Skinny kid to ‘Wrecking machine’, Gavin Preston’s journey to cold-blooded killer

GAVIN Preston was so dangerous police could only utter two words to describe him: “wrecking machine’’.

From surfie kid to ‘wrecking machine’

GAVIN Preston was so dangerous police could only utter two words to describe him: “wrecking machine’’.

The Sunshine boy who began a life of crime as a skinny kid with a surfie look teamed up with Matthew Johnson to form the forerunner to one of the most dominant of jail gangs, the Prisoners of War.

The pair formed a seemingly unbreakable bond in Pentridge in the 1990s, protecting themselves from bullying by notorious older crooks such as Victor Peirce.

UNDERWORLD FIGURE ADMITS EXECUTION STYLE KILLING

They called themselves Youth Gone Wild.

Johnson even heated a frying pan with YGW embossed on it and burned it into his skin.

Both would go on to cap long undistinguished criminal careers, involving robberies and violence, by turning killer.

Both skated the fringes of the gangland war; Preston was caught on phone taps talking to marked man Benji Veniamin before Mick Gatto killed him in a Carlton restaurant.

By 2010, when Johnson was in the Acacia Unit of Barwon prison, with Tommy Ivanovic and crime kingpin Carl Williams, the pair had fallen out.

But Preston called and gave Ivanovic a dire warning.

He told Ivanovic he was living with a “dog’’ (criminal slang for a police informer). The “dog’’ was Williams.

This recorded conversation was months before April 19, when Johnson beat Williams to death with a bicycle seat.

In 2011, Preston would not confirm who the “outside man’’ behind the brutal bashing of Williams had been.

It has been speculated that money was paid to a friend of Johnson’s for the premeditated killing, of which only Johnson has been convicted.

When admitting his crime, Johnson said he acted alone.

With his former best mate guaranteed to be behind walls for at least 32 years, Preston, whose nickname “Capable’’ was emblazoned across his stomach, was doing his best to join him.

Preston had struck up a friendship with Sav Tsivicos, then a Bandido bikie who wanted to recruit him.

After all, Preston was what the club needed: a hard, connected criminal who was a member of militant union the CFMEU working on the Myer Emporium site.

Sources say cash inducements were offered to get “Capable’’ into the club, but he was resisting.

It is understood he had been vouched for and had met with members, including then Bandido national Sgt-at-Arms Toby Mitchell.

Unfortunately, other matters came into play.

Police would investigate a dispute over a debt. And there was Preston’s arch-nemesis, Chris “Badness’’ Binse.

In November 2011, Preston and a criminal associate drove a Ford Territory stolen from Oakleigh along Weston St, Brunswick, where the Bandidos clubhouse is located next to Doherty’s Gym.

Mitchell and gym owner Tony Doherty were outside the gym when a man charged forward with a handgun and fired at Mitchell.

A second gunman chased Mitchell into the car park and fired a couple more bullets into him.

Remarkably, Mitchell survived, but he would never be the same.

The shooting could have been much worse: one bullet flew into a family car in which children were sitting.

Sources say that leading up to the attempted hit, Preston had become so enraged that he planned to shoot every Bandido he could find.

But shooting Mitchell was enough to turn Preston from hunter to hunted.

He would not only be pursued by the Purana taskforce, which quickly zeroed in on Preston as their prime suspect, but he would be tracked by Binse, who was desperate to even the score.

Binse attached a tracking device to Preston’s car, and parked outside his home with a semiautomatic gun beside him.

All that stood between Preston and death was a raid by the Special Operations Group, which Binse fled.

There was little evidence to charge Preston over Mitchell’s shooting, and he was eventually granted bail unopposed.

The force assigned surveillance teams — but Preston would graduate to becoming a killer regardless.

His victim, Adam Khoury, was an ice trafficker living in an apartment block in Canning St, North Melbourne.

Police officers tailing Preston were called off just minutes before the killing.

The two argued; Preston pulled his gun and shot Khoury three times, twice in the head.

A source told the Herald Sun Khoury knew too much about the Mitchell shooting and Preston had become paranoid he would “lag” on him.

The drug ice was fuelling the paranoia and some of his heavy-handed tactics.

Only months after Williams was bludgeoned to death, it became clear there was a Mr Big — who cannot be named for legal reasons — involved in the murder.

The identity of the Mr Big has never been officially released.

But the taskforce investigating Williams’s murder confirmed it was investigating a man outside prison who had a motivation to kill him.

But according to Preston’s POW gang, Williams had to die because he had broken prison rules.

Johnson had apparently complied with the order because under the Prisoner of War ethos. “dogs’’ were not tolerated.