Mafia’s Web: How mob bosses heatedly debated killing Donald Mackay

Australia’s most notorious mafia murder got “personal”, and it triggered a war in a secret meeting of mob bosses. LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

A secret meeting of mob bosses heatedly debated whether they should carry out what became Australia’s most notorious mafia murder.

In an explosive revelation, new details have been uncovered about Donald Mackay’s disappearance in 1977.

The murder was the first political assassination in Australia, turning up the heat on the mafia and sparking two Royal Commissions.

The aspiring politician and father of four had been naming and shaming Griffith identities – including kingpin Bob Trimbole – over their cannabis crops in paddocks surrounding the regional New South Wales town.

Mackay was last seen in the car park of the Griffith Hotel, where three bullet cartridges and a smear of blood were found.His body was never recovered.

Anti-drug campaigner Donald Mackay.

A new podcast by News Corp Australia – The Mafia’s Web – uncovered the claims about the disappearance and presumed murder of Mackay.

The podcast also exposes the tentacles of the mafia’s links across Australia, including new details about the AFP’s Operation Ironside bust, amid warnings the Calabrian based group continues to hold a grip on crime in this country.

It comes as a Griffith mafia don claimed he had been a dissenting voice against the planned murder of Mackay.

The details emerged in conversations with Roman Quaedvlieg, a former Australian Border Force Commissioner, who at the time was working as an undercover cop in Queensland in the 1990s.

He met the mafia don at a bus stop in Toowoomba before they drove to a cannabis crop site more than five hours away.

“What really fascinated me was this don, who was elderly at the time, he would have been in his 60s, he said to me … that he was part of the council of dons that got together to discuss whether they should do away with Donald Mackay,” Mr Quaedvlieg told the podcast.

Former Border Force Commissioner Roman Quaedvlieg worked as an undercover cop who infiltrated the mafia in Australia.

“And he said to me: ‘I was the only one that disagreed with the strategy to assassinate Donald Mackay, not because I was a saint or because I had any ethical concerns but because I thought that if we did that we would bring police attention to Griffith and I have been proven right. We have never been the same since that event.’”

Suspected triggerman James “Machine Gun” Bazley was sentenced to nine years jail for conspiracy to murder Mackay.

However, he was never charged with murder because no body was found.

Bazley died in 2018 aged 93.

He had publicly accused a corrupt cop of killing Mackay on the orders of the Calabrian mafia in Griffith.

But the 1979 Woodward Royal Commission named Bob Trimbole as the prime suspect for organising the hit.

Donald Mackay with wife Barbara & children Paul, then aged 19, Ruth then aged 16, May then aged 13 and James, then aged 3. The picture was taken during Easter 1977, just months before Donald was murdered by the mafia.

Mafia godfather Tony Sergi, was also named as a key suspect but was never charged over the murder. He died in 2017.

Sergi had been having dinner with two local policeman at the time of Mackay’s murder.

Three corrupt police officers, John Kenneth Ellis, Brian James Borthwick and John Francis Robbins, would later be jailed for perverting the course of justice.

Mackay, who was 43 when he disappeared, had been informing police about the location of the mafia’s marijuana crops around Griffith.

Donald Mackay, who disappeared from Griffith, NSW, July 1977, presumed abducted and murdered. Drug inquiry and witnesses. This is his van and the car park where he was believed to have been killed.

His fate was sealed during a court case when a policeman was forced to hand over his notebook to defence lawyers. That notebook contained details of where a marijuana crop was found and the name of the police informer – Donald Mackay.

More than 3,500 people have been interviewed over Mackay’s death, and there have been several hunts for his remains.

A $200,000 reward for information, offered in 2013, failed to produce any new information.

Mr Quaedvlieg said Mackay’s murder was the result of a vendetta, rather than a business decision.

“This was personal,” he said.

“Donald Mackay had been running around Griffith – not just in an anti drugs crusade because he knew that crops were being grown and that the Italian families that were involved had grown crops and had then bought very large mansions they called the grass castles.

“But he was actually calling out the names of people like the Bob Trimboles of the world that were doing it.

Bob Trimbole was accused of Mackay’s murder.

“Bob Trimbole. His name was being plastered all around, you know, his community as being someone who was a criminal, who had lost all his respect from his fellow citizens in that community. And so he was pissed off. Yeah, he was. He took it very personally.

“And so my read of this situation was that the murder of Donald Mackay was driven by personal animosity, not a business decision.”

Clive Small, a former NSW Police Assistant Commissioner, investigated the Mackay murder.

He said that there had been many theories about the disappearance, but nothing was able to stick to get a murder charge.

Mr Small, 74, said luck was not on the side of the investigating police.

“You can be a bit surprised that the body has never been found but when you think of it objectively, it’s not hard to hide a body,” Mr Small said.

“It could be in a deep grave in the bush, two or three metres deep, they could have thrown it into the ocean, often a body is not found.

Mafia godfather Tony Sergi was also a key suspect, died in 2017 but was never charged over the murder

Suspected triggerman James “Machine Gun” Bazley was sentenced to nine years jail for conspiracy to murder Mackay.

“I’d say it comes down to luck, whether you find they body or not, and that luck depends on which side of it you are on.

“There was no doubt it was a significant murder, it was well planned and it was executed by someone. But there was never enough to say that he did it or that he was involved,” he said.

Crime author Keith Moor said that the mafia changed tactics after Mackay’s murder.

“There was such massive heat on them that they literally had a board meeting of the bosses and said ‘never again, will we kill someone as high profile as Donald Mackay’ unless there is an incredibly good reason to do so,” he said.

“They like working in the background and not drawing attention to themselves.”

Paul Mackay at the furniture shop his father Don owned.

Paul Mackay, one of Donald’s children who took over the family furniture shop in Griffith had demanded a new police inquiry into his father’s disappearance in 2007.

He spent his life in Griffith, living alongside his father’s suspected killer Tony Sergi, who continued to run a winery in the region.

Paul Mackay died last year, aged 61, following a battle with cancer but his funeral was small because of COVID-19 restrictions.

He died without ever seeing justice for his father, and tragically, without ever being able to identify the location of his dad’s remains.

Donald Mackay’s wife, Barbara, died in 2001, but tirelessly campaigned for justice.

The Mackay family declined to comment.

Correction: A version of this article which appeared in a number of News Corp Australia’s newspapers on 8 August 2021 erroneously included a photo of Tony Sergi, a horse trainer from Queanbeyan. We would like to make it clear that Mr Sergi has absolutely no connection to organised crime and had nothing to do with the death of Donald McKay. We sincerely apologise to Mr Sergi for the hurt and embarrassment caused by this error.

Originally published as Mafia’s Web: How mob bosses heatedly debated killing Donald Mackay