Judy Moran - a sad old hag with a tragic past, writes Andrew Rule

BY the time Judith Moran got to court yesterday, it was all over bar the betting on her sentence.

Judy Moran

BY the time Judith Moran got to court yesterday, it was all over bar the betting on her sentence.

That, and jokes that were as black as the sky outside.

In the end, the sentence was bigger than her dress size -- not good news for a large woman who is 66 and battling health problems.

By giving her the same jail term as he had earlier handed the trigger man, Geoffrey "Nuts" Armour (26 years with a minimum 21), Judge Lex Lasry made it clear there were no excuses for a greedy granny who has shown no remorse for paying to get her brother-in-law killed. And who still denies it.

Of all the points the judge made, one stands out. After listing the violent deaths of her two sons and two husbands, he said stonily that despite the toll of those four murders on her, she, too, had turned to murder.

If this had any effect on Moran, it didn't show.

When the judge ended his sentencing remarks, she clung to the script she's followed all the way. "You're wrong, sir. I am innocent," she piped in a plaintive voice from her seat at the back of the court.

Once, it might have sounded defiant. Now it was pathetic. Not that anyone took much notice.

She shuffled sideways along the seat, swung herself on to her electric scooter, and rolled towards the door.

She faked a tight smile to someone she knew in the back row and exchanged a couple of words. Then she was gone, heading for the jail where she will probably die before she's eligible for parole in 21 years.

For a woman who has primped and preened her appearance all her life, she looked what she was: a sad old hag with a tragic past.

Her hair, once showgirl blonde and glossy, was as frizzy as the horsehair wig her barrister wore.

The face that has boasted truckloads of make-up -- most of it stolen, like her clothes -- was pale and blotchy. Instead of the boutique gear she wore to her family's gangland funerals, she had on a crocheted poncho as shapeless as its owner.

This is how it ends for the Carlton schoolgirl who left the classroom at 12 to be a factory machinist.

The teenager who went to work at the Myer department store at 16 and later learned to be a semi-professional dancer.

The young woman who could have seized the chance to make an honest living but who chose the "live fast, die young" motto that would see her first husband and her two sons do exactly that.

Judy Moran

If there is one lesson to be learned from Judith Moran's life story, it is this: the fact that someone does not have a long criminal record does not mean they are not criminals.

Moran had never had a conviction bar a minor driving offence before being found guilty of murder this year. But anyone who knew her 40 years ago knew she was the main reason her late father Leo Brooks was one of the best-known "receivers" of stolen goods in inner Melbourne.

She and others would steal clothes and goods from Myer and elsewhere and take them to Brooks' Carlton terrace house. Every Wednesday night buyers would turn up to inspect the latest hot gear.

Leo Brooks was a renowned insider at Carlton Football Club. Some players from the country and interstate boarded with him. The wise ones knew to avoid the dodgy deals in what they called "Leo's Emporium" but not all footballers are wise.

ONCE, at a well-known Carlton player's wedding, the unhappy couple received several identical sets of steak knives from different teammates.

Knowing exactly where they had come from, the angry groom turned up at Leo Brooks' house, demanding to exchange the steak knives. History does not record whether he got some different stolen property to take home.

On another occasion, Leo Brooks offered a respected premiership player's respectable mother a bargain deal on a silver tea service. After a quiet word of warning from her embarrassed son, the horrified mother knocked back the bargain.

But if Leo Brooks was a rogue, his daughter was worse. Hooked up at 18 with Les "Johnny" Cole, a known gunman, Judy took to the life of a gangster's moll. Cole stayed around enough to father Judy's first son, Mark, before being shot dead in Sydney.

Judith had already moved in with another violent career criminal, Lewis Moran, who had graduated from pickpocketing and standover to wholesale and retail drug dealing to subsidise his punting.

Lewis fathered Jason Moran, who went on to be educated at Essendon Grammar but ignored the opportunity to pursue any legitimate career. Jason carried a gun before he had a driver's licence and was feared for his temper -- and the fact his father and big half-brother Mark would back him up.

Judith Moran brought up her boys on the lavish proceeds of her husband's drug dealing and whatever other criminal rorts came his way at the bar of his favourite pub, the Laurel in Ascot Vale.

A more prudent woman might have steered her sons away from the crime scene that paid for their education, but crooks are not prudent.

The blowsy ex-hoofer and shoplifter started to believe the Moran name had a "power" that was hers to abuse. She used her boys like attack dogs to monster anyone who crossed her.

Older and wiser crooks did not pull the Moran boys into line out of respect for their father (and his connections) and so both mother and sons developed the sort of delusions that would lead the boys to their deaths. But even those terrible personal tragedies did not stop Judy.

Instead of keeping her head down, she signed a contract with celebrity agent Harry M. Miller to write a book and tried to keep up the high life.

Lewis Moran had never legally married her, and they separated in the 1990s. But he allowed her to keep up the gangster wife illusion by paying her several thousand dollars a month.

AFTER Lewis was shot dead at the Brunswick Club in 2004 she had to get her allowance from Lewis's quieter and less violent brother Des, "Tuppence".

They never liked each other much but bachelor "Tuppence" paid the noisy woman $4000 a month mainly to keep her from complaining. But he grew tired of the arrangement and, some say, had an ugly argument with her that ended in blows.

Judith wanted to believe that Des had access to a fortune in black money "stooked" away by Lewis before his death.

If there was a secret stash of cash, Des showed no sign of knowing where it was, keeping to his routine of beer and counter meals in the Flemington Tabaret.

But that did not stop Judy from embarking on a mad plan fuelled by a muddled mix of greed, spite and revenge.

Spooked by rumours Des was changing his will to cut out her grandchildren, by early 2009 she had persuaded herself murder was a short cut to his estate.

What happened next has been aired during the trial and was summarised yesterday by Judge Lasry. It is a lesson in how not to plan a murder. First she mortgaged her house to buy new cars for the well-named "Nuts" Armour and his wife, Suzanne Kane, after telling people she was financing an overseas holiday. This implied she had financial "great expectations" for no known reason.

After someone tried unsuccessfully to shoot Des Moran on March 17 that year, police grew suspicious -- but Judy kept talking on phones in ways that might have made any listeners even more suspicious.

When Des Moran was shot dead on June 15, she drove a getaway car back to her own house and left it in the garage, which was where police saw it when they interviewed her.

She also told provable lies about her whereabouts. This might explain why the police were watching when she dumped the car and some clothing that night.

Best of all, the murder weapon was found in her house. All the police needed to do was get an accomplice to "roll over" and the case was watertight.

When the cell door closed behind her last night, it was the end of the Moran saga. Every adult male Moran is dead, and now the woman who revelled in being the family matriarch might as well be. She has five grandchildren, all fatherless, each a witness to horrific crimes. They carry the Moran name -- but they are estranged from the woman that gave it to them.

- Andrew Rule is associate editor and co-author of the Underbelly books