How underworld figures and their families get hitched
When you’re a member of the underworld, or related to one, wedding day drama is a given — whether it’s an assassination attempt, a last-minute arrest or crashing your car into a photographer. Happily ever after is no guarantee.
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They’re meant to be the happiest days of their lives, but we all know weddings dish up the best and worst in people — and when we’re talking gangsters, or their family members, there’s bucketloads of bad juju to go around.
Whether it’s a last-minute arrest, an assassination attempt, or crashing your wedding car into a photographer, when you’re a member of the underworld, or related to one, wedding day drama is a pretty much unavoidable.
If only happily ever after was a guarantee.
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CARL WILLIAMS AND ROBERTA MERCIECA
Melbourne underworld figure Carl Williams tied the knot with pregnant convicted drug trafficker Roberta Mercieca in January, 2001.
It was “one of the best wedding days ever”, she said.
Roberta delighted in a gold frock “by a well-known local designer that cost Carl a small fortune”, while Carl wore a knee-length suit jacket with a matching gold vest.
They had one hell of a four-piece wedding cake with weird staircase-like adjoining structures.
Three months later, they welcomed their baby girl, Dhakota.
What happened in between only Roberta (and all of Australia thanks to the Underbelly series) knows, but she recalled the proposal fondly in her memoirs.
“Carl was not the most romantic type but he had his moments,” she wrote, in Roberta Williams: My Life — The Untold Story of an Underworld Survivor.
“He proposed when I was in the bath then we had one of the best wedding days ever. That was one of the happiest days of my life and it was sealed with a kiss.
The pair, who got together in 1997, ran a soon-to-fail children’s clothing store for a while.
A decade later — as the gangland wars raged — the law caught up with Carl, who was in 2007 sentenced to a minimum of 35 years for ordering three murders.
Roberta and Carl had already split, a divorce not too far off.
But that didn’t stop him from rubbing glamorous blonde — with a not too dissimilar sounding name — Renata Laureano, 23, under Roberta’s nose.
Carl taunted his ex with letters from his jail cell describing his affection for the chic blonde.
“I can still pull ‘em even when I’m in jail,” he wrote, and speculated on having an IVF child with her.
Roberta, who famously had a go at Renata outside court while wearing a yellow beanie, revealed it was Carl who had suggested they split for her sake.
“I love him to death,” Roberta said.
“We only (split up) because he just wanted me to move on.”
But soon after Carl’s guilty plea, Renata, feeling the pressures that come with dating an imprisoned self-confessed killer, split, and went on to marry Trav Lovett (more on them below).
Things only got worse for Carl.
He was beaten to death while incarcerated at Barwon Prison in 2010, and buried in a gold coffin, a fitting nod to his wedding attire.
DAMIEN GATTO AND FIONA SCALI
There was no expense spared at the wedding of Mick Gatto’s son on March 29, 2008.
The Carlton identity, who last month tragically lost his youngest son Justin, said he couldn’t have been more proud to witness eldest son Damien Gatto, then 27, marry his model girlfriend Fiona Scali, then 29, before more than 540 family and friends.
The couple, who had a 15-week-old son, Dominic, exchanged vows at popular gangland hangout, St Mary Star of the Sea Catholic Church, in West Melbourne before a lavish VIP Docklands reception.
Although the Gatto children and their partners are not gangland figures, the church has hosted the city’s underworld for decades, including funerals for standover man Alphonse Gangitano in 1998, murdered gangsters Jason Moran and Pasquale Barbaro in 2003, and gangland lawyer Joe Acquaro in 2016.
A black Hummer escorted a dozen of their nearest and dearest to the wedding, and the bride wore a white flowing dress with thin straps.
“Just as I was about to walk down the aisle the sun came out,” the bride told the Herald Sun at the time.
The doting gangland grandfather was left holding his grandson, Dominic, and couldn’t help brag he would be “the next heir”.
A decade ago, Melbourne’s gangland war was still raging, and the wedding was naturally filled with drama — an assassination attempt on a guest.
