The former best friend of Andrew Veniamin and Dino Dibra, Kallipolitis wore two-tone, calf-high, snakeskin boots, steel-capped and Cuban-heeled.

In his younger days, at Charlie’s pinball parlour, PK would demonstrate his power.

He could bend the No Standing sign with one thundering side kick.

In his pomp, beefed up on the juice, no one could beat him in a punch-on.

And if they still wanted to rumble in his jungle, he had a choice of two 9mm “toys” always fully loaded.

If there was ever a criminal squire of Sunshine, it was PK.

He’s a figure often overlooked in the bloodbath that followed his death in October 2002, but if police ever get to the bottom of PK’s life and times, they will find the wellspring of much of the mayhem.

Victoria Police’s Purana Taskforce applied in Melbourne Magistrates Court to question a suspect, Alfonse Traglia, over PK’s death.

Alf Traglia is a co-accused of Carl Anthony Williams in the murder of Jason Moran and Pasquale Barbaro in June 2003.

If, as the Crown suggests, Williams was an up-and-coming force in the drug scene of Melbourne’s western suburbs, he must have had PK’s permission or it’s unlikely he would be walking today.

A couple of dozen dealers of various commodities from methamphetamine to ecstasy and coke paid PK a cut of their take, or they didn’t do business in Sunshine.

And heroin dealers couldn’t get a start for love nor money – PK despised them.

It was not unusual for PK to pick up $50,000 in a day’s dealing and never leave his fortified home in Sunshine West.

But unlike his closest buddies, Andrew “Benji” Veniamin (left) and Dino Dibra, he was no “redlighter”.

He kept it all low key – no Porsches or BMWs for PK.

His pride and joy was a bone-coloured ’79 Kingswood with matching velour interior, and Statesman wheels and trim.

Benji might have had the Boxster and then the BMW 330i with his plates “ALLHOT” but PK had the Kingswood with “CORRUPT” on the plates.

PK’s father had put his three sons through martial arts training and only let them stop when they were wearing 1st or 2nd dan black belts.

He had averaged a couple of hundred winning fights at school each year, in addition to the cabinet full of trophies he had won in organised battle.

PK had gone to a private school – St John’s at Braybrook – but his mates were all at Ardeer High in Sunshine.

Benji, Dino Dibra, Mark Mallia and the others in the crew were all three or four years younger than PK.

PK had finished an apprenticeship as a panel beater, but his destiny, sadly, was in the underworld.

At 20 years, PK and his team controlled one of the most lucrative drug territories in Melbourne.

For more than a decade, they lived like kings, doing exactly as they pleased, never paying for anything, walking into every club and battering the bouncers if they objected.

They had more money than they could spend, and they definitely tried hard.

They could “chop out” girls and drugs for their mates in the best hotels in town every night of the year and still there was cash to stash in stooks (money caches) all over Sunshine.

You “chopped out” your mates no ­matter what, whether it was money, drugs or a woman you had just met.

You chopped them out or you couldn’t call yourself a mate.

And PK had chopped out more than any of them.

He had once put his life on the line over a $50 foil of speed.

A rival dealer, Mark Walker, had ripped off a mate with speed that had been jumped on (cut) so much it was useless.

Then he had dissed PK on the telephone.

They arranged a meet at a lonely bush location.

PK had come without his toy, fully intending to punch on with Walker.

But when he flogged him, like he did everyone else, Walker had pulled out his own toy.

PK wrestled it off him and put two slugs in the back of his head.

He got 14 years’ jail but on appeal the sentence was reduced to four.

Though he had despatched Walker on his knees, like an executioner, using Walker’s gun had made it manslaughter by self-defence.

Released in 1999, he was gracious enough to spare the mate who had dragged him into this.

Even though every head in Sunshine knew that under interrogation from “the jacks” he had somersaulted his leader.

PK gave him 24 hours to get out of Sunshine and he gladly complied.

PK had become a feared, unassailable force. But paranoia was rising.

He was doing lots of human growth hormone, courtesy of a crooked chemist who would dole it out for $100 a script.

GH and a little coke on the side made PK tetchy, especially when he couldn’t satisfy the ravenous appetite for food the juice gave him.

Associates were well advised to head for the nearest drive-through when the poisonous rage and hunger began to rise in PK.

One afternoon in his backyard, PK told his mates they were all marked for death, it was only a matter of who went first – they had done so many bad things to so many bad people.

They had all passed the point of no return.

PK should have known their enemies were standing among them.

Within four years, all but one man at PK’s house that day would be dead, all murdered by people they knew and trusted.

Kallipolitis was a close friend of John Auciello.

In 1996 Auciello was knee-capped in retaliation for a similar action perpetrated by one of his associates while he was present.

Auciello had been placed in the boot of a car before his captors popped him, one with a sawn-off shotgun, the other with the magnum.

Six hours of surgery saved his limbs.

Auciello had made his name as a right-hand man to Kallipolitis.

He had grown up on the streets of Sunshine with Andrew Veniamin and their 10-year run of delinquency and crime began when they were barely in their teens.

They swore they would back each other until death.

Every second day Johnny and Benji would be out collecting cash for PK.

It was BMWs, Porsches and SS Commodores all the way, a couple of times a month they would give the baseball bats in the boot an outing.

He hasn’t been seen around Sunshine for years.

The last thing his mates heard he was working on a road gang and giving his testimony in an Assemblies of God church, names deleted of course.

Three weeks before PK died in October 2002, one of the crew told him he had seen PK’s death in a vision.

Dino had been murdered almost two years before to the day and now it was PK’s turn.

“Take off Paulie, get away,” his mate had pleaded with him.

PK had always wanted to live in Cairns where he could fish on the Great Barrier Reef and raise his two kids in the tropical sunshine.

But now the bleak plains of “Scum-shine” would be his prison.

It was all getting too confusing in the neighbourhood.

Benji was playing both sides of the fence, hanging out with the Carlton Crew whose intimates controlled the neighbouring turf to PK’s.

Tension was building.

Dino had done the same thing, tying up with Carl Williams, even buying gear from Mark Moran.

He would get on the coke and go out of control, kneecapping old friends or attacking bouncers with connections to influential gangsters.

Like Benji, Dino could never turn his back on a problem; he always had to pull out his toy and wave it around to make his point.

Then it was only a question of who would get in first.

And in October 2000, three gunmen in balaclavas had ambushed Dino in Sunshine West.

It was rumoured Benji was one of them, but his police interview was over in five minutes flat.

For once PK was co-operative with the jacks, regaling them with stories of his night of fishing and drinking for an hour and a half.

If there was one person Benji feared, it was PK.

PK would never let you know he had a problem with you, not like Benji who would draw his gun at the slightest provocation.

Friends would say PK had Benji’s balls but some brains too.

By now the threats, both real and imagined, were coming thick and fast.

There were only two or three people who got into PK’s house, through the triple-locked door and security screen.

But when police went to PK’s house that October morning, they found the fortress unlocked.

PK was in a bedroom shot twice in the head.

Less than a metre from where he sat, police found a loaded 9mm pistol tucked into the mattress.

But even then, police say, PK didn’t forget his mates, even if one of them had betrayed him.

An old assault case had come to court after his death.

Several members of the team had blued with a kickboxing crew looking for trouble in a nightclub, some girl being excuse enough.

Though the kickboxers had provoked the fight, PK and co had flogged them soundly and his team were all charged.

But the late Paul Kallipolitis had taken the rap for everyone.

They had told the jacks of PK’s starring role; they knew their mate wouldn’t mind.

For death should never stop you chopping out your mates.