Epping greengrocer John Latorre learned those who rule by the gun can die the same way

John Latorre was a friendly Epping greengrocer to those who didn’t really know him, and a capo in the mafia to those who did. But even captains have a boss, and when the big bucks stop, the buck stops with someone.

The Latorres are no strangers to extreme violence, often shotgun related.

Take Vince Latorre, for instance, brother of the late John Latorre, the fruit and vegetable market identity who this week found that those who rule by the gun can die that way.

Vince is Vincent Paul Latorre, of Shepparton, not their cousin Vince Latorre, prominent among Werribee market gardeners.

When the police were chasing bad Vince Latorre of Shepparton over extortion, theft and murder back in the 1990s, they wasted some time shadowing the wrong Vince Latorre.

They must have laughed about that mix-up at the Latorre family Christmas. But bad Vince wasn’t laughing when rogue detectives allegedly took him into the bush to see if they could belt the truth out of him about where a fortune in stolen cash and jewellery were hidden.

And the Latorres won’t be laughing now that Vince’s older brother John is just as dead as a kid called Rocky Iaria, who vanished from Shepparton in 1991 and whose body reappeared in grotesque circumstances more than six years later.

The difference being that John Latorre, at 64, had lived a relatively long and rewarding life by the time a gunman ended it at 4am last Tuesday. Whereas Rocky Iaria was young and poor, barely 20 when he was eliminated as coolly as culling a fruit tree in the Latorre orchard at Shepparton East.

John Latorre was ambushed outside his home on a quiet street in Buchanan Place, Greenvale. Picture: Nicki Connolly

Rocky Iaria was born in 1971, fourth of six children of Antonio and Raffaela, hard-scrabble Calabrian immigrants who had a small orchard near Shepparton then started working for others.

Rocky grew up with hard work. It didn’t appeal as much as hanging out with tough guys who stood over fellow growers, often by poisoning an entire crop if extortion “tax” wasn’t paid.

Bad Vince Latorre was 10 years older than Rocky and, in his eyes, fabulously successful.

Latorre owned two customised Brock Commodores, expensive muscle cars that were a magnet for a car-crazy kid like Rocky.

Another member of the circle was a hard case called Danny Murtagh, who’d married into an Italian family.

By 1989, police were looking closely at Latorre and Murtagh over a series of thefts and burglaries in northern Victoria.

In May that year, well-informed burglars hit the home of Stephen Monti, a wealthy tomato grower who lived at White Hills near the Latorres’ older brother Mario, a Bendigo fruiterer.

Apart from a clock radio, a camera, a video recorder, watches and leather jackets, the burglars found Monti’s hidden safe containing $300,000 cash, 110 ounces of gold and much jewellery. Total value of the haul was $500,000 to $700,000, worth several houses in Bendigo then.

Police soon heard about the Shep crew.

Latorre would have been better off to drive an old ute with muddied number plates to “the job” but couldn’t resist driving one of his Brock specials.

The hot car was spotted on the road from Shepparton and near Monti’s place four times that day, including at a local hardware store where one occupant bought jemmy bars. A local noticed a young man matching Iaria’s description trying to hide as he kept watch outside the Monti house.

Those who knew John Latorre a little describe the murdered man as generous and courteous.

Vincent Latorre and his son Daniel Latorre outside a Melbourne court.

Soon afterwards, the Major Crime Squad raided the Iaria and Latorre homes. In February 1991, Iaria and Latorre were tried in Bendigo County Court. The case fizzled out with a hung jury.

Before a retrial began, someone tipped off detectives that one of Rocky Iaria’s Myrtleford relatives had the video recorder from the Monti burglary. Silly Rocky had sold it to them for $150.

That sale tied young Iaria to the heist. The cheap video player and an expensive lawyer would cost him his life. When the lawyer dropped a throwaway line that Iaria’s newly-proven involvement would also tie Latorre to the crime, the message landed.

On September 6, 1991, just 17 days before a second trial was to start, Rocky Iaria went for a drive “to see a few people about a few things”. He was never seen alive again.

His co-accused suggested he had “pissed off because he’s shit-frightened” of the upcoming trial. The thing about that deliberate red herring is that someone had left Rocky’s car at the Benalla railway station on the main Sydney-Melbourne line.

But Rocky’s parents feared the worst because they had signed over their house as a bond and their son would never have risked that by jumping bail.

