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Books used in this site

Another Dirty Dozen
By Paul Anderson
Published by Hardie Grant Books (2005)

Australian Crime, Chilling tales of our time
Edited by Malcolm Brown

Big Shots
By David Wilson and Lindsay Murdoch
First published by Sun Books Pty Ltd (1985)
Published by Lifetime Distributors (1998)

Blind Justice - The true story of the death of Jennifer Tanner
By Robin Bowles
Published by Allen and Angwin (1998)

Bombs, Guns and Knives - Violent crime in Australia
Edited by Malcolm Brown
First published by New Holland (2000)

Bugged
By Bob Bottom
First published by Sun Books Pty Ltd (1989)

Can of Worms
By Evan Whitton
First published by Fairfax Library (1986)

Catch and Kill Your Own: Behind the Killings the Police Don't Want to Solve
By Arthur "Neddy" Smith
Published by Pan Macmillan
(1997)

Chopper - From The Inside
By Mark Brandon Read
Published in Australia by Flowerdale and Sly Ink (December 1991)

Chopper 2 - Hits and Memories
By Mark Brandon Read
Published in Australia by Flowerdale and Sly Ink

Chopper 3 - How to Shoot Friends and Influence People
By Mark Brandon Read
Published in Australia by Flowerdale and Sly Ink

Chopper 4, For The Term Of His Unnatural Life
By Mark Brandon Read
Published in Australia by Flowerdale and Sly Ink

Chopper 5 - Pulp Faction
By Mark Brandon Read
Published in Australia by Flowerdale and Sly Ink (Nov 1995)

Chopper 6 - No Tears For A Tough Guy
By Mark Brandon Read
Published in Australia by Flowerdale and Sly Ink (Nov 1996)

Chopper 7 - The Singing Defective
By Mark Brandon Read
Published in Australia by Flowerdale and Sly Ink

Chopper 8 - The Sicilian Defence
By Mark Brandon Read
Published in Australia by Flowerdale and Sly Ink (1998)

Chopper 9 - The Final Cut
By Mark Brandon Read
Published in Australia by Flowerdale and Sly Ink (April 2000)

Chopper 101/2 - The popcorn gangster
By Mark Brandon Read
Published in Australia by Flowerdale and Sly Ink (2001)

Hooky The Cripple "The Grim  Tale of a Hunchback Who Triumphs"
By Mark Brandon Read
Illustrated by Adam Cullen
Pluto Press Paperback, 2002

Connections
By Bob Bottom
First published by Sun Books Pty Ltd (1985)

Connections 2
By Bob Bottom
First published by Sun Books Pty Ltd (1987)

Dirty Dozen - 12 True crime stories that shocked Australia
By Paul Anderson
Published by Hardie Grant Books (2003)

George Freeman: An autobiography

The Godfather in Australia
By Bob Bottom
First published by Reed Pty Ltd (1979)

Huckstepp: A dangerous life
By John Dale

Inside Victoria-A chronicle of scandal
By Bob Bottom
Published by Pan- Macmillan (1991)

Line of Fire
By Darren Goodsir
Published by Allen and Unwin
(1995)

The Matriarch: The Kathy Pettingill Story
By Adrian Tame
Published by Pan-Macmillan (1996)

The Mr Asia File
By Pat Booth
First published by William Collins (1978)

The Life and Death of Marty Johnstone

Mugshots
By Keith Moor and Geoff Wilkinson
Published by News Custom Publishing (2003)

Mugshots 2
By Keith Moor and Geoff Wilkinson
Published by News Custom Publishing (2006)

My Story
By Judith Moran
First published by Random House (2005)

On Murder - True Crime Writing in Australia
Edited by Kerry Greenwood
First published by Black Ink (2000)

On Murder 2 - True Crime Writing in Australia
Edited by Kerry Greenwood
First published by Black Ink (2001)

One Down, One Missing - Inside the Hunt for the Killers of Silk & Miller
By Det Sen Cons Joe D'Alo with David Astle
Published by Hardie Grant Books (2003)

Ray Denning. My Life and Time
By Donald Catchlove
Published by Ironbark (1994)

Shadow of Shame - How the Mafia got away with the murder of Donald MacKay
By Bob Bottom
First published by Sun Books Pty Ltd (1988)

Shotgun City
By Paul Anderson
Published by Hardie Grant Books (2004)

The Street. Confessions of an undercover cop
By Lachlan McCulloch
Published by Floradale Productions and Sly Ink (2000)

Tough 101 Australian Gangsters
A Crime Companion
By John Silvester and Andrew Rule
Published by Sly Ink (2002)

Underbelly 1 True Crime Stories
By Andrew Rule and John Silvester
Published by Sly Ink (1998)

Underbelly 2 True Crime Stories
By Andrew Rule and John Silvester
Published by Sly Ink (1999)

Underbelly 3 Some more True Crime Stories
By Andrew Rule and John Silvester
Published by Sly Ink (1999)

Underbelly 4 More True Crime Stories
By Andrew Rule and John Silvester
Published by Sly Ink (2000)

