Underworld rivalries: Alex Tsakmakis vs Barry Quinn
When your cellmate is known as the silverback in the Pentridge Prison jungle, it’s unwise to taunt him about his girlfriend. Barry Quinn learned that the hard way.
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Those in the know say the ruthless Alex Tsakmakis was never a big fan of Barry Quinn.
Though they had shared a cell, Tsakmakis harboured a smouldering ill-feeling, before a brief conflict which ended in, literally, volatile fashion.
Quinn was a dangerous double-killer and escapee, an individual regarded in some circles as some kind of cut-price Charles Manson.
He was a close associate of serial killer Paul Haigh, who had helped Quinn escape from prison years earlier.
Quinn also didn’t know when to pull his head in.
Tsakmakis – who never really liked Quinn – was a formidable gangland figure convicted over or suspected of up to six homicides.
He was ruthless enough to have settled a business dispute by killing one victim, wrapping him in chicken wire and throwing him off a boat in Port Phillip Bay.
His reputation was enough to make him something of a silverback in the Pentridge Prison jungle where few wanted to cross him.
“Tsakmakis was a very feared man,” one former Pentridge officer told the Herald Sun.
He was certainly not someone who would accept goading about his girlfriend being raped, which is exactly what Quinn did one evening in 1984.
Tsakmakis stewed on things overnight then got square the next day in shocking fashion, even by jailhouse standards.
A group was watching the TV soap opera The Restless Years when Tsakmakis suddenly sprayed flammable woodwork glue over Quinn.
He then started flicking lit matches at him, turning his enemy into something of a human fireball.
Quinn staggered around as guards tried to help and Tsakmakis hindered their efforts.
Tsakmakis might have loathed Quinn but he would have at least respected his adherence to one bedrock criminal commandment.
Even as he lay in agony not far from death in hospital, the victim refused to reveal to police how he came to have burns to 85 per cent of his body.
A newspaper death notice later appeared reading: “Barry, we always stuck together – Alex.”
There has always been suspicion the notice was placed by mischievous police, rather than the killer.
Tsakmakis was later nicknamed the Barbecue King in typical macabre prison-brand humour.
But Tsakmakis would eventually come unstuck, too.
The former guard said there was talk of money owed to Tsakmakis from backgammon and that pressure was being applied to debtors’ families to pay up.
Whatever the case, another prisoner found his own improvised method to eliminate an enemy in 1988.
Tsakmakis was delivering a meal when he was bludgeoned by a hulking killer wielding a pillow case containing gym weights.
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