The Gangland War

by John Silvester

  However, she omitted to thank the Purana Taskforce that was working to solve the murders of her family.

  20

  THE DOUBLE CROSS

  He was off to have a drink

  with some mates.

  Or at least he thought

  they were mates.

  LEWIS Caine was tough, confident and at the peak of his powers until he found too late that in the underworld tough guys often end up dead.

  Good looking and with piercing eyes, Caine could have been mistaken as a former sportsman on a gradual decline — the type who is past his best but remains a formidable opponent.

  But fellow crooks and police knew without asking that he had done some serious jail time — the giveaway was the way he moved. He had a cocky, almost confrontational walk that some men pick up in prison. A cross between a boxer’s strut and a street brawler’s stride. It gave a message that he was always ready for action and was confident he could handle any challenge. He was wrong.

  Caine, a self-proclaimed karate expert, kicked a man to death outside a Melbourne nightclub in 1988. He was convicted of murder and was considered dangerous enough to spend most of his ten years inside in maximum security.

  Caine, 39, was a friend of Mick Gatto but also an associate of Carl Williams. It was enormously difficult to remain neutral and Caine was from Tasmania, not Switzerland (although he would end up looking a little like Swiss-cheese). People in the underworld were expected to pick sides. It may be that Caine chose the wrong one.

  Roberta Williams said she saw Caine only days before his murder. Both Williams and Caine had abandoned anonymous suburban life, choosing to live in central Melbourne high-rise apartments. It may have been the nightlife, but more likely they knew that secure city buildings with lockup underground car parks, swipe card doors and working state-of-the-art closed circuit recorders were sizeable obstacles to would-be hit men.

  It was a sound argument. Certainly Mark Moran, Frank Benvenuto, Mario Condello, Charlie Hegyalji, Dino Dibra, Graham Kinniburgh and Michael Marshall were in no position to dispute the logic — they were all killed outside their suburban homes.

  Roberta Williams told the author, ‘He came over to say hi. We didn’t know him well. He seemed like such a nice person.’

  She said Caine’s killing was ‘just another kick in the guts’ and added: ‘When is this all going to end?’

  It was a rhetorical question. She should have asked her husband.

  Most criminals go bad by degrees. They start with minor property offences as kids, graduate to theft and then become violent. These are the building blocks of the gangster.

  But Caine was not your average ‘crim’. He went from indecent language to carrying a gun to murder — with little in between.

  The son of a Tasmanian police inspector, he loved the idea of being a hard man but lacked the discipline to prove himself in a legitimate way. According to a confidential police report, he joined the army on 11 May 1982, but went AWOL five months later and was discharged.

  He was born Adrian Bruce Bligh in Devonport, Tasmania, on 22 April 1965. His parents divorced and his mother moved to Queensland. According to police he had ‘an intense hatred of his father’. He claimed to be a martial arts expert but police found it was a lie. ‘He did some classes, but was only a beginner,’ one officer noted. But he knew enough to kick a harmless man to death.

  It was obvious Caine was fascinated by death and destruction. When he was arrested for murder he was found to have books on terrorism, Special Forces tactics and weaponry. Earlier he had been found with a book on explosives.

  He was a courier who once injured both wrists in a motorbike accident. According to a police report, at the time of his arrest, ‘Caine was under suspicion of being a large drug dealer, using his employment as a courier as a cover for his trafficking activities.’ It was believed that Caine’s position in the syndicate was one under the actual importer. He would not sell to street addicts, only to other heroin dealers.

  In the early hours of 18 September 1988, two lives collided: one of the man who courted violence and the other of a bloke just out for a good time.

  David Templeton was 34 years old when he crossed Caine. He lived with his parents in Williamstown until he married in 1978 and moved to Essendon. In 1984 he separated and later divorced. He then returned to live with his parents until 1985, when he bought a house in Newport.

  Templeton was always gainfully employed and regularly promoted. After leaving Williamstown Technical School, he had worked for three years as a bank teller. He then moved to Medibank where he started as a clerk and was later promoted to branch manager.

