Guiseppe
"Joe" Sergi, also from Griffith, was sentenced to five years jail
after being convicted over a marijuana crop in 1982.
Guiseppe, the
husband of Bruno Romeo Snr's (see below) daughter Caterina, was arrested over
one of Victoria's biggest cannabis busts in Shepparton in 1981. Giuseppe ended
up in business with Bruno Romeo Jnr (see below).
In July 1993, a Victorian
detective and a policewoman, posing as an art dealer and his girlfriend, arrived
in Griffith with another undercover policeman.
It was the first move in an
audacious "sting" that would eventually put Romeo and several other
gangsters behind bars.
The detective, using the alias Cole
Goodwin, and his "girlfriend", Judy, went to the Griffith
Ex-Servicemen's Club, where Honoured Society members met regularly, ostensibly
to gamble, in reality to talk business without fear of being bugged.
Goodwin studied Romeo and close
friend Rosario Trimbole close-up for the first time. A Victorian court was later
told the pair regarded themselves as "family".
Trimbole was a nephew of the late
"Aussie Bob" Trimbole, a principal of the notorious Mr Asia drug
cartel and one of the Griffith powerbrokers who ordered Donald Mackay's death.
Goodwin was to describe Rosario
Trimbole as a typical Griffith Calabrian - stunted and badly dressed.
Romeo and Trimbole were
related, like most Griffith Calabrians, who tend to intermarry.
The pair, then in their late 30s,
had equal standing in the Honoured Society's pecking order.
They deferred to some older men in
the organisation, but had power because they were more at ease in the wider
world.
Goodwin had spent months on
surveillance, watching them and others through a long lens and listening to
tapes and wiretaps. He had pored over their photographs, form and family
histories.
Earlier, Goodwin, Judy and their
friend had driven through the orchards to look at the "grass castles",
brick-and-tile monuments to bad taste and black money. They cruised the main
street, Banna Avenue, to see the businesses that dope built. They went to the
hotel car park where Mackay had been executed 16 years before. They ate at a
favourite Calabrian haunt before going to the club.
It was to be a reconnaissance
mission. The odds against getting friendly with their targets were long. Goodwin
saw a woman fetching drinks for the Italians, joking with them and taking their
loose change to play the poker machines.
He chatted to her as she fed the
pokies, and introduced her to Judy and their friend.
By 4am, after a late-night pizza and
many drinks, they were friends.
That night led to other trips to
Griffith, in which Goodwin and Judy perfected their roles. Their new friend,
Pam, introduced them to the Calabrians. They were wary, but Goodwin baited a
hook, saying how easy it was to conceal money by buying art. It worked.
Soon Romeo, Trimbole and others
were regular visitors to the East Melbourne apartment the police had rented for
Goodwin and Judy.
They all ate together in Lygon
Street, drank together in city bars.
When Goodwin and Judy visited
Griffith, Romeo proudly showed them the six-bedroom house he was building at a
cost of $1 million, and filled their car with cases of oranges and wine.
Goodwin told his new friends about
exploiting the art market, and professed an interest in buying cocaine wholesale
to sell to touring rock bands.
The Italians promised to help with
drugs - and to tell him when horse races were fixed.
They tipped him three horses at
Globe Derby trots one night; two won, the other ran second.
Dabbling in the art market wasn't
Romeo's only weakness. Romeo by name and by nature, he started bringing an
18-year-old waitress with him for weekends in city hotels.
In another case involving the
Calbrian Romeo's, West Australian criminal, Bruno Romeo Snr, the leader of
Italian crime gang N'Dranghita was implicated in an explosion in Adelaide on the
morning of March 2, 1994.
A police
intelligence report alleged Romeo was a key member of Italian organised crime
groups.
A parcel arrived at the National
Crime Authority's Adelaide HQ in Waymouth Street. It was opened by NCA
secondment Geoff Bowen 36 who was killed instantly.
Meanwhile, in early 1994, Goodwin
became so trusted that he and his "brother", another undercover
policeman, were able to talk their way into a plan to import $6 million of
cannabis from Papua New Guinea.
The scheme involved picking up the
drugs from a Torres Strait island and flying it south to Cohuna in a light
aircraft.
It was a good plan - but not for
Romeo, Trimbole and several others arrested on June 19, 1994, in a raid.
Goodwin, still posing as a bent art dealer with a taste for drug running, was
"arrested" along with the pilot and another undercover policeman.
It was a humiliating and expensive
blow for the Honoured Society. Two of its leaders, Romeo and Trimbole, were
exposed as falling for a scheme police had known about from the start. Five of
their followers had been arrested.
