Carl Williams, missing ‘Bung’: Victoria’s most mystifying unsolved crimes of the decade
Gangster Carl Williams was bludgeoned to death by Matthew Johnson in a brutal jailhouse killing — but was it organised by someone else? This case is among Victoria’s most mystifying unsolved crimes of the decade.
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They called Carl Williams “The Truth” after the American heavyweight boxer of the same name. The truth is that although the chubby gangster was killed on candid camera, whoever directed the action might never be unmasked.
Only two men were with Williams in his prison unit when he was murdered in April 2010. One of them beat him to death with a metal bar taken from an exercise bike while the other pretended not to notice.
The man who did the dirty work was never going anywhere. Matthew Johnson, a jailhouse killer-in-residence, will stay behind bars until he is very old or, in his turn, is killed by a younger version of himself.
But the Williams case, although officially solved, still heads our list of Victoria’s unsolved crimes of the decade.
Johnson’s conviction was inevitable and speedy but does not solve the mystery of who took out the contract.
Did one other person plan the killing? Or more? Such questions make it one of the most intriguing crimes of the last 10 years, and the slaughter of suburban greengrocer Paul Virgona on the EastLink freeway in early November.
WHO CONSPIRED IN CARL’S KILLING?
It seems obvious that at least two conspirators were behind the Williams killing. There is a school of thought that handsome gangster Rocco Arico – now in jail himself – pressured a trusted friend of Williams to set up the hit.
The “friend”, unnamed for legal reasons, was locked up with Williams and the brooding Johnson, one of the most dangerous men in a system full of them.
It seems Arico had a logical motive to silence Williams: the probability that he (Arico) took part in executing “Mad Richard” Mladenich in a seedy St Kilda motel in 2000 on Williams’ orders, so feared being dobbed in.
Williams, by 2010, was giving information to police. Enough, maybe, to spook Arico into suspecting Williams might implicate him in the Mladenich hit.
But did anyone else stand to benefit from Williams being silenced? If so, did they inject cash into a Matthew Johnson benefit fund? Even prisoners need money.
Soon after Williams was murdered, fingers pointed at a possible beneficiary: former policeman Paul Dale, previously accused of orchestrating the execution of informer Terry Hodson and his wife Christine at their Kew home in May, 2004.
With the Hodsons dead, the case collapsed against Dale and fellow policeman, David Miechel, over robbing a “drug house” in Oakleigh. With Williams dead, the theory goes, there was no chance of proving Dale had used Williams to organise the Hodson hit.
It seemed to some investigators, who tend to discount coincidence, that Dale was too lucky too often. But, in the case of Williams’ death, maybe that’s all it was.
These days, apart from cameo appearances at the Lawyer X Royal Commission, Dale is on the road selling car batteries around country Victoria.
Life as a travelling salesman is better than the eight months Dale spent on remand in 2009. During that time, he claimed later, he suffered extreme stress from being held in isolation. A policeman’s lot in jail is not a happy one.
WHO KILLED LES SAMBA?
Prison can take a toll on people not used to it. The once cocky racing identity John Nikolic has looked crestfallen since his arrest on a trans-Pacific yacht cruise in mod-2018, when he and his wife and crew docked in Fiji on the way back from South America.
The fact Nikolic sailed from Colombia with a yacht loaded with drugs suggests he was desperate or deluded or both. Bravado was exposed as stupidity when Fijian authorities grabbed him as his yacht entered port. His wife Yvette was cleared but Nikolic received 23 years with a minimum 18.
Nikolic’s criminal behaviour, which included carrying pistols on his yacht, boosted whispers that he should be questioned over the death of Les Samba in inner Melbourne in early 2011.
Samba was the sort of “racing identity” Nikolic tried to be: the sort that inhabits shark-infested waters between racetrack and underworld, siphoning black money from dark side to trackside, converting cash into big numbers in betting accounts and bank accounts.
Samba — nightclub doorman turned strapper turned racehorse nobbler turned “plunge” trainer and interstate man of mystery — apparently also turned over buckets of cash without bothering banks or the Australian Taxation Office.
No surprises there, given he had worked at the Adelaide end of the shadowy empire run by the late Abe “Mr Sin” Saffron, Australia’s Meyer Lansky.
Samba was denied a permanent NSW horse trainer’s licence for years because of underworld links. One such link was Peter “The Black Prince” Farrugia, who was shot dead in Queensland in 1992 by an estate agent later acquitted on self-defence.
Samba outshone John Nikolic at every level but there were some crude similarities. Like Samba, Nikolic is a smooth talker who could turn on the charm, although his nasty streak ran close to the surface.
Samba’s reputation as a “good judge” of horses overshadowed Nikolic’s reputation as a small-time trainer who fancied himself as a race fixer. In fact, Samba’s knowledge of racehorses helped get him killed.
When someone approached him with a tempting offer of earning commission on buying $3 million worth of young horses at the Melbourne yearling sales in 2011, Samba jumped at it. He came from interstate for the sales, apparently believing a mystery Malaysian tycoon was bankrolling a buying spree. Coincidentally, Nikolic had trained horses in Malaysia.
