The crimes and villains that rocked Melbourne in the past 30 years
From crooked cops to conmen, kid snatchers to killers, these are the crimes and villains of the past 30 years that shocked us and forever changed Victoria.
Andrew Rule
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By the time the first edition of the new Herald Sun hit the streets in October 1990, Victoria’s most notorious bent cop had finally come unstuck.
The fall of Paul William Higgins had been a long time coming. From when the former school sports star and Swans footballer put on the uniform, he was trouble.
“Buck” Higgins was a hard man but became notorious for doing business with brothel owner Geoff Lamb, who ran 25 “parlours”, two luxury houses and a Lamborghini. Higgins and another policeman also protected murderous drug dealer Dennis “Mr Death” Allen.
Taskforce Cobra quizzed hundreds of people and came up with 170 witnesses. Higgins’ trial started in late 1991, ran 13 months and almost sent the Police Association broke. Higgins did seven years inside, shunned by crims. Outside, he was shunned by former squad mates, and would die of cancer in 2016, still insisting he’d been a token sacrifice.
The cost of prosecuting Higgins might have discouraged pursuit of other corrupt police but some could not be ignored — such as a drug squad leak that could have got an undercover officer killed when his identity was “sold out” for $28,000.
In 1990, an investigation fingered Sgt Denis Tanner, who was then exiled in the Force Reserve. But he got the decision overturned at a police board hearing that reeked of cronyism.
In 1996 a newspaper drew attention to the shooting death of Tanner’s sister-in-law Jennifer at the family’s Bonnie Doon farm years earlier, and the discovery of a skeleton in a nearby mineshaft.
The skeleton belonged to a prostitute who had vanished from St Kilda when Tanner worked there. And Jennifer Tanner had two bullets in her brain and wounds in her hands, persuading a coroner to beware suspect “evidence” suggesting suicide.
Tanner was forced to resign. Charges against him were dropped and he has always claimed he’s innocent.
Whoever abducted and killed schoolgirl Karmein Chan in 1991 — supposedly the unknown deviant dubbed “Mr Cruel” — evaded a massive police hunt and will probably never be found.
In 1992 Mervyn Ashley Coulston shot three university students dead in Burwood. He got away undetected but was later arrested by a brave security guard after attacking a couple in St Kilda Rd.
One thing straight criminals had in common with bent cops was that they wanted to be rich. One crook who’d started life in a German refugee camp was so keen that in 1990 he changed his name from Olag Dietrich to Hugo Alistair Rich after getting out of jail.
“Ollie” reinvented himself as a share broker with a South Yarra apartment, gold BMW and a sideline in armed robbery, pulling eight “jobs” in 1991 that netted $500,000.
He was smart enough to succeed as a “suit” but couldn’t resist the dark side. He was eventually caught because of his penchant for stealing luxury Ford Fairlanes to use as getaway cars. The man who wore silk ski masks instead of balaclavas thought ordinary Falcons beneath him.
If Rich was pretentious, then Jimmy “Jockey” Smith was the opposite, a battler who graduated to bigtime crime after serving his apprenticeship in racing stables.
Jockey was so mean, they say, he could have $100,000 loot under the bed but still steal a bottle of milk.
Smith hid in plain sight for years, training horses near Nowra under the name “Tom Cummings”, cheekily joining the names of Australia’s biggest trainers Tommy Smith and Bart Cummings.
The day after Smith got out of jail in 1992, he was shot. Given he had been inside for shooting one policeman and trying to shoot another (as well as being prime suspect for murdering a bookmaker), he had enemies.
After a month in hospital, Jockey was back in town. But by November that year, his light fingers led to trouble when he pulled a gun and hijacked a car after being sprung shoplifting.
He was on the run yet again. So was a younger, crazier gunman, Christopher “Badness” Binse, who’d skipped jail a few weeks earlier.
Detectives knew Binse was hiding near Daylesford. They didn’t know that the other “guest” in the safe house, “Tom”, was Jockey Smith. When “Tom” drove to Creswick, a local policeman noticed his van was travelling a little slowly.
When the officer, Sen. Const. Ian Harris, found the van was stolen, he confronted Smith outside a pub. Smith pulled a pistol.
