The inside story behind the first shot in the gangland war that claimed more than 30 lives

Multimedia, book excerpt: WHEN Carl Williams met Mark Moran, he got more than he bargained for, writes Adam Shand in his new book.

Carl Williams

WHEN Carl Williams went to meet Mark Moran, he got more than he bargained for. A couple of hours later, he arrived at his parents' house for dinner and his mother's traditional chocolate cake to celebrate his 29th birthday - with a bullet in his stomach and revenge on his mind. In a new book, ADAM SHAND, tells the story.

ON THE morning of October 13, 1999, Barb Williams made a chocolate cake for Carl's 29th birthday, just as she had every birthday for the kids since they were babies.

She was only making one cake a year these days. Since her other son, Shane, had died, birthdays were all the more special, so this time she put extra effort into getting Carl's cake just as he liked it. It was the last one she would ever make.

Life was changing rapidly. Carl was a huge success in Barb's eyes. She didn't like to dwell on how he made his money, but she certainly enjoyed its benefits.

Carl and his father, George, were building a townhouse for her in Essendon that she would soon move into. She would have her freedom at last. She had stayed in the marriage because she had to, but she and George were living together like brother and sister.

Since Shane's death, Barb had found it harder and harder to pretend. The townhouse was modest, but it was going to be all Barb's, a sanctuary.

Carl may have been running a pill press in the family garage, but he always respected his parents. Barb couldn't remember more than three occasions in 29 years when her beautiful boy had answered her back.

They loved a laugh together or a chat over Carl's favourite homemade dish: baked beans, eggs and chips.

As she iced the cake, she was looking forward to Carl coming home early that morning. But Carl was late and he hadn't called.

When Carl eventually did arrive home at midday, he was pale and drawn. He barely looked at his cake and hurried past to the bedroom she still kept for him. Barb was disappointed; she had been looking forward to lighting the candles.

"What's wrong with you?" she asked, following him to the bedroom.

"Nothing. Just going to have a lie-down," said Carl, closing the door behind him. A few minutes later Carl called out to his father to come in and have a quick chat. He still didn't want Mum, just Dad.

Gallery: Carl Williams' life of crime

Full ombudsman's report into Carl's death

What Carl told the cops about evil hitman

Jason Moran and the smoking gun

Since Shane's death, George had become much closer to his second son. Barb was now getting the message that this would be no ordinary birthday.

When she was finally allowed into Carl's room, she saw George examining a small hole in the left side of Carl's abdomen: a gunshot wound.

Carl wondered whether he could just do nothing. He didn't feel too bad. Maybe they could just forget about it and let the wound heal.

Barb was sent to a doctor to ask a hypothetical question: what if someone, no one in particular of course, had a bullet in him? If he was feeling OK, could he just leave it and get on with life?

Crooks learn that if you can staunch the bleeding from a gunshot wound, surgery is not always necessary.

Especially if the bullet goes right through you, without hitting any major pieces of anatomy. However, a .22 slug, as this was, tends to ricochet around inside, destroying soft tissue and organs until it stops deep inside the body. Infection was the biggest worry for Carl.

The GP recommended a trip to hospital and almost five hours after the shooting, Carl reluctantly agreed. The bullet had hit a layer of fat and muscle and travelled straight downwards, lodging inside Carl's pelvis behind his genitals.

The surgery was straightforward but for the large, ugly incision they made to get at the bullet. Carl wanted to keep the bullet to put in a frame behind the bar with his Muhammad Ali gloves and Scarface portraits, but when he came to after the operation, he was disappointed to learn that the cops had taken his souvenir away as evidence.

When police interviewed Carl, he stuck to a simple, if implausible, story. He had been walking along the road and out of the blue he had been knocked out by somebody he hadn't seen.

When he woke up, he'd found a hole in his guts. He had no idea how it had happened or who had done it. End of interview.

But the police quickly worked out the story. In the hours after the incident, the Moran brothers had been picked up on listening devices bragging that they had taught the fat boy a lesson he wouldn't forget in a hurry.

The Morans had also dispatched a friend, Lee Pascu, to the hospital to ensure that Carl wasn't talking to the jacks. Carl knew what this meant. If he gave evidence against the Morans, he and his family were in mortal danger.

