Calabrian brothers Vince and Gerado killed in chilling driveway shootings
The Mannella brothers were shot dead in their respective Fitzroy driveways – a mere 400m from each other – nine months apart. Nobody has ever been charged, and it is unlikely anybody will be.
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GERARDO Mannella loved his big brother Vince, who was 17 years older and seemed like a big shot. When a hitman killed Vince in his own driveway in Fitzroy North one summer night, Gerardo was crazy with anger and grief and plans for revenge.
The younger brother’s hatred smouldered for nine months. His threats wafted through the Calabrian community from the smoky card-player cafes in Sydney Rd to Lygon St bars to the wholesale fruit and vegetable market where serious business was done.
Not every Calabrian is a member of the secretive group known as ’Ndrangheta, or the Honoured Society, but every ’Ndrangheta mafioso is Calabrian. Their code of silence, omerta, extends from mafia men to churchgoing grandmothers. It protects the killers and extortionists among them from the law — but not from each other.
Gerardo couldn’t stop talking about getting those who killed his brother. No one knows if he would ever have acted on it but someone thought he might so they killed him, too, a street away from where Vince died.
There were complicating factors such as the fact that (according to the coroner) both Gerardo and his wife were conducting extra-marital affairs at the time. But police ruled out sexual jealousy as a motive, deciding it was a case of one thing leading to another — or, as the homicide squad puts it: “Victoria Police has not discounted the possibility that the two deaths are related.”
For Vince, born in Calabria in 1950, the end came this way.
IT is January 9, 1999, a warm summer Saturday. He gets up late because he can. Vince hasn’t worked a conventional job for at least five years, at least not one that bothers the tax office.
As a younger man, he dabbled in occupations that do not surprise: a fruit and vegetable business, a Brunswick restaurant and club and as a builder.
The hiccup in his CV is serving seven years of a nine-year sentence for shooting a Nicholson St cafe owner who objected to his swaggering around with a pistol under his jacket. Patrons with guns make other customers nervous and inevitably want to eat and drink free of charge then rob the till as well.
The cafe owner considered Mannella a gangster and standover man and wanted no part of him. What he got for his bravery was the wrong end of what police call wounding with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm.
Standover men can’t publicly back down or they’re out of business. So Vince does the crime and does the time, the price of “respect” in Lygon St.
By the mid-1990s he’s apparently a man of leisure though not exactly idle. If he has any premonitions or worries they don’t show during his last day alive.
After a leisurely breakfast with his family in their renovated weatherboard in Alister St near Merri Creek in Fitzroy North, Vince goes out. He has places to be, people to meet.
He returns at 5pm to barbecue meat for dinner with his partner Nancy and their two children, Joe and Katherine. By 6.30pm he’s out again.
He meets Giovanni Failla at Cafe Sportivo in Lygon St and they go to Curly Joes, a restaurant on Sydney Rd, where they meet two Shepparton identities to discuss a business proposition. Later, around 10.45pm, the four return to Cafe Sportivo to drink and sing.
It all seems very friendly and probably is, although it’s possible someone close by makes a sneaky call to those who wish Mannella harm.
The fact is, a hit team would only have to keep eyes on his house, knowing he’ll come home.
At the time, Vince’s old parents and at least one of his brothers live just one street over, in adjoining houses on long blocks stretching across from May St to Willowbank Rd.
The eight Mannella siblings grew up in the Fitzroy North back streets near Merri Creek and probably feel safe there.
Mannella’s drinking companion, Giovanni Fallia, who also lives nearby, leaves the club to drop off some vegetables to his own house while Mannella visits home.
Around 11.40, Mannella drives his Ford Fairlane the four minutes from Cafe Sportivo to Alister St, planning to leave the car and a bag of leather belts picked up during the day.
The plan is for Failla to pick him up to go to another bar.
Mannella parks next to his wife’s BMW and heads for the door.
The killer is waiting. Mannella’s wife hears “pop pop pop” and comes out to find his body on the concrete near the door.
