Police were able to trace the fact that Hodson had hired the gear and he was convicted, only to later escape amidst unproven claims he paid someone to turn a blind eye.
He later moved to Melbourne. The old friend recalls: ‘I lost track of him until I got a call from his wife asking for $50,000 for bail. I said no.’
Hodson loved the idea of being a gangster, he says. ‘He wanted to be a flamboyant type; I guess he didn’t make it. Every time there was a murder of a crook in Melbourne I thought it would be Terry. In the end it was.’
The Hodsons’ bodies were found by their son in the lounge room of their home in East Kew on Sunday 16 May 2004.
Hodson almost certainly knew the gunman. Like most drug dealers he was security conscious and no-one entered his home without an invitation.
He also had two large and loud german shepherd dogs to deter intruders.
One theory is that Hodson knew the killer, let him in to the heavily fortified house, and was ambushed in the lounge room; his wife was then killed because she could identify the gunman, probably a business associate or ‘friend’ of her husband.
It is believed Hodson was smoking a roll-your-own cigarette when his guest produced a handgun and ordered the couple to kneel on the floor, where their hands were bound behind their backs before they were shot in the back of the head.
The couple was killed some time after Saturday evening. Their guard dogs were locked in the garage, either by the killer or by the couple when they welcomed their guest.
One neighbour said: ‘I didn’t hear the german shepherds, so I wondered what had happened. I heard what sounded like a shot about 6.15pm, but didn’t pay any attention.’
Hodson had been offered protection but had declined it. Being in protection would have meant he couldn’t keep seeing his grandchildren. Although he knew his life was in danger, he had decided to carry on as normal.
Ethical standards police had installed a state of the art security system and the Hodsons used it diligently. They had seven tapes each labelled with a day of the week and each day the correct tape was inserted. When investigators checked, only one tape was missing. The one labelled Saturday — the day of the murder.
If a covert camera had also been installed perhaps the killer could have been identified but such a security precaution was considered too expensive.
Investigators wanted to know why the police information report, written in May 2002, had mysteriously begun to circulate two years later.
It contained many allegations. Amongst them was the claim Hodson had been offered $50,000 by Lewis Moran to kill Carl Williams.
By the time the information became public Moran was already dead, but it could be interpreted as placing Hodson on one side of the fence in the underworld war.
On 14 May 2004, a story in the Herald Sun repeated some of the information from the leaked report, including the contract offer.
The following day Hodson and his wife were murdered. Some might draw conclusions about cause and effect.
Was it death by newspaper? The leaking of the confidential police document was a massive breach of security — but homicide squad detectives had to investigate not only whether the leak caused the murders but if that was the intention behind the leak.
Certain members of the underworld had seen the police report before the newspaper story was published. George Williams confirmed he had seen the document in the previous few weeks.
In fact, many members of the underworld didn’t need to see Hodson’s name as a police informer on an official document. They had suspected it for years.
Lewis Moran believed Hodson was an informer but found him entertaining company. He just made sure Terry was not close by when business was discussed.
Both Miechel and Dale were interviewed by homicide squad detectives and provided alibis.
But with Hodson dead, charges against Dale were dropped because of lack of evidence. Dale has always denied any connection with either the drug rip-off or the double murder. He resigned and took over a country service station, moving from pumping people for information to pumping petrol. And from giving suspects the hamburger with the lot to providing the same service for hungry truck-drivers.
For investigators, the Hodson double murder became even more important because of the suggestion of bent police involvement.
So much so that it was the one case with the potential to get multiple killer Carl Williams a decent discount on his sentence providing he talked about what he knew — and then was prepared to give evidence.
In the months before Williams agreed to plead guilty he suggested he had such information. In fact, he told police he had a man inside the drug squad who provided him with secret information. Perhaps that is why, when Williams was arrested for drug trafficking, the investigators were suburban detectives and not from the specialist drug squad.
Williams also suggested a policeman had told him Hodson had to go and that Carl should think about possible options. Williams, it is alleged, later came back to say he would deal with it but the policeman said the matter was in hand. A short time later the Hodsons were murdered.
But the value of Williams’ statement was destroyed when he chose to give self-serving evidence at his plea hearing. He deliberately destroyed his credibility as a potential witness in any future trials, earning a further two years for his efforts.
But while the court dismissed Williams, somebody must have been listening. Certainly, shortly after Carl made his statement, police launched a fresh taskforce, code named Petra, to investigate the Hodson double murder.
Deputy Commissioner Simon Overland said ‘This is a priority investigation. And we are making progress.’
So who pulled the trigger that night in Kew?
Many of Melboune’s hit men developed huge profiles during the underworld war. But there is one with links to the Mokbel-Williams camp who refused to move from the shadows.
Ruthless and deadly, the man known as The Duke has been mentioned as the possible hit man for the murder of Brian Kane, who was gunned down in the Quarry Hotel in Brunswick in November 1982. He has previously been charged with murder but acquitted.
