Mafia bosses who ordered death of Donald Mackay still free 40 years on
POLICE are still hopeful of charging the Calabrian mafia bosses who ordered the 1977 execution of Griffith anti-drug campaigner Donald Mackay 40 years on.
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IT is 40 years on July 15 since Australia’s first political assassination shocked the nation.
The victim was Liberal Party candidate Donald Mackay and the execution was organised by the Calabrian mafia’s powerful Griffith cell in New South Wales.
Although the Victorian hitman who pulled the trigger was convicted and jailed, the Mafioso who ordered Mr Mackay’s death have never been charged.
Mr Mackay, a Griffith businessman, was murdered in 1977 for no other reason than he had become a thorn in the side of the Italian organised crime gang.
He and wife Barbara had begun a public campaign against the booming marijuana trade in the NSW Riverina district.
Mr Mackay, 43, president of the Liberal Party’s Griffith branch, let it be known he was interested in locating rumoured marijuana plantations near the town.
That led to his tipping off the Sydney drug squad about a huge crop worth millions of dollars.
During the trial of those charged, defence lawyers obtained diaries and notebooks of the investigating police, one of which identified Mr Mackay as the man who had given police the information about the crop.
A May 1977 meeting of Calabrian mafia bosses in Griffith decided Mr Mackay had to go.
Robert Trimbole, who was at that meeting, was nominated to arrange the assassination of Mr Mackay.
A mere two months later, the hitman struck.
On July 15, Mr Mackay parked a company mini-van in the Griffith Hotel carpark about 5.45pm.
As he approached the bar a friend, Lionel Burns, shouted, “Get right up the marijuana bastards, Don!”
Mackay replied: “There’s only one I’m after.”
Another friend, Dr Gerald Fitzgerald, joined them and they discussed the non-prosecution of a member of the Sergi family.
Mr Mackay left the bar about 6.30pm and walked to the hotel bottle shop, where he bought a cask of Orlando Coolabah riesling.
In the quiet carpark, as Mr Mackay bent to open the car door, the killer struck.
One of at least three bullets fired from a .22 gun sheared hairs from Mr Mackay’s head.
Evidence suggests he was approached from behind, shot, caught as he started to fall to the ground and heaved into the boot of a nearby parked car.
It was all over in seconds. No witnesses have ever come forward to say they saw the shooting.
But accountant Roy Binks, whose office had a common wall with the parking area, probably heard Mr Mackay being murdered.
Around 6.30pm he heard “a human’s voice, similar to someone being sick or vomiting and similar to a groan”. He heard the noise twice, separated by a two or three second gap. He also heard three noises “similar to the cracking of a whip” about the same time.
Mrs Mackay soon became concerned. Her husband had promised to be home by 7pm and he was always punctual. She made some phone calls before asking family friend and solicitor Ian
Salmon to help look for him. About 1am, Mr Salmon found Mr Mackay’s mini-van.
“There was blood sprayed, like someone had got a fly spray full of blood and they just pressure-packed that blood all over the place,” he said.
“There were pools of blood and there was blood against the wall, which was right up against the front of the vehicle. There was blood on the tyres and there were scuffle marks on the ground and there were bullet shells on the ground,” he said.
“It was a very cold night.
“I saw an imprint, a hand imprint, on the driver’s side window immediately above the door, just above the keyhole, and it was a right-hand imprint. And it looked to me like someone had leant very heavily against that window, so disturbing the dirt ... This accorded, in my view, with Don opening the door.”
Police were notified. A search found the keys on the ground, directly below the keyhole of the driver’s door and about 30cm under the van. One of three spent .22 cartridges found had blood, tissue and hair on it, later identified as Mr Mackay’s.
The identity of the triggerman remained unknown for more than five years.
It was revealed only when one of those involved in arranging the murder tried to get himself off serious drug charges by turning on the Calabrian mafia.
That man was Gianfranco Tizzoni — and the hitman was Melbourne painter and docker James Bazley.
Both were convicted of conspiracy to murder over the Mackay assassination.
Mr Mackay’s son, Paul, told the Herald Sun in 2009 the mafia bosses who ordered his father’s death had got away with murder.
