A brief history of Melbourne contract killings
Encrypted apps, burner phones, shooters from overseas and the code of silence. The deck is often stacked against detectives trying to solve Melbourne’s underworld murder investigations.
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Some things never change in crime and one of them is the challenging nature of underworld murder investigations.
In his contract killing heyday, Carl Williams advocated the philosophy that “those who know don’t talk and those who talk don’t know”.
Although history showed he didn’t always live by it, Carl’s credo is pretty much the preferred model in gangland circles.
Police have had a pretty good strike rate in such “long game” cases over the years and some major prosecutions are now before the courts.
But the fact is they can often be in the position of being certain who pulled the trigger and why without being able to make an arrest because of the gulf between knowing what happened and being able to prove it.
Two experienced investigators agreed the biggest challenge was breaking down the wall of silence which frequently protects those who carry out the work.
They have almost invariably been paid to kill by someone more senior in crime ranks and know the potential consequences of commenting.
“Generally speaking, everyone you’re dealing with is not going to assist you. They’re going to actively work against you,” one investigator said.
The non-cooperation can go to extremes.
Sometimes, family or friends of the victim are angry at what happened but will stay silent because they fear the consequences of talking or because they intend to deal with matters themselves.
There are plenty of cases where someone who had been with the victim when a hit happened will not co-operate, despite the fact they were wounded in the attack.
Silence is far from the only obstacle for those examining such cases.
The shooters will have put in some level of planning and are almost always conscious of the need to cover their tracks.
Hit teams will use multiple vehicles, if necessary, and incinerate them afterwards to destroy forensic evidence like DNA and fingerprints.
The cars are likely to nowadays be fitted with registration plates cloned from a vehicle of the same model so they won’t come up as stolen.
In an increasing number of instances, vehicles have been stolen months earlier for no specific purpose and warehoused for a criminal buyer wanting them for one specific task.
“There’s any number of cars parked out there in the suburbs ready to go,” one experienced former gangland detective said.
Another long-time homicide investigator said suspects were frequently well-versed in police methodology, especially in areas of surveillance.
“Straight away, they won’t talk on the phone, to strangers, in the house,” he said.
In more recent times, the use of encrypted apps and burner phones have added technological barriers to investigators.
Sometimes, suspects with foreign links will flee overseas and use criminal networks to stay there.
A number have remained heavily involved in organised crime back here, working remotely to dish out orders and make big money.
These are some of Melbourne’s unsolved gangland murders of the past decade.
Rashad Adra, Thomastown, October 27, 2015
Rashad Adra was a hardworking family man who migrated from Lebanon in 1986, spending 20 years as a foreman at the Ford factory.
He was a long way from being an organised crime figure, but he died like one when his Darebin Drive house was sprayed with machine gun fire.
Mr Adra woke up wounded at 3am and said to his wife: “I think I’ve been shot.”
He later died and his four-year-old son, who had been snuggling up to his mum and dad, was lucky not to go the same way after suffering a gunshot injury.
The same weapon had been used in an attack on another Darebin Drive house a week earlier.
Homicide squad investigators told the Herald Sun in 2022 had a good circumstantial case.
Detective Sgt Simon Quinnel gave an indication of how tantalisingly close they were in an interview that year.
“We know a lot of people know a lot about the persons involved. I think everybody is angry that mistakes were made. Innocent people fell victim,” he said.
Police remain hopeful the underworld secrets which have, so far, protected Mr Adra’s killer may still be revealed.
Khaled Abouhasna, Altona Meadows, April 19, 2015
Investigators who arrived at the Khaled Abouhasna crime scene would have known they might be in for the long haul.
Abouhasna was fatally ambushed as he arrived home at 2am in his Mercedes-Benz, a crime which has had long-term repercussions.
With him was his brother-in-law Kazem Hamad, later to become a massive thorn in the side of law enforcement as the architect of Victoria’s fiery tobacco wars conflict.
Hamad was already a formidable Middle Eastern organised crime figure with his share of enemies, causing some to ruminate on whether he was actually the intended target.
Another feared MEOC figure with a history of involvement in such late-night gunplay was mentioned in dispatches as a possible culprit but there have never been any charges.
