Pasquale Barbaro: The tough guy who had to die
PASQUALE Timothy Barbaro was accused of many things in his 35 years but subtlety was not among them. The crime kingpin had family links to the Mafia, played hard and paid the price writes Janet Fife-Yeomans.
- Police study whether tracking device led shooter to Barbaro
- My vow to stop scumbag killers: Scipione
- You didn’t say no to a man like Barbaro
- Crime kingpin slain execution style
PASQUALE Timothy Barbaro had been accused of many things in his 35 years but subtlety was not among them.
Tattooed, pumped up at the gym, flashing gleaming Rolex watches and driving only the most showy and expensive cars such as his $2 million black Lamborghini, he traded off his infamous family’s links to the Mafia even though he had distanced himself from that particular criminal group.
Blood-soaked dynasty: Barbaro’s family links to Mafia
Just in case his appearance did not intimidate enough, he wore his Mafia links across his back. One of his favourite T-shirts was red with the word “malavita” on it, the Italian term for the bad life or evil life and linked to organised crime “Mafiosi, outlaws, criminals”.
He liked to be known as “The Boss” around Leichhardt’s Italian Forum where he lived, and was tailed by his bodyguard, known as “The Shadow”.
Barbaro looked like what he was — a well-connected gangster on the rise as he played the tough-guy game with Sydney’s other underworld figures doing business over short blacks in coffee shops and stalking what is left of seedy Kings Cross.
It was a high-stakes game he lost last week when he was gunned down outside the home of one of his notorious mates, construction industry figure George Alex, after they had enjoyed dinner. There is nothing to suggest Alex was involved in his death.
His murder is just one of those being investigated by Strike Force Osprey, set up on Thursday as Sydney’s gangland murder count reached eight. Barbaro’s namesake grandfather and a cousin were both killed in gangland hits.
At one stage, he was kidnapped by an uncle.
Like his dad, Melbourne crime figure Guiseppe “Joe” Barbaro, and his Canberra-based uncle Francesco “Fat Frank” Barbaro, Pasquale, also known as Tim, built his business around drug-dealing and his notoriety from being brash, impetuous and dangerous-looking.
Also like his dad, infidelity could have been his middle name. Joe Barbaro has at least another seven children to three women whom a court was told had not known about each other. One of those three was Anita Ciancio. Their daughter, Montana, was famously kidnapped several years ago as a three-week-old baby from a Melbourne shopping centre carpark by a couple desperate for a child.
As well as his wife and mother of his two children Melinda, Barbaro was said to have a list of girlfriends.
But behind his carefully cultivated image was a fractured upbringing during which he was expelled from a number of schools, despite his mother Cheryl Gilroy’s attempts to shield him from the influence of his father.
The large Barbaro clan are at the heart of the Calabrian families who make up the ’Ndrangheta in Australia. Law-enforcement back in the Calabrian capital of Plati view the family as a “major player in drug and weapons trafficking, notably to Spain and Colombia, as well as being responsible for numerous murders,” according to Mafia expert and former NSW assistant commissioner Clive Small.
Gilroy was 20 when her son was born on February 6, 1981, her only child with Joe Barbaro. His parents split up before he was two and Gilroy remarried and took him to Queensland to “shield him from the influence of his father and his father’s family”, the NSW District Court was told in 2004 when Barbaro was jailed for drug dealing.
At one stage, he was kidnapped by an uncle and while his mother won custody, his father retained the right of access which usually involved visiting him in jail even as a young child.
“During contact with his father via access (Barbaro) witnessed criminal activity, infidelity and violence,” the court said.
Diagnosed with ADHD, Barbaro went to six or seven schools, was expelled from most of them for being disruptive, fighting and “showing off”. The only time he came close to a qualification was completing part of a food and beverage course while in Year 10 at TAFE.
His mother’s attempts to steer him on to the straight and narrow failed and he first ended up before a court at the age of 16 for burglary and harassment. Armed robbery, possessing heroin and amphetamines and threatening to kill someone — his real education was in crime.
