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On April 4, 2004, the Age reported that police
had identified at least 12 suspects. In confidential police files six were
listed as both victims and offenders.
MAY 4, 2004 - Body of convicted murderer Lewis
Caine found in a Brunswick street. Ange Goussis
and Keith Faure charged and jailed.
MAY 2004 - Terrence Hodson and wife Christine
shot dead in their Kew home.
FEBRUARY 6, 20O6 - Mario
Condello shot dead as he arrived home in East Brighton.
GREED, power and revenge fuelled
Melbourne's gangland war to its bloody end.
Of the 27 so-called gangland killings, 14 fell under
the microscope of the Purana Taskforce.
At the heart of the war was a battle for control
of the multi-million-dollar amphetamines market.
In the words of one of the victims, it became one
crazy drug faction's personal crusade to eliminate its competition.
That faction was run by Carl
Williams, whose obsession with killing members of the rival Moran clan was
legendary in criminal circles.
The spark for the underworld inferno is said to
have been Mark Moran shooting Carl Williams in
the stomach.
In the early 1990s, the drug market opened up
after a long-running police operation jailed one of the country's biggest
amphetamine gangs.
A mad scramble for power followed.
Police believe one of the main triggermen in the
spate of killings that soon followed was Andrew
"Benji" Veniamin.
He is believed to have killed three mates from
West Sunshine and they weren't his only scalps.
Of the core killings, Mark
Moran was the first to go on June 15, 2000. Of all the murders Williams has
been involved in police believe this was the only one he actually committed
himself.
Moran was a drug dealer who, along with half
brother Jason and step father Lewis,
had established a strong foothold in Melbourne's cannabis and designer drug
trade.
Veniamin and
another western suburbs identity -- killer and drug dealer Paul
Kallipolitis -- are suspected of shooting dead Dino
Dibra, a cocky crook from the western suburbs, on October 14, 2000.
Kallipolitis
was then rewarded for his work by becoming the next target of his former mates.
Police intelligence led in court suggests Veniamin
shot him dead in his home on 15 October, 2002.
By the time Bulgarian-born drug dealer and
extortionist Nikolai "The Russian" Radev
was gunned down in Coburg on 15 April, 2003, Veniamin
had moved away from his links with underworld associate Mick
Gatto.
Veniamin had
shown loose loyalty to industrial mediator and former champion boxer Gatto
before joining the Carl Williams group.
Just over a month after the Radev
hit, a gunman ambushed Jason Moran and unwitting mate Pasquale Barbaro in a
family van at a kid's footy clinic in Essendon. Barbaro was never an intended
target but the unlucky victim of circumstance.
Williams had long
bragged of his vision for a Melbourne crime scene free of Morans, even
considering attacking family matriarch Judy Moran before associates talked some
sense into him.
He once told Jason
Moran he had taken the bullet fired into his stomach in 1999 and "put
it in your brother".
Former bouncer and wannabe actor Willie
Thompson was a creature of habit and that made him an easy target as he left
his martial arts class in July 2003.
He was alleged to have been a drug soldier for
crime boss Tony Mokbel, who wasn't happy about
losing one of his staff.
He called a meeting with Williams
and others and offered $300,000 for them to kill the man he thought responsible
for Thompson's death: amphetamines dealer Michael
Marshall.
Williams took the
offer and passed the job on to two associates, who shot the hotdog vendor dead
outside his South Yarra home in October 2003.
He pocketed $200,000 and was going to give
$100,000 to the shooter who got arrested before he could claim his fee, because
police had planted a listening device in his car and heard the execution.
It was
a great deal for Williams considering he was the
one who had ordered Willie Thompson's death.
In December 2003, Graham
Kinniburgh was shot dead outside his Kew home for allegedly trying to broker
peace between the warring factions.
But Williams lost
one of his own when Veniamin was shot dead by Gatto
at a Carlton restaurant in March 2004. A jury found it was self-defence.
A week later Lewis
Moran was enjoying a beer with mate Bert Wrout at their usual joint, the
Brunswick Club, when two gunmen burst in and shot them both.
A member of a long-standing crime family. Noel
Faure, this week admitted he was one of the shooters and another man has
been jailed for his part as getaway driver.
They claim Williams
and Mokbel offered them $150,000 for the job.
In May another Williams associate, convicted
killer Lewis Caine, was shot.
Also known as Sean
Vincent, he was dating gangland lawyer Zarah
Garde-Wilson at the time. Two men were convicted and jailed for his murder
in 2006.
- From: The Herald Sun - March 1, 2007
On May 10, 2007,
the Herald Sun reported that a major coronial inquest into Melbourne's gangland war could mark the final chapter in
the long-running saga.
Purana Taskforce detectives were compiling a report detailing each murder from the underworld
war era, police confirmed.
