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CARL'SREVENGE
Anthony Dowsley
The shot that sparked Melbourne's gangland wars
The gangland wars that raged in Melbourne for more than a decade resulted in the murders of 36 underworld figures. Hostilities ran deep but much of the violence can be traced to one shooting.
On October 13, 1999, police found Carl Williams lying in a hospital bed with a bullet in his stomach after he was shot on his 29th birthday. 
Williams hadn’t reported the incident to police. They were told of his injury because x-rays had revealed a bullet lodged inside him after he presented to John Fawkner Hospital.
Speaking to investigators who came to visit him, Williams made the situation sound as innocent as possible.
He said he had been walking towards Broadmeadows shopping centre when he was hit on the head before waking up near the TAFE after being out cold for five minutes.
He noticed the wound on his stomach but thought it was only a graze. After arriving at home, he told his parents he had been hit, took a shower and treated the injury with Betadine.
But Williams’ condition deteriorated. His parents, Barbara and George, took him to hospital after he became woozy as he tried to stand up.
As Williams lay in hospital giving his implausible story to police, it’s safe to assume he was already plotting revenge for what had really happened.
Williams had been shot in the stomach in broad daylight during a meeting with half-brothers Jason and Mark Moran at a reserve in Gladstone Park earlier in the day.
Jason Moran
Mark Moran
The Moran boys were involved in the Melbourne drug trade and far higher on the criminal pecking order than Williams at that stage.
Williams and the Morans were in a dispute over a pill press and a related $400,000 debt – not that Williams was going to tell police that. He had other plans.
Williams’ thirst for revenge triggered Melbourne’s bloody gangland wars. It took four years, but he eventually got even with the Moran boys for the 1999 shooting.
Footage: Channel 7
Mark Moran was ambushed at his Aberfeldie home and killed when a gunman opened fire on June 15, 2000.
Jason was gunned down with his bodyguard, Pasquale Barbaro, as they watched Moran’s children at a football clinic in Essendon on June 21, 2003.
Lewis Moran, the father of Jason and stepfather of Mark, wasn’t spared. He was murdered at the The Brunswick Club Hotel on March 31, 2004.
The violence didn't end there. Others died as Williams tried to get square or protect himself from those loyal to the Morans, before he himself was beaten to death in Barwon Prison on April 19, 2010.
Producer: Andrew Piva																											

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