The jury of six women and six men filed in. Some were smiling, others emotional. His son had his head in his hands, shaking and close to tears. His daughter’s right leg bounced with nerves. His wife just looked at her husband. As the jury came in he smiled. When the foreman announced the verdict of ‘not guilty’ Gatto showed emotion for the first time, pushing his glasses back as his eyes welled with relief. He then turned to his family. He thanked the judge twice as he was told he was free to go. One lawyer had previously asked him how he had remained so strong during the trial. He said he feared his family would collapse if he gave way.
Outside was the usual media throng and backslappers. Gatto told them, ‘Thank God for the jury system, thank God for Robert Richter, a top barrister.’ His lawyers had every reason to thank their client in return. The rumoured fee for the defence team was $400,000. That night Gatto’s many supporters returned to his house for a celebration with wine, beer and pizza, ending Gatto’s fourteen-month prison-inspired diet. A few days later he posed for a Herald Sun photographer as he relaxed in Queensland. The picture did not impress some friends of the late Andrew Veniamin.
Gatto was inundated with media requests and said he was prepared to talk for a fee to be donated to the Royal Children’s Hospital. For years he had donated to the Good Friday Appeal — he even managed to contribute $5000 from his prison cell while in solitary confinement. He told 3AW’s award-winning breakfast team and budding investigative duo, Ross Stevenson and John Burns, ‘If there is a media outlet or a talkback show that is prepared to pay a six-figure sum that goes directly to the Children’s Hospital I would be more than happy to give my input and have a chat — no problem’. He confirmed he had lost 30 kilograms in jail but said he doubted if people would like to follow the program. ‘I have always maintained I would rather have been fat and free. I used to shadow box in my cell because as you know I was locked up for 23 hours a day. They were calling me Hurricane Carter in there. I did it to keep focused and my mind right, otherwise you just go off your head.
‘There are plenty of people in there who lost the plot and went mad. Imagine being locked in your bathroom for 23 hours then you’ll sort of understand. A lot of people didn’t recognise me. Some thought I had fallen ill, but I intended to lose the weight. It was the only good that came out of it. He said that following the verdict he wanted to keep out of the headlines. ‘I just want to be low key and be left alone to do my own little thing. I’m going to concentrate on the building industry … it’s been pretty good to me. I want to forget about all this other nonsense. It’s really got nothing to do with me anyway.’
He said he didn’t feel he needed to look over his shoulder in the future and did not feel in danger while in prison. ‘No, I was never in fear. That was all trumped up. There was never a problem there. I was happy to go out in the mainstream handcuffed. I said “Send me out in the mainstream handcuffed”. I didn’t want to be a hero but I just knew that all this nonsense was blown out of proportion. I’ve got no enemies. I’ve done nothing wrong. The bloke tried to kill me. What am I supposed to do, let him kill me? So at the end of the day I can walk around with my head held high. I’m not worried about anyone.’
Two months after his acquittal he chanced to meet one of the authors in Lygon Street. He looked at peace with the world. He smiled and pulled back his jacket to show his stomach and said he’d put on ten kilograms.
19
COOL BEER, COLD BLOOD
He tried to carry a gun but
his arthritis meant it
was more of a liability
than an asset.
LEWIS Moran was a traditional criminal with traditional tastes. And that, in part, led to his violent end in the front bar of the Brunswick Club on 31 March 2004.
For many years Moran’s regular pub had been the Laurel Hotel in Mount Alexander Road in the inner western suburb of Ascot Vale, strategically placed mid-way between Moonee Valley and Flemington racecourses.
The Laurel was a pub of choice for gangsters of discernment. Moran’s son Jason once pulled a gun on another drinker there. Graham ‘The Munster’ Kinniburgh popped in for a drink in the bar there before he headed to a meeting with Alphonse Gangitano in January 1998 on the night Big Al was murdered.