It is hoped an inquest might shake out vital pieces of evidence that could help police close
in on remaining players in the underworld.
Crime clan matriarch Judy Moran hopes an inquest will formally resolve the slaying of her
son Mark Moran.
"I want the person who shot my son dead to be incarcerated," she said.
She said Moran's young children, aged 12 and 13, deserved closure.
Gangland kingpin Carl Williams was charged with murdering the drug dealer outside
Moran's Aberfeldie home on June 15, 2000.
But the charge was withdrawn in a plea deal that saw Williams locked up for at least 35
years over three other underworld killings, including Ms Moran's husband Lewis and other
son Jason.
Ms Moran believes other key players in the killing remain at large.
Initial investigations into Mark Moran's murder suggested Williams had not pulled the
trigger, but a key witness later gave police a version of events implicating Williams.
Police and State Coroner Graeme Johnstone have had lengthy talks about plans for an inquest.
Ms Moran will this week write to the coroner appealing for an inquest.
The Purana report is now being compiled.
Ms Moran said she wanted justice for her son and hit back at her critics, some of
whom panned the black cowboy hat and skirt she wore to Carl Williams' sentencing on
Monday.
"If I go out, that's how I dress," she said.
"I don't do that just to go to court. I'm not a jeans person -- never have
been.
"But none of this is about me -- it's for my family who are dead.
"Now my mantra is about Mark."
A spokeswoman for the State Coroner said he would not comment on open cases.
Arrest turned tide for crack underworld
taskforce
March 6, 2008
Several underworld figures wanted to help police stop
Melbourne's gangland war
but remained silent because they were so scared of killer Carl
Williams.
They came forward very soon after
Williams was arrested and provided vital information to Victoria
Police's Purana taskforce.
Det-Insp Gavan Ryan (left), who this week handed
over leadership of the elite taskforce to Det-Insp Bernie Edwards
(right), said
the arrest of Williams was a turning point.
"We knew if we could get Williams
behind bars that it would make life difficult for him and his
friends," Det-Insp Ryan said.
"Certainly the shooting side of
things slowed down when we locked him up. Locking Williams up also gave
us an opportunity to talk to people who would not talk to us while he
was out in the community.
"We always knew if we could pop
Williams in the bin we would have a good chance of getting a lot of
information, and that's exactly what happened."
It was the arrest of Williams's hitman
Sean Sonnet during a failed 2004 attempt to execute Calabrian mafia
money man Mario Condello that led to Purana nabbing Williams.
Det-Insp Ryan said Purana had gathered
enough evidence to implicate Williams in several murders by the time
Sonnet was arrested.
"I rang Purana officer Shane
O'Connell immediately after Sonnet's arrest and simply said 'Go and get
Fat Boy', and five minutes later he rang back to say he had picked up
Williams," he said.
"We questioned Williams that day,
and he ended up getting jailed for 35 years."
Williams pleaded guilty to three murders
and was found guilty of a fourth. He's a suspect in several others.
Purana was formed in May 2003 to combat
the alarming level of gangland slaughter in Melbourne.
In the five years since it has charged 58
offenders with 298 offences after bugging more than 500,000 telephone
conversations, taping 53,000 hours of conversations and conducting
22,000 hours of physical surveillance.
Purana was so successful at ending the
underworld war that Victoria Police decided to make
it a permanent taskforce.
Its brief is to investigate established
and emerging criminal networks.
Det-Insp Edwards this week started as the
new head of the permanent Purana taskforce.
He brings a wealth of experience. He has
been in the homicide squad and detective training school, and at busy
stations such as St Kilda and Dandenong, since graduating from the
Victoria Police academy in 1980.
"Purana has always been headed by
people who are very well respected within Victoria Police. They will be
a hard act to follow," Det-Insp Edwards said.
"The pressure is on me -- and Purana
-- to keep performing."
Det-Insp Ryan said the keys to Purana's
success in the gangland war were the resources support it was given by
Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon and Deputy Commissioner Simon
Overland.
"Christine and Simon got a terrible
caning in the media and elsewhere in the early days of Purana, when it
appeared to some that things were not happening quickly enough," he
said.
"They backed us, provided us with
the resources we needed.
"Having that support was a key to
Purana's success. It meant we could make big decisions immediately,
expensive decisions, knowing force command was behind us.
"Christine and Simon deserve to get
all the subsequent plaudits for Purana's success because they took a lot
of the criticism before the arrests started happening."
Det-Insp Ryan said while he couldn't say
there would be no more underworld killings, he was confident the spate
that Purana was formed to investigate had ended.
"Crooks will always kill crooks.
It's like prostitution -- you will never take that away," he said.
"But the nature of that particular
war is over."
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