Abouhasna – who was also known as Kay Kay – was connected to other big names in Melbourne’s underworld, including bikie strongman Toby Mitchell and senior Mongol Tyrone Bell.
Although his family insisted he was not an underworld figure, it was clear the Crime Stoppers hotline wasn’t about to go into meltdown and the case remains unsolved.
Muhammed Yucel, Keysborough, May 2, 2017
For a killer who didn’t have a clue, whoever shot Muhammed Yucel certainly left plenty of them around.
Yucel was visiting a mate in Church St, Keysborough, to play video games and late in the evening decided to call it a night.
As he lifted the rear roller-door to head home, a twitchy gunman decided to shoot first and ask questions later.
It turned out the fatal bullets were most likely meant to eliminate an organised crime-linked figure who lived nearby.
It wasn’t the last mistake of a sorry saga.
Investigators later established a cloned number plate used on a vehicle connected to the crime was printed at a north suburban gym run by a senior Comanchero bikie.
The plate was attached to a Jeep Cherokee which the hit team failed to properly incinerate.
A gun found dumped beside the Great Ocean Rd was found to be connected to the crime.
Again, the silence of the underworld was the shooter’s greatest protection.
Those in the know would have been aware of talk the gunman was acting on behalf of one of the most powerful bikie bosses in Australia.
Police have been unable to rule out that the shooter was former Comanchero bikie gang office-bearer Hasan Topal.
Topal took off to the Middle East in 2019 after doing a prison term over a brutal brawl at an Australian Capital Territory strip club.
Those in the know don’t expect him to return voluntarily.
Zabi Ezedyar, Narre Warren, August 16, 2017
Sometimes, even the most incompetent hit men provide no guarantee of a conviction.
Whoever killed Zabi Ezedyar could scarcely have botched it any worse, opening fire without even getting out of his car and murdering an innocent man through that lack of due diligence.
It is believed the intended target was Mohammed “Afghan Ali” Keshtiar, a bikie-linked figure with heavy influence in the city’s Middle-eastern organised crime sphere.
Keshtiar wasn’t around and it was the unlucky Ezedyar who suffered severe wounds to the upper-body, dying at the scene.
Again, Hasan Topal of the Comancheros was someone who attracted intense police interest.
There was persistent talk in the aftermath that some members of the OMCG were unhappy with the blundering crime.
Straight-shooting former homicide squad boss Insp. Tim Day was another left unimpressed.
“A panicked, cowardly attack,” was his summary.
Six years later, it was Keshtiar’s turn when he was shot dead in South Yarra in an as-yet unresolved gangland killing.
Nabil Maghnie, Epping, January 8, 2020
Nabil Maghnie was one of the Melbourne underworld’s most feared figures though, strictly speaking, he did not die in a gangland murder.
This was more a case of the volatile enforcer who pushed his luck one too many times, demanding someone cough up money but paying the price himself.
The veteran Middle Eastern organised crime identity – who had been shot twice before – went to a Dalton Rd home after someone from the property had been involved in a road rage incident with his daughter Sabrine.
After bashing one victim in some kind of compensation claim, someone emerged from inside and blasted Maghnie to the head, killing him instantly.
“Negotiations have broken down,” one seasoned detective later observed.
Maghnie’s son AJ and a mate were also wounded before the gunman disappeared.
What the shooting did have in common with many underworld killings was the silence which has protected the perpetrator.
Those who knew the details of what had happened and who was responsible have been uncooperative with police to the point where a case which initially looked eminently solvable still has no result after more than four years.
Kerry Giakoumis, Thomastown, June 10, 2020
Police were confident a long time ago that they knew what happened to Kerry Giakoumis.
The problem was that whatever it was had transpired inside the walls of the Hells Angels’ infamous Nomads chapter clubhouse in Lipton Drive, Thomastown.
It’s fair to say, anyone allowed into the stronghold is unlikely to be the kind of person who would help police and would be well aware of the potential consequences of doing so.
Giakoumis had travelled to Melbourne with associates, including two members of the Angels Adelaide-based North Crew chapter on June 5.
Five days later, he walked into Lipton Drive and never made it out alive.
Investigators in 2021 searched a waterway in Diggers Rest for any trace of the 29-year-old.
