The Gangland War Page 9

  At first Mokbel appeared relaxed, thinking he would be able to bribe his way out of any minor passport offence. But his face dropped when he saw the Purana detective. He had the good grace to say, ‘I don’t know how you did it but you’ve done a brilliant job.’ He later lost his sense of fair play, telling the police he had ‘evil dreams about what I was going to do to you and your families.’

  Perhaps he should have checked his stars for that day, which read, ‘Leos tend to feel they’re entitled to more freedom and independence … others might not agree today.’

  On word of the arrest, more than 120 police in Victoria raided 22 properties (including the Bonnie Doon farmhouse where Mokbel had hidden) and arrested fourteen suspects. Later, eight people appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates Court charged with drug-related offences. Police also seized almost $800,000 in cash, drugs, eight vehicles, two power-skis, a Taser stun gun, mace spray, a pistol, a shotgun and a rifle.

  It was also, by pure coincidence, Jim O’Brien’s birthday.

  Round two to the police.

  TONY Mokbel was never going to come quietly. From day one he made it clear he was going to fight any extradition attempts.

  Back in Melbourne authorities faced a race against time. They had to present the charges to a Greek court in Greek within 45 days. Under international law a suspect can only be tried on the charges approved under extradition treaties. Eventually Mokbel was charged with the Lewis Moran and Michael Marshall murders and drug trafficking offences. This meant he was facing life in jail — and he already owed a minimum of nine years for his cocaine conviction in 2006.

  Despite the odds against him, Mokbel remained remarkably chatty. In the back of the court he spoke to The Age’s European correspondent, James Button, declaring: ‘I would be on a plane tomorrow if the Australian Government would agree to sort out the truth from the crap.’

  He said he was not involved in the murder of Lewis Moran. ‘Mate, I deny full stop all this.’

  He claimed he had jumped bail because he knew he was facing more charges and would not have been able to defend himself from jail. ‘Eventually, I do want to go back to Australia,’ Mokbel said. ‘All I’m asking is that the Australian Government sit down with me and talk and nut out the crap from the truth and I am hoping to go back.

  ‘If they came and they talked to me and we came to an agreement I’m more than happy to get on a plane tomorrow.’

  It was typical Mokbel bluster. He seemed to believe he had such political clout that he could deal directly with the government. His delusions were such that he had once been recorded saying that when ‘Paul gets back from leave, Con will have a chat and sort it all out.’

  ‘Paul’ was the then Director of Public Prosecutions, Paul Coghlan, and Con was his barrister Con Heliotis QC. Mokbel was kidding himself. There would be no deals.

  Mokbel went from delusion to denial and eventually to anger.

  He said Purana was picking on him.

  ‘If I were going to jail for things that I did that would be OK,’ but Purana was ‘hungry to convict whoever they would like, not for the right reasons’.

  He said the underworld war had been a tragedy. ‘We were all friends and it (the gangland killings) was the saddest thing happening, it was just sad.’

  In a later hearing he was less relaxed, claiming that being sent back to Australia was like facing trial in Nazi Germany.

  ‘It would be impossible for me to get a fair trial,’ Mokbel told a Greek court. ‘It’s like you sending me to Hitler.’

  The churlish may have pointed out that Mokbel was familiar with the concept of summary execution without trial.

  Eventually a panel of three Greek judges granted the extradition. His local lawyer, Yannis Vlachos, said Mokbel would appeal. ‘It is an uphill struggle, but we will fight it and remain optimistic,’ Vlachos said.

  The process was further delayed when he was sentenced to a year in a Greek jail on false passport charges. He was moved to the maximum-security Korydallos prison complex, fifteen kilometres from the city. Built for 640 inmates, it houses nearly 2000 and was described by Amnesty International as one of the worst jails in Europe.

  So it was a surprise when the phone rang in the Purana office and the voice at the other end belonged to Mokbel, who had apparently bribed prison officials for access to several mobile phones.

  Angling for a deal, he wanted the murder charges dropped if he was to return. He said he was prepared to talk about police corruption or anything else. He said to O’Brien, ‘I’m a drug dealer, not a killer.’ Hardly the best admission for your CV.

  The House of Mokbel had fallen. Now he was trying to salvage something from the wreckage.

  It meant the police could claim a massive victory against organised crime. But the win came twelve years after their failure to act had set the scene for gangster to turn on gangster in what became the underworld war.

  4

  OUT OF HIS LEAGUE

  Al had got away with murder.

  But, a few years later,

  it would be his turn.

  IN 30 years in the underworld, Gregory John Workman earned a name as a man who didn’t dodge danger.

  Like most of his breed, he had a lengthy police ‘docket’. It had begun when he was a teenager, back in 1966 when Sir Robert Menzies was Prime Minister and imperial currency was being replaced with dollars and cents.

  Workman’s record included convictions for assault, theft, burglary, malicious wounding, abduction, illegal possession of a firearm, armed robbery and escape.