The committal hearing was the first
to be held in the new security court at Melbourne Magistrates Court.
It ran a long time and the evidence
was damning, so damning that Romeo and Trimbole were to plead guilty at their
subsequent trial, where they received 13 years' jail with a minimum of eight.
Mafia Tie To Rock
Star's Lost Riches
By Paul Whittaker and Rory Callinan
The Courier-Mail
February 13, 1999
Rock star Michael
Hutchence was involved in property dealings with a company allegedly connected
to the mafia, a Courier-Mail investigation found.
Bruno Romeo Snr and
his family are current and former directors of a company which sold a Gold Coast
bowling alley for $2.25 million to a trustee company linked to the former INXS
frontman.
The National Crime
Authority raided the Labrador bowling alley in 1995 in a cocaine trafficking
investigation, Operation Pug. Company records indicate Harbrick Pty Ltd, whose
former directors include Bruno "The Fox" Romeo, a convicted drug
dealer, also borrowed $270,000 as part of the deal.
Accountants and
lawyers who have acted for Harbrick are now representing companies being sued by
Hutchence's mother, Patricia Glassop, and stepsister, Tina Hutchence, to release
millions of dollars in assets.
The curiously named
Nexcess owns the title to the bowling alley on behalf of a trust.
The company is part
of a tangled web of eight companies, six of which are based offshore, being sued
by Hutchence's mother and stepsister in a bid to force them to declare they hold
an estimated $25 million of the dead singer's assets.
Hutchence committed
suicide in Sydney in 1997. The $270,000 loan to Harbrick, which Australian
Securities and Investment Commission records show has not been repaid, was
secured against bowling equipment and other fixtures at Paradise Lanes.
The bowling alley,
at 378 Marine Pde, Labrador, is one of five multimillion dollar properties
worldwide which Mrs Glassop and Ms Hutchence claim should have been included in
the singer's estate and divided according to his will.
The NCA's Operation
Pug targeted a person associated with Harbrick, which continued to run the
bowling alley after selling the land it was on to Nexcess.
A former South
Australian man, who was not a director or shareholder of Harbrick, was convicted
for trafficking in cocaine.
Bruno Romeo Snr was
a director of his family company Harbrick from 1988 to 1990.
His son, Bruno Lee
Romeo is still a director of the Queensland-registered firm.
The other director
is Romeo Snr's son-in-law, Guiseppe "Joe" Sergi.
(See above)
The largest
shareholder of Harbrick is Mr Romeo Snr's wife, Nazzerina.
The other shares are
held by the Romeo's eldest son Domenico "Mick" Romeo (see above).
Ms Glassop and Ms
Hutchence are waging a court battle against the Hong Kong-based executor of
Hutchence's will, Andrew Paul, to have the contested assets, including the
bowling alley, transferred to his estate.
Their lawyers allege
the bowling alley was bought by Nexcess using Hutchence's funds and held in a
beneficial trust known as Broadwater. Broadwater is controlled by former
Hutchence will executor and Gold Coast lawyer Colin Thomas Diamond and his
family.
The bowling alley
was mortgaged for $2 million in August 1996 to a UK company called Blomep
Finance Ltd, a subsidiary of British- Virgin Islands registered Blomep Holdings
Ltd.
Andrew Paul is
Blomep Finance's sole director and Colin Diamond signed the earlier loan
documents.
The loan was
refinanced in January 1998 to the State Bank of NSW which holds a $2.3 million
mortgage over the site. Mr Paul claims the total net assets for the estate
amount to just $1.2 million with the first $800,000 to be divided between two
charities.
Court documents show
the accountants and lawyers representing Harbrick in its dealings with the
bowling alley purchase and loan agreement are also representing a number of
offshore companies which it is claimed control the singer's assets.
ASIC records show
Gold Coast solicitors J.F. Connors & Associates lodged a deed of charge
relating to the bowling alley on behalf of Harbrick in October 1993.
The following year
the same firm's principal John Francis Connors witnessed transfer documents
relating to Nexcess's purchase of the bowling complex.
Curiously, in June
last year the same firm entered a conditional appearance in Queensland's Supreme
Court on behalf of five offshore companies which are being sued by Hutchence's
mother and stepsister to declare they hold some of the disputed assets,
including a London townhouse and French villa, in trust for the singer's estate.
Surfers Paradise
solicitors Freestone and Kumnick, which lodged charge documents with the ASIC in
May 1997 on behalf of Harbrick also entered appearances in the Queensland civil
action on behalf of Sin-Can- Can Pty Ltd and Nexcess.
