Budding MP Roberta Williams was arrested following a police sting which saved Carl Williams’s life
SHE wants your vote at the next election. But how easy is it to overlook Roberta Williams’s former life as an ecstasy-dealing sidekick to a vicious underworld boss?
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BANKRUPT convicted drug dealer and would-be federal politician Roberta Williams was arrested during a police sting which saved the life of her husband Carl.
Now-dead underworld heavyweights Lewis and Jason Moran arranged to murder Carl Williams in front of guests at a lavish christening for baby Dhakota Williams in 2001.
‘I’LL F---ING KILL HER WHERE SHE STANDS’
The planned assassination was foiled when detectives set up an undercover operation in which Williams was arrested and jailed, just hours before the scheduled hit.
An unintended consequence of the lifesaving sting was that they were able to gather evidence that Roberta Williams was heavily involved in her husband’s drug trafficking.
Ms Williams has been chosen to be the Australian People’s Party candidate to try to wrestle the seat of Maribyrnong from Opposition Leader Bill Shorten at the next federal election.
But it may be her bankruptcy — the Herald Sun last year revealed she owed the taxman almost $300,000 — which prevents her standing, rather than her drug convictions.
If she can’t get her bankruptcy discharged she will not be able to run for parliament, but her drug convictions aren’t a hurdle — other than in the minds of voters — because she ended up serving less than a year in jail.
It was a person deep within drug boss Tony Mokbel’s gang who tipped off police that Williams was about to be murdered at his then six-week-old daughter Dhakota’s christening.
The informer told a veteran detective the Morans had hired two Sydney hitmen to gun down Williams at a Keilor reception centre during the christening party.
Detectives believe the foiled plot prompted Williams to come up with his own plan to murder Jason Moran when he least expected it.
Moran was executed in front of his children while attending an Auskick football clinic in Essendon North on June 21, 2003, and Williams later admitted murdering Moran and Moran family patriarch Lewis Moran.
The Morans put a contract on Williams in 2001 after he shot dead Jason’s half-brother, Mark Moran.
They wanted to deliver a strong message and decided killing Williams in front of family and friends at his daughter’s christening was a very public way of proving that point.
Police discovered the plot only three days before it was due to be carried out.
An emergency meeting of senior officers was called to discuss how to thwart the attack.
They decided that staking out the christening party in the hope of identifying and catching the hitmen was too dangerous.
A plan to put a booze bus outside the christening to deter the execution was considered.
The meeting eventually decided getting Williams behind bars was the safest option.
Williams was on bail awaiting trial over a $20 million drug operation, so another arrest would guarantee to put him behind bars and out of reach of the hired killers.
Police command agreed to provide $100,000 to detectives so they could set up a sting involving an undercover officer buying drugs from Williams.
An undercover officer had recently made contact with drug dealer Walter Foletti.
Evidence suggested that Foletti was getting his drugs from Williams.
Detectives planned to use the $100,000 to get proof that Williams was Foletti’s supplier.
Police bugs recorded the undercover officer asking Foletti on May 18, 2001, if he could provide a large quantity of ecstasy tablets in a hurry.
Later that day, Foletti told the undercover officer he had spoken to the supplier’s wife, Roberta Williams.
She said would confirm the deal the next day.
Foletti rang the Williams home at 10.20am on May 19 and asked to speak to Carl, but was told by Roberta that her husband was still in bed.
He asked her if her husband was “organising that thing for me” and that “the bloke is going to ring me up after 12”.
Roberta Williams told him the deal was set for that day.
The undercover officer rang Foletti at noon and arranged to meet at the McDonald’s car park in Sydenham about 2pm.
He arranged to buy 8000 ecstasy tablets for $100,000.
Detectives photocopied the notes which made up the $100,000 before putting them in a green shoebox and giving them to the undercover officer.
Foletti arrived at the car park with another man and parked his white Jeep near the undercover officer’s car.
