The last photo of gangland boss Carl Williams taken outside prison walls

Inside the top-secret mission to turn gangland boss Carl Williams into an informer, including a meeting with a woman he knew at a dingy motel.

This never-before-seen picture reveals the moment Carl Williams began co-operating with police, leading to his ultimate demise.

Williams, during a trip out of maximum security Barwon Prison under heavy guard for four days, is pictured with Victoria Police officers in the Queenscliff area.

It is the last photograph taken of Williams outside prison walls.

The exact location has never been disclosed.

More than a year after he posed for this snapshot, believed to be in December 2008, Williams was bashed to death in the Acacia unit by fellow inmate and jailhouse enforcer Matthew Johnson.

The gangland boss was photographed standing alongside a specialist team, who had taken him to an area near Queenscliff specifically chosen not only to keep Williams safe, but to also stop any escape plot.

Carl Williams, in red, and his father George, pictured with police members. Picture: Supplied

The secret location was near — but not on — the Swan Island restricted army base, where it was first planned he would be taken.

His father, George Williams, also appears in the photograph, after he too was discreetly taken out of Dhurringile Prison near Shepparton.

Williams, still in his prison-issue orange jumpsuit, was blindfolded and transported to the location in a van with blacked out windows.

“Everything was blackened out,” a source said.

“He didn’t know where he was.”

It can also be revealed Williams was taken by officers to a dingy motel where he met up with a woman he knew in order to have sex.

Williams, however, was unhappy with the state of the room and in the end “nothing happened”, a source said.

The December, 2008, “download” of Williams was a top secret mission to obtain statements from him about an unsolved double murder.

Police planned to ‘download’ all Williams intel on the underworld.

The Petra taskforce — investigating the double execution of police informers Terry and Christine Hodson in May, 2004 — applied to have Williams taken from maximum security Barwon Prison under a “custody permit” in a deal that would cut an estimated 10-years off his 35-year minimum jail sentence.

Williams made three statements about the Hodson killings implicating a detective who police suspected was a corrupt officer.

The 39-year old was weeks away from giving evidence at a Supreme Court trial over the Hodson murders, along with another key witness, his former lawyer Nicola Gobbo, when he was bashed to death by Johnson on April 19, 2010.

The Herald Sun has previously reported Victoria Police documents reveal Williams would give evidence in up to 10 gangland hits, carried out during the bloody Melbourne drug war.

The documents outline “8-10” killings in which Williams could “fully assist investigators”.

Under the headline, “Proposed evidentiary debrief of Carl Williams”, the Petra taskforce document states he was prepared to “start from the beginning and give up everything”.

Apart from the Hodson murders, the gangland murders of Michael Marshall, Graham Kinniburgh, Victor Peirce, Joe Quadara, Mark Mallia, Nick Radev and Richard Mladenich were listed.

The proposal, if carried through, would have implicated some of the under world’s biggest names.

Johnson would go on to argue he killed Williams in self defence to prevent him getting in first.

It would later emerge that Johnson had access to Williams’ police statements.

Other underworld figures would also become aware of Williams’ deal with police — including that Victoria Police paid his daughter’s school fees and that he moved to have 10 years cut from his 35-year jail sentence.

Although multiple probes were conducted into Williams’ fatal bashing, suspicions that Johnson was paid to execute Williams were not substantiated.

Police continue to make inquiries surrounding whether Williams’ intention to implicate now jailed mafia don Rocco Arico in the murder of underworld enforcer Richard Mladenich in 2000 was a factor.

Arico remains a suspect in organising Williams’ murder.

The Victorian Coroner did not conduct an inquest into Williams’ death in custody due to the multiple investigations which were carried out.