Gangland hard man met end tied to chair in Carl Williams’ ‘torture room’
Police issued a warning to the underworld on the number of bodies being dumped on Melbourne’s streets. So Carl Williams’ next victim would not be left on the street, but beneath it — in a bin stuffed down a stormwater drain.
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Mark Mallia was sitting in a chair with his hands tied and a gag in his mouth when Carl Williams entered the “torture room’’.
It was a tin shed in the backyard of crook and junkie Terence Chimirri’s Lalor family home.
It was August 18, 2003, just four months after Mallia’s crime crew boss, major drug trafficker Nik Radev, had been shot dead in a Coburg St.
Carl Williams — according to a police supergrass who can only be referred to as “The Runner’’ — was behind the hit on Radev.
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And his trusted triggerman, Andrew “Benji’’ Veniamin, is thought to have pumped Radev full of bullets as he sat in his Mercedes like a sitting duck.
Now it was Mallia’s turn.
According to a statement made by The Runner, Williams perceived Mallia as a threat who needed to be eliminated. Secondly, he thought he had money stashed.
But he needed a plan.
Chimirri, a wild man with a heroin addiction, was the perfect option to lure Mallia out for the kill.
He had the right connections to get it done, and according to The Runner, the deal was hatched at a Lalor pokies venue.
Mallia, the 37-year-old hard man, was driven to the “torture room’’ from his home in Sandringham. Two of his most trusted allies, Damien Cossu and Hizir Ferman drove him to Chimirri’s house in his own car.
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When Mallia arrived, the man he feared the most, Veniamin, was waiting for him.
Veniamin then placed a call to Williams, who was at home in Hillside in Melbourne’s outer northwest.
Williams collected wads of cash and stuffed it in a black plastic bag before driving with The Runner to Lalor.
It had only cost Williams $50,000 to convince Mallia’s one-time friends to lure him to the shed where he was to suffer an excruciating death.
The Runner and Williams arrived at the house, a cream brick veneer home, similar to the others in a working class street.
A typical house in a typical street.
Once inside the front door, to the right was a renovated lounge room with a “brownish coloured varnished floor’’.
To the left of the entry was a bedroom where Chimirri ushered both Williams and The Runner.
Carl unloaded the bag of money onto the bed like Santa emptying his Christmas sack.
Chimirri made sure it was all there.
“Terence counted the money to himself and when he’d finished counting it he nodded to Carl and shook his hand,’’ the Runner said.
Then there was “an air of uneasiness’’ as Ferman and Williams met. They had been on opposite factions of the brutal drug business.
After all, Mallia was believed to have hired Ferman to kill Veniamin at one point.
They walked out to the garage where they could hear Mallia’s muffled words. When they opened the garage door they found Mallia bound with a noose around his neck.
“Terence opened the side garage door where I saw Mark Mallia tied up and gagged, seated on the chair. His hands were tied behind his back and he was seated upright on a chair,’’ The Runner said.
“I knew he was gagged because I saw his face, his face was red and I could see rope or something that looked like rope around his neck.’’
The men stood around him as Carl, The Runner and Chimirri entered the scene.
They looked at him for five seconds and left, according to the Runner’s 2006 statement.
Although they knew he was to be killed, The Runner claimed he and Williams did not know it would be so gruesome, later reading about the details in the newspaper.
Others disagree.
An orange coloured soldering iron was seized by police as evidence. It was believed to have been used during the interrogation of Mallia.
It was then assumed he was strangled with the rope and transported to Sunshine West before being set alight in a wheelie bin.
Mallia’s charred remains were found in the suburb where Veniamin grew up.
Sources have told the Herald Sun that weeks before Mallia’s body was found police had given a warning to at least one of the chief gangland players. They had mentioned the rising bodycount being left, literally, on Melbourne’s streets.
Mallia would not be left on the street, but beneath it, in a bin stuffed down a stormwater drain.
In the immediate aftermath of Radev’s murder four months earlier, there had been fear of retaliation.
Williams varied where he slept, even returning to his mother, Barb’s, house and spending nights at Crown Casino. Veniamin was so paranoid at the threat Mallia posed he even slept in his car.
With Mallia eliminated, it was back to normal and they hit the clubs.
“Carl and Andrew were more relaxed and in particular Andrew was more like he used to be, jovial, laughing, like he was before the Radev and Mallia murders.’’
Veniamin had seven months to live.
Williams would not be a free man again after mid 2004. Within seven years of Mallia’s death he too would be murdered. But his death would be caught under the gaze of prison cameras.
Originally published as Gangland hard man met end tied to chair in Carl Williams’ ‘torture room’