Hitman Andrew Veniamin was a gunman who picked the wrong fight when he drew his gun on underworld identity Mick Gatto
SPECIAL: IT WAS 10 years ago that Mick Gatto shot dead hitman Andrew Veniamin in self defence. True Crime’s Paul Anderson revisits the scene.
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MICK Gatto and his Carlton crew knew how gun-for-hire Andrew Veniamin played the game: in quick-or-dead cowboy style.
It had become evident to the older and the wiser that the young western suburbs criminal had a propensity for shooting first — be it with his mouth, his fists or a handgun — and, most of the time, not even bothering to ask questions later.
In Gatto’s own words, which he would utter in the Supreme Court, Veniamin had a “Jekyll and Hyde” mentality and seldom considered the repercussions when his anger boiled over.
When asked during his own murder trial if he believed Veniamin was a murderer, Gatto replied that he did.
“And a psychopath?” Crown prosecutor Geoff Horgan, SC, would ask.
“Well, yes,” Gatto would say.
The tattoo-stained kid from the Sunshine Crew was wild and unpredictable, and was known to prefer a revolver when it came to choice of handgun.
Revolvers, after all, aren’t prone to jams like semiautomatics are.
In the lead-up to March 23, 2004 — the day Gatto shot Veniamin dead in self-defence in a restaurant corridor — the Sunshine Crew kid had started to show his dangerous colours.
Veniamin’s colours were highlighted in the Supreme Court during Gatto’s murder trial.
A childhood friend told the jury how Veniamin shot him in the leg during a planned fistfight over a young woman.
Before that confrontation, Veniamin had shot up the man’s house, firebombed his parents’ home and considered killing his sister to flush him out.
“A friend of mine promised me that there’d be no guns, as long as I brought no gun as well,” the victim told the court.
“I promised him (Veniamin) I’d bring no gun and he promised me the same thing. He just stood there until I got close to him and then produced a gun.
“I got close enough to him and lunged for it … Several shots went off.”
Gatto supporter Steve Kaya fine-brushed some detail in court.
He told Gatto’s defence barrister, Robert Richter, QC, about the hot-headed gunslinger.
Mr Richter: “Can I suggest to you that in the last couple of years of his life, or slightly more, Veniamin was out of control?”
Mr Kaya: “Correct.
Mr Richter: “And you saw him being out of control on a number of occasions?”
Mr Kaya: “Yes.”
Mr Richter: “Can I suggest this to you — that he became unpredictable and violent?”
Mr Kaya: “That’s right.”
Mr Richter: “He had a reputation as a killer, did he not?”
Mr Kaya: “He did.”
Mr Richter: “He had a reputation as a hit man who killed people?”
Mr Kaya: “Yes.”
Mr Richter: “For money, I suggest?”
Mr Kaya: “Yes.”
Mr Richter: “There was an incident once where you and he and some other people were at the Men’s Gallery at Lonsdale St?”
Mr Kaya: “Yes.”
Mr Richter: “A couple of large burly bouncers didn’t let Veniamin in, is that right?”
Mr Kaya: “That’s right.”
Mr Richter: “Were you present when he took both of them on, attacked them violently and viciously?”
Mr Kaya: “Yes … When he lost it he could have done anything.”
The court heard Veniamin once contemplated storming the St Kilda Rd police complex with guns blazing because he thought detectives had stolen jewellery during a raid.
“He said he was just going to run into the police complex and do his best,” Mr Kaya told the court.
Gatto would later add: “He wanted to go and turn it on with (the cops). He was going to go and shoot them.”
On another occasion, the court was told, Veniamin was paid $20,000 so he would not kill a man who’d fought with his brother at a nightclub.
“To stop what was going on we negotiated some money to change hands,” Mr Kaya said.
ANDREW Veniamin was born to Greek Orthodox parents on November 16, 1975 in Footscray.
His skinny body and goofy grin gave little indication of his future gangland status and reputation.
In high school he knocked around with budding crook Dino Dibra, and one of Dibra’s best mates.
At that age Veniamin was a keen and handy boxer.
“He was training five days a week,” Dibra’s mate once told this author.
“He was running three or four kilometres a day.”
Australian Olympic boxing coach Beau Gerring said he remembered Veniamin as a “whippersnapper” with raw talent who fought at around 50kg and won his first half dozen bouts.
