Drug kingpin Alen Moradian was in ‘Alameddine-linked’ car when shot dead in gangland slaying

Comanchero bikie Alen Moradian had just got into his Audi hire car to head off to the gym when he was shot dead. But his killers may also have made a fatal error.

Investigations in and around Spring Street, Bondi Junction, where Alen Moradian, left, was gunned down in a carpark on Monday, continued today. Pictures: News Corp

A slain drug kingpin was shot dead in the front seat of a luxury car he hired from a company known to have links to the Alameddine organised crime network.

Comanchero bikie Alen Moradian had just got into his Audi hire car to head off to the gym when two gunmen who were lying in wait in the underground carpark of his Spring St apartment block in Bondi Junction opened fire.

Moradian was shot multiple times, including fatally in the head.

The Daily Telegraph understands that the car Moradian was in was not registered in his name, but rather a hire car company from southwestern Sydney that police intelligence suggests is linked to the Alameddines.

Alen Moradian was getting into a hire car linked to the Alameddine crime clan when he was shot dead in the head on Tuesday morning.

Moradian was shot dead in the underground carpark of his apartment block at 20 Spring Street in Bondi Junction. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Damian Shaw

Homicide Squad detectives will probe the use of a hire car, as well as his other associations with organised crime groups, as part of their investigation into the extensive list of people who may have wanted him dead.

What may be a crucial breakthrough for detectives is evidence left behind in a Porsche getaway car that was dumped on James St in Bondi Junction just minutes after Moradian was shot dead.

SMOKING GUN

But unlike a second getaway car dumped at Zetland, that first vehicle was not completely set alight.

The quick efforts of fire fighters to extinguish the blaze meant a gun left in the vehicle could be recovered.

Underworld sources said while the planning and preparation to track Moradian down in his new high-rise Bondi Junction hide-out was done with precision, the killers leaving behind a gun could be a big break for investigators.

“It is a professional job, but they got pretty sloppy in the middle,” one underworld source said.

“They didn’t burn the car properly and they left a gun behind, which could have anything on it.”

Moradian first moved to Australia from Iraq with his “loving” parents in 1980, but during his sentencing on drug importation charges in 2011 the NSW District Court heard how “problems between (him) and his father (began) developing in his teenage years”.

CCTV footage and forensic evidence is set to be crucial as NSW Police Homicide Squad detectives try to solve another underworld murder. Picture: Daily Telegraph/ Brendan Read

He soon left home while still a teenager and did not finish school, working intermittently before entering a life of crime which provided him with a far more lucrative income.

“(Moradian) sought to live outside the law, enjoying the substantial material profits and rewards available to those high up in the illicit drug trade,” the court heard in 2011.

“His motive was greed.

“He showed no insight into the problems that his trade caused the community, nor did he appear to pay any attention to the risks imprisonment and disgrace his conduct would bring to him or his family, particularly his wife and his sister.”

Detectives returned to Spring St in Bondi Junction on Wednesday in their hunt for clues about who killed Moradian. Picture: Daily Telegraph/Brendan Read

Moradian had been aware for many years of threats to his life which came with the gangster life he lived.

But a knock on the door from NSW Police last August to inform him of credible intelligence about a bounty on his head is understood to have left him “living in fear”.

Moradian tried to mitigate the dangers by moving out of his family home and regularly switching between CBD apartments, as well as regularly switching the car he drove.

But the strict conditions of his parole meant he was forced to continue living in Sydney, instead of escaping overseas.