Hitmen can do a “double tap” of two shots or a “bowling ball” with three. This is more of a colander: five shots to the head.
Police believe the shooter crosses the road to the Merri Creek trail and runs several hundred metres to Albert St, where a car is waiting. Joggers are common on the trail.
For reasons never divulged, police confidently suggest that an accomplice picked up the shooter in a “terracotta” coloured Pontiac Trans Am.
There aren’t many such cars, distinctive because of a giant eagle mural on the bonnet. The colour description is highly specific, as if police are told who’s involved.
But proof is something else. Nobody has ever been charged with Vince Mannella’s murder or his brother’s nine months later, barely 400m away. The betting is that no one ever will be.
You can walk from where Vince was shot in Alister St, turn down Willowbank Rd then into a lane linking with May St, about 40m from where another brother, Salvatore “Sam” Mannella, lived most of his married life next to their parents, Gieseppe and Carmelo.
On Wednesday, October 20, Gerardo works in the morning as a crane operator on a Collins St building site. He knocks off early for a stop-work meeting, heads home to Avondale Heights to pick up some tools then drives to Fitzroy North to help Sam weld a shotgun safe.
The brothers work on the safe until dark. Gerardo calls his wife to say he’ll eat with Sam’s family and be home by 8.30pm.
At 8pm, Gerardo leaves the house, chatting to Sam’s wife Rocchina outside. As he approaches his car, two men emerge from a laneway across the street. Gerardo yells “No” and runs but they shoot his legs. As he tries to crawl back to the house they shoot him in the head.
Police are told the shooters leave in a blue station wagon. Officially, that’s the limit of their knowledge, then or now.
May St and Alister St have changed in 24 years. But a few older residents still talk about the Mannella hits.
One man tells neighbours a strange thing. On the night of the shooting, he arrived a few seconds afterwards, just as a strange car was leaving the street. The driver pulled up and asked him “Did you see that?”
The puzzled resident replied: “No. See what?” The other driver drove off without a word.
When he saw the body and the blood he realised he’d been asked if he was a witness. Perhaps it was a good thing he wasn’t. Maybe the bad guys took the view that omerta might apply to the Mannellas but not civilians.
The old Mannellas, Carmelo and Giuseppe, stuck around the patch where two of their eight adult children were murdered. They sold in 2014, and their son Sam, real name Salvatore, did the same three years later, reputedly moving his concrete truck and shotgun safe north to Reservoir.
New owners have done much work to rescue what one refers to as the “Calabrian Edwardian” houses. They pulled out big outdoor ovens and spits, replaced bare concrete with lawns and flowers, restored iron roofs and fitted solar panels.
The homicide squad passed the Mannella cases to the Purana Task Force. Investigators who so confidently identified the terracotta Trans Am as the getaway car for the Vince Mannella shooter have got no further.
One theory is that a fruit and vegetable market identity (who would ultimately head the Honoured Society) knew something about the brothers’ deaths.
The Godfather-in-waiting had previously shown his willingness to “get on the tools” if required, as did his brother.
Detectives have confirmed that the Godfather’s “name came up” as they combed through the murders. It still does. So does the Mannella family.
Gerardo’s daughter Antonietta Mannella was at primary school the day her dad didn’t come home from Uncle Sam’s place, but the shock did not stop her from following in his footsteps — into crime, not crane driving.
Antonietta has become the girlfriend of murderous Middle-Eastern organised crime boss George Marrogi, but has found that love hurts. She has been jailed for complicity in Marrogi’s massive drug importations.
Another member of the clan has been convicted over big drug importations with heavy organised crime figures.
Police have ruled a line under the Mannella murders, conceding they won’t be solved without a miracle.
The question hangs over them: did Vince’s ambition outstrip his influence in the Honoured Society, and get him executed in a power struggle, with his loyal brother killed as collateral damage?
There’s a simpler scenario. Vince Mannella, like most crooks, was a gambler. It could simply be that he got into trouble gambling and couldn’t or wouldn’t pay his debts. Either can be lethal.
You win some. You lose more.
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