Later, Jason Moran followed up with a menacing phone call. He told Carl that he wanted his .22 slug back and he would be coming to get it. Oh, yes, Carl thought to himself. You'll be getting it back with interest, you dog.

Just how the shooting, the seminal moment in Carl's rise and fall, occurred is the subject of many conflicting stories and theories.

ACCORDING to George Williams, the falling out had begun months earlier over a piano, believe it or not.

Jason was all hot and bothered looking for a piano that he'd stored with a friend of Carl who had made himself scarce.

Jason bumped into Carl on Union St, Ascot Vale, and demanded he hand over a number for the alleged piano thief. According to George, Carl refused, saying he would get the bloke to call Jason.

Mark Moran and Jason Moran

Mark Moran and Jason Moran.

That did not please Moran, who pursued Carl up the street, haranguing him. It turned into a minor scuffle. Carl gave a good account of himself, according to George.

Despite having his right arm in a sling from recent shoulder surgery, he still got in a couple of good lefts to the head.

Jason, never liking a fair fight or one he couldn't win, backed off. He eventually got his piano back, but not his dignity after coming off second in a fight with a one-armed fat man.

Carl had also offended Jason by taking up with Roberta, the wife of their associate, Dean Stephens, with whom she had two children. Roberta stoutly denies she cheated on Dean with Carl, saying they got together only after her marriage broke down. Carl had been a confidant and a friend, not a lover.

Yet Moran associates say Roberta had taunted her then-husband, showing off expensive gifts Carl had given her. They deny her stories of abuse at the hands of Dean.

"She gave as good as she got," Moran family friend Bert Wrout says. "She made him out to be something he wasn't."

Barb was disappointed that Carl had got together with Roberta. She wasn't at all the type of girl Barb had hoped that Carl would end up with. Roberta was rough and tough and already had kids with two other men. Barb thought he was making a big mistake.

Carl had been with a local girl, Nicole Mottram, whose twin brother was a cop. They had been in love, but Nicole backed away after Carl went deep into the drug scene.

Nicole was from a good family; she had nice manners and a future. She was blonde and pretty, and respectful to Barb, while Roberta was coarse and loud and every second word from her mouth was an expletive. Carl admired Roberta's toughness, her ability to survive.

He learnt a lot from her and she definitely stiffened his resolve to take on the Morans. She was an ally as much as a lover.

To Barb, Carl and Roberta seemed more like mates than lovers.

There was lots of piss-taking and play fighting between them. They also shared a hatred for the Morans.

ROBERTA especially loathed Trisha and Antonella, who were married to Jason and Mark respectively. They had looked down on her as trash. The wives of thugs and drug dealers, they had put on airs and graces as if their dirty money had elevated them to a higher class.

They had shunned Roberta and never lifted a finger to help her on the several occasions when Dean had almost bashed her to death.

Jason Moran

The weapon and the van Jason Moran was shot in.

"They were just fakes through and through, with their silicone tits and expensive fake teeth and dyed hair. They shunned me from the beginning because they thought they were better than me. They didn't give a f--- if Dean killed me and the kids. All they cared about was money and living like f---ing royalty. But their husbands made their money just like we did, from drugs," she says.

Judy Moran was even worse, in Roberta's eyes, a common shoplifter parading around as though she were a member of the aristocracy. Their whole show of family unity was a charade.

Roberta says Mark and Jason never gave their mother more than a few dollars here and there from their villainous activities over the years. In fact, Roberta claims that Jason, whom she idolised, had once bashed Judy in the bar of a hotel.

It was a measure of how little class the Morans really had, what terrible hypocrites they were. They had tried to lord it over her and Dean when they were married too.

Roberta alleges Jason and Mark had set up their mate Dean with a large amount of hash. He had done a year's jail over it and when he got out, the Morans had made him pay them back $15,000 for the drugs he had "lost".

Dean was no high-rolling crook, just a slaughterman at the local abattoir, but Jason and Mark had decided to keep him down. Dean had just copped it all without complaint, but she was going to make sure Carl stood up for himself. In fact, Roberta couldn't care less if Carl killed the lot of them.

In early 1999, there was a drama over the ownership of the pill press Carl was using. It was said to be the property of Danielle McGuire, Carl's friend, who grew up nearby in Broadie. Though he was married to Antonella, Mark Moran was also in a relationship with Danielle.

