Deadline: Jail could be safest place for gunmen who botched Sam Abdulrahim hit

Prison may be the most palatable possibility for the wannabe gunmen who infuriated their bosses — and their victim — when they botched the hit on Sam “The Punisher” Abdulrahim.

Mark Buttler and Andrew Rule with the latest crime buzz.

DAY OF THE JACKASS

More evidence has emerged that the wannabe contract killers who tried to eliminate Sam “The Punisher” Abdulrahim may be among the most inept crooks in the badness business.

That’s saying something because Australia has a rich tradition of asinine assassins who either murder the wrong victims or can’t manage a clean kill of the right ones.

The Fawkner cemetery debacle got off to a bad start when the hit team shot Abdulrahim eight times but didn’t kill him.

They then took off along Box Forest Rd but ploughed their SUV getaway car into a fire hydrant, then bolted on foot, leaving an evidence bonanza inside a vehicle they were clearly intending to torch.

One of these criminal masterminds was then caught on CCTV jumping into a bulk bin at the back of a fast food restaurant and dragging rubbish over himself.

He lasted less than a minute before scrambling back out, managing to dislodge his hoodie as he did so, giving delighted police a clear profile image of his face.

“He’s gonna go from the bin to the bin,” an astute observer remarked last week.

One of the alleged shooters jumps into a bin behind a fast food restaurant on Sydney Rd. Picture: VicPol

Ultimately, prison may be the most palatable possibility for the shooters.

Adbulrahim and his mates have a reputation for violence and have publicly made it clear they view funerals as places for mourners, not murders.

Those who sent the gunmen must be most unhappy about the way it went and will have that nagging feeling there are loose ends.

On the other hand, if blundering trigger-work is a threat to the blunderer’s health, the Comanchero klutz Hasan Topal would be long gone.

In 2017, Topal shot dead two innocent men in mistaken identity killings and has lived to tell the tale, albeit in exile overseas.

Topal’s blameless victims are the latest in a list of people murdered by mistake by the criminally stupid.

One of the worst examples was the shooting of young mother Jane Thurgood-Dove as she brought her children home from school to their home in a quiet residential street in Niddrie in 1997.

A pot-bellied gunman shot her. It is certain the hitman, Steven John Mordy, and his accomplice, Jamie Reynolds, were supposed to kill Carmel Kypri, wife of an alleged criminal who lived a few doors away.

Police at the Niddrie home where Jane Thurgood-Dove was murdered in a case of mistaken identity.

The only good thing in the tragic story is that Mordy and Reynolds both went to early graves within a few years, Mordy from a heart attack and Reynolds by drowning. A third accomplice is waiting to be hit by the karma bus.

The reptilian Roy “Red Rat” Pollitt was jailed in 1990 (and deported to the UK in 2018) for shooting dead tradesman Lindsay Simpson at a house in Lower Plenty in 1984.

Pollitt not only killed the wrong man — he did it deliberately because the victim had seen his face. Pollitt was supposed to kill a drug dealer, Alan Williams, but Williams was tipped off to the plan by detectives.

But Simpson, the target’s innocent brother-in-law, was not in the loop. When he arrived at the house that night, Pollitt shot him in the head, despite the victim pleading “my name is Simpson”.

Pollitt’s reasoning was that Simpson had to die regardless. As the judge said when sentencing him six years later, pure evil.

NICKNAMES THAT STICK

Jails, like sports teams, boarding schools and the police force, are full of nicknames ranging from the brutal to the brilliant.

Many are life sentences, such as the one copped by the detective known forever as “Bothwell” from the day he loudly misinterpreted a birth notice (“mother and baby both well”).

The thing about nicknames is that they stick in the memory long after proper names are forgotten. It goes that way for Ray Mooney, the playwright and novelist who learnt his craft doing time in Pentridge Prison in the bad old days.

Pentridge Prison was no place for the feint of heart.

Mooney’s novel A Green Light is one of the greatest Australian crime sagas since For The Term Of His Natural Life and Robbery Under Arms, predating the brilliant Animal Kingdom.

A Green Light draws on Mooney’s friendship with the late hitman Christopher Dale Flannery, known as “Rentakill” (as in Rentokil) before his own murder in Sydney in 1985.