Underbelly 5
By Andrew Rule and John Silvester
Published by Sly Ink (2001)

Underbelly 10
By Andrew Rule and John Silvester
Published by Sly Ink (2006)

Untold Violence
By Tom Noble
First published by John Kerr Ltd (1989)

Victoria Police Corruption
By Raymond Hoser
First published by Kotabi Publications (1999)

Walsh Street
By Tom Noble
First published by John Kerr Ltd (1991)

The Winchester Scandal
By Rod Campbell, Brian Toohey and William Punwill
First published by Random House Australia (1992)

Without Fear or Fervour
By Bob Bottom
First published by Sun Books Pty Ltd (1984)

Writing on gravestones
(2001)

New Aussie True Crime Bookshop now open

Auscrimebooks, a specialist on-line Australian True Crime Bookstore, has just opened its doors. It stocks selected titles by authors such as Andrew Rule and John Silvester, Adam Shand, Adrian Tame, Paul Kidd, Michael Kuzilny and Paul Anderson.

Editions 1 to 11 $199.00 (incl post) - Now available at auscrimebooks.com.au

NEW BOOK OUT NOW!

Bulletin journalist Adam Shand recently released Big Shots: The Chilling Inside Story of Carl Williams and the Gangland Wars.

In 2003 Adam Shand, until then a financial journalist, naively set out to unravel Melbourne's bloody gangland wars.

A few months' research, a guaranteed cover story. But his foray into the underworld took him deeper than that. Before long, he found himself counted as a friend by those who sometimes ended friendships with a hail of bullets.

Big Shots takes the reader into the heart of the city's multi-billion dollar 'disorganised crime' scene, as Shand meets key figures and suspects, including Carl and Roberta Williams, Mick Gatto, and many others.

He discovers the human drama behind the brutal slaying's that were splashed across the front pages, and in the process comes to question his objectivity. And even whether he is being used to further the players' murderous ends.

A ride through the underworld
(The Age)
September 8, 2007

A dream dinner party hosted by actor turned barrister turned crime author Susanna Lobez would bypass the usual Hollywood stars and Nobel Prize winners. Her hypothetical invitation list would instead sparkle with the colourful personalities of the Australian criminal demi monde. There would be flash underworld lawyer Zara Garde-Wilson at one end, opposite murdered Carlton Crew member Alphonse Gangitano — "he has to get an invite, because he was so pretty" — while high-class brothel madam Sarah Fraser could regale the table with tales of servicing the visiting Prince Albert, Duke of Edinburgh, on his 1867 tour of the colonies. "She was very entrepreneurial," says Lobez of the woman known as "Mother Fraser".

Rounding out the crowd would be Charlie Wootton, a one-time Mr Big of Melbourne, but a shadowy figure so effective in keeping his nose clean and his head below the parapet that no one seems to know what became of him. Yet Wootton holds the key to a long-standing fascination with crime that has guided every phase of Lobez' varied career, culminating in Gangland Australia, an exhaustive and rollicking history of 180 years of organised crime.

It was at the Zorro Club, also known as Charlie's Place, that Lobez first came into contact with Wootton and Melbourne's flourishing illegal gambling dens. It was the early 1980s; she was in her 20s and St Kilda wasn't yet the well-heeled playground of investment bankers and management consultants.

"I had a friend who had spent a lot of time in and out of prison. He was on the fringe, related to some crime families, a heroin user, and used to hang out in the night-time at these illegal gambling dens St Kilda was absolutely flooded with," Lobez says. "My friend introduced me to Charlie. He was a very imposing figure, but respectful and polite. I was wide-eyed, just soaking everything in. I wanted to experience it all."

No. 73 Acland Street, St Kilda now thrums to the sound of bossa nova and the espresso machine in the ground-floor cafe, but right above was once Charlie's Place, a dingy joint of Laminex tables where red aces was the name of the card game.

"It would be the same scenario in Carlton. You'd go upstairs somewhere and there would be a latch that opened in the door and you'd say 'Joe sent me' or some such. It was the tail end of an era. It sounds so cloak-and-dagger and old-fashioned now, but it was only 25 years ago," Lobez says.

Gangland Australia is the first exhaustive account of organised crime in a country that boasts a keen batting average of crooks. The book has its provenance in several bottles of wine shared by Lobez, then host and producer of Radio National's The Law Report, and her co-author, British-based criminal gang expert James Morton, over which they got talking about their pet subject. As Morton writes in his foreword, "The great villains in recent British crime were outpaced by Australian underworld identities. Even the gangsters from New York, Chicago and Detroit during the Prohibition years might find themselves outgunned on the other side of the Pacific. It was clear that there was a gripping book to be written about criminal gangs in Australia."

The result is a rollercoaster ride through Australia's colourful history of organised crime. It's an ambitious account of murder, robbery, prostitution, drugs, great escapes, revenge, betrayal and corruption, beginning with the 1828 Bank of Australia robbery in Sydney, and finishing with the rise of amphetamines as the new currency of the underworld alongside the bloody denouement of Melbourne's latest turf war. It is a national overview, but Melburnians can be proud: at various times in its history, Marvellous Melbourne could claim the dubious title of the crime capital of Australia, and in 1939, the 1960s and '70s had a higher per capita crime rate than London.

