Ron Medich: Australia’s richest killer who dressed like a dodgy property developer from central casting
HE had the flashy suits, the house, the glam wife and even the burly bodyguards. But in the end, multi-millionaire Ron Medich, who was convicted of Michael McGurk’s murder, was just a big man in his own little world.
NSW
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DRESSED in his favourite form-fitting black top and pants, Ron Medich looked like an ageing gangster.
The multi-millionaire’s outfits — which he fancied made him look like the ultimate “man in black” Johnny Cash — were part of his collection of accoutrements that unwittingly made him look like a dodgy property developer from central casting.
There was the entourage of real men in black, musclebound bodyguards who rode roughshod over anyone he didn’t want to get too close as he did business from his small Leichhardt office above his favourite Italian restaurant, Tuscany Ristorante, part of the Norton Plaza shopping centre.
Medich had been drowning in cash since he and his brother Roy sold the shopping centre in October 2007 for $112 million and split the proceeds.
Then there were the underworld mates like Melbourne gangland figure Mick Gatto, with whom he had been exploring a business deal involving a 27-storey luxury apartment complex in the centre of Melbourne. The deal fell through.
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Add the daily rituals of long lunches followed by visits to clubs and massage parlours including the Babylon where he always picked up the tab and was usually accompanied by his sidekick, Fortunato Gattellari, once an Australian boxing hero who had the unlucky nickname of Lucky.
Medich also surrounded himself with wheeler-dealers such as former Edinburgh light fitting salesman Michael McGurk. Handy with his fists, it was said that there was no one McGurk would not do business with — including Medich.
Ron Medich could even boast a pet politician, NSW energy minister Ian Macdonald, better known as Sir Lunchalot. The Independent Commission Against Corruption was told that Medich once dropped Macdonald off at the Four Seasons hotel in The Rocks, where he had arranged for the minister to enjoy the services of an Asian sex worker called Tiffanie in exchange for meetings with government officials.
He had the requisite harbourside mansion, in his case on Australia’s most exclusive street, Wolseley Rd, Point Piper, and a glamorous blonde wife, Lithuanian-born Odetta, who lunched with the ladies and entertained with the A-listers while bringing up their two sons.
But Ron Medich remained the outsider.
He never got the respect he craved from the eastern suburbs elite. They saw him as the boy from the west and joked: “How do you make a million? You give Ron Medich $2 million.”
They derided him with the nickname “Cottees” after the “Thick ‘n’ Rich” ice-cream topping.
“He never really had any friends. People just used him for his money, people including Lucky. He would buy his ‘friends’,” a source said.
“The other businessmen didn’t give him a great deal of credibility and that was part of his problem. It fed his anger. He was a sad person really.”
In the end, Ron Medich was a big man in his own little world.
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Ron and Roy Medich come from traditional hardworking migrant stock. Their grandfather Mate Medich left his wife Mande and two sons, Peter and Lubo, at home in their Croatian stone cottage with no running water or electricity to sail to Australia after World War I. After six years’ toil, he had saved enough to buy a north Queensland cane farm and brought his family to join him in 1930. Peter and Lubo returned home to Croatia to find their wives, and Peter married Mandina in 1947, bringing her back to the outback heat. Ron was born in Innisfail hospital in 1948 and Roy a year later.
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As technology drove out the smaller cane farmers, the Medichs moved to Sydney’s southwest where they built a cinema empire starting with Cabramatta’s Protea Theatre where the young brothers made money by cleaning the floors. The family built the Casula drive-in, the Royal Theatre at Chester Hill and bought Liverpool’s Regal Theatre.
Roy Medich’s website shows a photograph of their dad Peter alongside another western suburbs-boy-made good, Hollywood actor Rod Taylor, as “Medich Production became the first independent film producer in Australia to make a major investment in international film production in 1973”.
The family moved into property development and horse racing, building Cabramatta’s Stardust Hotel-Motel and the El Toro Hotel-Motel at Warwick Farm where, in 1972, Gough Whitlam celebrated his famous “It’s Time” election victory.