They arrested a number of Angels and their associates as part of the same operation but no charges were laid over the murder.
The homicide squad view is that Giakoumis got into some kind of dispute with patched Hells Angels after entering the clubhouse.
Perhaps some clue about what police think had happened was offered when they seized gym equipment for forensic testing.
Korey Kesici, Mickleham, May 5, 2022
The murky world inhabited by Korey Kesici meant his cold-blooded killing would always be a challenging investigation.
Kesici, 22, stepped out of his family’s Bangalore Way home just after midnight to talk to someone parked outside in a white BMW.
Moments later, he was shot several times, dying at the scene as the BMW drove away before being set alight in nearby St Georges Boulevard.
The killers are likely to have then made their getaway in a red Holden Commodore ute which was found torched the next day in Beveridge.
Both cars had been stolen well in advance.
Kesici was a former Mongols bikie prospect and had been associated with the Notorious Crime Family gang founded by jailed underworld boss George Marrogi.
Detective Insp. Dean Thomas later said those organised crime links complicated the case.
“This has added complexity to the investigation and our lines of inquiry, including a motive. What is clear to us is that this was a deliberate, targeted organised crime hit,” Insp. Thomas said.
Mohammed Keshtiar, South Yarra, August 4, 2023
The man known far and wide as “Afghan Ali” is suspected of being one of the organised crime figures tapping into Melbourne’s illicit tobacco rivers of gold.
That was until he was ambushed after leaving a gym and walking along Almeida St, South Yarra, to get to his luxury digs at the Capitol Grand.
Keshtiar had moved into the apartment building just off Chapel St partly because it had the kind of swipe access, CCTV and private parking valued by many security-conscious gangsters.
It wasn’t enough.
Killers with knowledge of his movements opened fire on Keshtiar in front of shocked witnesses.
A man who was walking with the victim later declined to help investigators.
Keshtiar was previously connected to the outlaw motorcycle gang world and had long been involved in the drug trade, before pivoting to the lucrative illegal smoke caper.
It was the second attempt on his life after a failed hit at Narre Warren in 2017.
That resulted in a horrific wrong-victim slaying as the gunman – almost certainly wanting Keshtiar – opened fire on Zabi Ezedyar, a visitor to his home.
Robert Issa, Craigieburn, October, 2023
The masked gunmen who pounced on Robert Issa were probably forced to do so in a busy shopping centre car park.
Circumstances in the lead-up meant Issa would have been acutely aware of his personal safety but he may have thought he was OK sitting in his white Mercedes at Craigieburn Central.
If he did, he was wrong.
It was there, near the Timezone arcade, that the gunmen struck with ruthless efficiency, shooting the 27-year-old dead on the spot.
The murder was a likely contract hit with a high-degree of planning involving three cars.
The killers escaped Craigieburn in a Range Rover which was torched in Westmeadows before they jumped in a blue Toyota, travelling to Reservoir, where they incinerated it and left in a third vehicle.
Issa had been close to a Comanchero bikie-linked figure who was in conflict with a heavy Melbourne crime faction involved in high-level drug trafficking and firearms crime.
The situation had escalated badly to the point where the family home of Issa’s parents was blasted with gunshots in the weeks before the fatal ambush.
John Latorre, Greenvale, March 2024
It was long odds from the start that the murder of mafia figure John Latorre would be solved in a hurry.
This was a clinical suburban killing involving a well-briefed killer who knew his quarry’s movements and made a quick motorcycle getaway after the deed was done in pre-dawn darkness.
Its perpetrator was never likely to be a bungling ice addict with loose lips leaving behind clues.
Latorre, a fruiterer, left home early every working day at 4.30am to drive to the Melbourne Market in Epping where he ran a successful fruit and veg business.
The 64-year-old’s other commercial interests in the world of Italian organised crime meant there were plenty of possibilities and nowhere near as many people likely to co-operate.
Those in the Honoured Society have a long tradition of maintaining a silence, known as omerta, when it comes to law enforcement.
That has been demonstrated here and internationally by the rarity of convictions in mafia killings.
Some of the biggest names in the sector where Melbourne’s markets and the underworld intersect have fallen over the decades, without result.
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