Hitman: What drove underworld killer Andrew ‘Benji’ Veniamin

A fateful decision as a teenager led to Andrew “Benji” Veniamin becoming the most notorious contract killer in Melbourne's gangland war.

The biggest decision of Andrew Veniamin’s life came in 1993.

Aged just 17, he and two mates had been busted over a frightening armed robbery in which a wholesale tobacconist was ambushed and handcuffed at West Sunshine.

The bandits covered their captive’s eyes with heavy black tape and threw him into the back of his van, before driving to somewhere more private and transferring smokes worth upwards of $28,000 to another vehicle.

Their victim was lucky to escape, somehow scrambling free as the van turned into an oven on a roasting hot day.

Veniamin was a feared presence in Melbourne’s underworld.

He was shot dead by Mick Gatto in 2004.

Veniamin was arrested soon after and admitted his sins but declined to name his co-offenders, one of whom was believed to be a close mate named Dino Dibra.

While still a minor, he had the option of pulling his head in and trying to make a go of life as a “squarehead”.

Veniamin decided to go the wrong way.

“They started playing with guns about 12 months later. It was the start of the underworld,” one former Sunshine-based detective said.

“There’d be stuff like putting the gun on the bar at the Sunshine Heights Hotel and saying, ‘How would you like it if I shot you?’. Now line up the beers’.

“They had no respect.”

Within seven years, he was a suspected murderer and a feared presence in Melbourne’s underworld.

By the time he was shot dead by Mick Gatto in 2004, Veniamin was the public face of contract killing in an era of gangland carnage.

Carl Williams was among the underworld figures at Veniamin’s funeral. Picture: Colin Murty

The diminutive triggerman was often spotted at the side of his master, drug boss, Carl Williams.

He would serve as both shooter and bodyguard for Williams as the latter crashed through Melbourne’s crime world in a brief but bloody reign.

Veniamin killed as many as seven and was responsible for at least two other non-fatal shootings.

He was suspected of killing both foes and friends in a brief but brutal stint as a triggerman.

Among the victims were some of the heaviest names in Melbourne’s volatile underworld.

Nikolai Madev Radev was a Bulgarian-born criminal known, for some unknown reason, as Nik The Russian.

Andrew `Benji’ Veniamin with Lawyer X Nicola Gobbo and Carl Williams.

The 44-year-old had a ruthless nature and a frightening reputation, but was also a big-time drug trafficker doing business with Williams and his father George.

Radev coveted the services of a leading amphetamine cook, which had the potential to damage market share for Williams and others.

When Carl and George decided he had to go, Veniamin was their man.

Radev enjoyed lunch with father-and-son at the Brighton Baths on April 15, 2003, where he was told he could travel in convoy with them to Coburg and talk to the cook.

After parking in Queen St, Radev climbed from his vehicle and walked towards Reynard St and unexpectedly turned back to fetch a cigar.

But it was literally no cigar when Veniamin – driven to the scene by another conspirator – suddenly emerged and smoked Radev with two handguns.

The standover man was dispatched with such efficiency that a seasoned detective was later to remark he looked like “Swiss cheese.”

Victor Peirce – a fixture in Melbourne crime for two decades – was another big-name victim.

Although the getaway driver conviction of Faruk Orman was years later quashed by the Supreme Court, no one seriously doubts Veniamin pulled the trigger in Bay St, Port Melbourne, in 2003.

“Hello mate” from Veniamin were said to have been the last words Peirce heard.

Two old Sunshine friends who could be traced back to his early crime days of the 1990s would also die at his hands.

Wildman Dibra grew up with Veniamin, carrying out armed robberies and doing what they could for the local vehicle rebirthing industry.

Veniamin's grave at Keilor Cemetery.

Mick Gatto was acquitted of murder.

Dibra, who would become a drug dealer and dangerous gunman, was ambushed at his West Sunshine home in 2000, possibly over a drug crop-house dispute.

Paul Kallipolitis, a fellow accomplished kickboxer, was shot at close range inside his Nicholson Parade, West Sunshine, home in October, 2002.

The 2000 murder of fruiterer Frank Benvenuto remains unsolved but is widely regarded as Veniamin’s doing.

In the end, the sinewy shooter died the way he lived – violently.

Mick Gatto fatally shot him during a confrontation at a Carlton restaurant in 2004.

Gatto was later cleared on the grounds of self-defence, partly because of Veniamin’s dangerous nature and propensity to carry guns.

Originally published as Hitman: What drove underworld killer Andrew ‘Benji’ Veniamin