Samba was last seen leaving the Crown Metropol Hotel on the evening of February 27. Soon afterwards, he met an unknown person outside 299 Beaconsfield Pde, Middle Park.
When a gun was produced, he ran for his life but was wounded, fell down and was shot in the head.
Police later found a spent cartridge from a second weapon, which implied he had been ambushed by more than one shooter after agreeing to meet someone.
Police had several leads to chase. One persistent story is that someone known to Samba had called him from a public telephone near St Kilda. Why anyone who carried a mobile telephone would do that is intriguing.
The truth is that Samba could easily have upset the wrong people in a lifetime of shady deals. Whether John Nikolic was one of those or not, or was simply paid to help, is a mystery wrapped in an enigma. But one thing investigators will have noted is that, in the underworld, to be owed big money can be more dangerous than to owe it.
The so far fruitless efforts to find Samba’s killers will no doubt have probed whether he was owed a fortune, or had borrowed one.
Rumours persist about the identity of the long-haired (or wig-wearing) gunman who shot Samba and ran away. But rumours aren’t evidence.
THE $1M CASE OF MISSING BUNG
Siriyakorn Siriboon will always be remembered as “Bung”, the family’s pet name for the 13-year-old who vanished while walking to school in Boronia on the morning of June 2, 2011. Bung left the family home in Elsie St around 8.30am after a breakfast of egg rice soup and headed east towards Boronia Heights College.
Three doors up, a neighbour’s dog barked as she hurried past with her schoolbag. A neighbour glanced out his window and caught sight of the teenager in her school uniform and blue raincoat.
Police believe she crossed busy Albert Ave and then turned into Harcourt Rd, as usual, close to the back entrance to the school.
Police identified 30 potential abductors and gradually eliminated them. One they could not identify was a tattooed man who had been seen driving a station wagon in the area. He remains a person of interest.
While there is every chance that an opportunist predator grabbed Bung at random, no one knows for sure except the offender.
Police have never conceded that the abduction could be anything but a random attack by a person acting alone. Any alternative must remain a faint possibility.
A painstaking police investigation has not found a link between Bung’s mother, Thai national Vanidda Pattison, and anyone who might have a grievance against her or Bung’s Australian stepfather, Fred Pattison. Fred and Vanidda and Bung’s older sister Pang have never given up hope of finding Bung alive.
In 2014, police announced a $1 million reward. In 2018, seven years after Bung’s disappearance, police turned to facial recognition technology in the hope that she was still alive and had a presence online. Bung was featured as one of 10 missing person profiles in the Invisible Friends campaign launched by the Missing Persons Advocacy Network.
The campaign uses facial recognition and auto-tagging technology through Facebook to detect the faces of missing persons in images shared online.
MIDDLE PARK MURDER COLD CASE
Whoever killed Jeanette Moss was either let into her Middle Park apartment or knew how to get in without forcing the door.
The frail grandmother was found dead on January 14, 2014, with upper-body injuries and a sheet around her neck.
Some of her jewellery was stolen, including a watch, rings and a necklace. Other pieces, worth much more, were left.
Almost six years on, police are no closer to an arrest.
All they know is that the killer must have known the security camera in the lobby of the Miami Towers apartment building in Beaconsfield Pde didn’t work. If not, the killer was hugely lucky to fluke a building with a useless camera.
Everyone who lived in the building’s 36 apartments knew the camera was dead and it is a fair bet they weren’t the only ones.
The camera was out of action so long that tradesmen, cleaners, furniture removalists, estate agents and maintenance workers could have known about it.
The camera and an antiquated master key system were fixed after the murder but too late to help “Jenny” Moss.
It was possible that anyone who had lived or worked in the building had copies of the master key.
But a “visitor” with a plausible manner wouldn’t need a key if he or she had ingratiated themselves with a friendly and trusting woman preparing her apartment for her upcoming 70th birthday.
Mrs Moss had wanted a crack in the wall plastered over and painted.
She had already had sofas cleaned ready for when her daughter Tara arrived from London for the big day.
All that’s known is that whoever killed her did not force entry — or leave fingerprints.
The police’s first job is to eliminate the victim’s nearest and dearest. In this case, that was her adult son, a businessman of impeccable character, then his wife and cousins.
It wasn’t like the Wales-King “society murders” of 2002, although there are coincidental links.
Both Jenny Moss and Margaret Wales-King were described as “socialites”, both were 69 when they died, and Mrs Moss knew Margaret Wales-King’s sister Di Yeldham.
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Another routine line of inquiry ended when police confirmed that Mrs Moss — struggling with terminal illness — had no romantic attachments that could have soured.
The toughest challenge for investigators is to find a random predator with no connection to the victim.
Without specific surveillance footage or a suspect known for “similar fact” offences, they need a tip-off. The trouble is they often get too many dead-end leads.
In this case they had to eliminate a “weirdo” conman who befriended and preyed on elderly women, borrowing money and stealing clothes from them.
The best lead is still to trace the missing jewellery. Of a handful of items, two stand out. One is a Ferguson family ring, the other a gold and diamond necklace.