Local hero Darren Neil saw this and fronted Smith. When Smith fired a shot into the ground, Neil put his kids in the pub for safety and drove his car at the gunman. It worked. The policeman drew his pistol and shot Smith dead, closing the chapter on a long crime career.
Smith’s contemporary Normie “Chops” Lee, dim sim manufacturer and member of the 1976 Great Bookie Robbery crew, also unwisely made a comeback in 1992. Lee and Stephen Barci failed to shut the door of the getaway van while trying to rob a Melbourne airfreight terminal on July 28. Lee was shot by police staking out the scene.
In 1993, heroin importer and old Caulfield Grammarian David McMillan was arrested in Thailand and banged up in the infamous “Bangkok Hilton,” plotting an ingenious escape.
In 1994 religious salesman Robert Arthur Selby Lowe was convicted of the abduction and murder of six-year-old Sheree Beasley at Rosebud three years before.
AFL footballer Jimmy “Excitement Machine” Krakoeur, a losing punter, was persuaded to cover his losses by moving “gear” across the Nullarbor for drug baron John Samuel William Higgs. Higgs got a legal problem. Jimmy got 16 years.
The gunmen who pulled the audacious Richmond Armaguard heist in 1994 can’t be named, but one of the gang later revealed details of the $3m robbery before fleeing to Scotland, where he was found hanged.
By the time Melbourne-born escape artist Brenden John Abbott was caught in Queensland in early 1995, Lygon St gangster Alphonse Gangitano had shot hard man Greg Workman in St Kilda.
This led to Gangitano’s ally Jason Moran finding and bribing two “protected” witnesses to recant their statements and take an expenses-paid overseas trip. Moran, of course, later killed Gangitano.
In August, 1995, Lenny “Mr Big” McPherson died in Cessnock Jail while on the phone. At the funeral his daughter said not everyone would have chosen her dad’s path in life “but at least he was at the top of his profession.”
In early 1996, Vietnam veteran, bomb maker, robber and escapee Alexander Robert MacDonald ran a job advertisement for a man to join a mining expedition. He recruited Ron Williams, a loner whose identity MacDonald stole before murdering him on a remote beach.
MacDonald pulled bank robberies in three states then bought a boat in Victoria. He was setting up one more armed robbery when police nailed him in mid-1997 before his planned escape to the Solomon Islands.
In November that year, rodeo rider turned biker Michael “Chaos” Kulakowski was murdered with two other Bandidos in Sydney. Police, fearing reprisals, raided outlaw clubs in four states. They should have raided a Brunswick house owned by emerging entrepreneur Tony Mokbel before the unfortunate fire that destroyed it along with amphetamines and chemicals potentially worth millions.
The shooting of Alphonse Gangitano at home by Jason Moran at the start of 1998 was bookended in November when “Mad Charlie” Hegyalji was shot in his own Caulfield garden, probably by his associate Dino Dibra. This happened the same week a well-connected young lawyer, Nicola Gobbo, became a barrister. She was already an informer.
In August 1998 police officers Gary Silk and Rod Miller were shot dead while checking a car driven by serial robber and rapist Bandali Debs, eventually convicted of the murders with his offsider Jason Roberts, who later claims Debs acted alone.
In 1999, the body of veteran stick-up man Aubrey “Grandpa Harry” Broughill was found in a flooded quarry with his testicles missing. An unknown drug dealer, Carl Williams, was shot in his soft underbelly by the Moran brothers. It was a small wound for mankind but a giant step towards the gangland war that Williams immediately declared against his enemies.
The new millennium was the end of good times for another bent cop, Kevin Hicks, convicted of pinching seized drugs for resale, “selling out” cases and possibly stealing the office footy tips cash jar. Second generation market mafia man Frank Benvenuto was shot dead in Beaumaris.
In 2001 Alan Williams, former top gangster, asked around for a gun to kill a Victorian detective, associate of the jailed Paul Higgins. Williams, dying from AIDS and drug addiction, wanted revenge before he exited, partly because his innocent relative Lindsay Simpson was shot dead by Roy “Red Rat” Pollitt in a case of mistaken identity. Pollitt not only shot the wrong man but got paid $5000 in counterfeit notes, then copped a huge sentence. Making him a triple loser.
