Latest / Real Crime with Adam Shand / From the Desk - Why Melbourne’s Gangland War Became Legend

Transcript

From the Desk - Why Melbourne’s Gangland War Became Legend · Real Crime with Adam Shand

• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Real Crime with Adam Shand. I'm your host,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Adam Shand. And this is my Friday feature from the desk.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: I did a live show in Melbourne this week at
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: the Grandview Hotel in Fairfield. And I told the story
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: that's dominated my career. My special subject, if you will.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Melbourne's gangland war. I began telling this story in 2003.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: And I thought.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: I'd be finished in a few months and move on,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: as journalists do. In 2026, many people still want to
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: hear it.
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: First tonight, the dramatic early morning police raids that foiled
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: another gangland execution. It's been hailed as a victory for
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: Purana Task Force Police, assigned to stamp out Melbourne's violent
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: underworld war.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: My theory is that much of the true crime audience
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: is motivated by understanding events that they've lived through. But
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: that doesn't fully explain why Melbourne's gangland war still resonates
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: with so many, including a new generation, 16 years after
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: the death of the main protagonist, Carl Williams. So today,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: I'm going to delve into the lasting appeal of the story,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: especially as Sydney's gangland wars are just as violent, chaotic
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: and intense, but seem destined to be far less memorable.
• 1:29
  Speaker 4: He always had it in the back of his mind.
• 1:31
  Speaker 4: He knew that from his experience in the underworld that
• 1:35
  Speaker 4: there's nobody that can't be got. If you want to
• 1:37
  Speaker 4: get someone bad enough, you can get them. And also,
• 1:40
  Speaker 4: jail's a dangerous place. People die in jail all the time.
• 1:42
  Speaker 4: We don't hear about it.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Carl Williams' murderous rampage became a coherent national story because
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: of people like me. The storytellers were able to give
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: disorder a plot line. It made sense on a moral level.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Sydney may have comparable violence, but it has... Sydney may
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: have comparable violence, but it's never produced the same simple,
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: sharply drawn story with an enduring cast of characters, or
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: the recognisable story arc with a beginning, a middle and
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: an end. The shooting of Carl Williams in 1999 by
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Jason Moran created a personal grievance. which developed into a
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: campaign of retaliation, shifting alliances and revenge. I think the
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Corrections Victoria will be working very hard in the next
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: 48 hours to segregate all the possible risks in there
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: because this will set the jail alight. They've all got televisions,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: they're watching the news coverage of this, so there could
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: well be repercussions in the next 48 hours, so it's
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: a very tense time. Audiences could understand it almost like
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: a Shakespearean family feud that claimed the lives of of
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: about 30 villains. It had a cast of characters who,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: because of the Underbelly TV series, have transcended their roots
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: as suburban crooks, killers and drug dealers. The characters, their nicknames,
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: their deeds and their reputations will live on in memory,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: even in death. Names like Andrew Benji Veneman.
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: Just taking it easy, especially since Mark got part.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that is a praise from you.
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: Did you hear anything? No, the dealers, they don't say much.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Fat Tony Mockbell, Graham the Munster Kinebra and Alphonse Gangitano,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: the Black Prince of Ligon Street, are seared into the
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: public consciousness.
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: Can I trust them? No, they tell it straight.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: They look after their own.
• 3:45
  Speaker 4: Which is more than I can say about any other
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: prick in this town.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: The principal players seem to be connected. Chopper Reid said
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: the Melbourne underworld was like Chickasaw County in northeast Mississippi.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: a population of about 150 people who were all related
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: by blood or circumstance. To be strictly accurate, Chickasaw County
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: actually has a population of 17,000 as of the 2020 census,
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: but I knew what he meant. There were simmering tensions
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: that seemed to span generations. Historical grievances were were given
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: new impetus once the shooting began in the late 1990s.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: This is the moment two killers close in on Michael Marshall,
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: an execution ordered by Carl Williams. The gunman leaves the car,
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: firing a volley of shots at the hot dog vendor
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: in front of his young son. The pair flee, a
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: police scanner picking up details of their crime.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: The violence took place in otherwise mundane places that people knew,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: outside homes, in restaurants, at football grounds and on suburban streets.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: The underworld did not seem to be geographically separate from
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: the places where the rest of us lived. Melburnians who
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: lived through it all know the locations. Many knew someone
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: who even heard the kill shots or used to see
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: the killers and their victims at the local shops or cafes.