  After 10 years with Medibank he decided he needed a change and became a sales representative.

  His family described him as honest, hardworking and community minded. He was an active member of the North Melbourne and Point Gellibrand Rotary Clubs.

  But on the night of Saturday 17 September 1988, the likeable and responsible Templeton was for once a pain in the neck.

  He had been admitted to the Melbourne nightclub, Lazar, and after a few too many drinks proceeded to make a scene.

  Caine had arrived at the same nightclub at 10.30pm to see a friend who worked as a bouncer and to catch up with a woman he had met the previous day at a motorcycle dealership in Elizabeth Street.

  As they stood at the bar, Templeton and Caine were to have the briefest of conversations.

  The salesman had grabbed a policewoman friend’s badge and, without her knowledge, used it to pretend he was in the job. It is an offence to masquerade as a policeman, but Templeton’s antics were immature rather than malicious.

  He was guilty of being a show-off, and probably a drunk one. He should have woken up the next morning with a sore head and an attack of guilt. But he was never to wake up.

  Templeton and Caine appeared to show a sudden interest in one girl and an instant dislike for each other.

  Caine was seen to be loud and aggressive and Templeton, still pretending to be a policeman, complained to a bouncer, who happened to be Caine’s friend.

  Caine was taken outside and told there had been a complaint and that he was no longer welcome inside. He took it badly, swearing and kicking a parked car.

  He continued to yell and swear, claiming a policeman was trying to steal his girlfriend. Twenty minutes later Templeton came out and Caine attacked him. Templeton ran away, but Caine jumped into a cab already occupied by four people and hunted him down in Spencer Street.

  According to a witness, ‘The victim was lying on the ground and Caine was punching and kicking him in the head and body.’

  A police report said later: ‘Caine pursued Templeton and subjected him to a savage and merciless beating and kicking, causing multiple abrasions, lacerations, contusions, and fracturing of skull.’ He died on the footpath.

  Caine went back to the nightclub and was seen with blood on his hands. According to police he was heard to say, ‘That bloke copped it; I knew I’d get him. Don’t fuck with the Wing Chun boys.’ He was also heard boasting in triumph: ‘I got the guy who got my girl.’

  He was arrested around 3am. He showed no concern for his victim and no regard for his future, glaring and trying to intimidate the arresting police. When he was handed over to homicide detectives, one told him that staring might work in the schoolyard but not in the interview room.

  The days of homicide detectives giving offenders short and violent lessons in manners were long gone. These days they want to gain convictions rather than inflict concussions.

  Manslaughter and murder convictions are not easy to get in prosecuting alcohol-related fatal assaults. But in the Templeton case the jury was so horrified by the cold-blooded nature of the attack, they were prepared to convict Caine of murder. Not once, but twice.

  He was convicted in November 1989, appealed and was convicted again in August 1990.

  During his appeal, Caine managed to slip his handcuffs and escape from court. He was caught clos
e by, after falling over. Police who grabbed him saw him trying to get rid of a knife. ‘How Caine came to arm himself with a knife and avoid detection of same is not known,’ a policeman noted.

  A police summary said, ‘Caine is a loner with no strong family ties. He is a keen and regular exerciser who maintains an excellent standard of fitness. He is fit and healthy. He has an unpredictable nature and to this day has shown little or no remorse for his conduct.’

  A detective who interviewed Caine had no doubt he was already a lost cause: ‘In my opinion he is capable of killing again either whilst in custody or when released. Members should exercise extreme caution when dealing with him.’

  Far from being mortified that he had killed a man, Caine, also known as Sean Vincent, became a hard man inside prison.

  When moved to a less violent part of the prison system, he asked to move back. He loved the dog-eat-dog nature of the violent jail culture. In 1997 he was one of five prisoners subdued with tear gas after a three-day standoff in the top-security unit in the Barwon Prison.

