted and sentenced to be imprisoned for life.

Count 3, the murder of Lewis Moran, you are convicted and sentenced to be imprisoned for 25 years.

Count Four, the conspiracy to murder Mario Condello, you are convicted and sentenced to be imprisoned for 25 years.

I further direct that you serve a minimum term of 35 years
imprisonment before becoming eligible for parole. The sentence will commence from this day.

I have already taken into account the fact that you have been in custody since 2004 when determining the appropriate minimum and the sentence and I intend that the new minimum term that I have imposed commences from today. To make it absolutely clear: what I intend is that you are to serve 35 years imprisonment from today before you could be considered eligible for parole.

Policing is not sausage
making. Success or failure
can't be judged by what comes
out the end of the machine.

 

SO what happened?

For twelve years, gangsters played out a Hollywood movie in Melbourne streets, but with real bullets and real blood.

As with the perfect storm or a hundred-year flood, conditions had to be perfect for disaster to happen. In hindsight, it is clear there was not one reason but many.

The first is history. The Melbourne underworld is notorious for using bullets and blades to settle its differences. Gangsters have been shot on the docks and in court buildings, dumped in the bay, stabbed in prison or have simply ‘gone on the missing list.' Wars have started over something as simple as the price of tomatoes (the Market Murders, 1963-64); a share of money (Great Bookie Robbery, 1976) or a dispute over sausages (Pentridge Prison Overcoat Gang, 1970s).

The second reason for the war is police apathy. From the 1980s, Victoria Police came under pressure to spend taxpayers' money efficiently. ‘Key performance indicators' were imposed, setting artificial goals such as set numbers of random breath tests or patrol hours. Police were expected to cut crime rates and lift solution rates while boosting training and fixing the gender imbalance.

Achieving such goals came at the expense of gathering crime intelligence. Policing is not sausage making. Success or failure can't be judged by what comes out the end of the machine. Investigation of organised crime requires identifying the next big thing. If police can identify new players before they become entrenched, it solves tomorrow's problems today – but that requires a large, flexible, committed and expensive intelligence section.

Former Chief Commissioner Mick Miller built the Bureau of Criminal Intelligence and surrounded it with specialist squads but he insisted that when detectives were promoted they returned to uniform to share expertise – and to cut the risk of corruption created by staying too long in crime squads.

But the Miller model was eventually let slide. Specialists such as the stolen-car squad were disbanded and the drug squad was denied resources and not supervised well. Despite conventional wisdom that police should only be allowed to stay in high-risk corruption areas for limited time, detectives were able to make careers in the drug squad. It was a recipe for disaster.

Tackling potential crime bosses requires expensive taskforce policing, so the force ignored the problem until it was too late. The trouble is that budding gangsters get to grow stronger and harder to deal with.

The perfect example: Andrew ‘Benji' Veniamin. Vicious, callous and cunning, in 1999 he was identified as a man ready to use guns. But little was done. Soon, Veniamin had done his first
paid hit, killing Frank Benvenuto in Hampton. He would go on to complete six more contract killings before being shot dead.

When the Purana Taskforce started, investigators were stunned at how little was known about Veniamin and others. Purana's first head, Phil Swindells, was to spend months gathering vital intelligence before he could move against the gangsters.

THE war might not have started without police corruption. The murders of Terence and Christine Hodson and the ambush killing of Shane Chartres-Abbott have been linked to police – allegations deemed credible enough for two taskforces to be formed to investigate. But there was another link to corruption that created the environment for gangsters to kill.

Three drug squad detectives directly involved in prosecution cases against high-profile suspects including Tony Mokbel, Lewis Moran and Carl Williams were themselves facing charges. The cases against the suspect drug dealers could not be heard until the police cases were dealt with, which would take years. As a result Mokbel, Moran and the others were granted bail, which meant rival drug dealers were on the loose at once, fighting over the same patch.

Nine of the murder victims were on bail when they were killed and Carl Williams was on three sets of bail while ordering murders. Tony Mokbel was on bail when he fled overseas. Nothing has been done to review the bail system. In fact, when a senior policeman suggested it he was pilloried by the legal profession.

THE war was funded by massive drug money, used to pay hired guns. At least fifteen criminals were paid to kill or played supporting roles in murder plots.

Drug money undermined an already under-resourced drug squad that was tainted and out of its depth. But in the end, the easy money meant some crooks began to believe their own
publicity. Old-school criminals like Graham Kinniburgh and Lewis Moran knew the value of a low profile but the cashed-up ‘cowboys' made the mistake of courting publicity, ignoring the fact it would inevitably bring political pressure to clean up organised crime.

As Dino Dibra said before he was shot dead, ‘Mate, I've just watched
Reservoir Dogs
too many times.'

Elements of the media polished the ‘glamorous' images of some gangsters, treating them as equally credible sources to police.

At one stage, it was the gangsters who held the press conferences and the police who said ‘no comment'.

Some of the taped conversations between reporters hungry for a quote and killers looking for a public relations boost would embarrass both parties if ever released.

Some of the gangsters seemed to think Purana was just another gang. One was foolish enough to write an obscene ‘verse about it while in prison, beginning with the lines:

‘Fucking Purana Squad,
Youse are a fucking joke,
Why pick on us?
We're nothing but good blokes.'

IN the end, the war showed that most gangsters made basic mistakes and acted without considering consequences. The Morans shot Williams without considering he might fight back. Williams started a war without considering it must end with him in jail or dead. ‘Benji' Veniamin killed so often he knew he must die.

They pretended to live without fear, yet autopsies showed that several were using anti-depressants and sedatives. Mark Moran considered suicide. Many privately sought counselling.

Caught in a world of their own making, some could see no way out. Gangitano had not made enough money to invest in a straight business and lacked the character to turn his back on crime. As a result, his children lost their father.