Inside the tangled web of the 1998 Coburg car-bomb that killed John Furlan
It was the murder that stunned Melbourne, and has had police stumped for 21 years. The investigation into the death of John Furlan in a large-scale car-bomb explosion still remains unsolved, despite the severity of the explosion.
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A gangster who died in a prison release sex session, a shadowy suspect who knew explosives and a victim murdered in a casino-style car-bomb blast.
The 1998 death of John Furlan was a tangled web that remains unsolved today, despite years of investigation by specialist arson detectives and the homicide squad.
What is known is that Furlan was aware he was in grave danger in the period before the murder which stunned Melbourne.
He had told a mate he believed he was under surveillance and spoke of being threatened in a late-night phone call.
But he took a few days away in Tasmania, anyway, crucially leaving his Subaru unattended behind a gate at home while away.
That was all the time the killer needed and, on August 3, Furlan’s fears became reality at Coburg.
As he drove along Lorensen Avenue, the Subaru exploded with enough force to fling debris onto the roofs of houses 500m away.
Police have never revealed whether the blast was detonated by a timer or remote control, but it could have been a mass tragedy.
A group of children walking to school could have been killed in an explosion which destroyed a section of asphalt.
The Subaru’s bonnet landed beside them after a blast which had sufficient force to destroy a section of asphalt.
The initial investigators found themselves heading in many different directions.
The colourful Furlan, who had a vehicle salvage business in Glenroy, had an array of financial interests, romantic pursuits and a passion for the punt.
He had many associates but was, ultimately, found to be a normal man with no apparent reason to become a murder victim.
Twenty-one years on, police are chipping away and making steady progress.
The latest breakthrough, which has the killer explosives coming from the Mordialloc area, is another piece of an intriguing puzzle.
Mafia-linked figure Domenico Italiano – whose grandfather was reputed to be Victoria’s first godfather, was to come under the scrutiny on detectives.
One line of inquiry – but not the only one – was that he was concerned about Furlan’s knowledge of corrupt raffles he had been running.
Italiano – who rented a Coburg car yard from Furlan – was released from jail in 2005 after doing time on other matters, but the 50-year-old died before investigators could get much further with him.
As Sen-Sgt Jeff Maher succinctly put it in 2013: “On the day he was released, he had the services of a prostitute and had a heart attack. He waited all that time to get out and died.”
Another person of interest was Phillip Lander, who also went by the surname Matthews.
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Lander had a long criminal history, including for explosives offences, but took his own life in the years after the Coburg tragedy.
He is suspected of building the bomb and planting it under the seat while Furlan was in the Apple Isle.
In 2013, police said they had two surviving suspects and 15 others of peripheral interest to the inquiry.
Originally published as Inside the tangled web of the 1998 Coburg car-bomb that killed John Furlan