“He was a very good boxer,” Gerring said.
“We taught him to punch straight and hit, and not get hit. He perfected that pretty well.”
Not well enough in a more deadly context, it would later be revealed.
By the time he hit his early 20s, Veniamin — also known as Benji — had given up on an amateur boxing career.
He had a burgeoning criminal career instead.
His early form included recklessly causing injury, false imprisonment, possession, arson and robbery.
In 1999, Veniamin and Dibra were running a cannabis cartel and shooting and wounding victims around town.
The drug parties were constant.
“Our motto was not to worry about tomorrow,” Dibra’s best mate said.
“Live today to the fullest because we never knew if there was going to be a tomorrow.”
According to one of several police information reports, Veniamin was “a shooter” who “feared nothing” and was “crazy”.
Police believe he shot dead fruiterer Frank Benvenuto in his car in May 2000.
Detectives suspect he turned a gun on Dibra five months later, after the duo challenged each other for control of the local cannabis market.
The next of the Sunshine group to be murdered was enforcer Paul Kallipolitis, in October 2002.
The prime suspect: Andrew Veniamin.
“(Kallipolitis) had been standing over people since Dibra’s death and was also trying to run things,” a police report said.
In the Supreme Court, a detective by the name of Boris Buick would sum up what he described as the three stages of Veniamin’s short but blazing criminal career.
“(The first) was when he was living in Sunshine and he was part of a group of people that he’d grown up with — went to school with,” Det-Sgt Buick said in evidence.
“He increasingly became out of control. He was violent. That group that he was associated with were committing numerous acts of violence.”
Of stage two, Buick would say: “(After mid 2002), that’s when he became, I suppose, a peripheral part of the Gatto group.”
DOMINIC “Mick” Gatto needs no introduction.
A successful businessman who mixed with criminals (including Alphonse Gangitano, the Moran family and Graham “The Munster” Kinniburgh), Gatto is well known for his involvement in industrial mediation and making charitable donations to kids’ causes.
In his younger days, Gatto was a professional boxer; a very capable bruiser.
According to Dibra’s best mate, Veniamin initially looked up to Gatto.
“Andrew said he liked Mick Gatto a lot because he trusted him and cared about him like a son.”
In court, Gatto admitted he saved Veniamin’s hide from time to time.
“He was forever getting himself into trouble at nightclubs and what have you and I was always sort of getting involved sort of patching things up,” Gatto would say.
Gatto said while at one of his own birthday functions — a “little surprise party” for men only, as he described it — Veniamin admitted to killing Dibra and Kallipolitis.
“I was pouring a drink at the bar and I was looking at him thinking to myself, ‘I wonder if these rumours are true about him,’ Gatto said in evidence.
“I motioned him over and he come over to the bar and I said words to the effect, ‘I’ve got to be careful of you,’ or something like that. He said, ‘You’re a mate of mine. What are you talking about?’
“I said, ‘Well, you know, PK and Dino — they were your mates too. You grew up with them.’ He said, ‘Mick, they were dogs … I’m dirty I never put another clip into them.’”
Gatto described Veniamin as an “acquaintance”.
“I’ve got hundreds of acquaintances,” he told the jury.
“I like to establish networks with people … It comes in handy with the work that I do.
“I mean it might be a building-type scenario in the western suburbs and he might know someone that’s there. He (Veniamin) runs that part of town. I like to know as many people as I can.”
STAGE three of Veniamin’s hard and fast existence, according to Det-Sgt Buick, saw him move to chubby drug trafficker Carl Williams’ camp.
By that stage an obsessed and paranoid Williams was up to his bottom lip in a war with the Moran family.
“I want every one of them dead and every one of their crew dead,” Williams once told one of his soldiers.
It is common knowledge Williams was orchestrating the murders of all perceived enemies.
“It was probably early to mid-2003 where Veniamin began to have contact with Williams and that increased from then on,” Det-Sgt Buick told the Supreme Court.
In December 2003 Graham “The Munster” Kinniburgh was gunned down.
Gatto was particularly close to The Munster, and word on the gangland grapevine — as incorrect as it was — had Veniamin as the triggerman.
(Police had Veniamin under surveillance by that stage, and knew he was on the other side of town when Kinniburgh went down.)
