Underbelly 4 Page 13

  One member of the underworld said many were 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 chopout.’

  But, as is the tradition in Melbourne when a criminal dies violently, the Herald Sun newspaper was filled with death notices, including some from well-known criminals, career armed robbers, and an underworld financier dying of cancer and several others well connected in the underworld.

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

  The dead man’s older brother, Mark, who repeatedly tried to help Richard straighten out, said of him: ‘He was sixteen 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.

  There was an incident in jail, shortly before his release, that left him with another group of enemies. The story circulating in some criminal circles was that Mladenich had stood over a relatively vulnerable young inmate in jail, unaware the man was connected to a powerful Romanian crime family.

  When the young man told his family about Mladenich’s humiliation of him, the story goes, they sent a teenage gunman to avenge their relative’s honor. According to the story, the killer was too young to drive a car and had to be driven to the scene.

  It is alleged he uttered the Romanian curse, ‘You are the Devil and we have rid the world of you,’ as he left the room.

  But police are sticking to their less romantic scenario. They believe the young gunman went to the flat to either kill or rob the drug dealer who had lived in the room for six months. But when he opened the door and found Mladenich, he panicked and started shooting. If so, it proves the old saying about the dangers of having a reputation.

  LESS than twelve hours after Mark Moran was murdered outside his luxury home, a group of his associates met in another house in the northern suburbs of Melbourne to begin planning a payback killing.

  Even before the body was removed from the crime scene police knew they were in a race with the Moran clan to find the killer.

  If homicide squad detectives were to get there first there was every chance the killer would be charged and, if convicted, would be sentenced to prison by a Supreme Court Judge.

  But if the Moran gang won the race the sentence would be automatic – death – and there would be no appeal. Mark Moran, thirty six, was always the apparent white sheep of the family, the one who stayed in the background and kept a low profile. But on 15 June, 2000, the man who shunned publicity made the headlines, the latest victim in the underworld war known to have claimed nine lives since January, 1998.

  Moran’s natural father, Leslie John Cole, was ambushed and shot dead outside his Sydney home on 10 November, 1982. He was the first victim of the gangland wars that resulted in the death or disappearance of eight Sydney underworld figures in the early 1980s. It took eighteen years, but Mark went the same way as his father – proof that, in crime as in horse racing, blood in the end will tell.

  If police had any doubts about the potential consequences of Mark Moran’s death, they were to learn otherwise within hours. A close relative of the dead man snarled at detectives: ‘We will look after this. You can go and get fucked.’

  The Moran name has been well-known through three generations in Melbourne criminal circles and the clan’s reputation was not earned with a pacifist philosophy.

  Within twenty-four hours of the murder Detective Inspector Brian Rix of the homicide squad admitted police were receiving little help from the Morans. He further ventured that the shooting had ‘all the hallmarks of an underworld slaying.’ Then the normally taciturn Rix produced a remarkably long sentence.

  ‘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,’ he said.

  Sometimes you can deduce more from what police don’t say. What Rix didn’t raise in public was why Moran had left his house for less than thirty minutes on the night he was killed.

  Who had he gone to meet? Did the killer know Moran would go out and then come back fairly quickly?

  It is fair to conclude that an armed killer would not sit outside a luxury house in a luxury street all night on the off chance the target would venture out. Unless he happened to follow Moran back to the house after seeing him elsewhere he had to have inside knowledge.

  So the real question became: ‘Who set him up?’

  Police tried to use the underworld anger to try and help solve the murder. They were the hunters on horseback chasing the hounds who were chasing the fox.

  If they timed it well, the hounds would take them to the fox. If they didn’t the hounds would tear it apart first.

  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.’

  But he acknowledged the dangers. ‘It’s a real concern that they’ll go out and try and seek retribution, but we’ve got to try to get to the family and say that is not the way to go about things … they’ve got to trust the system.’

  The basic facts are that Moran left his million-dollar home in Combermere Street, Aberfeldie, near Essendon, for just over twenty minutes. When he returned a gunman shot him as he got out of his late-model Commodore. The shotgun blast knocked him back into the car, killing him instantly.

  It was no surprise when it became known that a Moran had been murdered. The surprise was that it was Mark and not his elder half-brother, Jason, the notorious gangster serving two years and six months over an assault in King Street, Melbourne.

  Jason Moran was a close associate of Alphonse Gangitano. The two men were both facing charges over the King Street brawl, but Gangitano was murdered before the trial.

  It is believed that Gangitano and Moran fell out ‘very shortly’ before Gangitano was murdered. Very shortly, perhaps.

  While Jason Moran was seen as wild, violent and erratic, his younger half-brother 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 assume a higher profile.