This gave him some kind of proprietary right to the pill press, he believed. But he was prepared to give Carl full ownership of the press for the bargain price of $400,000.

In Carl's view, he owed the Morans nothing. On the contrary, they owed him $996,000, the balance of a deal Mark had reneged on (to split the profits of an earlier joint drug venture). He wasn't going to chase it. Carl was now making enough money to let that old debt go, as long as the Morans left him alone.

There was enough demand in the party drugs business for all the crooks to become rich beyond their wildest dreams. Why worry over $1 million? Carl reasoned.

Still, he wasn't going to pay them a cent while that debt was outstanding.

DESPITE all these issues swirling around, Mark and Carl continued to do business together. Mark was still buying chemicals from Carl, but now Carl was ripping him off, inflating the prices and foisting substandard merchandise on him. Mark had continued to buy the chemicals and Carl, though he no longer trusted Mark, was prepared to continue taking his money.

On Carl's birthday, Mark had arranged to meet him in the car park of Gladstone Park shopping centre in Melbourne's northern suburbs. When Carl arrived in a hire car, he was concerned to see that Mark had brought his brother along.

The enmity between Carl and Jason was well-known after the incident at the Melbourne Aquatic Centre, but Carl was blinded by greed. He had a loaded Glock 9mm in his bumbag if anything went wrong.

Mark and Jason were concerned they might be under police surveillance (they were right), so they all got in Carl's car and drove through the back streets until they found a small reserve where they could talk in private. They moved away from the car, out of the range of any listening devices the cops might have planted.

It was a hire car, but everyone was getting paranoid. Both sides had police in their pockets so the game was getting more complicated. The two groups of corrupt cops were waging their own struggles through their villain proxies. Anything was possible, given the big money at stake.

Mark asked Carl if he could get some more chemicals to produce a new batch of ecstasy. Carl agreed, but reminded Mark he still owed him $60,000 from an earlier deal. Mark accused Carl of ripping him off, saying he had heard he was buying the chemicals for just $5000.

"Carl just said it was tough s---. No one was forcing them to buy his chemicals and if he had made a good profit, then that was his good luck. The Morans would do exactly the same. Carl said Mark's face went dark red in anger. He was filthy on him," says Roberta.

Mark became highly agitated, accusing Carl of being involved in a plot to run through his house to steal cash and drugs. Carl denied this.

Then, without warning, Mark pulled a wooden baton from his jacket and clubbed Carl over the head, knocking him down. Though he was dazed, Carl launched himself at Mark, tackling him to the ground and the pair began wrestling.

Carl then heard a gunshot. He looked up to see Jason pointing a snub-nosed .22 handgun at him. For all his strength and prowess as a footballer, Mark couldn't shift Carl off him. He was shouting at Jason to kill Carl.

"Shoot him in the head, Jason, put one in his head," Mark screamed. But strangely Jason couldn't do it. Carl said later that Jason's hand was shaking so badly he couldn't shoot straight.

It was like Jason had Parkinson's disease, he said. He fired three or four shots that all missed. Finally, he put the muzzle against the left side of Carl's belly and pulled the trigger.

CARL didn't feel a thing, he said later, on account of the adrenaline flowing through him, but it took all the fight out of him. Mark and Jason found the Glock in his bumbag: with a hole in his guts and no gun, he was defenceless. The Morans cursed and swore at him. They said they had done this many times before.

They had protection from the cops so if Carl lagged them they would know immediately; they would kill his entire family and his friends too.

Remarkably, they all got back in Carl's car and returned to the shopping centre, their business concluded.

The first shot in a gangland war that would claim more than 30 lives had been fired. Some of the killings were directly related to this moment in Gladstone Park, some had nothing to do with Carl. They were a by-product of the fear and paranoia that hung over the city then. As complex relationships unravelled, threatening to expose the seedy underbelly of Melbourne's party drug scene, killing became the best and cleanest option.

Yet the violence only begat more violence. Like a raging bushfire, the malevolent forces driving the conflict eventually took on a life of their own. 

*Edited extract from Carl Williams: The Short Life and Violent Times of Melbourne's Gangland Drug Lord, by Adam Shand, Michael Joseph, rrp $29.99