He was also investigated over his alleged connection to the killing of Mike ‘Lucky’ Schievella, 44, and his partner, Heather McDonald, 36, at their St Andrews home in 1990. The couple, connected to the drug world, were forced to kneel, then bound and gagged before they were slaughtered in their own home. Just like the Hodsons.
It is not the first time a selective leak might have contributed to murder after finding its way into print.
Observers with long memories recall that Isabel and Douglas Wilson were drug couriers for the notorious Mr Asia heroin syndicate in the 1970s. When the pair decided to talk to police about drug running that fact soon appeared in the Brisbane Sun newspaper.
The Wilsons’ bodies were later found in Rye, Victoria, on 18 May 1979. They had been shot on the orders of the syndicate boss, Terry Clark, because they had been talking.
The Wilsons, too, were dog lovers: their pet was found wandering in the suburbs because the hit man wouldn’t kill it. But, as with the Hodsons, it didn’t save them.
22
BODY BLOW
Police say that while Williams
was planning to kill him,
Mario was trying to set up his
triple hit counter attack.
THE big man strolling through the city’s legal precinct didn’t look like someone on the underworld equivalent of death row. He had no idea that within days he would become yet another victim of Melbourne’s vicious gangland war.
Mario Condello was deep in conversation with a member of his legal team when he stopped mid-stride and beckoned. He wanted a chat.
It began badly. Then went downhill.
‘I’m not fucking happy with you,’ he opened. He was not in the mood for idle chit-chat.
The author, unused to such robust language in a public street, asked the reason for his apparent concern.<
br />
It was his picture that had appeared in the most excellent crime book Leadbelly — Inside Australia’s Underworld Wars (available at all good book stores).
The caption read, ‘Mario Condello … a man of means by no means.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he demanded. It was a rhetorical question.
For a nano-second, the author considered responding that it was a clever play on words to illustrate that Condello was a disbarred lawyer living a million-dollar lifestyle without actually working.
But he wisely decided to remain silent on the grounds of self-preservation.
Condello, dressed casually but expensively, was also offended by the word ‘shady’ appearing in a caption under another of his photos in the seminal work Underbelly 8.
The author quietly suggested that it was a fair comment given Condello’s record, which includes convictions for arson, fraud and drug matters.
Years earlier, Condello was the target of a police taskforce code-named Zulu that investigated his alleged criminal links to drug trafficking, arson, fraud and attempted murder.
The author suggested that since Mario had been sentenced to 13 years’ jail, the term shady was fair and apt, perhaps even understated.
Condello, always the argumentative (if disbarred) lawyer, instantly responded that he had served only six years and furthermore, ‘It should have been two … we all make mistakes’.
During the chat in Lonsdale Street, just days before he was due in court to face an incitement to murder charge, Condello was in vintage form. He moved from threatening to entertaining and, finally, charming.
He wanted his name kept out of the papers as he didn’t need the publicity or the notoriety. Headlines were bad for business, he said. He did not expand on what that business might be. When it was pointed out to him that his arrest for attempting to incite the murder of a rival underworld figure, Carl Williams, his father, George, and a Williams’ team member, was of more than passing interest, he graciously acknowledged that such headlines were inevitable. He said of the so-called rival, Carl Williams: ‘I hardly knew him. I met him once at Crown (casino). That was it.’ Certainly, Mario had been a frequent and welcomed guest at Crown where he had unfettered access to the high-rollers’ Mahogany Room and was said to turn over more than $7 million a year.
No wonder they gave him free finger food.
Money may open doors, but bad reputations can close them. Both Condello and Williams were later deemed undesirables and banned from the casino by order of Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon.
Condello’s trial before a Supreme Court jury was due to begin in early February 2006. The court was to hear allegations that he offered a contract of $500,000 for the triple hit and would organise a fake passport to get the killer out of the country.
The case was simple, relying on a police informer and secret tapes that appear to indicate Condello would pay for the murders.
The prosecution claimed Condello had purchased an arsenal of weapons from South Australian porn king, Bill Nash.
A police informer said Nash provided 15 weapons including an Uzi 9mm sub-machinegun, a Colt .357 Magnum, a Bentley 12 gauge pump-action shotgun plus handguns and ammunition. The first shipment arrived in March 2003.
Police used a wire on the informer and claim they taped Condello saying he wanted the hit man to gun down Williams in Lonsdale Street with the Uzi from a passing motorcycle.
‘You’ll have the fuckin’ money to cover you, 150 a fuckin’ head. Do ya understand? We don’t want to go around hurting innocent fuckin’ people … but some of these blokes from the western districts or western suburbs … they just want to take action …
‘Until they’re fuckin’ gone, mate, there’s always going to be trouble.’
The conversations and the alleged plot occurred in March 2004 — when the cool-headed Gatto was in prison waiting for his trial over the Veniamin trial, leaving Condello in charge.
Condello and his lawyers remained confident they could defend the charges. But they didn’t get the chance.
