Mapped: Where the mafia have been in Queensland

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

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

MOUNT GRAVATT, BRISBANE

The Mount Gravatt Cemetery in Brisbane’s southern suburbs is the final resting place of Pasquale Barbaro.

There’s been quite a few criminals of the same name in Australia, but this Barbaro lived in Runcorn, Queensland, telling neighbours he was a retired council employee who had moved there from the ACT.

Pasquale Peter Barbaro from Runcorn in Queensland.

He had become a police informant in 1989 when he fell out with the Calabrian mafia.

He survived two blasts of a shotgun in April that year at a house in Daisy Hill.

He moved to Runcorn where he was stabbed and shot in March, 1990, when he had gone outside his heavily fortified home to pick up his Sunday newspaper.

INNISFAIL

Nicola Mamone’s death in 1934 was one of the first times the public became aware of the mafia in Australia.

He was shot six times while walking with a friend.

His death was linked to an extortion racket.

The mafia would threaten that they would burn local cane farmers’ crops unless they paid protection money.

Mamone had cut off the ears of his killer Giovanni Iacona in the lead up to his death.

ST GEORGE

The farming community four hours drive west of Toowoomba became a key mafia crop growing area in the 1990s.

A major sting uncovered how the Griffith, NSW, mafia would prey on poor farmers in the region.

And once the farmers had agreed to grow crops once, they were on the hook and relentlessly pressured to continue.

Colin McLaren, an undercover police officer who wrote a book about the Griffith mafia.

FAR NORTH QUEENSLAND

The mafia would fly drugs from Papua New Guinea into Australia via Far North Queensland. Undercover Detective Colin McLaren revealed he was part of drug flights into the area, which led to arrests in the 1990s.

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