  About eighteen 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.

  Last year, he was involved in assaulting a policeman at Remington Racecourse on Oaks Day.

  About six months before Mark’s death the Moran brothers had a falling out with a father-son team who produced amphetamines. The dispute was over a failed speed lab.

  As is the norm in this world the dispute was handled with firearms. A women heard an argument in a Broadmeadows location followed by a man crying out, ‘No, Jason.’

  The result was the son was shot in the stomach, a wound that apparently caused a form of amnesia, because the victim could not later assist police in finding out how the bullet got there.

  Detectives believe the Moran brothers claimed the father-son team owed them $400,000. They believe that Mark pulled the trigger.

  On 17 February, 2000, police noticed Mark Moran driving a luxury car. When they opened the boot of the rented car, they found a high-tech handgun equipped with a silencer and a laser sight. They also found a large number of amphetamine pills th
at had been stamped through a pill press to appear as ecstasy tablets.

  In a raid the day after Mark’s murder police raided an associate’s home and seized another five thousand tablets similar to those found in the boot of the hire car. Months before Moran’s death he was ejected from the County Court after trying to use a false name to get into the plea hearing after his brother was found guilty over the King Street assault. AFL footballer Wayne Carey gave character evidence for Jason Moran, for reasons that remain unclear.

  Police said Moran was one of the new breed involved in drug trafficking known as the ‘Bollinger Dealers’, who associated with minor celebrities and the new rich.

  They wore designer suits and used a pill press to stamp their amphetamine products to look like party drugs such as ecstasy.

  Mark was a former professional chef and a ‘gym rat’ who was often seen at the Underworld fitness centre in Melbourne. He once listed his occupation as personal trainer.

  But he had not worked regularly for years and police say his high-income lifestyle and magnificent home could have only been supported through illegal activities. He refused to speak about business on telephones and rarely spoke with associates in his house because he feared he was being bugged by police.

  He was extremely proud of his fitness levels and physique and was described ‘extremely narcissistic’. He was well dressed and when he was shot he was wearing a huge diamond stud in his left ear.

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

  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.

  One theory police are looking at is that someone connected with the network wrongly blamed Mark Moran for having informed on them to try to remove a competing drug syndicate.

  A second underworld rumor was that he was considered an easier target to kill, because Jason was in jail and unable to fight back.

  A third source suggested that a gangster with a grudge against Mark ordered the murder after warning him he was on thin ice.

  But the favorite early theory was that it was a payback by the father-son ‘speed’ team and certainly that was the one the Moran family seemed to believe, at least initially. The favourites had good alibis for the night in question. While this may have impressed the police it left associates of the Morans unconvinced.

  Within days of the murder there were reports of shots fired near the North Fitzroy family home of the main suspects.

  Police sources said they were concerned for the welfare of a lawyer who regularly socialises with several members of the Moran family.

  ‘It is not the right time to be taking sides,’ a detective said last night.

  The Herald Sun, the underworld’s newspaper of record, was filled with death notices to a ‘lovely gentleman’. There were many from former league footballers including one from a colourful former Carlton captain who fondly remembering them running a victory lap after a premiership in the 1980s.

  There was one notice falsely placed under the nick-name of a drug squad detective. Police suspect it was placed to give the appearance Moran was talking to police when he was killed.

  The funeral was the usual procession of real friends, hangers-on, crims in black suits who refused to take their sunglasses off, even though it was a cold winter’s day, and bikies who would not take their colours off, even when inside the church.

  Jason Moran was allowed day leave from prison to speak at the funeral. Mourners said the brother spoke with real emotion but his death notice concerned police. It read: ‘This is only the beginning, it will never be the end. REMEMBER, I WILL NEVER FORGET.’

  Some mourners were less than impressed when a long-haired Hells Angel insisted on embracing Jason inside the church. ‘You should never touch someone on day leave.

  What if the screws think you’ve slipped him something,’ said a mourner with plenty of jail time. Because the funeral was going to choke local streets a request was made for uniformed police to control traffic but a senior policeman vetoed the plan. He didn’t want media images of police holding up traffic for some of Australia’s most dangerous gangsters and their hangers on.

  While Mark Moran had a low public profile police had no doubt he had a long, and violent, criminal history.

  Career criminal Raymond John Denning once told an inquest that Moran was one of three men involved in an armed robbery where a guard was shot dead.

  He said the other two men involved were the notorious Russell ‘Mad Dog’ Cox and Santo Mercuri.

  The robbery occurred on 11 July, 1988, in Barkly Square, Brunswick. Two armed guards leaving the Coles warehouse with a cash tin were held up at gunpoint. A struggle followed and Dominik Hefti, thirty one, was shot in the chest and the leg. He died two days later at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.

