Deadline: Mafia figures playing it safe in wake of John Latorre hit

If you rule by the gun you die by the gun, which fruiterer John Latorre learnt the hard way. His murder has rattled some Italian organised crime players and now one top mafia figure has taken security to a new level.

Five months after mafia-linked market figure John Latorre died in a fatal ambush, the reverberations are still being felt.

Deadline is told some Italian organised crime players have been paying much greater attention to personal security than before the Greenvale killing early this year.

That extends to one of the mafia’s most senior figures who’s doing a bit more than just looking over his shoulder.

The word is that he’s engaged a new driver (read bodyguard) lest he fall victim to the kind of ambush tactics he may have himself employed against enemies as a younger man.

It certainly would not be a cheap exercise but, when you have as much money as this bloke, it won’t break the bank.

Better than ending up like Latorre, who was completely exposed when a hit team struck outside his home in Buchanan Place.

The killers, probably a cut above the average suburban triggermen, knew just when the 64-year-old would set off for work at the Melbourne Markets in Epping and made sure they were in position.

They escaped the area on a small motorcycle and very little has been heard since.

Fruiterer John Latorre was gunned down in Greenvale on March 12.

Tobacco war hits northern front

Theories that the ongoing tobacco war is a Melbourne-only phenomenon are going up in a puff of smoke.

Locals at Ettalong Beach, on the Central Coast an hour north of Sydney, tell us there are four tobacconist shops in town. That is, there were four until this month, when the newest one was destroyed the same way that scores of tobacco shops have been around Melbourne.

The new tobacco shop in question, Cignall, had its windows smashed the night before a firebombing which gutted it and damaged nearby properties in the early hours of a Friday morning, August 9.

Theories that the ongoing tobacco war is a Melbourne-only phenomenon are going up in a puff of smoke. Picture: TikTok

That there are so many tobacconists in one small community suggests that sales of untaxed cigarettes and vapes is rife there, regardless of whether the premises are licensed.

The theory goes that if tobacco stores are licensed (as they are not in Victoria), police or council by-laws officers or maybe even Border Force can take punitive action over any breaches.

New South Wales, of course, has traditionally been a place where authorities can be very tolerant of organised crime, although that state’s health inspectors claim to have held 3000 inspections in 2023, seizing $13.7m in vapes and e-liquids and more than 4.8 million cigarettes and 1700kg of other illegal tobacco.

None of that stopped what happened at Ettalong Beach, where local police are looking for two men seen near the property just before the fire, one of them carrying a jerry can.

Meanwhile, the local Peninsula Chamber of Commerce president is smoking mad about the proliferation of tobacco shops in his patch, saying the fire bombing has local retailers scared.

“We don’t want to see this escalate further,” he told local media outlets the morning after.

“Our local retailers are now highly concerned that we might be experiencing a local turf war. This issue has to be addressed.”

This particular chamber of commerce boss has a familiar name. It is Matthew Wales, a moniker he shares with Melbourne’s “society killer”.

The tobacco shop was vandalised just a day before it was engulfed by a suspicious fire. Picture: ABC Central Coast / Shauna Foley

While good Matthew is worrying about fire bombings up north, bad Matthew is finishing the long sentence he got for offing his mother and stepfather down south.

The outlaw Mattie Wales was, of course, a harmless and obscure hairdresser until he made a life-changing decision to kill his nearest and dearest after dinner at his Glen Iris house in 2002.

He copped 30 years with a minimum of 24, which technically means he should be up for parole in early 2026. But extra jail lockdown time imposed during the pandemic might have moved things forward a little for the poor little rich boy.

A police chief’s life is not always a happy one. Picture: David Crosling

No backseat driver

Chief Commissioner Shane Patton likes to get a taste of life on the road by driving a night shift from time to time. And we really do mean driving.

Those who travel with the chief as they patrol and respond to calls quickly learn one thing — he doesn’t like being a passenger.

It’s not clear whether he has a distrust of other drivers or a high regard for his own skills but we’re told he insists on being behind the wheel.

Colleagues with him on one recent shift were probably left wishing he wasn’t in the car at all.

They had all turned out to an incident at a home in the southeastern suburbs when the boss stood in a large dog poo.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, it should be noted that the offending turd was actually inside the house. It was that sort of joint.

A police chief’s life is not always a happy one.

Hayden Haitana, with ring-in Fine Cotton in 1985, has been remembered as ‘a con artist and a larrikin’.

Fine cotton: the ring-in after the ring-in

Veteran television journalist Janine Widgery has seen and done a lot of tricky yarns in her time, but the 40th anniversary of the Fine Cotton ring-in this month has reminded her of a postscript a few months after the great debacle.

Widgery’s then boss Fred Fraser of Nine News on the Gold Coast had arranged an exclusive interview with the ring-in trainer Hayden Haitana for ace host Mike Willesee on A Current Affair.

More importantly, the film crew also scored access to Fine Cotton, the innocent party in the whole affair, along with substitute horse Bold Personality.

“We hired a horse float and both of us (Widgery and Fraser) drove to the Sunshine Coast and picked him up,” Widgery told Deadline last week.

“We brought him back to my acreage at Coomera. I had two mares there at the time. He was so emaciated I literally hand-fed him for weeks.”

Before the story was aired, the Courier Mail newspaper got wind of it and a reporter and a photographer started following Widgery to find out where Fine Cotton was. She and Fraser tumbled to the subterfuge and pulled one of their own, switching in another horse at the property — a ring-in for the ring-in — to make sure their exclusive story wasn’t gazumped.

The Courier Mail crew soon realised they had been outwitted and dropped off.

Widgery recalls Hayden Haitana with much affection.

“He was definitely a con artist and a larrikin. His brother Pat was a jockey. I remember Hayden telling me to put my house on their horse Roymac in the eighth at Randwick. It started at 100-1. The bookies wouldn’t take my bet of several hundred dollars on the nose so I ran around the betting ring putting smaller bets on. Roymac bolted in and we upgraded our boat…”

Ray Shuey became internationally respected as a road safety expert and advocate. Picture: Manuela Cifra

Vale Ray Shuey

In 1974, Ray Shuey’s brother David and his wife Barbara were killed in a head-on road crash in country Victoria.

Both were aged 25 and, as with so many other road tragedies, it was not the fault of those who’d died.

But some good was to come from that terrible event at Kyabram.

It reinforced for Ray Shuey the human cost of road toll, something he would later take with him to his job as Victoria Police traffic Assistant Commissioner.

He approached the appointment with great gusto and there is widespread agreement that his ideas and passion saved many lives.

In retirement, he became internationally respected as an expert on and advocate for road safety.

Hundreds are expected at the Shuey funeral next Monday.

He has been widely remembered as a passionate copper and one of the force’s gentlemen.

One Herald Sun reader and former officer commented: “Ray was anything but just a cop. He led when those that were supposed to lead Victoria Police ducked, he took responsibility when those around him protected themselves and he was a true example of the traditional Australian values that seem to have been lost: Look after your mates (all of them); no sacrifice is too great; make a difference and stand to when needed”.