Mooney has just revealed a new story about another old prison mate, “Hollywood George” Waugh.

He writes: “Hollywood stood about 175cm and was scrawny, with an emerging pot belly. He looked more like a fat matchstick than a matinee idol. That’s why we called him Hollywood.

“But Hollywood George had charisma and was one of the all-time great philanderers. He’d been a music archivist for a Queensland radio station and knew more about the music industry than the editors of Rolling Stone. He carried a contact list that included Johnny O’Keefe, Billy Thorpe, Bob Dylan and Crash Craddock and he had the goss on them all.”

Jailbird turned playwright Ray Mooney.

Hitman Christopher Dale Flannery

Apart from teaching Billy Thorpe to dance “the stomp” in Kings Cross, Hollywood told cell mates, he’d shared his “yippee pills” with Johnny O’Keefe. As for Dylan’s hectic private life, well …

Hollywood was a conman. His crime of choice was bouncing cheques. His hobby was romancing an endless procession of women who wrote to lonely hearts columns. His only outdoor recreation, says Mooney, was cutting a swath through the batting order in prison cricket games.

“Hollywood’s one sporting talent was an ability to swing a cork cricket ball off three steps,” writes Mooney. “He was unplayable.”

There is a lot more where that comes from, including the night that Mooney stopped Flannery from murdering Hollywood with a cricket bat for the suicidal act of pinching his wife Kath Flannery’s handbag.

TAKE CARE SHAGS

A carpet-layer we’ll call Shags has a pretty solid client list, but it’s his nocturnal activities that have been raising eyebrows of late.

Turns out floor coverings aren’t the only thing Shags has been laying in his down time.

Scuttlebutt has it that Shags has also been getting very cosy with a well-heeled female client.

Unfortunately, she is also the partner of a heavy underworld figure who is said to be displeased.

HARDENED CRIM’S BLUE FEELING

A renowned hard man in Melbourne’s underworld may have recently become a bit of a soft touch.

That is one way to report that an organised crime raid targeting the hard man and his mates led to police seizing his erectile dysfunction medication.

Mind you, police might be saving him from himself.

Many years ago, a Melbourne underworld figure newly released from jail arranged some paid female company and took a blue tablet to help things along. But the exertion proved too much and he did a Sir Billy Snedden and died on the job.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

Gobbo’s Mate is a plain country racetrack battler whose naming is far smarter than its performances.

The four-year-old gelding is sired by former sprint great Star Witness from a mare called Bad Romance.

Gobbo’s mate was all set to run at Bendigo recently but was scratched.

Is this a portent? Could there be more non-runners to come as the saga involving lawyer and police informer Nicola Gobbo drags on?

Stay tuned.

I DIDN’T DO IT

The highway patrol cops who two weeks ago nailed a man who had been driving without a licence since 1978have struck a purple patch.

Last Thursday they attended a collision in Springvale in which the Honda Accord, white in colour, had rear-ended a stationary BMW waiting to turn right in Heatherton Rd.

The Honda driver blew 0.141, as in almost three times the limit. He claimed he had not been driving the car until reminded that when emergency services arrived, there was nobody else in it. Only him.

The fact the alleged drunk is facing a heap of charges will be cold comfort to the other driver. She’d had her new BMW X1 for only a month … after having it on order for more than a year.

DOGGY STYLE

Speaking of nicknames, it’s good to see a golden oldie that bobbed up when Victoria Police’s crime command staff donned the denim last week to raise $3000 for the Jeans for Genes charity.

Leading the feast of fashion was Det. Supt. Paul O’Halloran, universally known in the force as “Doggy”, for reasons lost in the mists of 1980s misbehaviour.

Doggy rocked a triple-denim ensemble of jeans, shirt and jacket to win the day. He always was sharply dressed by the standards of a profession that was once shockingly fond of nylon short-sleeved shirts and clip-on ties.

COURT LOSES ITS COOL

Much hot air is expelled in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court every working day, at great public expense.

When the complex’s airconditioning malfunctioned last week, the verdict from the powers that be was that it was time to get out.

Despite it being in the dead of winter, the place had to be evacuated for reasons of ventilation.