Sorry end for gangland father George Williams renowned for playing dumb
GEORGE Williams always had a sharp eye for easy money, a trait that would enrich his family — then destroy it, writes Andrew Rule.
Law & Order
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GEORGE Williams always had a sharp eye for easy money — but only the one.
His other eye was glass, something he had in common with another notorious one-eyed parent, Kath “Granny Evil” Pettingill, whose violent brood of sons made George’s baby-faced son, Carl, seem gentle.
While Pettingill’s murderous family raised hell around Richmond, and the Morans were criminal royalty of the inner northwest, George and Barbara Williams and their sons, Shane and Carl, were nobodies until the 1990s drug boom.
George came from a poor but dishonest family in Richmond, nursery for many a crook until gentrification took hold.
Young George became a pool hustler and petty crook. He lost his eye in a pub brawl but among the violent men in his circles he was seen as the peaceful type.
Like many other battlers in the 1950s, George’s parents got “temporary” shelter in old army huts at Camp Pell in Royal Park.
People called it “Camp Hell”. The camp had success stories such as the budding billionaire Kerry Stokes, Melbourne Cup jockey Harry White and Supreme Court judge Frank Vincent, but it was a place where visiting tradesmen and delivery vans came in pairs — one to drive, one “riding shotgun” to keep thieves away.
George Williams met Barbara Denman there. They produced two sons and bought a house in Broadmeadows, although they didn’t live happily ever after.
A family friend recalls George as “pretty harmless” and a “mug punter always looking for a tip”.
“To tell the truth,” says the friend, who played street cricket with Carl and Shane, “I was more frightened of Barbara!”
George was happy to take the “easy money” path that would enrich his family — then destroy it.
The older son, Shane, would die of a drug overdose in 1997. That left the chubby Carl, still unknown but already starting out in the “party pills” racket.
By 1999, Carl was making obscene amounts of cash — and his father was along for the ride. In fact, police believe that behind the scenes George had more influence over the “business” than he let on. It suited him to play dumb.
George adopted the casual streetwear of his son’s generation, but underneath the expensive T-shirts, tracksuits and gold chains he came across more as an old-fashioned Aussie “knockabout” than a slick career criminal. It wasn’t altogether a disguise.
George was the sort of bloke you used to see at the races or propping up a bar in a favourite pub of the type that has a TAB outlet, cold beer and “hot” gear being sold in the carpark.
There were underworld casualties before 1999, but it is crime folklore that the gangland war started in earnest on October 13, 1999, when Jason Moran shot Carl in the stomach with a .22 handgun in Gladstone Park.
Moran and his older half-brother, Mark Moran, were meeting Williams to “talk shop” — their competing interests in the amphetamines trade. What happened next has been played by actors in television drama series and discussed endlessly.
One fact stands out: if Moran had shot Williams in the head instead of the belly, it would have prevented the vicious vendetta that killed so many.
Williams got back to his parents’ house that afternoon but ignored the cake his mother had made for his 29th birthday. He went into his bedroom and called for his father to tell him he’d been shot.
The bullet did not harm any vital organs and was removed safely. Police took possession of it — and took statements in which Carl swore he could not remember who had shot him. His memory would “recover” later, when he was in jail over drug charges, and recruited a hitman to hunt the Morans.
As for the connection between father and son, it was strong enough that they were arrested together just six weeks after the shooting.
Police had gone to an apparently empty address in Broadmeadows to deliver a summons. They left but noticed later that vehicles had turned up there.
When they investigated they found a pill press thumping out a huge batch of the amphetamine pills that Carl sold wholesale for $8 each.
The police found more than 25,000 pills and 7kg of amphetamines with a street value of millions. They also found Carl hiding in a bed with his shoes on. In another room they found George trying to hide. It was George, not Carl, who was armed — with a loaded Glock semiautomatic pistol.
He might have looked like a “mug punter” but the old pool hustler was willing to “tool up” to protect Carl from the risk of other crooks doing a “run through”.
In the end, Carl would be convicted over four gangland murders and conspiracy for a fifth. It’s hard to say whether George had prior knowledge of any or all of them. But police are certain he was involved in the hit on Nik “the Bulgarian” Radev in Coburg in early 2003.
The Radev killing produced no arrests but one memorable quote from the late Mark “Chopper” Read, who said of the Bulgarian: “His attitude to personal accounting has always been cavalier.”
The accounting motive was not enough to link George to the killing but the fact his Vectra sedan was spotted suspiciously close to where Radev was shot suggested he was up to his armpits in it.
When not committing crimes, George used a silver Mercedes often parked behind the Supreme Court near the rooms of his favourite lawyer, the enigmatic Zarah Garde-Wilson, well known for her courtroom attire and her pet snake.
Garde-Wilson was dubbed “the hyphen with the python” but George was more a snake in the grass. He was careful to distance himself from his son’s excesses but detectives believe he was a silent partner in the drug trade.
Unlike Carl, described by a jockey friend as “Caligula on cocaine”, George lived quietly for years in the family’s brick veneer house in “Broady” with its fake wood panelling, no flash furnishings and country music CDs.
“For all the money he made, he never spent it,” one police officer says.
“Might be a lot of holes being dug up.”
Police believe George and Carl’s warm father-son relationship rested on joint criminal enterprises — including Radev’s murder.
“They were partners in crime. He knew the extent of what Carl was up to.”
For someone so well connected, whenever George was questioned he seemed strangely “out of the loop”.
“He was always polite,” says the police source.
“He never jacked anyone up, but he was remarkable for the fact that he knew so little.”
When the Herald Sun came calling after the murder of Jason Moran in 2003, George seemed befuddled about who was responsible.
Yet an astonishing selection of mobile phones in front of him indicated he liked to stay in touch with the outside world.
Like those other wise old criminals in the rival faction, Graham Kinniburgh and Lewis Moran, he liked to stay out of sight. Unlike them, he died of natural causes.
But his sons didn’t.
