Jailhouse confession in gangland killing of drug dealer Wayne Boyd
EXCLUSIVE: A STUNNING jailhouse confession has been made to the first murder in Victoria’s gangland war.
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A STUNNING jailhouse confession has been made to the first murder in Victoria’s gangland war.
Wayne Boyd’s execution — known as the “bowling ball murder” — occurred at the height of the Moran family’s dominance of the illicit drug trade and before the emergence of Carl Williams in 2001.
But after a failed prosecution, it has now emerged the alleged killer, Kevin Farrugia, told a jail snitch he gunned down the drug dealer.
A Sunday Herald Sun investigation reveals:
BOYD’S widow has spoken for the first time, saying justice over the father of two’s death has been largely ignored;
A KEY witness in the Boyd case says he is disillusioned with how it was handled by police;
THE transcript of a secret hearing from 2008 that looked into the murder, and;
SECRETIVE underworld drug lord Frank Cardona, who is suspected of ordering the Boyd hit, refused to confess to police who visited him on his deathbed in jail.
Boyd’s body was found dumped on Melbourne’s western fringe with the back of his head blown off in 2001.
While giving evidence in the Supreme Court over the murder of Graham “Munster” Kinniburgh, a key witness named Farrugia as Boyd’s killer when explaining the help he had given authorities in exchange for a reduced sentence.
“(The statement) relates to the murder of Wayne Boyd by Kevin Farrugia,” Witness A, a paid hitman, told the jury.
Witness A claims Farrugia confessed to the murder in prison. “Kevin said that he did exactly to Boyd what he had done to Hamilton except that Hamilton had escaped and Boyd didn’t,” Witness A told police. “His head exploded and blood poured out of his head like a tap.”
Farrugia was charged with the murder of Boyd, but the case fell over more than a decade ago when Justice John Dixon ruled the evidence of Scott Hamilton, another drug dealer who was kidnapped by Farrugia, could not be used in the trial.
Now Boyd’s widow, Shelley, has broken her silence, saying: “My children deserved a father. When Farrugia was charged, I eventually thought now is time I can face his killer.
“He (Boyd) was a good man who worked all his life. I mean, he was led astray, but good anyway. I just wanted to see the man who shot him jailed. Everybody — me, the police, everybody — knows who did it.”
It took Ms Boyd years to forgive her husband. After his death, she tried to distance herself from him — she had two children to raise.
“Look, Wayne was a pot dealer who sold to a network up here (Queensland), but he kept a lot of things to himself. I thought he was going down to Melbourne with my father to sell some ivory,” Ms Boyd said last week. She now accepts her husband was involved in large-scale drug manufacturing.
Boyd was last seen alive leaving the Westend Hotel in Sunshine just before midnight on November 8, 2001, with a man Ms Boyd’s father identified as Farrugia.
Ms Boyd is also not convinced her husband was killed by just one person. “The police told me they found his phone with a woman who later died from a hot shot ... I’ve heard a woman may have been present when he was shot.”
Victoria Police said it could not respond in time to questions.
Victim accuses lawyer
PADRAIC MURPHY
SCOTT Hamilton has accused a high-profile lawyer of asking him to sign a false statement so charges against his kidnappers would be dropped.
According to confidential documents obtained by the Sunday Herald Sun, Hamilton made the allegation — which amounts to a serious attack on the integrity of the justice system — in a compulsory examination by the Office of the Chief Examiner in 2008 as it gathered evidence about Wayne Boyd’s murder.
Hamilton was quizzed about the kidnapping in which he was beaten unconscious and robbed of $180,000.
Kevin Farrugia, Christian De Bono and Matthew Silk were eventually charged, and each faced jail terms.
Hamilton told the hearing he was contacted by a secretive drug lord named Frank Cardona who said he could recover the money if he gave a statement exonerating the trio.
“It was Frank’s suggestion that if you go in and see (the lawyer) and say ... they were only mucking around ... make a statement and whatever and you’ll get your money back,” Hamilton said.
He told the OCE the lawyer took notes before asking him to sign the dodgy statement. “(The lawyer) goes ‘here, just sign there’. I go, ‘sign what? ... where’s my money?’ He goes, ‘what money?’ ... He’s not a lawyer I want to have ... He was ... trying to pervert the course of justice.”
When the trio were sentenced, the judge said the defence had put forward material “that the victim has recently conveyed to Farrugia’s solicitor that he has ‘got on with his life’, is suffering no ill-effects and bears no ill-will towards ... Farrugia”. Hamilton this week denied ever saying that to Farrugia’s lawyers.