Gatto — who acted as one of Kinniburgh’s pallbearers — stayed in contact with Veniamin “just to see what he was up to”.
“I just really wanted to know because I believed that he could have been wanting to cause me harm, or that was the indication I had.”
Veniamin contacted Gatto five days after Kinniburgh’s death and protested his innocence.
“He was a tricky little bloke,” Gatto would say in court.
“I wasn’t sure. I did have some doubt.”
Four days later the two met again.
Gatto: “Andrew or (his new) group believed that some Chinese were responsible for Graham’s death and they were just putting this scenario to me.”
That night Gatto met Williams and Veniamin amid a sea of punters at Crown Casino.
Williams denied involvement in Kinniburgh’s death.
THE DEAL: GATTO, CARL, BENJI AND THE CROWN CASINO PACT
Gatto said the drug-inspired killing spree was not his war, and implored Williams to leave him out of it.
In late February, Purana Taskforce detectives visited Gatto at La Porcella restaurant, in Rathdowne St, the court heard.
Gatto held business meetings there.
He said the detectives asked if he knew about certain unsolved gangland killings, to which he said he did not, before warning him to watch his back.
“I don’t recall specifically what they said about Veniamin but I know he was mentioned, along with Carl, about a contract,” Gatto told the court.
Detectives later denied issuing the warning.
IN continuation of his own surveillance campaign, Gatto rang Veniamin on March 23, 2004 and asked him to visit the La Porcella restaurant.
“I never lured him there at all … didn’t know where he was (when I rang),” Gatto said in evidence.
“He could have been in Hong Kong.”
Gatto was sitting with a couple of blokes, including Steve Kaya, when Veniamin strutted in about 2pm wearing a cap, T-shirt, three-quarter-length cargo pants and thongs.
No one at Gatto’s table noticed the bulge of a gun under Veniamin’s clothes.
None admitted to looking for one.
“You can hide a revolver anywhere, unless you only got jocks on,” Mr Kaya would say.
After about 20 minutes, Veniamin motioned Gatto for a chat in private.
They ended in a corridor lined with boxes of tinned tomatoes behind the kitchen.
The two talked and things became heated, according to Gatto.
He said the head to head went something like this:
Gatto: “What’s doing mate?”
Veniamin: “I’m sick of hearing this s---.”
Gatto: “What do you mean?”
Veniamin: “I’m still hearing that you think I’m responsible for your mate (Kinniburgh).”
Gatto: “Well, I have to be honest with you mate, that’s what I keep hearing. That’s what people are saying.”
Veniamin: “I wouldn’t interfere with you because you’re a mate.”
Gatto: “Dino Dibra and PK were your mates. You f---ing killed them.”
Veniamin: “Well they deserved it. They were dogs.”
Gatto: “Look Andrew, I think it’s better if you stay out of our company. You know, I really don’t believe that you can be trusted. I’d just rather you not come around near us at all.”
According to Gatto’s evidence: “I was looking at him in the eyes and his face went all funny and he sort of stepped back and he said, ‘We had to kill f---ing Graham … F--- him and f--- you.
“I never seen where he got it from but he pulled a gun out and that’s when I lunged at him … I just lunged at him and I grabbed his arm and the gun went off past my head ... I actually thought it (the round) hit me.
“I had hold of his hand with both my hands and I sort of pushed it towards him and … I forced — he had his hands on the trigger and I just forced his hands — squeezed his hands to force him to pull the trigger.
“When I pushed the gun towards him and I was squeezing his hand he sort of pulled me off balance and I nearly fell over on top of him and the gun was going off.
“It was just bang, bang. I’ve got to be honest, I thought I was a dead duck. I thought I was gone.”
During the struggle for control of the gun, five shots were fired.
Three rounds hit Veniamin — one in his head and two through his neck.
Under cross-examination by Crown prosecutor Horgan, Gatto said he believed it was a miracle he “never got hit by a bullet or a ricocheting bullet in that confined concrete area”.
Mr Horgan suggested the bigger and more powerful Gatto — a former professional boxer — controlled the situation.
“He’s got the gun in his hand. How am I in control?” Gatto retorted.
He said Veniamin tried to kill him, and he instinctively reacted.