Foletti gave a shopping bag containing 8000 ecstasy tablets embossed with the letters XTC to the undercover officer, who handed over the shoebox stuffed with $100,000.
As this was happening, Carl Williams rang Roberta and was recorded asking her if the deal had been done yet.
Roberta told him she hadn’t heard, but expected to soon.
Foletti rang her at 3.13pm and she told him to “bring what you’ve got now”, but Foletti told her it would be better if she came to him.
Roberta Williams immediately got in her dark BMW coupe and drove to Foletti’s house in the suburb of Hillside.
Surveillance police watched her leave Foletti’s house three minutes later. She was carrying a blue shopping bag.
Other surveillance police saw Carl Williams arriving home at 3.24pm in his white Mitsubishi Lancer.
READ MORE: ATO MOVES TO EVICT ROBERTA
He took a call from his wife on his mobile and she told him she was at the Watergardens shopping centre in Sydenham.
Police followed as he drove there and watched as Carl and Roberta Williams met. After walking round the shops, they got into Carl’s car.
Heavily armed members of the special operations group swooped as soon as Carl and Roberta got in the vehicle.
Carl Williams was found with Victoria Police’s $100,000 in his lap and he and Roberta were jailed that day.
Roberta was granted bail 48 hours later, but it was 14 months before Carl got out.
She pleaded guilty in 2004 to trafficking in a commercial quantity of ecstasy.
Robert’s barrister, Con Heliotis, QC, made an emotional plea for a suspended sentence.
She clashed verbally with a policewoman during a pre-sentence hearing, calling the officer “f ... ing ugly”.
“I wish she’d place her badge down there so we could punch on and get it done, because she has got so much to say,” she said.
Mr Heliotis made much of Roberta Williams’s traumatic childhood.
He also claimed she was suffering post-natal depression at the time of the drug offence.
Her fourth child, Dhakota, her first with Carl Williams, was six weeks old when Roberta was arrested in May 2001.
Mr Heliotis said Roberta Williams was one of eight children.
“Her father, a truck driver, was burnt to death in a trucking accident when she was eight months old,” he told the Supreme Court.
“Her mother was clearly unable to cope with eight children and found little time for any of them.
“The mother’s two de facto partners following her husband’s death were both physically violent to Roberta Williams and her siblings.
“Roberta was left to roam the streets from about the age of eight.
“By the time she was 11, her mother packed her belongings and put them out in the street, literally, and she was then made a ward of the state.
“At 16 years of age she formed a relationship with her first boyfriend, who became her first husband. By 17 she had given birth to her first child, Tye, to her husband, Dean.
“By the time she was 18 she had made her first appearance in a Magistrates’ Court.
“Your Honour will see that some 16 years ago, when she was 19, she served three months’ imprisonment for trafficking amphetamines.”
Mr Heliotis said Roberta was also convicted of possession of ecstasy and cocaine in November 2000.
After living together for 10 years, Roberta and Dean married in 1995. They had three children.
Mr Heliotis’ plea failed to get the suspended sentence he was seeking for Roberta Williams.
Justice Murray Kellam jailed her for 18 months and ordered that she serve at least six.
“I can do jail standing on my head,” Roberta Williams told the Herald Sun at the time.
“The kids are stressed out ‘cos they are going to miss me. But they are prepared for it. They know I am going in.”
Carl Williams was also later convicted of trafficking in a commercial quantity of ecstasy over the police drug sting that saved his life.
Foletti was jailed for five years and six months.
Dhakota’s christening was rescheduled for December 2003 after her father was released.
Carl and Roberta were keen to portray themselves as a loving and law-abiding family.
They invited the ABC’s Four Corners to film the christening at Crown casino’s plush Palladium Room. They chose Crown because it had the best security in Victoria.
Among the 120 guests was family friend Greg Domaszewicz — the babysitter who was acquitted over the 1997 murder of Moe toddler Jaidyn Leskie.