But when the old style pub turned trendy and began to serve foreign Tooheys beer, Lewis was disgusted.
The Moran clan had drunk at The Laurel for years and while Lewis was comfortable surrounded by friends and associates there, he decided that if the pub didn’t have his favourite Carlton United product on tap it was time to try the Brunswick Club in Sydney Road — a few hundred metres from the local police station and near a proposed redevelopment Tony Mokbel claimed would turn the tired shopping strip into a little piece of Paris Down Under. Which piece he didn’t say.
Melbourne is known for its exclusive establishment men’s clubs but the Brunswick Club is not one of them. Moran the elder felt welcome there and became a fixture. Several times a week, he would turn to the left when he walked in and stand at the bar to sip seven-ounce glasses of beer.
All his friends knew they could find Lewis at his favourite spot, known in the trade as his ‘lean’. The trouble was, so did his enemies. In fact, they could see him through the window from the street.
Lewis Moran knew he was marked for death but, according to friends, he ‘was too stubborn to take any notice’. The elder statesman of the crumbling Moran crime dynasty was facing serious drug charges and police had already tried to keep him in jail for his own protection. When he insisted on being released on bail, police tried again: varying the reporting conditions to make his movements harder for a hit man to track. But all their good work was wasted because he could always be found at the Brunswick Club.
Lewis Moran may have wanted a quiet life but crime was all he knew. Detectives had given evidence in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court that he had been involved in drug deals worth $10 million over the previous four years.
Senior Detective Victor Anastasiadis told the court one informer gave Moran $5.5 million in pseudoephedrine-based tablets, used to make amphetamines, and was to receive a share of the amphetamines in the deal with Moran. That’s why the 57-year-old grandfather was facing 17 charges, including trafficking commercial quantities of amphetamine, hashish, ecstasy and pseudoephedrine.
He had been charged with his old friend, Bertie Wrout, a senior citizen and likeable rogue who later had heavy calibre reasons to wish he hadn’t been Lewis’ drinking mate.
Senior Detective Anastasiadis said he feared for the informer’s safety if the accused pair was released. But the informer was not in as much danger as the pair of old crooks.
On 22 July 2003 — after nine months on remand — Lewis was granted bail despite police opposing it, officially on grounds he would seek retribution for his son’s murder and pose a threat to a police informer. He was released on condition he reported daily to police, obeyed a night curfew and would not contact witnesses.
His lawyer also argued he should be freed so he could act as a father figure for his murdered sons’ children.
Violent death ran through the generations on both sides.
In October 1978 Leslie Herbert Kane had been shot dead in his Wantirna unit. His body was never found. But it was one of his children, Trish, who eventually moved in with her childhood sweetheart — Jason Moran — and had children with him.
Les Kane’s brother, Brian, was also shot dead — in a Brunswick hotel in November 1982, apparently as revenge for the brazen shooting of Raymond Patrick ‘Chuck’ Bennett in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court three years earlier.
Among the mourners for Brian Kane was a young Jason Moran.
In the same month, in an unrelated shooting, Mark Moran’s natural father, Les ‘Johnny’ Cole, was shot dead in Sydney as part of a NSW underworld feud.
When the decision to kill Lewis was made is still a matter of speculation, but police believe it was probably at a reception centre near Keilor Cemete
ry the previous evening.
It was there that many of the western suburbs’ most dangerous criminals gathered for a wake for Andrew ‘Benji’ Veniamin, shot dead in a Carlton restaurant on 23 March 2004.
After all, straight after Benji was shot dead, Williams had said, ‘Here we go again, fasten your seatbelts’ and he was not planning a trip at the time.
Police tried to protect Lewis but he had lost his will to live. His arthritis meant carrying a gun was now more of a liability than an asset. The former light-fingered pickpocket could no longer make his fingers work.
He gave up the gun idea after firing a shot through the floor of a car while trying to load his new weapon.