In May 2002, gunman Victor Peirce was shot dead in his Commodore in Port Melbourne. Zealous police charged getaway driver Faruk Orman, who would eventually score a get-out-of-jail card through the Lawyer X debacle.
Weeks later, Griffith orchardist Tony Romeo was shot while pruning a peach tree soon after getting out of jail over a drug conspiracy. Thirty workers saw nothing. Some say he brought dishonour to the family when recordings of him with strippers were played in court.
The Griffith mafia look like a heritage act compared with a vicious new breed, the “Sunshine Boys”, including Dino Dibra and Andrew Veniamin’s sometime mate Paul Kallipolitis, who was shot dead in October 2002. It turns out 2003 was even deadlier for the Sunshine crew.
Jason Moran and his mate, one of several unlucky and slightly inbred cousins named Pasquale Barbaro, were shot dead at a junior football match in Essendon in June. Likewise Willie Thompson at Chadstone in July.
Alleged hotdog vendor Michael Marshall was eliminated in South Yarra in October. Tribal elder Graham “The Munster” Kinniburgh was shot outside his Kew house in December. Being criminal royalty, the old safecracker drew many more mourners than did despised human traffickers “Steve” Gulyas and “Tina” Nhonthachitch after their execution at Sunbury.
“Benji” Veniamin was a crazy little man who’d kill anyone for cash. This explains why Mick Gatto shot him in a Carlton restaurant in March, 2004, and was acquitted of murder on self defence. Lewis Moran was killed the same month in a club in the next suburb.
Most chilling of all, Terry Hodson and wife Christine were executed in their Kew home in May.
In early 2006 Mario Condello was shot in his garage in Brighton. A month later, Mokbel skipped bail and vanished, greatly upsetting waiters whom he routinely tipped with $100 notes.
Mokbel reappeared in Athens in 2007, where he was arrested with his wig. In April 2008, Nicola Gobbo’s BMW was torched in South Melbourne, reputedly with much unexplained cash inside. In August, Gobbo’s client Rob Karam and others were pinched for the massive tomato tin ecstasy importation. In December, the X-rated lawyer was wired for sound to try to link cop Paul Dale to the Hodson hit.
In 2010, jailhouse enforcer Matthew Johnson killed Williams in Barwon Prison. The Hodson case collapsed without Williams. Police paid Gobbo $2.88m. She wanted more.
In 2011, then Bandido bikie identity Toby Mitchell survived being shot outside a Brunswick gym, but made a remarkable recovery using the drug guru behind the Essendon Football Club scandal.
In 2012, Chris “Badness” Binse was back in the bin after stealing $235,000 and shooting at police in a 44-hour siege.
He survived unscathed but Jill Meagher was raped and murdered by parolee Adrian Bayley, creating a shockwave of community reaction.
In 2013, John Higgs the amphetamines tycoon was sentenced to 18 years over the great tomato tin importation. In 2014, the veteran gunman Billy “The Texan” Longley defied the odds by dying of natural causes in a hospital bed in his 80s. In 2015 teenager Masa Vukotic was murdered by crazed Sean Christian Price.
In 2016, former policemen Roger Rogerson and Glen McNamara were found guilty of murdering baby drug dealer Jamie Gao. Body disposal experts state this is because they used rope instead of chain to anchor the body with weights, and that leatherjacket fish chewed through the rope.
Russell St bomb mastermind Stan Taylor died in jail after a lifetime of crime beginning in the 1950s.
In March 2019, a boxing night in Kensington ended in tragedy with one man shot dead and others assaulted when rival groups clashed. “A brouhaha that turned into a bloodbath,” one observer said.
In late 2019 suburban fruiterer Paul Virgona was executed while driving on EastLink freeway. Three men linked to the Mongols outlaw motorcycle club were arrested in early 2020.
The Mongols formed an entourage to welcome turncoat former Fink Shane Bowden into a stretch limousine when he left Loddon Prison in winter but it was downhill from there.
Bowden was shot in the legs at Epping soon after and moved back to the Gold Coast and his old club, the Finks. But he couldn’t outrun trouble. He was shot dead on October 12.
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