Jason Moran gangland execution: Hitman shocked Melbourne with murder at kids’ footy clinic
SHE is a murderous granny, but Judy Moran is still a mum at the scene minutes after her youngest son’s brutal execution at a kids’ footy clinic 12 years ago.
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CRIME matriarch Judy Moran likes to talk to her dead relatives.
And there’s been plenty of conversation over the years, considering her two sons — Mark and Jason — and her partner Lewis were felled during Melbourne’s gangland war.
While other associates were also gunned down during the wild underworld feud, Judy orchestrated and participated in the shooting murder of her brother-in-law Des.
There was obviously no love lost there, and it’s highly unlikely Judy has ever engaged in post-death chats with him.
From her prison confines, Judy will no doubt say a prayer for her youngest son Jason whom a hitman cut down 12 years ago today on the orders of rival Carl Williams.
She might even have a cup of Nescafe with Jason’s ghost and reminisce about the good times.
WHEN Jason Moran jammed a pistol into the front of his pants on the morning of June 21, 2003, he knew he was a hunted man.
More accustomed to imposing fear on others, Moran had already spent months under threat by the time he made the short drive from home in Moonee Ponds to Cross Keys Reserve in North Essendon for an Auskick footy clinic.
His brother Mark had years earlier been murdered by the same brutal rival — Carl Williams — whose power and willingness to use it was now out of control.
Fresh in his mind would have been months of conflict, pursuits, stalking and gunfire.
But when the time came and the man in the balaclava and gloves pointed a gun at Moran, his most important protective step was no use.
Before he could even think of reaching into his trousers for the pistol, the firing began.
A shotgun blasted through the glass, followed by volleys from a long-handled revolver.
As the children in the back of the van screamed, Moran and his mate Pasquale Barbaro were blown away in an execution that shocked a city already used to years of gangland violence.
The hooded gunman who struck at Cross Keys invaded the public consciousness in a way years of previous bloodshed had not.
Rowland Legg, the senior sergeant of on-call crew two, was at home when he received a phone call at 11.30am.
It was to be the beginning of months of sustained work on a case that ultimately would be removed from his team at a critical stage.
Mr Legg, in customary understated style, told the Herald Sun the scene inside Moran’s Mitsubishi passenger van was “messy”.
“There was relief and astonishment that the children in the back of the van were totally physically unharmed,” he said.
Mr Legg said that within hours, intelligence was being received that a man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was responsible.
That man, who the Herald Sun has chosen to call “The Runner”, had a long criminal history.
“There was information coming in that he (The Runner) might be the one,” Mr Legg said.
The Runner was known to be extremely close to Williams, who years earlier had been shot in the stomach during a confrontation with the Moran brothers.
“Obviously, we were thinking pretty strongly of the Williams camp,” Mr Legg said.
“(But) you’ve got to eliminate other possibilities. It’s a two-pronged situation.
“It was always possible that it wouldn’t be related to that (feuding with Williams). You could not exclude the possibility someone would take advantage of that to carry out their own vendetta.
“It (the conflict) was common knowledge.”
PICTURE GALLERY: Jason Moran execution — the players
One of the alternatives requiring a hard look was a pair of men checked by police in the vicinity in the preceding days.
They were monitored then hauled in and questioned.
Investigators established they had alibis and Mr Legg was ultimately satisfied they were there to deal drugs.
There were plenty of people who had cause to wish Moran dead but the Williams crew was clearly on the top line of betting.
He and The Runner were interviewed within days but declined to reveal what they knew.
It was clearly going to be a hard slog, using the kind of methodical checking that eventually yielded two enormously significant breakthroughs.
One came from painstaking, repetitive work that threatened to turn the Operation Dozer investigators’ eyes square.
Grainy black and white CCTV footage from the back of the Cross Keys Hotel was analysed for many hours until they isolated a white van seemingly being used to case the area and later dropping off someone they were to conclude was the gunman.
The second major boost came when the call records of a particular pay phone on Moreland Rd were analysed.
On the day before the shootings, that infrequently used phone, 2km from the crime scene, had seen an unusual level of use in a short space of time.
There were multiple calls to Williams, one to an associate of The Runner and others to a business in the city and a home in the northern suburbs.
“Áll this was in a block which suggested that the same person or people were making the calls,” Mr Legg said.
“We surmised they were planning, making final calls.”
A visit to the property in the northern suburbs revealed the caller to that address was a violent career criminal from the south-eastern suburbs who it was later established owned the same kind of white van captured by the CCTV.
The Herald Sun has chosen to call this man “The Driver”.
The discovery of that vital link set in course a massive surveillance undertaking in which every home and car connected to the suspects were bugged and tracking devices installed.
It was during this period that The Driver bought an “untraceable” rebuilt car that the Dozer detectives believed, based on the conspirators’ discussions and movements, would be used for an imminent major crime somewhere in the South Yarra area.
Soon after, The Driver found and destroyed a listening device planted by police in that car.
The bug find might have been enough to scuttle the plans of many criminals, but scouting for whatever was to happen continued.
Mr Legg said investigators were later to form the view that the weekend of October 18-19 was when the two would strike.
But on the Friday night before, Mr Legg, whose crew was back on call again, received a phone call to say a child was missing in suspicious circumstances at Myrtleford, in the state’s north.
By the next evening, crew two was in Myrtleford investigating the disappearance of Daniel Thomas, the murdered toddler whose body was later found under a house.
The Purana taskforce was assigned to take over the Dozer work, with help from one member of Mr Legg’s crew.
As it happened, The Driver and The Runner did not act on their planning until the next weekend.
Their target turned out to be drug-dealing hot-dog salesman Michael Marshall, executed at his home in South Yarra at the behest of Williams.
Once again, the shooter had no qualms about the presence of children and Marshall died in front of his five-year-old son.
This time, because of the surveillance earlier put in place, the getaway was only temporary.
The pair travelled to The Driver’s house at Cheltenham, where they discussed getting rid of the gun.
They were arrested hours after Marshall’s death, outside the Elsternwick Hotel, en route to the city, and charged the next day.
The Runner and The Driver — who was never paid in full by Williams for the Moran job — gave statements that destroyed his empire and put him in Barwon Prison.
It was there that Williams died at the hands of Matthew Charles Johnson in 2010.
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