School picture captures young Gavin Preston before his descent into life of crime
Gavin “Capable” Preston resembles a surfer more than budding criminal in his 1988 Sunshine High School picture, with former classmates recalling a charismatic figure with a wild side.
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Gavin “Capable” Preston, with his big smile and blonde mullet, looked more surfer than standover man in this old school photo.
Preston appeared every bit your average 16-year-old as he sat front and centre of the picture of the Sunshine High School year 10C class of 1988.
A year after the shot was taken, Preston finished up with school and was setting out on a life of crime.
His exploits and the accompanying danger ended in a contract killing at a Keilor cafe on Saturday morning.
Those who were with him at Sunshine High recall a confident, charismatic figure who was wild but gave no indication of being underworld material.
“He had a bit of swagger. He had people who were very loyal to him,” one old schoolmate said.
The former student said Preston played footy and supported Richmond in the then-VFL.
She said he was wild but not in any exceptional sense among the rough-and-tumble environment of Sunshine back then.
“There were lots of rough kids around. I didn’t think he would become a killer,” the former schoolmate said.
Preston was an institution in Melbourne crime for almost three decades.
On the outside, he was a killer and a standover man, who, even in his 50s, struck fear into virtually everyone who crossed his path.
During his frequent spells behind bars, he was responsible for many jailhouse bashings and was almost fatally stabbed in a Barwon Prison ambush in 2015.
Preston started his rise through the ranks of the crime world in Sunshine as a contemporary of the up-and-coming crime figures like Andrew Veniamin and Dino Dibra, after leaving Sunshine High in year 11.
He was constantly in trouble during his younger years, eventually working his way up to armed robbery.
Preston later ended up doing a stint in a New South Wales prison for firearms and drug trafficking offences.
It was during this time that senior police here became aware he had some extremely sensitive force information with the potential to compromise safety.
“As you can imagine, that was a big deal. It got very serious,” one veteran investigator said.
In the period around the turn of last decade, Preston was again out of control.
At one stage, he and feared Middle Eastern organised crime figure Nabil Maghnie were running amok.
Preston denied it, but he and Maghnie were the only real suspects in the 2011 ambush of then-Bandido enforcer Toby Mitchell outside the gang’s Weston St clubhouse.
Mitchell was lucky to survive.
Months later, Preston shot drug dealer Adam Khoury dead in his North Melbourne apartment — a killing he later successfully argued was a case of defensive homicide.
It was about this time that Preston and Maghnie were arrested outside the Melbourne Town Hall, tooled up with guns and in some kind of hurry to get somewhere.
The smart money had it that they were en route to murder Carlton Crew figure Mick Gatto as he relaxed with mates at a CBD cafe.
There was some grim irony that it was Maghnie’s son Abbas ‘AJ’ Maghnie who was wounded by Preston’s side at Keilor on Saturday.
One senior police officer described Preston as a “wrecking machine”, but Preston preferred his nickname “Capable” because he had cultivated the image that he was capable of anything.
In a plea hearing for the Khoury killing, one of his lawyers had said Preston just wanted to live a normal life.
His dream, the lawyer said, was to “become like one of the people on the tram — an ordinary person”.
In the end there was no parole and Preston served his full term before going back to the only way he knew, with fatal consequences.
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