Mapped: Where the mafia have been in NSW

The mafia infiltrated Australia decades ago, bringing its organised crime network to places all over Sydney and Greater NSW. See where they have spread.

The mafia infiltrated Australia decades ago, bringing its organised crime network to places all over Sydney and Greater NSW. See where they have spread.

MURRUMBIDGEE RIVER

Mafia pair Rocco Medici and Guiseppe Furina were murdered, with their bodies dumped in the Murrumbidgee River, near Griffith, in 1984. Medici’s ears were cut off before the bodies were thrown in the river. Melbourne mafia figure Liborio Benvenuto, who is now dead, ordered their murders as payback for a bombing attack on his car at Victoria Market a year earlier.

Murdered Mafioso Rocco Medici.

Guiseppe Furina was also killed.

GRIFFITH

Pasquale Barbaro is now in jail in Melbourne for his role in the Tomato Tins drug importation. The Griffith based mafia boss was found guilty of attempting to bring in 4.4 tonnes of ecstasy into Australia. Now he is fighting his conviction because his lawyer Nicola Gobbo was also a police informant.

Pasquale Barbaro (right) and Nicola Gobbo arriving at court. Picture: ABC News

A customs agent finds canned tomato tins holding tonnes of ecstasy tablets. Picture: Australian Customs Service.

GRIFFITH

James Frederick Bazley was suspected of murdering Donald Mackay outside the Griffith Hotel in 1977. Mackay’s body was never found, but Bazley was later sentenced for conspiracy to murder in Victoria.

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

GRIFFITH

Francesco “Little Trees” Barbaro was named by the Woodward Royal Commission as a main suspect in ordering the hit on Donald Mackay.

Francesco Barbaro, at the Griffith drug inquiry.

EARLWOOD

Pasquale Timothy Barbaro was a member of the notorious family that has its roots in Griffith. He was shot dead on the footpath in Earlwood in Sydney in 2016 where he was visiting someone. Attempts to revive him failed. He was only 35. His grandfather Pasquale Barbaro was murdered in Queensland in 1990, while a cousin, also named Pasquale Barbaro was assassinated in 2003 at an Auskick clinic in Melbourne.

Pasquale Peter Barbaro who was killed in Queensland.

Sawn off shotgun used to kill Jason Moran and Pasquale Barbaro which was left at the scene of the murder in 2003.

Pasquale Barbaro's picture on top of his coffin in 2003.

Murdered underworld figure, Jason Moran.

GRIFFITH

Tony Sergi complained he was unfairly tarnished because a royal commission called him a killer. The Leonard Cohen song Hallelujah was played at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Griffith in 2017 during his funeral. He died of natural causes, outlasting his rivals and staying one step ahead of the police. He was born in Plati in Italy and imported his winemaking skills and mafia tactics to Australia.

Tony Sergi in the shop at his Griffith winery. He was named in the 1971 Woodward Royal Commission report as being a prominent member of the Calabrian mafia cell that organised the murder of Donald Mackay.

GRIFFITH

Angelo Licastro was quizzed over his work for Tony Sergi in the 1970s when a royal commission was probing the disappearance of Donald Mackay. He was murdered while on holiday in Plati.

Anti-drugs campaigner Donald Mackay, who disappeared from Griffith, presumed abducted and murdered.

Police search a farm in Maude Road, Hay for the remains of Donald Mackay. Donald Mackay, 43, went missing from the car park of a hotel in Kooyoo Street, Griffith in 1977.

GRIFFITH

A $23 million cannabis crop was busted in 2011, which police blamed on the mafia.

Robert (Bob) Trimbole.

RANDWICK

Bob Trimbole was eating dinner at the Glensynd Motor Inn at Randwick in 1977 when Donald Mackay was bundled into the back of a car in Griffith, New South Wales. A royal commission declared Trimbole was a major suspect in the murder, which was the first political assassination in Australia. The former bankrupt was also said to have been the major promoter of getting the Italian mafia into the marijuana game in Australia. His family owned a farm in Griffith but he began investing in Sydney property in the 1970s. He left Australia in 1981 when the Stewart Royal Commission had been announced, fearing he would be one of its targets. He died in Benidorm, on Spain’s Costa del Sol, which is often referred to in British newspapers as the Costa del crime.

NEWTOWN

Domenico Belle was stabbed to death at Newtown Railway Station in Sydney in 1930. He entered the station with another man who pulled a knife and plunged it into his chest. Belle was suspected of spending money that was meant to post bail for another mafia boss’ bail. That was believed to be the motive for his murder, which led Australian police to seek information about the mafia from authorities in London.

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Originally published as Mapped: Where the mafia have been in NSW