  He began to build a reputation as a tough teenager in a tough place — the working-class Melbourne suburb of Preston. It was an area and an era in which many teenagers joined gangs — either the Mods or the Sharpies. Most moved on, but Workman used street violence as work experience in his chosen field. He was a diligent delinquent and eventually graduated from gang member to gangster. His reputation grew and, like many others, the young standover man turned to dealing drugs as he moved into middle age.

  But when he was young he was just a big, good-looking kid from Preston East State School with a ready smile and an eye for the girls.

  One of his first girlfriends remembered: ‘All the girls had a crush on him. He had nice parents. I don’t really know what went wrong for him.’

  He once grabbed the author, then a tiny, but rather gifted, primary school boy, and threw him on his shoulders in what he considered to be a humorous street abduction.

  At that moment in Wood Street, Preston, the budding author thought no good would come of Gregory John Workman. Neither knew their paths would cross again in tragic circumstances 30 years on.

  The Workmans lived in a Housing Commission house in busy Albert Street — a few houses from a policeman who would one day become the head of the Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence and one of the country’s few real experts on organised crime.

  Even then, there were rumours around the teenage Workman that an older relative was dabbling in marijuana — a drug virtually unheard of in the suburbs in those days. Years later, there was no doubt Workman was into crime full-time.

  ‘He was one of the better crooks in the area,’ a policeman who locked him up more than once would recall much later.

  ‘He would stay in the background and wouldn’t do stupid things to bring police attention on himself. He had an air of confidence and a touch of class.

  ‘He was rumoured to be behind some good stick-ups in the area, but he wasn’t convicted over them.’

  He was a good crook but he wasn’t always a good bloke. Just ask his family. One of his close relatives became a manager at a successful Melbourne clothing business. Police later found a car boot full of clothes stolen from the factory. Workman was said to have stood over his relative to make him the inside man in a stolen clothing racket. The relative lost his legitimate job and gained a criminal record: a case of from rag trade to scallywag trade. It would have been an interesting Christmas Day at the Workman
s’ that year.

  Workman was successful by his own lights but in underworld terms he was a middleweight and was finally caught fighting out of his division. It would not be the police who would stop him, but fellow criminals. One in particular.

  On 6 February 1995, Workman and a crew of heavy criminals, including Alphonse John Gangitano, met for a wake at a Richmond hotel before heading to a party to celebrate the release of Mark Aisbett, who had been bailed on armed robbery charges earlier that day.

  The party was already in full swing in a flat in Wando Grove, St Kilda, when the team from Richmond arrived around 1am.

  After another three hours of drinking, the mood turned ugly. Gangitano was seen arguing with one of his old mates, Martin Felix Paul. According to a confidential police report: ‘Gangitano was identified by an independent person as being in possession of a pistol and arguing with another male. It was apparent that Gangitano was being restrained by another person and was highly agitated.’

  One of Australia’s most experienced investigators into gangland murders, Detective Senior Sergeant Gavan Ryan, was later to tell the coroner that someone at the party overheard a conversation between Workman and another man, in which the issue of Workman’s gambling debts was raised.

  Ryan would not know that he was to spend most of the next decade investigating gangland murders and eventually would run the Purana Taskforce.

  The witness later told another man at the party that Workman was about to be ‘bumped’ over the debt.

  The witness left the party with the man and while in a taxi alerted the driver that he feared there was about to be a murder. The driver must have been convinced because he drove to the St Kilda police station to pass on his passenger’s fears.

  The argument was loud enough for neighbours to call the police. Several said they heard the name ‘Harry’ being used — a nickname for Alphonse used by his closest friends.

  Police arrived to the noisy party, unaware that a Who’s Who of the underworld had gathered. They were told that the two men who had been arguing in the driveway had left and they were assured there would be no further problems.

  It was an overly optimistic call.

  When Workman walked out the front door onto the porch he was shot eight times.

  The woman who lived in the flat and had organised the party drove Workman to hospital, but he died without regaining consciousness. Eight .32 calibre slugs will do that.

  If Gangitano had planned to kill Workman over a debt, he picked a stupid time and place to do it. In hindsight, it was a sign that Al was spinning out of control and would one day be seen as expendable himself.

  A woman later told police she saw Gangitano standing near the body holding a small silver pistol before being led away by another man.

  Coroner Wendy Wilmoth later found that a witness ‘stated that she heard gunshots, went to the porch and saw Gangitano and Martin Paul standing almost at the feet of the deceased. She heard someone say, “Get him out of here” and saw Martin Paul lead Gangitano away.’

  Ms Wilmoth said another witness, ‘saw Gangitano run from the porch holding a gun in the air, soon after she came out of the front door, and saw the deceased collapse, injured, on the porch’.

  It should have been an open and shut case. But it wasn’t.

  Two sisters who saw the shooting were whisked into a witness protection program to keep them away from the gangsters.

  It seemed a huge breakthrough. The man who had become the public face of organised crime in Victoria was in deep trouble. His lawyer contacted homicide squad detectives and said his client was prepared to be interviewed.

  Police said they were in no hurry. He may have fired the shots but now detectives were calling them.