“What do you expect me to do?” Gatto asked. “Just stand there and let him do it?”
Gatto said Veniamin was lying on his back “spluttering and coughing blood” when he retreated back to the restaurant with a red, ringing ear.
He handed Veniamin’s .38 Smith & Wesson to the restaurant owner, who wrapped it in a paper towel for the police to seize on their arrival.
The court was told Gatto checked his ear for blood and handed a .25 pistol to one of his group, as he did not want to be caught with it and charged with firearm possession.
At trial, Gatto was asked why he didn’t use the .25 — previously bought off Lewis Moran — when Veniamin pulled his .38.
“I never had a chance to go for my pocket,” Gatto would reply.
“If I hadn’t lunged at him and grabbed his arm, mate, I wouldn’t be here today to tell the story. I’d be a statistic.”
GATTO spent more than a year in jail on remand awaiting trial after he was charged.
The jury heard testimony from those at the restaurant and scientific evidence about ballistics, blood splatter patterns and gunshot residue.
Gatto took the stand and gave compelling evidence.
“He died because he just pulled a gun at me,” Gatto calmly told the jury.
“He went ballistic. He tried to kill me and I stopped him from doing that and he got shot rather than me. Thank God he did.
“I still believe if it was anyone else in my position they’d get a key to the city.”
He told the jury he was saddened to have spent so long in prison on remand.
Mr Horgan asked him why he believed the police would quickly release him.
“Because once they conducted their forensic examinations — I mean they put a man on the moon 30 years ago — (I believed) they would establish very quickly that what I was saying was true.”
Gatto said he believed Veniamin had killed “at least six” men during the gangland war.
Mr Horgan: “But he couldn’t, you say to this jury, manage to pull a gun out of his pants in that narrow passageway and shoot a target your size?”
Gatto: “Mr Horgan, if he (initially) wanted to kill me I would have been like a lamb going to slaughter. It was just a spur of the moment what happened.”
Mr Horgan: “He didn’t want to kill you?”
Gatto: “Not at that point, no. I don’t believe he did. He only tried to kill me after I told him that he wasn’t welcome there anymore and he wasn’t trusted.
“He just changed completely. He just lost it.”
When Mr Horgan suggested a bloodstain on Gatto’s trousers suggested he’d inadvertently knelt in blood to fire a shot into the wall to set up a defence, Gatto replied: “Please, you people, I’m sorry to say it, but you are all off your heads.”
In his closing address, Mr Horgan submitted that Veniamin would not have been armed on the day of his death as he would have known, at that stage, he was under constant police surveillance.
Defence barrister Richter played the cowboy card.
“No one in this court, on either side, would suggest for a single moment that it was all right to kill Mr Veniamin because he was a killer … No one suggested that it’s all right to kill an outlaw,” Mr Richter said.
“No one suggested that the law does not afford equal protection to the good, the not so good and the bad. I might have said ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’.
“We did not introduce Mr Veniamin’s character and antecedents and reputation gratuitously in order to blacken the name of a dead man. That would have been wrong.
“The defence does not have to prove that Veniamin produced the revolver. The prosecution has to prove that Dominic Gatto produced the revolver.”
Mr Richter said Veniamin took two “friends” with him to the restaurant.
“He went along with Mr Smith and Mr Wesson.”
The jury took a day to find Gatto not guilty of murder on the grounds of self-defence.
Outside court, a free (and much thinner) Gatto rejoiced with his family and supporters.
“This is the lucky country,” the George Clooney lookalike boomed.
“Thank God for the legal system. Thank God for the jury.”
That night he held a party; Italian food and wine on the menu.
Mick Gatto was back in town, minus an official key to the city.
Not that he ever wanted one.
“I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, what happened,” he said in court.
Gatto politely declined to talk about the shooting when the Sunday Herald Sun approached him this week.
He has been busy in the past 10 years.
Apart from running his legitimate business ventures, Gatto has farewelled fallen friends at funerals, held fundraisers for mates and worthy charities, and chased — in Singapore — missing millions owed to victims of stockbroker Opes Prime.
He wrote a book, worked with Hollywood comedy legend Jerry Lewis to raise money for young muscular dystrophy sufferers, and remains a permanent figure in the boxing industry.
He has also been portrayed in two TV crime dramas.
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