Two weeks later, on September 23, the new trial began. Evidence involving Iaria was tossed out and Latorre, facing the jury alone, was acquitted.

On February 19, 1998, a gravedigger at Pine Lodge lawn cemetery east of Shepparton used a backhoe to open the grave of Dulcie Pearson, who had been buried in August 1991, only days before Rocky’s disappearance. Now her husband had died and was to be buried with her.

Rocky Iaria’s body was found six years after his murder in someone else’s grave at Pine Lodge, near Shepparton.

But the backhoe had dug only a little way when it hit something odd. A bag of lime, set rock hard. Under it were the remains of Rocky Iaria, wrapped in plastic, head blown apart with a shotgun.

Back in 1991, someone had buried Rocky in the fresh grave. Almost the perfect crime, except the killers didn’t count on the old lady’s husband joining her.

Coroner Paresa Spanos found that Vincent Latorre either killed Iaria or ordered his death, probably because it would win his acquittal on the robbery charges. Despite a $100,000 reward, no one was charged with Iaria’s murder.

Apart from the beating he took after being abducted by two masked men, Vince Latorre seemed to have gotten away with it, although his many sins would later find him out.

The Latorre family did not lose any standing as a result. It’s possible that Vince’s acquittal of the Monti robbery and dodging the Iaria murder bolstered respect for the family name in Calabrian circles, along with their in-laws and business partners, the Grillos.

When Vince and John’s father, Pasquale Latorre, died some time before Rocky Iaria’s body turned up, the funeral for the father of nine and grandfather of 29 was so big it stopped the traffic in Shepparton.

It wasn’t until 2009 that Vince Latorre was finally sentenced to a long jail term, this time for blackmail and extortion.

Brother John, meanwhile, presented as a canny character who conducted himself politely in public. But police were well aware he was a heavyweight in the wholesale vegetable scene dominated by the Calabrian mafia’s Honoured Society.

Family speak to detectives at the scene of John Latorre’s murder. Picture: AAP

A police officer comforts a woman at the scene of the shooting. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

John Latorre played the part of quiet ambassador for the mafiosi, a sort of Italian community leader, a little like the “friendly godfather”, Joe Arena, who was shot dead outside his Bayswater house in 1988.

The only public controversy in Latorre’s low-profile career was offering donations to the Liberal Party to cultivate contacts who might obtain a visa for Calabrian gunman Francesco Madafferi, a convicted criminal whose brother Tony Madafferi is a respected Dandenong greengrocer.

Apart from publicity over massaging political connections, John Latorre has mostly avoided trouble, at least publicly. The family are known as passionate Essendon football supporters, reportedly watching training on a monitor in their office at the wholesale market in Epping.

Those who knew Latorre a little describe the murdered man as generous and courteous.

Neighbours in the well-manicured houses in Buchanan Place in Greenvale recall him “anonymously” putting bags of fruit and vegetables on their doorsteps during the pandemic.

One woman who knew him describes “a really decent person … respectful, a good listener, astute. The first to pour oil on troubled waters.

“When I heard this, I thought it had to be a case of mistaken identity.”

A trusted source in the vegetable growing scene says “Johnny” was respected and liked by those who dealt with him.

And Latorre didn’t let any grudges against the legal system interfere with business. While brother Vince was serving a big sentence, Latorre had a profitable deal supplying produce to the Fulham prison near Sale.

But there was never any doubt he was highly connected (and formerly highly respected) as a “capo” in the criminal organisation that Calabrians call ’Ndrangheta, the society that outsiders often call the Family. Capos are captains, senior players in the hierarchy but answerable to a boss.

At funerals John Latorre would shake hands the conventional way with “Aussies” but, when approached by Calabrian men, he would kiss some once on the cheek – and a select few on both cheeks.

Homicide detectives are trying to work out which of those men might have turned on Latorre – and why. The answer, as with most crime, will involve drug money.

Police will speculate whether any big drug shipments have gone astray, costing ’Ndrangheta backers here and in Italy millions of dollars outlay and tens of millions in lost profits. Detectives wonder if such a thing could aggravate existing leadership tensions between the old guard and impatient heirs.

When the big bucks stop, the buck has to stop with someone.

The summary offered by one who knew Latorre is cryptic but it might be right.

“It’s a family thing,” he said.