• 5:13
  Speaker 5: The next thing they were... police everywhere with machine guns
• 5:18
  Speaker 5: and they grabbed these two guys, threw them down on
• 5:21
  Speaker 5: the ground. One had his face down prone to the
• 5:25
  Speaker 5: concrete and they put handcuffs on he and his colleague
• 5:29
  Speaker 5: who was sitting up back to the road and there
• 5:32
  Speaker 5: were police cars, more police cars arrived after that and
• 5:36
  Speaker 5: it was all over in about 15 minutes.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: The Underbelly book and TV series gave the conflict a name.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: The drama played out in 13 episodes. transforming it from
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: news to history and eventually into mythology. Shit, Tony, you
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: look like crap, mate.
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: You going to be all right?
• 5:54
  Speaker 5: Listen, that Carl crew, mate, there's a class act, huh?
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Bastards, mate.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: They're fucking Italians. They all think they're big shots, mate.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: Every single one of them.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: It became even more desirable because of the court order
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: initially banning its screening in Victoria. Pirate copies circulated widely.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: I even think some of the crooks involved had a
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: hand in that. By comparison... Sydney's gangland conflicts are opaque
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: and much more difficult to package. The shootings involve fast-changing alliances,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: families and networks, imprisoned or overseas organisers, contract shooters who
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: have little or no personal connection to their targets. And
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: these killings have roots in disputes where the precise motives
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: remain hidden or even trivial in fact. Today, violence brokers
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: and expendable young gunmen stand between the people ordering the
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: killing and their targets. This makes the violence no less frightening,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: but the story seems less intimate and less comprehensible. As
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: one senior police officer said this week, the killings were
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: nothing out of the ordinary. Fatal underworld shootings in Sydney
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: are just, quote, part and parcel of life in a
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: big metropolis. This is hard to swallow. given the mistaken
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: identity execution of two men in recent weeks with no
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: links to crime. The public is baffled by the violence
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: and the media offers only vague justifications such as, quote,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: groups battling for ascendancy in the lucrative drug market. Sydney
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: has its own colourful gangland history and its cast of characters.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Men like George Freeman, Stan Smith, Lenny McPherson, Paddles Anderson
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: and Nettie Smith. But the story is more about a
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: succession of different eras rather than a clearly bounded war.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: The corruption around Brisbane's Fitzgerald era, Perth's bikey conflicts, Adelaide's
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: organised crime mysteries and the family murders all lack that
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: single nationally recognised storyline. That's why Underbelly on Channel 9
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: drew an average weekly audience of about 1.3 million viewers.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: And the numbers for the later storylines have steadily shrunk.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: the producers fired their best shot first. Melbourne's war was
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: exclusively crims killing crims, whereas some later conflicts have posed
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: a greater risk to innocent people. But public memory is
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: not a statistical measurement of danger. It rewards characters, continuity,
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: intimacy and a satisfying narrative. I recall in 2004, the
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: retired gangster Billy the Texan Longleat complained to me that
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Carl Williams did not deserve the publicity he was getting.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: The painters and dockers murders of the 1960s and 70s,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: of which he was a key part, were much greater,
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: he said. More than 40 people died during that conflict.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: But you know what? It's spoken of today like ancient history.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: And despite his self-styled reputation, Longley is best remembered for
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: killing his wife and ordering the shooting of a union rival.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: And ultimately... for giving up his fellow unionists in the
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: Costigan Royal Commission. And even Longley was forced to admit
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: Carl Williams' team was a formidable force. On June 21, 2003,
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: a gunman caught up with Jason Moran in the car
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: park of a suburban footy oval during a Saturday morning
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: Auskick session. He shot Moran and his mate Pasquale Barbaro
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: while they sat in Moran's van with his small children
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: in the back. Longley said that to the public this
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: was an appalling, barbarous act, but to the criminal fraternity
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: it showed you can be hit anywhere if your opponent
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: is determined. These are very serious people, he said solemnly.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: The killing of Moran was the culmination of four years
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: of planning and scheming by Williams. Carl and his family
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: never felt a moment of remorse for the public executions.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: The Morans had never wanted the Williams family to get ahead.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: They came from a higher criminal class. class, they believed.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Mark and Jason Moran's grandfather, Desi, was a leading SP
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: bookmaker in Melbourne's north. Their grandmother, Belle, was a backyard abortionist.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: Both relied upon connections in the police force to ply
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: their trades. Their father, Lewis, continued that tradition. working with
