|
He spent his adult life in
and out of jail.
''He was a reputed skilled street
fighter who stood over prostitutes, drug dealers and businesses,'' Detective Sergeant Stuart Bateson
told a court.
Mlandenich, then 39, died from a
bullet to the head in a St Kilda motel on May 16, 2000.
At about 3.30am, one of his ''many
enemies'' entered room 18 of the Esquire Motel, a haunt of prostitutes, heroin
dealers and addicts, and shot Mladenich.
Mlandenich was known to be the
body guard for notorious northern suburbs drug dealer Mark
Moran.
He was similarly gunned down a month
later.
An April 2003 inquest into the
shooting revealed that the killer stared directly at an eyewitness immediately
after the shooting.
Andrea Louise
Davies was in bed beside her
sleeping boyfriend, Gabbi "Rocky" Jabbour, talking to Mladenich as
another man slept in a chair.
She said in a statement the door
swung open quickly and a young, slim, tanned man wearing sunglasses under a
hooded windcheater took three large, fast steps into the room.
The man raised his right arm and
aimed it at Mladenich's head as he got up.
"I heard a sound . . . like
party poppers going off and a bit of an echo.
I then saw Richard fall towards the
door," she said.
The killer lowered his arm,
"turned and looked directly at me for about two or three seconds.
I kept looking at his face and
didn't notice any movements that looked like he was putting it away. (He) turned
and walked very quickly from the room."
But despite Ms Davies'
close encounter and a $100,000 reward, the slayer of Mladenich remained a
mystery.
Coroner Phillip Byrne delivered an
open finding after the inquest into the death killing.
Detective
Sergeant Bateson said Mr Jabbour told police he suspected a man named Rocco
Arico of the murder.
Arico was jailed in June 2001 for nine years with a minimum of seven over a near-fatal
road-rage shooting in July 2000.
Mr Jabbour's
statement said
Arico had asked where Ms Davies was
and that a fellow prisoner told him to "forget about the four seconds in
which Richard was killed and forget that the girl saw the guy".
Police were not
permitted to interview
Arico in jail.
Dead hitman Andrew
"Benji" Veniamin is known to be a prime suspect as the Mlandenich
assassin.
|