Law enforcement agencies at the time noted he was highly confident.
In October 2002 aged 21 he was arrested by a joint Australian Federal Police and NSW State Crime Command Crime operation who had his part-time home in room 123 of the Sunnybrook Hotel at Warwick Farm bugged along with his phone.
He was jailed for nine years with a non-parole period of six years after pleading guilty to drug dealing including arranging for his father to send him methylamphetamine from Melbourne to Sydney via a drug courier on a plane.
What the court did not know at the time was that earlier that year, Barbaro’s breathtaking arrogance had prompted Mafia bosses in their NSW heartland of Griffith to have a meeting to assess his drug distribution network as he sought to set up in the ACT by undercutting the prices of his rival Uncle Frank, who was connected to the Bandidos bike gang.
The Mafia chiefs were concerned at the dispute between uncle and nephew who each claimed the other to be a police informant, an easy way to get rid of rivals.
Law enforcement agencies at the time noted he was highly confident, had a high opinion of himself and was willing to take risks.
Sources say it was about this time Barbaro moved away from his Mafia background, setting up his own drug network which he ran from top to bottom.
Careful not to step on Mafia turf, he set up his own independent groups in western Sydney among Middle Eastern crime gangs and bikies.
While the Mafia bosses still knew everything he did, Barbaro could no longer rely on them for protection, sources said.
On his release, he returned to what he knew best and by June 2012 he was arrested again, on charges of manufacturing 2kg of ice in Goulburn and Cobbitty between October 2010 and November 2011. He was one of four men charged.
His wife Ms Barbaro stood by him as he was remanded in custody at Long Bay jail from June 2012 to May 2013
While Barbaro was behind bars, an alleged accused money lending fraudster called Ian Lazar allegedly conned Ms Barbaro into paying him $35,000 with the promise the money could get her husband’s charges dropped through a new legal team.
Lazar also allegedly told her there was a hit on Barbaro and the money would protect him in jail, a court has heard.
It was after his release on bail in May 2013 that Barbaro began to spin completely out of control. Despite facing trial at Campbelltown District Court in February next year, he felt he was invincible with no fear of either the cops or his underworld “mates”.
His best friends included Dallas Fitzgerald, the son of feared former Hells Angels boss Felix Lyle, and current Hells Angels chief Suat Sarmisaklioglu.
Within months he had organised the “hottest” New Year’s Eve party on Sydney Harbour, an $80,000 extravaganza on the luxury yacht Oscar ll which he promised would attract “the biggest gangsters in Australia” and claimed supermodel Miranda Kerr would attend.
She didn’t turn up but his Brothers 4 Life gangmates did. He used the B4L to strongarm anyone getting in his way but that night one of Barbaro’s guests, B4L leader Farhad Quami, was shot and badly wounded in a hail of bullets.
Barbaro’s involvement in the construction industry brought him into contact with George Alex and his lack of respect for the old guard led to a meeting with Melbourne underworld figure Mick Gatto to “sort things out”.
Quami, 34, and his brother Mumtaz, 31, are currently on trial charged with the murder of one of George Alex’s friends and business associates Joe Antoun, 50, in December 2013.
In November 2015, Barbaro himself escaped an assassination attempt as he dodged bullets in a Leichhardt laneway. No one was charged but one of the suspects, Hamad Assaad, was gunned down dead in October this year.
There are no winners in the tough-guy game.
Top cop gifted gin to PR firm hired for ‘media advice’
Police Commissioner Karen Webb gave bottles of her Commissioner’s gin to the heads of a PR firm she hired for ‘media advice’ before she became Police Commissioner.
Breastfed baby’s uni graduation palaver sparks anger and apology
Western Sydney University is under pressure from breastfeeding advocates to overhaul its graduation ceremonies, after a young mother was told that her three-month-old needed a ticket.