Dead thug Carl Williams was hated by his victims

THE death of multiple murderer and drug dealer Carl Williams was no great loss to society. It would be difficult to find a more evil man, or a man with more enemies.

THE death of multiple murderer and drug dealer Carl Williams was no great loss to society.

It would be difficult to find a more evil man, or a man with more enemies. He was hated and hated for good reason.

The list of people who wanted Williams dead was a long one and that list is about to be probed by the homicide squad detectives.

The priority is to find out whether it was a deliberate hit, or a falling out between inmates.

Williams pleaded guilty in March 2007 to murdering drug ring patriarch Lewis Moran, his drug dealer son and violent thug Jason Moran and western suburbs drug dealer Mark Malia.

A jury had earlier found Williams guilty of ordering the execution of hot dog salesman Michael Marshall.

So that's four underworld murders we know he did.

Police suspect Williams was also responsible for ordering several more of the murders which became known as Melbourne's gangland killings.

He may have even pulled the trigger himself in the 2000 murder of Mark Moran, although he was never charged.

Each victim had friends and relatives who no doubt hated Williams.

His prolific drug dealing also made him many enemies, due to his habit of either killing his rivals or undercutting them to steal their market share.

To suggest, as some lawyers and commentators have, that yesterday's Daily Telegraph's story may have been a factor in Williams's demise is pure talk.

The Daily Telegraph revealed taxpayers paid the private school fees for Williams' daughter.

While that article no doubt outraged taxpayers, as it should, it is unlikely to have come as a surprise to those most likely to want to see Williams dead.

Both the scant details published yesterday, and many more details The Daily Telegraph chose not to report, are widely known in the criminal world.

Certainly the most likely suspects for wanting to harm Williams would be well aware of those details.

In sentencing Williams to life with a non-parole period of 35 years, Justice Betty King said she was concerned Williams could become a cult hero. Websites offered shirts with statements like "I'm a member of Carl's crew".

Justice King no doubt hoped impressionable people who admired Williams would read her remarks.

"I have concern that some younger members of the community who are involved in petty crime may be looking to you as some some sort of hero," she said.

"You are not. You are a killer, and a cowardly one who employed others to do the actual killing, while you hid behind carefully while alibis.

"You should not be the subject of admiration by any member of our community.

"You have robbed families of people they love, of sons, brothers and fathers.

"You were indeed the puppet master deciding and controlling whether people lived or died. These were not vigilante killings. They were matters of expediency to you. These people were either in your way as competitors, or persons that you believed may be vengeful towards you because of other activities you had undertaken, or because of some animosity that you bore them. You acted as though it was your right to have these people killed."

Williams and his drug-dealer former wife Roberta were glorified in the hit television show Underbelly.

It is to be hoped those impressed by the criminals portrayed in the various series of Underbelly think long and hard about the fact almost all of them are now either dead or behind bars.

The role of Williams in Melbourne's underworld war and illegal drug industry was huge.

He was among the first Melbourne criminals to recognise ecstasy was becoming the drug of choice among young Australians in the late 1990s. Local crims, including Williams, were not making much profit from the emerging ecstasy craze because the tablets had to be imported at huge risk and cost.

So Williams got himself a pill press and a bit of chemical expertise and started churning out fake ecstasy tablets which contained an array of incredibly harmful ingredients, including horse tranquilisers and amphetamines.

He made millions from that enterprise.

The suggestion is it was a pill press which led to Jason and Mark Moron confronting Williams in a suburban park in October 1999..

Ever the hothead, Jason Moran pulled a gun and shot Williams in the stomach.

Police intelligence suggests Jason Moran deliberately didn't kill Williams because doing so would deprive the Moran clan of money they believed Williams owed them.

Jason Moran would have done the world a favour if he had plugged Williams between the eyes several times. Doing so would have saved Jason Moran's life and the lives of many others.

But Williams recovered and became obsessed with not just killing the Morans, but others close to them. The going rate to hire a hitmen at the time was somewhere between $20,000 and $40,000. Williams was making so much from his massive drug dealer network that he could afford to offer gunmen at least $50,000 and sometimes up to $150,000 a hit.

That's a lot of money to a hardened crim and Williams found no difficulty in recruiting people to do his dirty work. It is just possible a similar amount of money was offered to kill Williams.