  But they made the mistake of not protecting what they had. They took their star witnesses for granted.

  The sisters made statements implicating Gangitano and were then put under police protection and sent beyond Gangitano’s influence — or so the theory went.

  But it was not like the movies. Almost immediately, the sisters began to have doubts.

  One was not allowed to visit her doctor for arthritis medication. They spent days in Carlton and were driven down Lygon Street several times, despite it being the area where Gangitano and his henchmen spent most of their time.

  The witnesses were not allowed to collect clothes on layby at a department store and were forced to live on takeaway food. One of them told a detective they were ‘made to feel like we’re the criminals, not him’.

  They were shunted into a cabin in a Warrnambool caravan park in western Victoria with a promise that their protectors were only a phone call away.

  But when they tried to contact their police protectors three times the supposed 24-hour number rang out.

  Increasingly anxious and annoyed, the women felt they had been left for dead — not a comforting thought when you were about to help police jail a ruthless gunman. ‘The witnesses formed an opinion that their safety was no longer a priority of the Victoria Police and that the police were not in a position to adequately protect them,’ according to a confidential police report.

  Isolated, alone and frightened, they rang one of Gangitano’s closest associates, Jason Moran, who arranged to meet them in Melbourne the next day. It was exactly two months after the murder.

  Moran was a negotiator. His opening gambit, according to police, was to advise one of the women that if she gave evidence she and her family would be killed. He then took the sisters to his solicitor, Andrew Fraser, and to another lawyer’s office where the witnesses made an audio tape recanting their original police statements.

  Gangitano paid for them to fly out of Australia on 20 May to England and the United States. The murder case collapsed. Eventually, Gangitano’s lawyer billed police for $69,975.35 over the failed prosecution.

  But Coroner Wendy Wilmoth was able to investigate the case at Workman’s inquest, even though the key witnesses had ‘flipped’.

  ‘It is beyond doubt that Gangitano was at the premises where the shooting occurred, at the relevant time, that he was in possession of a gun and that he was in an agitated state of mind. The retraction of their statements by the (sisters) can be explained by their extreme fear of Gangitano,’ she said.

  ‘Having considered this evidence, and taking into account the required standard of proof, I find that Alphonse Gangitano contributed to the death of the deceased by shooting him.’

  In other words, Al had got away with murder. But, a few years later, it would be his turn. Another example of the truth of the saying, ‘What goes around, comes around’, a fitting epitaph for most standover men.

  5

  THE FIRST DOMINO

  In a business where attention

  can be fatal, Gangitano was

  a publicity magnet.

  IT was just after midnight when the two men in the green hire car cruised over the empty Westgate Bridge, heading away from Melbourne’s city skyline.

  The driver took little notice as his passenger casually picked up a McDonald’s paper bag, apparently containing the remnants of their late-night snack, and threw it out the window.

  It was only later that the driver would wonder why the bag wasn’t sucked behind the fast moving car and, instead of fluttering onto the roadway, flew straight over the railing into the mouth of the Yarra River, 54 metres below.

  And it would be months before police would conclude that the weight in the bag thrown from the bridge equalled that of a .32 calibre handgun — the one used to kill one of Australia’s most notorious gangsters less than an hour earlier.

  Alphonse John Gangitano was still lying dead in the laundry of his home with two bullet wounds in his head and one in the back when the two men crossed the bridge, but it would take four years before the events of that night were exposed.

  GANGITANO was not Melbourne’s best gangster, but he was the best known and certainly one of the best dressed. Glamorous, charming and violent, he played the ro
le of an underworld identity as if he had learned it from a Hollywood script. Which, to some extent, he had. He watched a lot of films. Too many, maybe.

  The sycophants would call him the Robert De Niro of Lygon Street. His critics — and there were many — called him the ‘Plastic Godfather’.

  In a business where attention can be fatal, Gangitano was a publicity magnet, first as a boxing manager, photographed with world champions such as Lester Ellis, and then as a crime figure whose court appearances were routinely followed by an increasingly fixated media.

  He posed for photos and loved the crime boss image. He craved the centre stage and shunned the shadows. The only time he became outraged was when one of the authors said on radio, ‘Alphonse Gangitano has the brains of a flea and the genitalia to match.’ It is not known which part of the barb he found most offensive. He sued using his favourite lawyer, George Defteros, but when Al died, so did the legal action.

  Some gangsters are born into the underworld, driven there by a cycle of poverty, lack of legitimate opportunities and family values that embrace violence and dishonesty. But that was not Gangitano’s background. He came from a hard-working, successful family. His father had run a profitable travel agency and invested astutely in real estate.

  Young Alphonse was given a private school education — at De La Salle, Marcellin and Taylor’s College — but struggled to justify his parents’ investment. He was remembered as a big kid with attitude, but not much ability and no application.

  He was quick with his fists but not with his wits, though he was cunning enough to fight on his terms, usually king-hitting his opponents. He was charged with offensive behaviour when he was nineteen and, over the next five years, he graduated from street crimes to serious violence. Along the way he started to gather a group, which for two decades was known as the Carlton Crew.