Griffith winery owner Tony Sergi was named in the 1979 Woodward Royal Commission report as being a prominent member of the Calabrian mafia cell that organised the Mackay assassination.
The report said Trimbole and Sergi were “bosses” of the crime gang and both were involved in marijuana growing and distribution.
“I lay the blame for Mr Mackay’s disappearance and undoubted death at the doors of that organisation,” Justice Philip Woodward said in his report.
Mr Sergi has not been charged with the murder and has told the Herald Sun he was not involved.
“I’m innocent. Why does my name keep coming up? I didn’t even know Mackay,” he said.
The many twists and turns following the 1977 murder of Donald Mackay have kept it in the news for four decades.
Police received new information in late 2011 about where his body might be, which prompted detectives to have a fresh look at the case.
An announcement by the NSW Government in July 2012 that it was offering a $200,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of his remains brought in yet more new leads.
Residents wondered why there was suddenly a massive police presence at a vegetable farm just west of Hay in NSW on the morning of June 12, 2013.
It soon became clear from media reports that police armed with search warrants and earthmoving equipment were searching the property after an anonymous tip-off that Donald Mackay’s body had been dumped there.
A Hay local, who asked not to be identified, told me within hours of the search starting that the man who owned the land at the time Mr Mackay disappeared had died about 15 years earlier.
He said police had warned the current owner — who was not a suspect — that they might be there for at least five days as the area they were concentrating on included a dam and a well that needed to be searched.
I contacted the now free hitman James Bazley, who had served his time over the Mackay murder, by telephone in June 2013 at his Melbourne home to alert him to the search and to try to get comment from him on it. He hung up within seconds.
All the then 88-year-old convicted contract killer said before hanging up was that he was innocent and that he hoped the new search for Mr Mackay’s body was successful as it could help clear his name.
Bazley’s lawyer, Bob Galbally, told me in 2013 there was more Bazley would like to say about his claimed innocence, but the conditions of his parole prevented him from doing so.
“He continues to be on parole for the rest of his life and it is a condition of his parole that he not give interviews to the media,” Mr Galbally said.
It ended up being 15 days before the searchers at Hay gave up without having found any trace of Mr Mackay’s body.
It wasn’t the first time the Mackay family had had their hopes raised that the body might be found; only to have those hopes dashed.
Three of Mr Mackay’s children, Ruth, Mary and James, emailed me a statement as the Hay search wound down.
“We are very grateful to the members of the dedicated search team who have been searching for the body of our father Don Mackay for the past two weeks near Hay,” they said.
“Our fervent hope was that we may have been able to finally know where our father’s remains were and that 36 years on, we could have given Dad a dignified burial. Sadly, that was not to be. We are particularly grateful to all the members of the NSW Police Griffith Area Local Command, who let our family know before the search was about to begin and ensured we were aware of progress.
“We would also like to pay tribute to the many officers of the NSW Police, Victoria Police and Australian Federal Police, along with investigators from the Australian Crime Commission (and its predecessor, the National Crime Authority) who have never given up on trying to resolve this case over three and a half decades.
“Although media attention can at times be upsetting, we are also grateful to those professional journalists who have tirelessly reported the story of Dad’s murder throughout their careers, continually bringing it to the public’s attention.”
The failed search didn’t end the new Mackay murder investigation.
I revealed in the Melbourne Herald Sun in 2014 that Griffith detectives had made a secretive visit to Victoria to chase up new leads in the Mackay murder.
The new information that prompted the then Supt Mick Rowan and Det Insp Paul Smith to come to Victoria to investigate was provided after the failed dig to find Mr Mackay’s body in Hay in 2013. Media publicity about the search led to new information being provided to police.
Victoria Police Det-Insp Ken Ashworth confirmed to me in May 2014 that the Purana anti-gang taskforce was assisting Griffith detectives with information relating to underworld identities suspected of having knowledge of, or involvement in, the Mackay murder.
He said he provided the Griffith detectives with access to documents — and other material Victoria Police had — on the high-profile killing of Mr Mackay.
The new information given to Griffith detectives in 2014 strongly suggested Melbourne-based criminal Gianfranco Tizzoni was with Bazley, the hitman hired to murder Mr Mackay, when Mr Mackay was shot dead.