The hitman was thwarted, and the Gatto family associate Fedele D’Amico lived to see another day as guests kicked up their heels into the night.
A glam engagement party preceded the big day, where guests were treated to two bottles of Johnnie Walker Blue label scotch, worth $295 each, per table at the Waterfront in Port Melbourne.
SARAH GATTO AND REGAN THOMOPOULOS
When the good times were a rolling, Mick Gatto, the son of two Calabrian immigrants, saw his son and daughter marry 13 months apart from one another.
And when it came to walking his daughter down the isle, once was not enough on February 14, 2009.
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Sarah Gatto and Regan Thomopoulos had two Valentine’s Day ceremonies; one at the Greek Orthodox in Carlton; the other at St Ignatius Catholic Church in Richmond.
The reception was held at Shed 14 at the Docklands, in similar vein to her brother’s big day.
Though the bride and groom are not underworld figures, some of the guests had seen their fair share of Melbourne’s underbelly.
“I am a very proud father, she is a good girl,” Mick said after the wedding.
He said his daughter had worked hard to create a magical experience.
“She put the whole thing together herself.”
But the happiness didn’t last long.
Sarah had moved out by 2010, with the pair later divorcing, and by 2012 were caught up in a legal spat over unpaid body corporate fees at a home she’s left two years prior.
Mick, a professional mediator within the business industry, said at the time he hadn’t wanted to intervene in the dispute.
“I could have sorted it out, but I didn’t want to go that way,” he said.
“She hasn’t lived there for two years. She has moved on with her life.”
RENATA LAUREANO AND TRAV LOVETT
At a time when Carl Williams was up against the law in a downward spiral to the slammer, with fun-loving times with wife Roberta haven fallen by the wayside, luck came his way in the form of a blonde, long-legged, woman the media dubbed “dream girl”.
All of a sudden, Renata Laureano, 23, was turning up alongside Carl’s parents to support him in the gangland murder trial in 2007.
Carl couldn’t resist taunting his ex with lines like this: “I can still pull ‘em even when I’m in jail”.
Roberta couldn’t take it any more.
“Don’t go near my daughter, you trashy piece of f---ing carnage,” she told her after receiving the provocative letters from Carl.
But things didn’t last as long as Carl might have hoped.
As the murder trial continued, Renata found herself in jailbird relationship with a self-confessed killer.
Having made her excuses, she set her eyes on a young man by the name of Trav Lovett, whom she married two years later in Fitzroy Gardens, on May 10, 2009.
Dressed in a sparkly floor-length gown with a long veil, strappy heels and her hair swept back, Renata looked the blushing bride Carl could only have dreamt of.
Their wedding party wore black and carried bouquets of blood-red roses.
Pictures posted on social media of the pair showed them hugging and kissing.
Renata and her new beau avoided becoming gangland figures themselves, but news of the wedding sparked another bitter outburst from Carl’s ex-wife Roberta, who thought Renata had used her ex’s court case to latch on to his notoriety.
Roberta claimed Renata had dropped Carl a few weeks into his jail term and “he didn’t want nothing to do with her”.
“She just wanted the glamour and the hype at court, she wanted to get a modelling contract and when it didn’t come she just went,” she said.
“She’s really thought she was going to get something out of it.”
SAMIR JOUAYDE AND SUSIE ARIDA
The wedding of Hells Angels bikie Samir Jouayde and Susie Arida almost didn’t happen.
Samir came close to spending his special day behind bars — but an 11th-hour reprieve saw him released to wed long-time lover Susie Arida in July, 2011.
Dressed in his bikie gang colours, albeit a slightly fancier take on the usual leather, but with a Nomads logo on the front, Samir danced the night away with his bride at a lavish bash featuring hip-hop artists, a magician and a Lebanese rock band.
“It’s party time,” said Samir, flanked by members of the Parramatta chapter of the Hells Angels outlaw motorcycle gang.
But his $32,000 celebration with 300 guests at the reception centre in western Sydney was close to being a total disaster.
