Andrew Rule: Does Mokbel, the free man, pray for forgiveness?
Tony Mokbel has dodged serious convictions for a long time, paying patsies to be crime middlemen as he paid jockeys to rig races, and 20 years after the brutal murder of Mick Marshall — as the gangland king prays in church — questions linger.
Andrew Rule
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Like Tony Mokbel, who allegedly ordered his murder, Mick Marshall flew “under the radar” for a long time before the brutal realities of criminal life caught him.
That was when a hitman, allegedly hired on Mokbel’s behalf, shot the young father dead outside his house while he was holding the hand of his five-year-old son.
The little boy ran to the house screaming hysterically.
“Someone shot my daddy, someone shot my daddy,’’ a witness would tell police they heard the boy cry.
Michele, the boy’s mother, told sickened detectives: “I rushed to the gate and when I opened it, he said, ‘Daddy’s dead’ …
“I looked out on to the street and could see Mick laying on the road, face down.”
As she rushed to her dying husband, the boy grabbed his mother and said repeatedly the words calculated to haunt them both ever since: “No, you might be dead, too.”
That terrified little boy is now 27. What effect his nightmare ordeal had can barely be imagined — a thought that might trouble the clergy and congregation at Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Church in Thornbury, where Mokbel turned up last Sunday, creating a stir among regular worshippers and a few rubberneckers.
If Mokbel put cash in the collection plate that day, or any other, it shows the moral dilemma all churches face. Most of them have admirable views on treatment of children in line with the Maronites, whose code of ethics states it “is committed to safeguarding children, young people and those who are vulnerable (and has) zero tolerance to any activity that makes children, young people and those who are vulnerable feel unsafe in any way.”
Should any church take money from a criminal who was initially suspected by police of ordering Marshall’s murder, which traumatised a vulnerable child beyond belief and whose drugs ruined countless lives?
Mokbel has never been convicted of murder but the fact is he dodged serious convictions for a long time, paying patsies to be crime middlemen the same way he paid jockeys to rig races.
Leaving aside the necessary white lies and blind eyes of the legal system, the truth is that Mokbel has routinely broken the laws of the land — and of the church he professes to follow.
He is intimately acquainted with the mortal sins, from adultery to perjury, but murder is top of the list.
The ruthless international drug trafficker hired standover men to do his dirty work for years.
Michael Ronald Marshall’s murder was one he was never convicted of and now never will be. But it’s clear Mokbel feared the evidence against him on various charges was so strong it prompted him to jump bail and bolt to Greece after being tipped off by a lawyer in 2006.
Marshall was killed outside his home in Joy St, South Yarra, on October 25, 2003. He had a bunch of bread rolls in one hand and was holding his son’s hand with the other when the hitman ran up behind them.
Shocked police listened in on audio bugs planted in the getaway car, hearing four shots. They’d been monitoring the shooter and his driver for weeks, and knew they had been scouting the South Yarra area.
The police wondered if the crooks were planning a robbery, and had no idea that the little-known Marshall was the target of another hit in the crazy underworld war Carl Williams had started in 1999.
Phone taps between the shooter and Williams gave no indication the Marshall murder was on the cards.
Call it death by handshake. A handshake that sealed the deal for the callous hit that would, ironically, end the underworld war because it led directly to the arrests of several key players who then turned against their paymasters.
Not that the two men who shook hands had peace in mind. It was a false gesture, a sneaky way to slip a note to the killer.
The scrap of paper that the crime boss palmed to the shooter held two addresses for the man he wanted dead.
One address was in Collingwood near the Housing Commission towers. The other was in South Yarra near Hawksburn Station.
The two addresses reflected the double life of the target, a low-profile but highly active player in the nightclub scene.
Marshall supposedly scraped a living selling hotdogs and lollipops outside nightclubs. But it takes more than hotdogs to pay for two valuable inner-city properties. In truth, he made most of his money selling ecstasy tablets.
The fatal handshake was part of a Tuesday lunchtime meeting the month before Marshall’s murder. It was in the carpark of the Red Rooster store in Moreland Rd, Coburg, where the Mokbels had grown up.
Investigators working on the Jason Moran-Paddy Barbaro killings (at a children’s football clinic at Essendon two months earlier) had surveillance police watching suspects around the clock, using long lens cameras, phone taps, car trackers and bugging equipment.
The suspected hit team of shooter and driver had unknowingly led the watchers to the Red Rooster meeting.
