Carl Williams saw Mark Moran as biggest threat in crime family

As the brains of the family who was well respected in the criminal world, Mark Moran was chosen to die first in Carl Williams’ deranged revenge plot.

Mark Moran’s bullet-riddled ute parked outside his Aberfeldie home.

Carl Williams chose to kill Mark Moran first because he feared him more than his brother Jason.

Evidence from a key Purana task force witness outlined how the drug boss obtained multiple weapons from gangland figure Dino Dibra before Mark’s June 2000, murder then concocted statements incriminating another criminal after the deed was done.

The testimony also alleged Williams wanted both Morans murdered using a revolver and a sawn-off shotgun to make it clear in Melbourne’s underworld that he was the man responsible.

The witness, known as Mr Thomas, told investigators a dispute over a pill press sparked the shooting of Williams in a reserve in Gladstone Park as he met Mark Moran and his younger brother Jason, an incident which sparked an era of gangland carnage in Melbourne.

Mr Thomas said Williams later recounted to him how the shooting unfolded in the reserve.

“Carl said that Mark hit him over the head with a lump of wood. Carl said that he fell to the ground and that Jason shot him in the stomach,” Mr Thomas said in a statement.

“Carl said that Mark was telling Jason to shoot Carl in the head to finish him off but Jason didn’t do it.”

The Morans stole the .45 pistol Williams took to the meeting in a bum-bag then left.

Mr Thomas said that, from that point, Williams was “totally obsessed” with getting Mark, Jason and their father Lewis.

He chose to kill Mark first because he was the brains of the family and was well-respected in the criminal world.

“Carl also said that if he had killed Jason before he killed Mark, that Mark would do everything in his power to murder Carl and would be more likely to succeed in doing so than Jason would,” Mr Thomas told Purana.

“Carl definitely saw Mark as being the bigger threat out of the two of them.”

Williams saw Mark Moran as his biggest threat.

Jason Moran shot Williams, unwittingly triggering the downfall of his family.

Williams set about assembling a spy network of associates to carry out surveillance on Mark, planning to kill him while Jason did a stint in prison.

Mr Thomas said one of those was a man known as The Driver and that Williams would later make comments that made him believe they were both involved in the later murder of Mark Moran.

In the period after he was shot in the guts, Williams started to make inquiries about where he could get a shotgun and whether its barrel could be cut down.

“Carl didn’t say why he wanted it cut down but I knew he wanted to use the gun to murder one of the Morans. I didn’t have to ask him why he wanted the gun but I knew why,” Mr Thomas testified.

Dino Dibra, who would later also become an underworld war victim, was contacted and brought two shotguns, one an under and over model and the other a side-by-side.

Mr Thomas took the side-by-side to an engineering shop in Tullamarine and used a drop saw to cut the barrels and the butt, reducing it to a length of half a metre, before handing it over to Williams.

“He didn’t say what he wanted it for but I knew he was going to use it on the Morans,” police were later told.

A week before Mark Moran was shot dead outside his Aberfeldie home, Dibra dropped a silver revolver off to Mr Thomas, saying Williams had asked for it.

He took the gun to a mate’s Port Melbourne office to be stored in a safe and, days later, Williams collected the weapon.

Mark Moran lies dead in his ute outside his Aberfeldie home.

“A few days after Mark Moran’s murder, I was approached by my friend in Port Melbourne who asked me if the gun he’d held for me was used in Mark Moran’s murder. My friend was stressing out about it. I told the friend that it wasn’t and that I had sold it to someone else for $2000,” Mr Thomas told Purana.

“I then went to Carl and asked him if that was the same gun used to murder Mark. Carl told me that it was the same revolver used to murder Mark Moran and that he had something to do with it.”

Mr Thomas told police the Dibra shotgun he kept was later found at the scene of Jason Moran’s murder at a junior footy clinic in June, 2003.

Multiple weapons were used in killings orchestrated by Williams during this era.

The statement said Williams was almost always with Rocco Arico at this time.

Mr Thomas said Arico was acting as a bodyguard because he thought the Morans may try to kill him and wanted someone around who had a “bit of dash.”

“By having a bit of dash, I mean that he was willing to do anything for Carl, including shooting someone if it came to that,” Mr Thomas said.

Williams would later tell Mr Thomas that the Mark Moran murder was only part of the job.

He would regularly say “one down, two to go.”

“By that, I took it to mean that one Moran was dead and that Jason and Lewis were still to go,” Mr Thomas said.

The grisly murder scene of Jason Moran and Pasquale Barbaro, shot dead in front of Moran’s children.

The sawn-off shotgun used to execute Moran and Barbaro.

“Carl never said that it was him that pulled the trigger or told me who helped him commit the murder, only that he was involved in the murder and responsible for Mark’s death. Carl seemed very happy with this and wanted it known in criminal circles he was responsible.”

He then turned his attention to how Jason would die.

“Carl constantly talked about shooting Jason in that same manner that Mark Moran was murdered,” Mr Thomas said.

“By that, I mean he wanted to use a sawn-off shotgun and revolver for Jason, too. Carl wanted to send a message to the Morans that he was responsible for killing both Mark and Jason.”

Mr Thomas told Purana that Dibra and Arico boasted of killing Mark Moran in the aftermath.

He said he knew “100 per cent” that Dibra was not involved but he could not speak for Arico.

Mr Thomas said Williams later pushed him to make a false statement implicating another man, Mr McGrath, in Mark Moran’s murder.

It was to say that he had given the revolver to Mr McGrath to carry out the shooting.

“Carl then asked me to rewrite the statement in my own handwriting and give it back to him so he could pass it on to (lawyer’s name redacted),” Mr Thomas said.

“The statement that Carl asked to do was totally fabricated by him. In the end, there were six or seven statements fabricated by Carl aimed at destroying Mr McGrath’s credibility in relation to the Mark Moran case.

“Carl was of the belief that the statements would create enough doubt about Mr McGrath and would get him off the Mark Moran murder.”

McGrath would ultimately tell police that Williams acted alone in killing Mark Moran, but this was never proved.