The Griffith detectives believe Tizzoni and Bazley put a lot of work into planning to murder Mr Mackay near Jerilderie, NSW, on July 12, 1977.
Mr Mackay had been tricked into meeting Bazley, who was posing as a potential buyer of furniture from Mr Mackay’s shop, at Jerilderie that day, but ended up not going due to having to unexpectedly attend a funeral.
It is likely Tizzoni and Bazley had planned the Jerilderie hit in such a way they were unlikely to be seen or heard.
A number of high-profile Calabrian mafia identities — who each would have been prime suspects — had particularly strong alibis that took them away from Griffith on the day of the planned Jerilderie murder of Mr Mackay.
The Griffith detectives believe the actual hit three days later on July 15, 1977, was rushed and ill-planned because Tizzoni and Bazley were ordered by the Calabrian mafia bosses to do it quickly while their alibis were still strong and available to them.
That meant shooting Mr Mackay in a pub car park in Griffith about 6.30 on a Friday night. Shells left behind were later linked to a gun owned by Bazley.
One of the three .22 spent cartridges found at the murder scene had blood, tissue and hair on it, later identified as coming from Mr Mackay.
Mr Mackay was a big man. Shooting him dead in a busy pub car park and then presumably lifting his body into a car boot without anyone seeing would be incredibly difficult for one man.
Tizzoni is the most likely person to have helped Bazley at the murder scene.
“I have reviewed the full NSW brief of evidence, and also material held by Victoria Police, and it is my view that it was highly likely to have been two people involved,” Supt Rowan told me in 2014.
“I wouldn’t discount that Tizzoni was at Jerilderie and it may well be he was at Griffith.”
The Griffith detectives paid Bazley a visit at his Melbourne home in 2014. Bazley refused to open the door and shouted to the detectives through it that they should speak to his solicitor.
“We approached Mr Bazley, who was not willing to discuss the matter further with NSW or Victoria Police,” Insp Smith said then.
“He made it very clear he didn’t want to talk to police, both in person and through his lawyer.”
Supt Rowan told me in 2014 that while the new probe into the Mackay killing was primarily to find the body, he was not ruling out one day laying murder charges over the Mackay murder.
“If you found a body you may also find other things that could certainly be cause for further investigation,” he said.
“The investigative techniques and so forth have advanced so far over the intervening period that you would never say never.”
Supt Rowan said the continuing investigation into the Mackay murder by Griffith detectives was launched in late 2011 after they received information anonymously which eventually led to the failed search for Mr Mackay’s body in Hay in 2013.
“We got a letter that was written to us at Griffith Police that outlined to us that the remains of Donald Mackay could be found on a property in Hay,” he told me.
“Effectively it was very broad information that was sent to us, but over a period of 18 months we tried everything we could to knock it out and in the end we couldn’t knock it out.
“We were able to corroborate, from the information that was in the letter, we were able to get it to a point where we were able to corroborate aspects of it.
“We put the available information before a coroner and the coroner granted us an order to go and dig up the property. It had to be done. The information was sound to a point that you couldn’t walk away from it and not dig it up.”
While there was no evidence the property searched in Hay ever had any connection to the Calabrian mafia figures suspected of ordering the Mackay murder, detectives were able to establish strong ties between some of them and Hay.
Supt Rowan said Griffith detectives were determined to find Mr Mackay’s body, both for the Mackay family and in the hope doing so might also provide more clues that could possibly lead to charges.
He said that with the passage of time it was unlikely more charges would ever be laid over the Mackay murder, but doing so couldn’t be discounted.
“Finding the body is something that is very close to police in Griffith and they will continue to pursue any credible information that comes in,” he said.
Tizzoni, who died of natural causes in 1988, gave evidence that he helped Trimbole organise the hit after Trimbole’s Calabrian mafia bosses ordered him to get rid of Mackay.
It is possible that if Mr Mackay’s body is found then charges against those mafia figures could follow.
Penguin is this month releasing an updated version of Keith Moor’s book on the Donald Mackay murder, Crims in Grass Castles, to coincide with the 40th anniversary of his execution.