A week before the big day, Samir and four of his Hells Angels associates were arrested and charged over the alleged theft of four luxury cars and an attempt to extort $120,000 from Terry Mullens, the owner of a luxury Burwood car dealership.
The cars were taken, but in a bizarre turn of events were returned undamaged 26 hours later.
Initially refused bail, and set to miss his wedding, Samir’s barrister made a successful last-ditch appeal which saw the bikie released under strict curfew.
He said sitting in a cell thinking he was going to miss his wedding “was a bit nerve-racking”.
The bail condition meant he was under house arrest between 8pm and 8am, but was allowed out until 2am for his special day.
Samir granted News Corp exclusive access to the event at the New Westella Reception Centre, Lidcombe.
“Just make sure you write good things and tell people how nice we are,” Samir said.
He laughed when asked what he thought of his barrister, George Thomas, who said: “What I can’t understand is why a fellow would want to get out of jail to get married, which is like a life sentence anyway.”
CHRISTOPHER COELHO AND ‘DEE’
Founding Hells Angel member Christopher ‘Ball Bearing’ ditched his bikie lifestyle — for love.
Bearing, as he was known, had been contemplating ending his membership with the world’s most infamous gang for some time.
In March 2013, Coelho, and Dee, 50, some 20 years his junior, were planning a fresh new start.
He told the Sunday Herald Sun he had “retired” because he was getting married and was adamant he was not part of any bikie war with rivals the Bandidos.
“After 42 years, I’d just had enough. I’m getting married. I left the club to get married.”
After his wedding in 2013, the couple rode through the middle of Australia. Coelho draped his Harley’s handlebars with Australian flags. Dee rode a smaller Harley alongside him.
But happily ever after was cut short when Coelho was killed in a car accident near Kew in March.
“He lived a great life. It feels like it’s been cut short by this happening,” Dee said.
“Chris was a wonderful and genuine man. He took part in life and lived it to the fullest.”
REGGIE KRAY AND ROBERTA JONES
At the height of their gangland days in the ‘50s and ‘60s, identical twin brothers and Reggie and Ronnie Kray ran London’s East End.
Seen as charmers in the swinging 60s scene, they mixed with stars like Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland at their West End nightclub. Their gang was known as ‘The Firm’.
“They were the best years of our lives. They called them the swinging sixties. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones were rulers of pop music, Carnaby Street ruled the fashion world … and me and my brother ruled London. We were f------ untouchable,” Ronnie Kray reflected in his 1988 autobiography, My Story.
Arrested in 1968, the underworld brothers were sentenced to life behind bars for their parts in murder, armed robbery, arson, assaults and running protection rackets.
Mostly downhill from there, a jail romance sparked things up for Reggie in 1997, two years after his older brother Ronnie died of a heart attack in prison.
At age 63, the former gangland boss turned born-again Christian — serving the last year of a 30-year sentence for murder — married Roberta Jones, 38, an English graduate, in the prison chapel at Maidstone Prison.
The night before, Kray had somehow organised a half-hour laser show that lit up prison walls, flashing an image of wedding bells and the couple’s names in dark sky.
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The bride, who arrived at the prison gates in the early afternoon in a jeep driven by a female friend, wore an ankle-length ivory beaded dress with satin ballet flats and a simple boutonniere.
Reggie’s lawyer Mark Goldstein said a few words after the service.
“They (Reggie and Roberta) wish to thank their family and friends for their love and support and look forward to the time when Reggie is released and they can spend the rest of their lives together,” he said.
They kicked on with an alcohol-free reception attended by a handful of close friends and relatives, while other relatives hung out in the pub over the road, where flowers were seen to be delivered.
After the reception, newlywed Mrs Kray walked out of the prison into the jeep, hitting a photographer at high speed.
Kray’s happiness however, was short-lived.
He died of bladder cancer in 2000, a few weeks shy of his 67th birthday.
But, in a last-minute turn of good fortune, he was released from the slammer on compassionate grounds, and able to spend his last days by his wife’s side.
Originally published as How underworld figures and their families get hitched
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