  The inmates, led by Caine and double murderer and escapee, John William Lindrea, were demanding contact visits, extra time in their cells, access to recreational equipment and a more ‘relaxed regime’ in the management unit.

  On the first day of their protest in July 1997, an emergency response team went into the cells and forcibly carried the inmates out into the exercise yard. The following day the prisoners again refused to move and the head of the jail’s emergency response team issued a series of progressive warnings telling the inmates they could be subjected to force unless they complied.

  After two hours the inmates were told they would be given no more warnings. The team then moved in and ordered the inmates to lie on their cell floors with their hands behind their backs.

  When the inmates refused the team used an aerosol tear gas spray, but the prisoners went to the air intake valves in their cells to breathe fresh air.

  The team then dropped two tear gas grenades, each the size of an egg, through the door slots of Lindrea and Caine’s cells.

  The wing filled with tear gas and prison officers, wearing gas masks, stormed the area, grabbed the five inmates and forced them into the open air. They were stripped, showered and taken to an exercise yard. Prison sources said the inmates declared they would refuse to dress as a continued protest.

  ‘After two hours in the nude in the cold they decided that discretion was the better part of valour and dressed,’ a prison source said.

  Caine was violent before he went to jail. He was cold-blooded by the time he left and he walked into an underworld war where cold killers were a valued commodity.

  Caine had a tough guy’s glare but underworld survivors need to be able to keep one eye behind them.

  He had mastered prison power plays but was out of his depth in the streets of Melbourne. Caine left his city apartment about 8pm on the night of his murder. He was off to have a drink with some mates.

  Or at least he thought they were mates.

  CAINE was not the only underworld shark circling with the smell of blood in the water. He began to drink with two others, one who had turned betrayal into an art form.

  Caine would have been confident he could confide in his new hardened drinking buddies. He would have known the word was out they had killed Lewis Moran in the Brunswick Club just weeks earlier on behalf of Carl Williams and, it is alleged, Tony Mokbel.

  Williams had been on a hit man recruiting drive. His first choice, Benji Veniamin, was dead and his second, The Runner, was in jail.

  It was time to replace the casualties of war.

  He had first turned to a group of old school gangsters with a family history in the notorious painter and docker union. He persuaded one, The Journeyman, to take the contract to kill Lewis Moran for $150,000.

  Now he recruited the volatile Lewis Caine.

  Williams was frightened that after the murder of Moran Senior, the Carlton Crew would hit back and he was now committed to an extermination policy. He would kill all the key men close to Mick Gatto and then the Don himself.

  The first target would be Mario Condello, the smooth former lawyer who was Gatto’s best friend. It was Condello that Mick entrusted to run business while he was in jail for 14 months waiting for his murder trial over the death of Veniamin.

  Williams reasoned that with Gatto inside, Condello was hopelessly exposed. It was the perfect opportunity to launch a hit and he offered the job to Caine, who accepted. Caine then tried to recruit The Journeyman to his team.

  It was an error of judgement. A fatal one.

  The Journeyman not only had links to Williams, but to the Carlton Crew. Police believe he flipped on Carl’s team and told Condello of the contract.

  Mario outbid the contract and The Journeyman swapped sides.

  On 8 May 2004 The Journeyman and his off-sider called for a meeting at a Carlton hotel to discuss the Condello hit. Other drinkers in the bar said the three seemed friendly and relaxed. What exactly was said will never be known but the three hopped into a four-wheel drive and headed off.

  Caine was in the back seat. He’d had a little to drink and a small amount of cocaine but he was functional. The Journeyman’s offsider turned around from the front seat and without warning shot Caine under the right eye, killing him instantly.

  The body was dumped nearby in a dead-end street called Katawa Grove, in Brunswick.

  Police say no attempt was made to conceal the body because Condello wanted to make a public statement of what he would do to anyone who came after him.

  The Journeyman told the Herald Sun he had seen Caine since his release. ‘I thought he was trying to lead a normal lifestyle. I don’t think he was a gangster or a big-timer.’