Someone who had known Moran for years said of him: ‘Lewis loved money. He was rich but he didn’t know how to have a good time.’
He had been introduced to the drug business by his sons and embraced the wealth it generated. Friends said he liked to watch cooking shows during the day, do a little business in the late afternoon and drink from about 6pm. He was notorious for hiding money, much of which has never been found.
Once he hid $14,000 in an oven and was shattered when someone turned it on — shrinking the notes to the size of Monopoly money. But there was a happy ending. His well-connected mate Kinniburgh found a compliant bank manager in Sydney who would accept the cash.
Moran had little formal education but, as an experienced SP bookmaker, was sharp with numbers. After Kinniburgh was murdered he knew his own survival was a long shot.
Despite that, he went to the Brunswick Club every night — regular as clockwork — until time ran out.
He was killed and his mate Bertie Wrout badly wounded the day after Veniamin’s wake. It was no coincidence. Some say revenge is a dish best eaten cold, but Carl was a fast food boy from way back.
Moran saw the gunmen enter the club and said, ‘I think we’re off here.’
‘Off’ is an underworld expression for dead.
Lewis ran in an arc trying to escape. He didn’t have a chance and was shot dead a few metres from where he had been enjoying a quiet beer just seconds earlier. The moments leading up to the murder were caught on the Brunswick Club’s security camera, but the killers were wearing balaclavas.
Club staff were deeply traumatised and were said to be worried when a wake was planned at the bar where Lewis was murdered.
A few years earlier, Lewis had still been a powerful figure with powerful friends. When his stepson Mark was killed he was bent on revenge. He refused to help police with their investigations because he still believed he had the pull to deal with his enemies. At first he wasn’t sure who was behind the hit, but eventually all roads seemed to lead to Carl Williams.
A secret police report, later to be leaked to the underworld with disastrous consequences, claimed police informer Terence Hodson was offered $50,000 to kill Williams. The offer was allegedly made in May 2001 in the name of Lewis Moran.
Lewis, always careful with the money he stole from other people, was well under the odds with his contract offer. Moran senior was easily trumped when it came to murder by tender.
The man who would later plead guilty to Lewis’s murder said he was offered $150,000 to kill Moran although he said he was short-changed $10,000 on settlement.
It’s a bit hard to go to the Small Claims Tribunal to argue you’ve been short changed in an underworld contract killing. And you can’t even claim it as a tax deduction.
The killer, known as The Journeyman, talked so that he could get a minimum sentence rather than life with no chance of release. And as he talked he warmed to the task, implicating himself in a murder where he wasn’t even a listed suspect.
The Journeyman claimed that the money for the Moran hit came from Carl Williams and Tony Mokbel. Williams would later plead guilty to the murder, while Mokbel continued to declare he was not involved.
Once almost untouchable, in his final year Lewis Moran was close to a spent force. The boys were gone, his friend, Graham Kinniburgh, was dead and his respected associate, Mick Gatto, was in jail.
Isolated and without a power base, Lewis, 58, let it be known he no longer wanted to fight back. Crippled by grief and illness, he was no longer a threat. But his enemies were not sure and they wanted to be. Dead sure.
Lewis was no fool. Shattered by the death of Mark and Jason, the death of his mate was the final straw. He was safe in jail but still fought for bail. When he was bailed on drug charges his former lawyer, an old mate, Andrew Fraser, who was in the same prison on drug charges, farewelled him with the traditional ‘See ya later.’ Moran shook his head and said he wouldn’t. He knew he’d be gone by the time Fraser was freed.
In the few weeks before the final hit police had been hearing that some would-be-gangsters were offering their services to kill Williams.
Williams maintained he could not imagine why anyone would wish him harm. Carl, nicknamed The Truth by Tony Mokbel, was telling little lies.
There was a confrontation in a western-suburbs Tabaret not long before Lewis Moran’s death, when the old crook was called outside by Williams. With no back-up, no guns, arthritis, a 25-year age gap and a 30 kilo handicap, Lewis wisely declined.
