Inside the failed hit on Mario Condello that finally brought down gangland king Carl Williams
Carl Williams was meticulous in planning a gangland hit — but he was arrested just as the body count was about to rise again.
Police & Courts
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Fatboy Carl Williams and wannabe hitman Sean Sonnet ordered drinks and laughed about the what ifs of bungling a “hit’’ on Mario Condello.
Inside a northern suburbs pub, kingpin Williams, his father, George, and emerging gangland player Sonnet peppered Williams’ cousin Michael Thorneycroft, with questions.
Among them was whether Thorneycroft could still “ride good”, referring to his motorcycle.
Thorneycroft would tell police after his 2004 arrest over the plot to kill Condello that there was levity in the early stages of the planning, in statements which later formed part of court proceedings.
“It would be like the world’s dumbest criminals if we were to ride up and I was to stall the motorbike, flip it or drop it, when (I’m) about to pop this c---,” Sonnet allegedly joked over drinks.
“Sean, Carl and I then laughed about this. Sean was joking with me but was also being serious at the same time.’’
Thorneycroft told police he knew they were planning to shoot someone, but they did not initially identify the target.
He alleged Sonnet had a gun down the front of his pants at the pub meeting and repeatedly put his hand towards the revolver when someone walked by.
“I believe that he was doing this in a way that he was showing that he was protecting Carl,’’ he said.
Sonnet also wanted to make it known he was a serious player, according to Thorneycroft.
“I do what I say I’m gonna do, don’t I Mick?’’ It was a rhetorical question Thorneycroft alleged he asked repeatedly to indicate he was set to go through with the “job’’.
Thorneycroft also alleged his cousin Carl told him: “We need a legit car or motorbike to use after you use the stolen motorbike or car to get away from the scene.’’
The drug boss turned killer also wanted his cousin to make sure nobody saw the hit team transfer from a stolen vehicle to a “legit’’ car or bike.
Williams’ expertise was clear.
He told his new crew to burn their clothes and the stolen vehicles.
“Carl said for us to do this because this will get rid of the DNA,’’ Thorneycroft stated.
A good “get-away’’ route where nobody saw them was also a must and mobile phones were banned because police could track them, Williams told the team.
Strikingly, according to Thorneycroft’s statement, Williams was not afraid to talk about other gangland hits.
He told police that Williams detailed another killing in which “there was 40 gallons of blood’’ left in a car.
Despite the gruesome blood splatter, the assassins continued to drive the car for two weeks, Thorneycroft was told.
The failed plot to kill Condello would be a breakthrough for the anti-gangland Purana taskforce.
Despite knowing police were bugging their phones, the underworld figures used them incessantly.
Condello, a lawyer turned gangster, knew he was under threat from Williams.
According to Purana task force documents, Condello beefed up his personal security and tried to conceal his day-to-day movements in 2004.
He was right to be worried.
Williams had caught wind of a contract Condello (and Lewis Moran) had put on his head.
A murky underworld player, who would become a police informer, approached Condello and offered to murder Carl and his father George Williams for a price.
At the time, the Carlton Crew knew Williams was a killing machine.
They assumed Mark and Jason Moran and veteran safecracker, Graham Kinniburgh, were among his gangland victims.
And Williams had retaliated quickly to Veniamin’s 2004 death with the public murder of Lewis Moran in the Brunswick Club in Sydney Rd.
The plot to kill Condello, who had connections in the Italian mafia, was meant to go down earlier.
Informers and phone taps revealed Williams had attempted to get a man known as the “Chinaman’’ to do the hit.
Williams’ former jail mate Sonnet was keen to take his place.
Thorneycroft said he and Sonnet conducted surveillance in Brighton, attempting to find Condello’s house and even staking out his child’s school.
The Purana taskforce was listening.
On June 9, 2004, at about 5am, Purana taskforce heads Detective Inspector Andrew Allen and Detective Senior Sergeant Phil Swindells held a briefing conference outlining the planned arrests that day.
Sonnet, Thorneycroft, Gregg Hildebrandt, and their prime target for more than a year, Carl Williams, would go down.
The arrests would stymie Melbourne’s gangland war.
As Sonnet, carrying two handguns, lay in wait to whack Condello at Brighton cemetery, police were staking him out.
About 7am, Sonnet and a drafted-in getaway driver Hildebrandt were arrested by the Special Operations Group on North Road, Caulfield South.
Thorneycroft and Williams were arrested shortly after.
It was the end of the road for “Fatboy’’ as a gangland kingpin.
Williams would plead guilty to four murders in 2007 and, in the process, cooperate with police himself on a gangland double hit – the 2004 murders of Terry and Christine Hodson.
Williams would be killed in jail, with the case later collapsing.
Matthew Johnson, the feared leader of the “Prisoners of War” gang, would be sentenced to life for his murder, committed under the glare of CCTV cameras while no prison guard was watching.
There was a police task force assigned, but no coronial inquest into Williams’ death, which is usually mandatory.
But in true gangster style, he was buried in a gold coffin.
His family believed because he was the “king of gangland’’, it was only fitting he be laid to rest in a casket almost identical to the one the king of pop, Michael Jackson, who departed the world in a year earlier.
And, in truer gangland style, there was a family squabble over who paid for it.
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