Victor Peirce loathed and feared in Melbourne’s underworld

Few police were fans of hitman Andrew Veniamin, but when he killed Victor Peirce 20 years ago this month, many who wore blue viewed it as his first good deed.

Victor Peirce is carried into court on charges of involvement in Walsh St police killings.

It’s about the year 2000 and a Melbourne gangland figure is set to meet Victor Peirce in a Melbourne hotel.

The man is a well-connected drug trade veteran and formidable in his own right, but Peirce wants a pill press returned and isn’t known for tolerating delays.

The dealer chooses the pub because of the protection lent by unknowing witnesses drinking and mingling inside.

He reasons that this makes Peirce far less likely to indulge his lifelong propensity for pulling the trigger.

But, some time later, Peirce says they need to have further discussions outside and it’s then that the terrified trafficker goes safety-first.

“Victor opened the door and I just ran,” the criminal later told an associate.

Peirce was loathed and feared in equal measure.

Peirce (second from left) with brothers Dennis Allen, Trevor Pettingill and Lex Peirce.

Not too many police were fans of hitman Andrew Veniamin but when he killed Peirce 20 years ago this month, many of those who wore the blue viewed it as his first good deed.

Peirce was acquitted by a jury over the infamous 1988 Walsh St ambush, in which Steven Tynan and Damian Eyre were fatally shot.

But, to the young officers’ colleagues, he was guilty of their cold-blooded murders from the earliest days of the inquiry.

There was no surprise that he went back to the only caper he knew as soon as he was released from prison.

In 1992, he was busted for using a network of female couriers to smuggle drugs into the state’s prisons.

Police from a special operation called No Name believed he had sent heroin worth hundreds of thousands of dollars behind bars, first through Pentridge Prison and then to the rest of the jail system.

“Peirce was supplying female persons with narcotics, which were in turn conveyed into Pentridge and other prisons throughout Victoria via contact visits these females would make with various inmates,” he said.

The Walsh St shooting case turned Peirce into an infamous Melbourne crime figure.

It was alleged that the drugs were then passed on to Peirce’s brother, Peter Allen, who was doing time in Pentridge.

Peirce had a strong relationship with Calabrian Mafia heavy Frank Benvenuto that went back to the 1990s.

One former detective said Benvenuto had enormous influence at the markets and was comforted by his use of Peirce as security.

Police once warned Benvenuto about his tendency to carry figures of up to $100,000 in the pocket in the front of his apron.

“He just said, ‘I’ve got Victor in my corner’,” an officer recalled.

“He had him as an enforcer and for protection.”

It was during the No Name investigation that Peirce was found to have fired a machine gun at the back of the Footscray markets.

In that period, Peirce controlled the movement of produce in and out of the market, using his force to ensure industry heavies were paid kickbacks for the privilege.

Ultimately, Peirce and Benvenuto probably died at the hands of the same man.

The scene in Bay St, Port Melbourne, where it all ended for Peirce in May 2002.

Veniamin is also a suspect in Benvenuto’s murder two years before Peirce’s death. Picture: Cameron L’estrange

Trigger-happy Andrew Veniamin had also been on the market man’s payroll and was a suspect in Benvenuto’s May 2000 murder at Beaumaris.

Benvenuto was found sitting in the wheel of his car after what was almost certainly a gangland hit.

His final phone call was to Peirce.

Suspicion was to grow between Veniamin and Peirce in the aftermath of the Beaumaris killing.

They are believed to have attended the 2001 wedding of Carl and Roberta Williams but Veniamin would later grow increasingly concerned about the wily, older criminal.

Through this era, those who Veniamin grew to fear had repeatedly found their lifespans shortened.

Purana taskforce investigators suspected Peirce had avoided death a week earlier when he failed to turn up at a meeting at the top of a car park.

Peirce was ultimately to die in similar circumstances, at the end of Veniamin’s gun and trapped at the wheel of a car on Bay St, Port Melbourne.

“Hello mate,” the shooter said before opening fire.

Veniamin would himself be shot dead two years later at the back of a Carlton restaurant by Mick Gatto, who was ultimately acquitted on grounds of self-defence.