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: police and forming connections with the best crooks in Australia.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: By comparison, the Williams clan came from nowhere and nothing.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Carl's mum, Barbara, and his father, George, grew up in
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: squalid public housing. George had dug sewers for the Melbourne
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Board of Works and did some debt collecting for a
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: local white goods retailer. George was also a pool shark
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: who lost an eye when a vanquished opponent glassed him
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: in a Richmond pub. He decided then he would never
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: be treated in this way again. When Jason shot Carl
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: in October 1999 and then threatened to do the same
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: to George, his death warrant was signed. Mark Moran was
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: already gone. Jason shot Carl in the stomach over a
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: dispute involving drugs and cash. Mark had urged Jason to
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: shoot Carl in the head, but apparently Jason didn't have
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: the courage to do so. It was a mistake. that
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: led to the destruction of the entire Moran family, an
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: underestimation of what Carl was capable of, a miscalculation born
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: of greed and arrogance. There was enough money in the
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: illegal drugs market at the time for everyone, but the
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: Morans did not want to share, especially with a lowly
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: crook like Carl. This class difference drove my understanding of
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: the conflict as I wrote about it and over the
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: years since. Make no mistake, They were all bad guys
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: living outside the law, but Carl seemed to be a
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: lighter shade of evil, with a moral edge over his rivals.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: His amiable persona and underdog status made him a more
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: sympathetic character. We wanted him to win because he was
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: protecting his family and not working with the police. But
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: of course, after the Underbelly series wrapped up, everything changed.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: He began cooperating with the police over the murders of
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: police informer Terry Hodson and his wife Christine in May 2004.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: That led to his own murder in 2010. This followed
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: the publication of a story in the Herald Sun newspaper
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: that the state was willing to pay private school fees
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: for Carl's daughter and for his father George's tax bill
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: in return for his cooperation. I stumbled on this story
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: a month or two earlier and had decided... It was
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: the kind of yarn that could get you killed in
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: the pressure cooker environment of a maximum security jail. I
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: dropped off the story, leaving another journalist to write it,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: with exactly the consequences I'd feared. The death of Carl
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: was the final scene of the saga that began 11
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: years earlier when Jason shot Carl. I think I always
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: knew that retribution would eventually catch up with him somehow.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: The loss of status that came with his 35-year sentence
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: was hard to accept for a man who once called
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: himself the Premier because he believed he ran the state.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: He once wrote to me in a letter, quote, Prisoners
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: are not considered people. Your death or mutilation does not
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: particularly concern the judges, prosecutors, police, prison officers or other
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: state officials, providing it does not cause too much embarrassment.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: Death in jail is such a common occurrence that it's
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: rarely reported in newspapers and even other prisoners find it
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: too painful to dwell on. Carl was the exception to
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: this rule and I thought of this as I addressed
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: the audience this week and that's exactly what Carl would
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: have wanted. His story will continue to be told. I
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: often say to people who come to me with that
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: big life story that one day they will have to
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: move on and soon I think I should take my
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: own advice. Sometimes I feel like an artifact in a
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: story I've been telling for too many years. It's been
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: 20 years since I published Big Shots, my account of
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: the war, and to celebrate, I'll be hosting some exclusive
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: driving tours of the main sites of the war. If
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: you'd like to come along, please get in touch on
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: Facebook or by email. This is Adam Shan from the
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: Desk for Real Crime. Make sure you like and subscribe
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: to the podcast, and you can do the same on
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Facebook for more stories inside Australia's criminal underworld. If you
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: want to report a crime, please call Crimestoppers on 1800...
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: triple three, triple zero, or you can email me on
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: adamshanwriter at gmail.com. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: this episode and supporting this story.
• 15:03
  Speaker 4: Independent storytelling that shapes the world is what Podshape really
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: cares about.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: Right now, there's thousands of people listening to this show
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: and our other true crimes, and they're completely engaged.
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: More than 10 million Australians listen to podcasts each week.
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: If you've ever thought about advertising your business in a podcast,
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: there's a link to reach out in the show notes
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: or head to Podshape.com to book a free call.