Santo Mercuri

Santo Mercuri was a criminal from the Flemington area and a member of a well known criminal gang who resided in his suburb and its neighbour, Ascot Vale.

Other members of the crew included Mark and Jason Moran, Jedd Houghton, Graeme Jensen, Frank Valastro, Victor Peirce, Mark Militano and Russell Cox.

Mecuri was the man convicted of the July 1988 armed robbery and shooting of supermarket security guard Dominik Hefti in Bruswick.

Mercuri and other criminals were sitting in wait for Hefti's van to arrive at the Coles supermarket.

Mercuri jumped Hefti in the storeroom and during a brief struggle over the cash, the bandit let shots go.

One round cut through Hefti's chest and another through his thigh.

In a last ditch effort to bring the robber down, Hefti managed to fire a shot himself.

The bullet tagged Mercuri's hand.

Hefti died, never knowing that his true shot, the injury it caused and the blood it drew at the scene would later prove Mercuri as his killer.

After the shootout the robbers panicked.

Mercuri's accomplices fled in a getaway car with $33,000.

Stranded and bleeding badly, Mercuri jumped in front of a car, forced its driver to the ground and stole the vehicle.

On August 20, 1988, police raided the home of Russell Cox who had just been arrested over a planned armed robbery in Doncaster.

They believed Mercuri had been patched up there and was being harboured.

Mercuri had left the house in a hurry, leaving a phone book page behind.

On the page was the name of the driver of the car he had commandeered at gunpoint after the Hefti hold-up.

Maybe Mercuri had planned to hunt down and kill the witness.

Five years later, police acted on a tip-off and arrested Mercuri at a hut at Glenlyon, 180 kilometres north-west of Melbourne. The shack was stocked with enough food to last a year.

After his arrest, a dishevelled and bearded Mercuri boasted of travelling to Melbourne for Collingwood games.

At the secure Brunswick Magistrates' Court, then Sergeant Kerry McNamara told how Mercuri pulled a gun on him during capture.

"I grabbed his right hand with my left hand and drove my right-handed pistol into his face," McNamara said.

Mercuri, 47, pleaded not guilty to the murder and armed robbery.

But DNA tests and X-rays of his shot hand ensured a guilty verdict, and he was sentenced to twenty-five years jail with a minimum of twenty.

Career criminal Ray Denning later alleged the Brunswick robbery involved the Moran brothers.

The Hefti murder led to the police shooting of another suspect, Graeme Jensen and possibly the Walsh Street police murders.

Victor Peirce, Jensen's best friend was one of the prime suspects as one of the Walsh Street gunmen.

Santo Mecuri died of cancer at Barwon Prison on July 22, 2000.

He had remained very fit whilst in prison and was feared amongst other inmates.