It was a solid upbringing for Ron and Roy and when their father Peter died in 1978, they founded their property business Medich Enterprises after the family holdings were split between Peter and Lubo’s sons.
They made some inspired property purchases, none more so than a 344ha of land at Elizabeth Dr, Badgerys Creek, which they picked up for a song at $3.5 million from the CSIRO. They added another 73ha at Bringelly.
With their proximity to the proposed Badgerys Creek airport, the brothers have been sitting on a goldmine and are believe to be negotiating a $500 million sale to Chinese developers.
They built neighbouring luxury mansions at Denham Court after subdividing two hectares at Camden Park in 1990. Ron modelled his on a French country estate with seven bedrooms, five living areas, tennis court, swimming pool, baby grand piano and an over-the-top $160,000 chandelier in the massive foyer. They boasted they would never leave the west with Roy calling the eastern suburbs set a “snob mob”.
Then in 2003, Ron sold up for $3.4 million and bought 42A Wolseley Rd, Point Piper. Within 12 months they had moved on to 112 Wolsey Rd for $15,150,000. Roy soon followed to the east.
In June 2014, his marriage to Odetta on the rocks and facing trial for the murder of Michael McGurk, Medich sold the Point Piper mansion at $37 million, pocketing a massive profit.
Still, all those millions are not worth much when you are confined to a jail cell, possibly for the rest of your life.
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Despite his mega-wealth, Ron Medich stayed pretty much under the radar until the sale of Norton Plaza. Awash with money as well as an estimated wealth of about $88 million, sources said that he was like a kid in a candy shop,
The money ran like sand through his fingers.
He sank significant amounts of money into Gattellari’s business ideas including a winery, the Macquarie Function Centre and what was known as the Boomerang Funeral Fund, which was to take regular payments from the bank accounts of indigenous people to pay for their funerals.
He met McGurk in 2005 through mutual acquaintances, businessman Bob Ell and Richard Vereker. Vereker — who enjoys close Labor Party connections — wrote a book about his mate McGurk in which he revealed the father-of-four would go on $10,000 to $15,000-a-week cocaine, ecstasy and alcohol binges.
For about three years, McGurk and Medich, a dubious money lender, were close friends and business partners involved in a number of property deals.
In 2004, Medich had sold 42A Wolseley Rd to finance broker Adam Tilley, whose brother Ben is a friend of James Packer, and his wife for $12.5 million and provided $7.5 million in vendor finance as part of a development deal.
The deal turned sour and when the Tilleys couldn’t meet the repayments, the case ended up in court. Medich had assigned the mortgage to McGurk to collect. McGurk took his job so seriously that he threw a firebomb at 42A where the Tilleys were living.
As McGurk and Medich’s relationship soured to “extreme animosity”, so had Medich’s marriage. Medich had asked Gattellari to have his wife followed. She was trying to find out information about him.
Things were spiralling out of control. “He’s got to go, I’ll get you the money. This f...ing bastard is ruining my life,” Medich told Gattellari, putting a $500,000 price on McGurk’s head.
At 6.25pm on September 3, 2009, McGurk, 44, was shot dead as he returned to home in Cranbrook Ave, Cremorne, and got out of his car carrying a takeaway.
The heat was immediately on Medich, who began a campaign of intimidation against McGurk’s widow, Kimberley.
Odetta moved to the couple’s $6 million luxury home in Beaulieu-sur-Mer on the French Riviera. Roy Medich tried to distance himself from his brother over their joint Badgerys Creek land, fearing his “bad character” would affect any sale.
In 2010, Medich was charged with McGurk’s murder and, as his life came crashing down and he moved into a rented apartment, he realised he didn’t even know how to cook breakfast for himself. He had never had to do it before.
Convicted last week and having his breakfast made for him courtesy of Corrective Services, Medich has achieved something no one else in those eastern suburbs could manage. He became the richest Australian ever convicted of murder.