Sin-Can-Can owns a
lavish Isle of Capri waterfront mansion bought for $1 million in 1995 which
Hutchence told his family he owned. Harbrick and Nexcess have also shared the
same accountant.
Tony Alford's
Southport accountancy firm was the registered business address for Harbrick from
August 1993 until January 27, 1994 - the day before Harbrick sold the bowling
alley site to Nexcess.
Mr Alford was
appointed as a director of Nexcess on January 28, 1994.
According to his
family, Hutchence had lunch at the complex the day sale contracts were exchanged
and decided to keep on the existing tenants of the centre's restaurant.
The former lessees of the bowling
alley restaurant said Harbrick's directors told them Hutchence had been into the
building to inspect the complex before agreeing to buy it.
Mr Alford is also a
director of a company called Akcess which now controls the bowling alley.
Mr Paul told the
court, through his Brisbane lawyer Joe Ganim, that the disputed property was not
and had not been owned by Hutchence or his estate but a complex array of company
and trust structures stretching from Australia through to Hong Kong and the
British Virgin Islands.
Efforts to contact
Harbrick representatives were unsuccessful.
On May 20, 2002,
Antonio
"Tony" Romeo was freed from Dhurringile prison farm, near Shepparton.
Named in the Herald Sun as a "Griffith
drug baron", he had
served a six-month term over a failed bid to import about $7 million worth of
cannabis from Papua New Guinea.
His cohorts included Rossario Trimbole.
A Victorian court was told the pair regarded
themselves as "family".
The Romeo and Trimbole families are long-term
residents of the Griffith area of southern New South Wales.
The day Tony Romeo got out of jail,
someone stole a white Toyota Prado in his hometown of Griffith.
The car wasn't seen in the town
again.
Despite rumours it would be unwise
to return to Griffith after serving his jail time, Romeo went home after being
released.
Six weeks later he was shot dead
while pruning a peach tree.
Antonio Romeo died when he was shot in the back on July 1,
2002.
Mr Romeo was shot once in the left shoulder and
the bullet passed through his chest.
No one in the area saw the sniper but some of the
dead mans co-workers told police they heard a shot.
Romeo was working near about six other fruit
workers when he was shot after returning from lunch just before 3pm.
It is believed there were close to 30 workers on
the 20ha vineyard at Hanwood, an orchard area near Griffith.
Some were close enough to hear the
thud of the bullet in Romeo's chest, but no-one saw anything.
Romeo was dead when the ambulance
arrived.
The identity of the owner of the vineyard was
uncertain as police searched the area following the fatal shooting.
Hours later, a vehicle was
torched near Darlington Point, about 50 kilometres away.
It was the Toyota that had vanished
from Griffith six weeks before.
The Toyota's mysterious reappearance
and destruction the same day Romeo was killed implied it had been stolen and
hidden to use as a getaway car. If so, the hit was a long-range plan hatched
much earlier. Perhaps years earlier.
Whether an outside shooter was paid
to do it - as James
Bazley was to kill anti-drugs campaigner Donald
Mackay in 1977 - or whether it was local talent is a puzzle that has
occupied investigators for weeks without any sign of a breakthrough.
Not that anyone is surprised by
that: NSW police have a poor record with "Mafia" crimes.
In any case, given the code of
silence, fingering the trigger man would be unlikely to answer more intriguing
questions, such as who ordered the shooting, and why?
What police do know is that the
shooting fits a pattern that goes back generations in Italian organised crime,
in which honour, family, business and affairs of the heart are mixed together,
often with deadly results.
Romeo's murder was clearly a
punishment according to Age journalist Andrew
Rule, but for what - the drugs deal or the sex?
Romeo's violent end is a postscript
to a remarkable story of crime and detection.
In it are clues that he might well
have been killed for wronging his wife and, by extension, the code of the
Honoured Society.
But the most damaging evidence
for Tony Romeo, ex-detective aka Cole Goodwin later recalled, might not have
been about drugs, guns or money.
It was when a prosecution witness
testified, in detail, about Romeo's weekends in Melbourne with the teenage
waitress.
This clearly came as a shock. The
teenager might not have been Romeo's only problem.
Rumours in Griffith suggest he had
also been too close to another Calabrian's wife.
Either way, he had broken the only
commandment that matters in organised crime: he had been caught.
The last word on Romeo's exit goes
to Goodwin, who has since retired.
"You don't mess with the
Calabrians," he said. "It's taken eight years to come around, but what
comes around goes around."
