Inside the lairs of slain solicitor-turned-mobster Mario Condello
A clapped out garden shed in a North Fitzroy backyard and a city office with happy snaps pinned to a board were where mafia money man Mario Condello met with Melbourne’s biggest underworld players. Take a glimpse into his “war rooms”.
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Cheap shelving units of faux-wood laminate, scattered business ties and a large framed poster of Marilyn Monroe formed the eclectic decor of the office of crime figure Mario Condello.
And like the Hollywood siren, the solicitor-turned-mobster died as he lived — meeting the sort of violent end expected of a man who moved in Melbourne’s most dangerous circles.
Shot dead during Melbourne’s underworld war, Condello, 53, was a fellow of contradictions — art lover, arsonist, devoted dad, drug trafficker and God-fearing gangster.
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THE GATTO & WILLIAMS PEACE MEETING
His daughter Vanessa described him at his funeral as a master of masks who kept his true self hidden.
A series of photographs show a rare glimpse inside that realm, from the tuxedo-wearing father of three celebrating with family to sharing a joke with violent standover man and drug dealer Nik “The Russian’’ Radev.
Condello was killed on the eve of his Supreme Court trial in 2006 for conspiring to murder rival underworld identity Carl Williams — a case he was confident of winning, because the star witness against him was an informer codenamed 166 who had been causing all sorts of problems for authorities.
The office displays snaps with friends and family pinned to a board alongside a certificate and a train ticket — and a big map of Calabria, Italy.
Newspapers and manilla folders sit on the desk, documents annotated with Post-it notes.
The office was one of Condello’s refuges. Another, a shed at the back of the family home in North Fitzroy, once served as a “war room” according to Condello’s playwright brother Enzo, who has fought to keep it as a relic of Melbourne’s underworld despite council bids to knock it down.
Mr Condello told the Herald Sun last year his brother would sweep for covert listening devices before meeting with the likes of Alphonse Gangitano, Graham Kinniburgh, Lewis and Jason Moran.
WHO WAS MARIO CONDELLO?
Condello wrote “funeral director’’ on his passenger cards when flying out of Australia, perhaps not that far removed from his real profession, that of ruthless money-lender.
It’s believed he was owed millions of dollars thanks to his exorbitant interest rates, debts that were wiped clean when he died.
According to former business associates he was also dabbling in some new ventures as the time approached for his trial.
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One was said to be a scheme involving a Customs insider and the illegal importation of fake versions of popular brand cigarettes, with “taste tests’’ on the streets apparently getting the thumbs-up from smokers.
He loved guns and owned an Uzi 9mm sub-machinegun among others, according to one former associate.
And he was once one of Crown’s top 200 ranked gamblers, turning over more than $7.5 million a year.
Born into an immigrant family from Calabria, Condello was an intelligent man who seemed destined for success after studying law at Melbourne University.
But within a decade of graduating, he had come to the attention of authorities over a drug crop at his farm near Ararat.
He was struck off as a lawyer in 1982 for drug offences and in 1986 was the mastermind behind an art insurance fraud worth $1.4 million, where he bought thousands of prints and then claimed they had been destroyed by rioters in Italy.
National Crime Authority investigations into Condello’s activities over the years hinted at his possible role as a money launderer for the Honoured Society, a Calabrian mafia organisation with Australian roots in Griffith, NSW.
His local ties were to the Carlton Crew, a group of men he once described to a television show as “the people who have a cup of coffee down there at Carlton’’.
They were old-school types who started out decades earlier with more traditional vices such as illegal gambling and extortion.
Former boxer Dominic “Mick’’ Gatto, was acquitted of murdering hitman Andrew “Benji’’ Veniamin in 2004, the jury accepting his claim that he acted in self-defence.
Veniamin, 28, was suspected of carrying out at least four slayings and was rarely far from the side of Williams, the instigator of most of the hostility between the two major Melbourne crime factions.
Williams had survived a shooting by one of the Moran brothers during a drug dispute in 1999.