“Look, I was willing to sign the false statement to get my $180,000 back. But I hate those guys. If I ever saw them, I’d kill them. I spent years recovering. I’m not sure I still have.”
The OCE, which asked Hamilton to produce a copy of the statement, is believed to have dropped the matter after he failed to find it.
Munster murder verdict appeal
PADRAIC MURPHY
CAREER crim Stephen John Asling is to appeal against his conviction for the 2003 murder of Graham “Munster” Kinniburgh.
Asling, 56, faces the prospect of dying in jail after being found guilty last month of executing Kinniburgh outside his Kew home on the orders of Carl Williams.
But the Sunday Herald Sun has confirmed lawyers for Asling will soon lodge an appeal, arguing the jury’s verdict may have been tainted by “accumulated prejudice”.
A key plank of the appeal will be trial evidence that Asling was in jail — therefore alerting the jury that he is a crim — when he confessed to a cellmate he was behind the killing while pointing to a true crime book in which he was named as a suspect in the murder.
“He goes, ‘I did this but they have no proof because I’m the best sneako’,” the cellmate told the jury.
The man has a long criminal history dating back to 1985, and has convictions for drug trafficking, deception and handling proceeds of crime.
In exchange for his evidence, the man had a life sentence reduced to six years and six months for trafficking cocaine and ecstasy.
But Asling’s defence team, led by Michael O’Connell, SC, destroyed the witness after revealing the book he claimed Asling was pointing to had not been published at the time.
Asling’s lawyers will argue the guilty verdict is unsafe because the jury was aware of his criminal past because of the discredited jailhouse confession.
An accused criminal’s past is usually withheld to ensure a fair trial.
The appeal is also expected to argue media coverage may have also unfairly influenced the jury.
Cops knew of crim’s kidnapping
UNDERWORLD bit-player Scott “Oz” Hamilton must be the luckiest crim on the planet — but he is still angry with police.
A drug dealer “loyal to the Morans”, Hamilton was kidnapped on February 13, 2002, by Kevin Farrugia, Christian De Bono and Matthew Silk just three months after Wayne Boyd’s murder.
Hamilton told police he was wrongly accused of being a snitch, but detectives believe the trio were playing out a sequel to the Boyd murder. And this time, police were listening in.
Hamilton was taken to Farrugia’s unit in West Footscray where he was robbed of $180,000 — most of which belonged to the Morans and was meant to be for a drug purchase.
He was beaten, pistol-whipped and Tasered for six hours until he was unconscious, then bundled into Farrugia’s car boot and driven to a secluded area where he was convinced he was to be executed.
What Hamilton didn’t know was that detectives had Farrugia under surveillance for the Boyd murder. Police from Operation Bronco were listening to the kidnapping.
But to this day, he believes police would not have intervened had he not managed to pop the boot and escape the car on to a busy street.
“They knew I’d been beaten and was in the boot. What kind of law enforcement agency allows that to happen? I’m talking to you now because the boot popped open while Kevin was on the phone,” he said this week.
Hamilton was a drug dealer and foot soldier for the Morans back in the early 2000s.
He told a secretive hearing in 2008 the family did business only in parks and public places, and “never put their hands on any money”.
Hamilton said he dealt mainly with Mark Moran until his death and then Lewis. “Never really spoke to Jason,” he told the hearing. “Jason was sort of like ... he wasn’t my cup of tea, he was too gangster-ish. He wasn’t a gentleman. Mark was a gentleman.”
The dealer said after the money rip-off, he was left to explain to the Morans about the missing money. “At first, they sort of was a bit dirty but then, like I explained ... it was just a flying rip,” he said.
“They never broke my balls about it, like, they never broke my balls because, I don’t know, I’d done things for them in the past.
“The main reason they were told is for protection, to make sure that they protect me. These dickheads are trying to kill me. So the money was irrelevant to them, and to me.”
He said he hadn’t seen his kidnappers since and believed drug lord Frank Cardona had died of cancer.
The now middle-aged father never complained officially but he did tell the Office of Chief Examiner about his concerns during a compulsory examination in 2008.
“The homicide squad … wanted me dead, they wanted to catch them red-handed killing me … They were there within two seconds of me getting out of the boot,” Hamilton told the secret hearing.
Silk, Farrugia and De Bono pleaded guilty to Hamilton’s kidnapping in March 2003, with phone intercept material proving crucial in the case.
