The biggest mistake the Moran brothers made started the gangland war
When the Moran brothers met up with an up-and-coming drug dealer in a Gladstone Park reserve to talk “business”, they made a mistake that would cost both of them — and many others — their lives.
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Every criminal makes mistakes.
Those who know the Moran family best say their biggest was not killing Carl Williams when they had the chance 20 years ago.
It was intended to be a private talk but ended in a very public war, the ramifications of which are still being felt today.
Twenty years ago, Carl Williams and the Moran brothers, Mark and Jason, met in an anonymous reserve off Barrington Crescent, Gladstone Park, to sort out some business friction.
This was never going to be a mediation session.
After some harsh words and shouting, Jason produced a .22 handgun and shot Williams in the stomach.
Making your own way to hospital with a bullet in your guts is no way to celebrate a 29th birthday.
They later extracted the slug — duly handed over to police for ballistic examination — and told Carl he would be okay.
But even as he offered a feeble excuse about being shot at random while minding his own business in the street, revenge was priority one.
And getting square would lead to the loss of many lives
There were upwards of 30 murders in an era of gangland carnage, many perpetrated on the orders of Williams.
At least five of them can be traced back to the Barrington Crescent meeting.
First to go was Mark Moran.
On a freezing night in June, 2000, he pulled up at home in Combermere St, Aberfeldie, where his killer was hiding in the garden.
Before Mark could climb out of his vehicle, the gunman unloaded with a shotgun and handgun.
He was dead within seconds.
Tuppence Moran, the brothers’ uncle, was one who saw it was clear they had made a huge mistake at Barrington Crescent.
“They should have killed him,” Tuppence was later to tell an associate.
“He (Williams) more than squared the ledger.”
If Moran allies hoped to exact revenge, they were to find it wasn’t going to be simple.
Williams had surrounded himself with some extremely dangerous, experienced criminals with no compunction about pulling the trigger.
Perhaps emboldened by the murder of Mark, Williams is suspected of being linked to the shooting deaths of standover man Richard Mladenich and drug dealer Nik Radev in the following three years.
But it was the brutality of the deaths of Jason Moran and his mate Pasquale Barbaro in June, 2003, which were to stun Victorians.
They were sitting in the front seats of a van at a footy clinic at Cross Keys Reserve when a gunman acting on Williams’ orders struck.
The hooded assassin blasted a window with a shotgun then finished the men off with pistol fire.
Five children in the back of the van watched the whole atrocity.
Anyone who thought Williams was finished was wrong.
Six months later, respected gangland identity and Moran ally Graham “The Munster” Kinniburgh was murdered as he arrived home late at night in Kew.
In the aftermath, Williams spoke of having met Kinniburgh and what a nice fellow he was, but nobody ever doubted he was behind the killing.
It was really just a matter of working out which of Williams’ stable of assassins had pulled trigger.
On March 23 the next year, one of the Williams crew, prolific gangland killer Andrew Veniamin, was shot dead by Mick Gatto at a Carlton restaurant.
Gatto — who would ultimately be acquitted by a jury — was arrested and charged almost immediately with murder.
But revenge was served hot just eight days later when Lewis Moran was shot dead by two men at the Brunswick Club, an attack only narrowly survived by his mate Bert Wrout.
One former detective with detailed knowledge of the players said Williams, later murdered in prison, more than got revenge for the Barrington Crescent shooting.
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He said Williams was never an top-line gangster and lacked the discipline to last.
“Really, Carl was like a bloke who’d played 70 or 80 games of AFL footy,” the ex-officer said.
“Did you ever see Fatty Smith talking to the press?”
But Williams ultimately caused enough chaos for Victoria Police to enlist the aid of barrister Nicola Gobbo in a desperate search for solutions.
Her activities through that era, and in other investigations, are now the subject of a Royal Commission.
Originally published as The biggest mistake the Moran brothers made started the gangland war
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