The Moran clan — a long-established local crime family — were tied to the Carlton Crew through patriarch Lewis Moran, a former illegal bookie who turned to the amphetamines trade.
THE MUNSTER
Another member of the Carlton Crew’s inner circle, former dock worker Graham “The Munster’’ Kinniburgh, was said by some to have been trying to calm the storm between the groups when he also became a victim, shot dead in December 2003.
Kinniburgh, seen in photographs dining with Condello at a city eatery many years ago and sharing a toast with him at a formal function, was gunned down outside his Kew home.
A coroner found Kinniburgh had been present at the murder of standover man Alphonse Gangitano in 1998 — a killing said to have been carried out by Jason Moran.
His death was said to have been a consolation prize of sorts for Williams — he’d wanted Lewis Moran killed, but his henchmen were taking too long.
One of the killers acted as a decoy, yelling out “Oi dog!”, a witness would later give evidence. Kinniburgh fired at the voice then the second shooter jumped out of some bushes and shot him in the head.
Ten days later, Gatto and Condello would be captured on Crown casino’s many security cameras meeting with the enemy, Williams and Veniamin, in a bid to broker peace.
“No you walk away from this and mind your own business,” warned Gatto, his words inpreted by lipreaders for the Supreme Court.
“But if anything comes my way then I’ll send somebody to you. I’ll be careful with you, be careful with me.
“I believe you, you believe me, now we’re even. That’s a warning,” he declared: “It’s not my war.”
When asked by Channel 9’s Sunday program, Condello denied the conflict ever stemmed from the drug trade, saying the Carlton Crew was not involved and that they “despise anyone who has got anything to do with that line of business’’.
And while he may have opted out of the narcotics industry in later years, he clearly didn’t bear such a hatred for those still in it that he refused to socialise with them.
NIK ‘THE RUSSIAN’ RADEV
In one photograph provided to the Herald Sun, violent drug dealer Radev has his arms around Condello as the former lawyer smiles for the camera.
Radev was a Bulgarian-born mobster and key figure in the amphetamines trade who was doing business with Williams and Mokbel.
His business methods included dangling a conman from a seventh-floor balcony and tying up an elderly man before threatening his five-year-old grandchild with a gun.
According to one gangland snitch, the vicious criminal with a taste for gold jewellery and Versace had allegedly accepted a contract on Mick Gatto’s life, but was shot dead in April 2003 before he could carry out the execution.
The informer, who is now serving time for two underworld killings, has since told police he had a falling-out with Gatto over the murder plot.
“I went and met with Mick Gatto to make him aware of the situation,’’ the informer said.
“He somehow was aware of it and because I hadn’t told him sooner he took offence to it. “Because of this situation I was deemed to be an enemy of Mick and his friends. In my heart I was never his enemy.’’
The informer claimed he didn’t learn of the murder plot until after Radev was himself killed.
GANGLAND INFORMER & THE KILL PLOT
The informer was a career criminal responsible for several deaths during his lifetime who considered himself something of a free agent in the gangland world.
He would later confess he was the getaway driver in the shooting death of Lewis Moran.
It was at the law firm’s offices that the informer came to know solicitor Zarah Garde-Wilson’s then-partner, Lewis Caine, a convicted killer who had aligned himself with the Williams camp in early 2004.
The informer would later claim he and an associate were forced to shoot Caine dead in self-defence when he pulled a gun on them for refusing to help murder Condello in May 2004.
A jury rejected their claim.
But Caine had been conducting surveillance on Condello, borrowing keys and security swipe passes for CBD buildings in which Condello was believed to be living after moving out of the family home.
Condello survived a murder plot later that year, because the would-be killers did not know he had moved.
But whoever was waiting for him on February 6, 2006 did not make the same mistake.
They ambushed him at his North Rd, Brighton home, in what would be the last of Melbourne’s underworld slayings.
Originally published as Inside the lairs of slain solicitor-turned-mobster Mario Condello
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