The rogue's gallery of local crime figures takes in early identities such as 1880s brothel keeper Madame Brussels, whose establishment at the top of Lonsdale Street had a hidden door to which numerous parliamentarians had the key; 1920s strongman Squizzy Taylor; the fearsome Pettingill clan (left); the earless Chopper Read; and the wig-wearing Tony Mokbel.

There are lesser-known characters such as Freddy "the Frog" Harrison, Pretty Boy Walker, and the one-legged Matthew Biggar, a conman who toured Europe in the 1920s, along with bent cops, bent lawyers and bikers. The book drips with landmarks such as St Kilda's Palais Theatre, where the oft-married Squizzy Taylor would go dancing with his pretty 16-year-old girlfriend Ida Pender, a "jazzer and skater" who worked at the Myer hosiery counter.

Arguably Melbourne's most infamous crime was the officially unsolved Great Bookie Robbery of 1976, in which the gangsters hid the loot — between $6 million and $12 million — in the same building. Asked to name a favourite, however, Lobez leans towards the MSS robbery of 1970, a carefully planned heist led by diamond-toothed underworld figure Joey Turner with the help of the Painters and Dockers and a stolen police uniform.

Brilliantly executed to the tune of $289,233, it came unstuck when his wife accidentally put stolen money through the wash and Turner tried to use still-damp $2 notes to buy a kangaroo-skin rug in the souvenir shop at the Southern Cross Hotel, sparking the interest of the cashier and, eventually, the police.

The relentlessly unfolding narrative of Gangland Australia leaves little room for sociological speculation as to the reasons behind Australia's rich criminal history. The authors pondered the "whys" privately, and developed the theory that the nation's convict origins had forged a tradition of hyper-masculinity: "When Australia started it was essentially composed of two gangs: the jailers and the jailed. The people who were guarding weren't really that much more noble than the people who were being guarded.

"I think we've confirmed our supposition that there was this gang mentality right from the beginning, an anti-authoritarian rebellious streak that forced men to be hyper-masculine."

One thing that frustrates Lobez is the relative lack of women in the criminal landscape. "If you're looking for equal opportunity in crime, it doesn't exist," she laughs. "From the Painters and Dockers through to Abe Saffron and the Italian gangs, it seems like a code that they kept their women at arm's length from it. It's a pet peeve of mine; not that women should be encouraged to commit crime, but why is it all men and why don't we look at that as an issue?"

Lobez' fascination with crime has seen her through three changes of career. At the time she met Wootton, she was appearing on the television series Skyways, playing an airport lawyer — "I had been remorselessly cast as a lawyer in my acting life, so I figured I must have a tough-bitch face." Reality mirrored fiction when a frightening episode with an overdosing friend convinced her to take a step back from the louche St Kilda milieu. Acting was jettisoned for law school, culminating in several years at the bar.

Many of the contacts she made in those years helped with the research for Gangland Australia. Some were prepared to go on the record; many weren't. She admires the well-planned crime and the audaciousness of some of the robberies, and dislikes the thugs, none of whom would have scored an invitation to her dinner party. One of the worst of the worst, she says, was Alex Tsakmakis (left), who trussed up a man with chicken wire and threw him into the bay over a money dispute, and while out on bail in 1978 robbed the Hawthorn Tattslotto agency, shooting the owner and his wife in the head (they survived). Before he was killed in prison by Russell Street bomber Craig Minogue in 1988, Tsamakis was famously stabbed in the neck by Chopper Read, "to teach him some manners".

The story of Gangland Australia ends, in gangster film tradition, with an unravelling. By 1990, Melbourne was Australia's amphetamine capital: the catalyst for the war between the establishment Carlton Crew and the Sunshine-based New Boys, led by baby-faced arriviste Carl Williams. The Carlton Crew's one-time leader, Alphonse Gangitano, known as "the Robert de Niro of Lygon Street", was shot dead in 1998, arguably sparking the warfare that lasted nine years and cost more than 30 lives. The continuing unfolding of the story, even as the authors were putting the final touches on the book, proved challenging, even frightening, when Mario Condello was shot dead a few kilometres from Lobez' home. But while a full stop might have been put on the most recent outbreak of violence by the June capture in Greece of Tony Mokbel (it is included in footnotes and will be updated in future editions) Gangland Australia proves crime shifts to fill any opening.

"Wherever there is money to be made … It is like a monster that will sprout another head although quite a few heads have been cut off this time," she says. Lobez also anticipates an outbreak of petty crime might greet the publication of Gangland Australia. "Criminals, I think are fascinated by their own work, and I suspect that of the thousands that are mentioned in this book, quite a few will be purchasing it — although James, who has written 25 books on criminal gangs, says most of them will nick it. Libraries better watch out."

Gangland Australia is out now through Melbourne University Publishing
RRP $32.95.
BUY GANGLAND AUSTRALIA FROM auscrimebooks.com.au