Lewis was said to have lost his personal taste for violence, although he did not seem to mind when Mark and Jason Moran used guns, baseball bats, fists and feet to exact revenge against real and perceived enemies.
Lewis was another of Melbourne’s old-style crooks who seemed to sail through life with few financial concerns and no pressing need to work for a living.
His crime record charts post-war criminal history. In the early days he was chased from a circus when he was discovered to have lifted valuables from members of the audience.
He was said to be involved in protecting backyard abortionists, SP bookmaking and steal-to-order break-in rings before moving into modern crime and, inevitably, drug trafficking.
When his sons were running hot he moved into semi-retirement, but his notorious love of a dollar drew him back into the drug business with its rivers of cash.
For Lewis, the day would begin by checking the form, placing a few bets and then turning on the cable TV. But he would not spend his time glued to the racing channel. Like many of his generation of gangsters, he was besotted by the cooking channel.
Even during the middle of the underworld war Lewis would sit and watch good, bad and indifferent television chefs cooking up international dishes.
Then, between 4pm and 6pm, he would often visit associates to talk business before heading to the pub. There the subject would revert to the day’s television recipes.
Gunmen, drug dealers, former armed robbers and try-hards would exchange tips on how to avoid gluggy risotto or overcooking crispy skinned salmon.
It was a long way from a pie at the races.
Police say there was no need to shoot Moran’s friend, Bertie Wrout. At 62, tall, thin, popular and relatively harmless, he could not have been seen as a threat by the two gunmen who walked into the Brunswick Club and opened fire.
Wrout survived the gunshot wounds but doctors were puzzled when they found one more entry wound than bullets. The puzzle was solved in a painful way for Bertie. Much later, while going to the toilet he felt burning pains more usually felt by brothel clients who insist on unprotected sex — and that wasn’t Bertie’s caper. When he heard a metallic noise at the bottom of the urinal, the pain stopped. Bertie had passed shrapnel. It is not known if police collected the vital evidence.
Less than an hour after Lewis Moran’s murder, Williams was not his chatty self, saying: ‘I’ve got no more to say.’ When asked if he feared for his life he said: ‘I’m all right.’
But Roberta was more animated. ‘My heart goes out to them (the Morans),’ she said. ‘I don’t know anything about it. This is insane. It just has to stop.’
While police and politicians expressed outrage over the Moran murder, Melbourne citizens seemed to have become accustomed to bloodshed on their doorsteps.
Upstairs at the Brunswick Club is a billiard room. Hours after the murder, two snooker players tried to pass the police lines to head upstairs for a game.
Even though Moran’s body was visible, they twice argued with police that they should be allowed inside to play.
After all, life goes on. For some.
From his prison cell, Gatto was able to organise a death notice for his mate. It read: ‘Lewis, you knew it was coming, you just didn’t care … Deepest condolences to Tuppence (Lewis’s brother) and the Moran family. Rest in peace my Mate and a big hello to Pa. (Kinniburgh) — Mick Gatto.’
The funeral was not a lavish affair, but Judy Moran would not let the story die with her estranged second husband.
‘Lewis and I were both worried about his safety, but he didn’t care; he was sick and tired of it all. I was horrified when I found out he’d been murdered, about three minutes after it happened.
‘But I am outraged that my family has been portrayed in the way they have. They were good people, not bad people, but they keep calling Lewis a drug baron — which is not true.
‘I am doing this for my grandchildren as a legacy to their grandfather.’
In her acknowledgements at the end of her book she thanked several people, including her photographer, the lady who helped her chose her outfits ‘at a very difficult time’ and a gentleman in the fashion industry for providing her with ‘lovely shoes.’
She thanked her hairdresser, ‘for all the hairstyles you created for me for the funerals of all my family.’
The Gangland War Page 27