  Denning said the three men planned to kill a woman whose car Mercuri had stolen for his getaway. Denning said: ‘It was decided among the three of them that they try to find her home address and knock her because she was the only one that Sam believed had identified him.’

  Senior Sergeant Peter Butts, formerly of the armed robbery squad, said that when police later raided Russell Cox’s Doncaster home, they found that the the page of the telephone book carrying the woman’s name and address had been torn out. Hefti’s murder sparked another spate of killings. Police wrongly believed that an armed robber called Graeme Jensen was responsible and he was shot during an attempt to arrest him on 11 October, 1988.

  The following day two young police constables, Steven Tynan and Damian Eyre, were murdered in Walsh Street, South Yarra, as a payback. It was the biggest outrage against Victoria’s police since the Stringybark Creek shootings by the Kelly Gang in the 1870s. Mark Read had predicted only weeks before Moran’s shooting there would soon be another murder.

  It is heating up quite nicely at the moment and it is a long way from finished. It is a good time to be retired,’ he said at the time.

  Police said that in nearly all the underworld murders since 1998 the killers had either stalked their victims or had inside knowledge of their movements.

  Police do not know if all the murders are linked but they have been able to find that nearly all the victims knew each other. Interestingly, many were invited to the opening of Alphonse Gangitano’s illegal casino in 1987. Which proves, if nothing else, that it’s a small world.

  There’s another postscript to the Moran murder. In their idle moments, detectives and others interested in the case wonder if there might be a link between the murder and the unsolved killing of Frank Benvenuto, shot dead in Beaumaris on 8 May, 2000. Benvenuto was the son of the former Godfather of Melbourne, Liborio Benvenuto, one of the fortunate people in his field to die of natural causes, which he did on 10 June, 1988.

  Moran and Frank Benvenuto were what police call ‘known associates’, which is not always the same thing as lifelong friends. Moran was killed with a shotgun, the preferred weapon in Italian payback killings. Although, as any member of the largely law-abiding Italian community would point out, shotguns are very common weapons.

  UNSOLVED UNDERWORLD MURDER VICTIMS:

  VICTIM:

  Alphonse John Gangitano.

  DETAIL: Shot dead in his Templestowe home on 16 January 1998.

  MOTIVE: Falling out with former friend.

  VICTIM:

  Mad Charlie Hegyalji.

  DETAIL: Shot dead in front garden of his South Caulfield home on 23 November, 1998.

  MOTIVE: Possibly debt or drug related.

  VICTIM:

  Vince Mannella.

  DETAIL: Shot as he returned to his North Fitzroy home on 9 January, 1999.

  MOTIVE: Possibly debt related or connected with an underworld power struggle.

  VICTIM:


  Joe Quadara.

  DETAIL: Shot dead as he arrived at work at a Toorak supermarket on 3am on 28 May, 1999.

  MOTIVE: Unknown, possibly armed robbery gone wrong.

  VICTIM:

  Dimitrios Belias.

  DETAIL: Found by cleaners in a pool of blood below a St Kilda Road office on 9 September, 1999.

  MOTIVE: Failure to pay gambling debt.

  VICTIM:

  Gerardo Mannella.

  DETAIL: Shot dead as he left his brother’s North Fitzroy home on 20 October, 1999.

  MOTIVE: Possibly pre-emptive strike because the killers believed he planned to avenge his brother’s murder.

  VICTIM:

  Frank Benvenuto.

  DETAIL: Shot dead in Beaumaris on 8 May, 2000

  MOTIVE: Debt related.

  VICTIM:

  Richard Mladenich.

  DETAIL: Shot dead while visiting a friend in a St Kilda motel on 16 May, 2000.

  MOTIVE: Possible mistaken identity.

  VICTIM:

  Mark Moran.

  DETAIL: Shot dead outside his luxury home near Essendon on 15 June, 2000.

  MOTIVE: Possible payback for earlier shooting.

  CHAPTER 9

  Yesterday’s Man

  ‘He ended up getting four years. We got life.’

  CALL him Ross Stephens. It’s not his real name, just another one of the aliases he’ll need for the rest of his life. It takes a bit to surprise a man who’s been through what ‘Stephens’ has, but when the phone rang at 3am in the upstairs main bedroom of a nondescript rented house in a town near Manchester, England, he was surprised, all right. Not only by the unearthly hour – but by the fact it rang at all. Only about a dozen people on earth knew how to contact him, and then only in an emergency.

  The man on the other end of the line was a senior policeman on the other side of the world, in Melbourne, with a message that couldn't wait for a more civilised hour.