To those who wanted Condello dead, time was running out. If he were found guilty, he would have been jailed and put in maximum security, where he would have been untouchable. If he won, he would be able to move where he wanted, when he wanted, free of the bail restrictions that threatened to turn the sitting duck into the dead variety.
Condello said the underworld war was a media myth as it was not two sides fighting, but one side determined to kill its perceived enemies. He said Williams was ‘out of control’ and wanted to destroy the established network known as the ‘Carlton Crew.’
‘They were out to kill anyone connected with Mick (Gatto).’
It was a reasonable assessment. Two of Gatto’s closest mates had been shot dead — Graham ‘The Munster’ Kinniburgh on 13 December 2003, and Lewis Moran on 31 March the following year.
‘It would have been Ronnie (Gatto’s friend Ron Bongetti who died in 2005 of natural causes), Steve (Kaya, who gave evidence for Gatto) or me.’
Gatto and Condello had been close and loyal friends for years. In a letter written by Mick Gatto while in jail on remand and offered for sale to the media by a mystery broker, Mick appears to ask Condello to assume control while he is out of action.
‘I tell you what Mario, it’s [jail] changed a lot since the days of old. I have to be honest; they treat you with the greatest of respect. I feel a bit like Hannibal Lector.
‘I am good as gold Mario, I can’t believe what has happened to me the last couple of days, but so be it.
‘I can’t believe for a bloke that prides himself on not getting involved in all the bullshit, I can’t believe how trouble finds me. I can’t believe that little maggot tried to kill me, anyway he is in his place.
‘Mario give the old bloke my regards and all our team — tell them I am going all right and I will be in touch in the near future.
‘Keep your eyes wide opened; you can’t trust any of these rats. I would hate to see anything happen to any of ours.’
When Gatto was acquitted, he took his usual place at the head of the table but the table had moved.
Once a fixture in Lygon Street, they had been forced over the past few years to move their social base to the upmarket Society Cafe in Bourke Street to avoid well-wishers and crime groupies. There was the added bonus that the Parliament end of the city has plenty of security cameras, making life harder for would-be assassins.
Gatto and his friends could be found playing cards and chatting upstairs at Society most days. Condello had an early dinner at the restaurant on Monday, 6 February, eating simply and tipping big. He left shortly after 7pm. His bail curfew meant he had to be home by 10pm and he pulled into the driveway of his North Brighton home with minutes to spare. Punctuality and premeditation go hand in hand. His killer was waiting, and despite the electronic security, he was shot dead in his garage just before 10pm.
Gatto, one of the first to hear, was devastated by the loss of his friend.
Within hours he said: ‘I know nothing about it. I don’t believe it is gangland connected … no way. I believe whatever the reason, it will come out in the wash.’
He said he would not speculate as his friend ‘was a very private person. He wouldn’t want me to talk about it’.
Gatto, a former heavyweight boxer, later threw eggs at the media flock gathered outside his home, quickly establishing he was not prepared to be interviewed and that he had not lost power in his right arm.
During his chat with the author just days before he was shot, Condello admitted he had carried a gun during the underworld war but said it was for self-defence as there had been three plots to kill him.
During the height of the gangland killings, Condello said he moved from his North Brighton home, not to hide from his potential killers, but to draw them away from his family.
‘Why should they be dragged into this?’
For that moment, Condello dropped his tough-guy façade and beca
me just another concerned and proud father. His daughter, he explained, was heading to America for post-graduate medical studies at a world-renowned hospital and his sons were working hard in a well-known Melbourne private school.
While Gatto was in jail, Williams decided to kill Condello as a payback for the death of Veniamin. Running out of hit men, his first plan came a cropper when Lewis Caine confided to the wrong people he was going to kill Mario. His friends flipped him and Caine was swiftly disabled.
The word is that Mario paid for the double cross, outbidding Williams’ kill fee.
But Williams would not give up, even though the talent pool of potential hit men was starting to dry up. He employed a new group who lacked the cunning and the caution to last long.
On 9 June 2004, the Special Operations Group arrested two armed men outside the Brighton Cemetery where they were waiting to ambush Condello. Four men — including Carl Williams — were arrested. It was a major turning point and the first time Purana was clearly ahead of the game.
Williams would not be granted bail and most of his loyal soldiers eventually made statements against him.
Days after the hit was foiled, Condello told Channel Nine: ‘For the first time, I’ve heard the birds singing in the trees. So let’s hope these birds continue to sing and everything becomes more peaceful than it has over the last … however many years … because, after all, we are not going to be here forever.’ (He was right about that).
But Peaceful Mario didn’t last long: ‘I hope it doesn’t continue to others or to myself for that matter because, as I said, I am prepared to forgive once and that’s as far as it goes. No more.’
Police say that while Williams was planning to kill him, Mario was trying to set up his triple hit counter attack.
On 13 June 2004 Condello was arrested for conspiracy to murder.
But on the eve of his hearing he said he was relaxed and looking forward to his trial, where he intended to finally clear his name.
The Gangland War Page 31