Mokbel was meeting Carl Williams and his father George and the shooter and driver, both given police code names because they subsequently gave evidence against Mokbel and Williams.
One of them was a regular Williams gunman, codenamed “Mr Andrews”. The wheelman’s alias was “Mr Thomas”.
The police briefing notes stated that the group were observed talking together, before Carl and George Williams and the driver turned away and allowed Mokbel and the shooter to have a private discussion. Mokbel was animated and appeared to tell the shooter something.
Then came the subtle move spotted by the sharp-eyed watchers. Despite having met earlier, Mokbel shook hands with the shooter, who immediately put his hand in his pocket.
The watchers guessed Mokbel had palmed him something. The shooter would later tell detectives that Mokbel had passed him the note with the target’s addresses and car details. At the time, the police had no idea who Mokbel wanted to be shot.
After the Red Rooster meeting, police constantly monitored the shooter and his driver. For four weeks, hidden operatives watched and listened as the pair drove around particular areas, one in Collingwood but increasingly around Hawksburn in South Yarra.
They were up to something, but what? Police wondered if it were a robbery on a local car dealership, or maybe a nearby hotel.
On this particular Saturday afternoon, the suspects’ Holden Vectra circled a block bordered on the east by Williams Rd and parked at the western end of Joy St.
It was clear from what the officers could hear on a listening device in the Vectra that the pair might be planning a shooting.
Shortly before 6.25pm, a resident parked his car in Joy St, unclipped the seat belt from his small son and walked eastwards, hand in hand with the child.
The police monitors didn’t realise a target had appeared until after the Vectra driver quickly drove up to stop behind the man’s car.
As the car stopped, the shooter jumped out, wearing a balaclava and holding two handguns. He shot the man three times in the head and again when he collapsed near the terrified child.
The car sped off and the shooter escaped on foot through a block of flats and into a rear laneway, where he was picked up by the driver. They headed south-east, towards the driver’s home address in Cheltenham, a house which had been under police watch for weeks.
On the way, one of them called Carl Williams and used a clumsy code about a horse being “scratched.” All eastern states gallops meetings were finished by then, and there were no harness race scratchings fitting the time frame.
Marshall, 38, was pronounced dead soon after arrival at hospital. He had paid the ultimate penalty for playing a dangerous game for high stakes, selling drugs in a volatile market.
Marshall was a successful criminal in that he had money but never made himself a police target while making it, and never made news. He wasn’t on any list of potential underworld targets but was known in some circles — enough that Mokbel believed the lie that Marshall was capable of killing Mokbel’s associate Willie Thompson, shot dead outside an East Malvern gym weeks earlier.
The truth seemed to be that the treacherous Williams had in fact organised Thompson’s shooting — but when the angry Mokbel asked about it, Williams lied and blamed Marshall. He then stooged Mokbel by setting up the Red Rooster meeting with Williams’ pet hitman to plot the Marshall murder to “avenge” Thompson.
The fact that they all seemed willing, for the second time in three months, to ignore the old-school taboo against involving children, showed how depraved the new breed of drug-dealing crooks had become. Mokbel was just as callous as any of them.
The shooter would later testify that, after his arrest, he got his solicitor to pass a message to Mokbel and Williams to hand the remaining $150,000 murder fee to his mother.
“A couple of days later, Carl Williams attended (the mother’s house) and only gave her $1500. (The shooter) has not received any more of the money he had been promised,” Purana investigator Jim O’Brien would say in evidence.
Mokbel’s false economy cost him everything. When the shooter “rolled” on him to police as revenge for the unpaid $150,000, Mokbel got the tip from a lawyer, jumped bail and bolted, proof that the lawyer involved played both sides according to whim.
The rest is history.
Now, 20 years on, Mokbel is bailed to live with his sister, free to go to church while he ponders whether lawyers can further unravel his string of convictions. But questions linger.
While Mokbel is kneeling in Our Lady of Lebanon, does he think about how a vicious killer shot a man in the head next to a five-year-old child? When he takes confession, does he ask forgiveness for that worst of sins?
Maybe not. Perhaps it’s just for show. It’s easy to toss some cash in the collection plate.
One thing is certain. Police are not impressed by the pious act.
“All of a sudden, we’ve got a drug dealer going to church,” one officer said this week.
“He’s now a celebrity. He may as well go on Dancing with the Stars.”
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