  Certainly the man’s views on Caine were of interest to the Purana Taskforce. The Journeyman tried to cover his tracks by leaving messages on the dead man’s mobile phone hours after the killing, but all roads led to him and within weeks he was arrested and charged.

  He was convicted of the murder and later became a prosecution witness and would talk about the murders police knew he had committed and one they didn’t — one that would raise serious allegations of police corruption.

  Caine may well have been a nasty standover man with connections in the drug world, but away from business he had an attractive and devoted live-in lover from the other side of the legal tracks.

  He was living in the city with a solicitor from a well-known Melbourne criminal law firm.

  The solicitor, the controversial Zarah Garde-Wilson, who lived with Caine for almost three years, was shattered by his death and made a request to the Coroner’s Court to have sperm taken from his body and frozen. The request was made after Caine’s body was released following the autopsy.

  The sperm had to be taken from the body within four days of death to ensure it remained fertile. The Supreme Court would have to approve the release of the sperm before Garde-Wilson could use it to become pregnant.

  She had told friends before the murder she planned to marry Caine, but his relatives said he was not ready to wed and didn’t want children.

  Underworld sources said the pair had only recently postponed plans for a lavish wedding with guests expected to fly in from around Australia and overseas.

  The couple first met when she was assigned to represent Caine over a routine .05 charge. Love bloomed among the lawyer’s briefs.

  The irony is that, like most crims, Caine fought to stop police getting body samples from him that could be used to link him to unsolved crimes. But after his death, he had no say in the matter.

  You may not be able to get blood from a stone, but you can get sperm from a dead gangster.

  21

  RATS IN THE RANKS

  ‘I may not be an angel, your honour, but I pride myself as being a police officer who hates crooks … For me to pass on that type of (murder) information, I’m sorry, I would never, ever do it.’

  SENIOR SERGEANT PAUL MULLETT
TO THE OFFICE OF POLICE INTEGRITY.

  OF all the murders during the gangland war, the shooting of male prostitute Shane Chartres-Abbott was one that failed to generate more than a flicker of public interest.

  He was not a colourful underworld figure, nor an innocent victim. He was just an opportunistic weirdo who specialised in sado-masochism and, from all reports, liked his work.

  The case would sit dormant for nearly four years as police, the courts and the media concentrated on the high-profile murders involving the Morans, Carl Williams and the so-called Carlton Crew.

  But the murder of Shane Chartres-Abbott was a time bomb that finally exploded to create high profile casualties and substantial collateral damage.

  The breakthrough, when it came, exposed a litany of alleged corruption, cover-ups, leaks, disloyalty and attempted sabotage that would severely damage the reputation of the Victoria Police.

  The case looked destined to remain unsolved until the hit man known as The Journeyman confessed to a senior Purana detective that he was the gunman.

  By this time, many killers and bit players in the war had done deals to avoid life sentences, but The Journeyman’s admission still came as a shock.

  He had already been sentenced to a minimum of nineteen years for his role in two contract killings and was not even considered a suspect for the male prostitute’s death.

  If he had shut up, he would never have been a suspect for gunning down Chartres-Abbott. But was he credible?

  In four decades in the underworld, The Journeyman had been motivated by self-interest. He had avoided several murder charges by forcing members of his gang to plead guilty on his behalf. He was a liar, a killer, and a manipulator.

  Yet his explosive statement implicating himself in the Chartres-Abbott murder did not appear to be driven (at least on the surface) by self-preservation. Ultimately, he would go much further — implicating one serving and one former detective in an alleged monstrous conspiracy.

  He named Detective Sergeant Peter ‘Stash’ Lalor and former Detective Sergeant David ‘Docket’ Waters. Even though The Journeyman was rightly considered a habitual liar, so much of his statement was corroborated that senior police set up a special taskforce, code-named Briars, to investigate any alleged links between a bent victim, supposedly bent cops and a bent hit man.