Carl Williams’ killer: ‘No-one out there suspected he was an idiot’

HE was jailed for ordering or performing gangland murders. But even his lawyer and his killer say Carl Williams was “gutless”.

AT the height of Melbourne’s gangland wars, you’d have been mad not to fear the reach of Carl Williams.

Across more than ten years in a war that claimed 29 lives, Williams was a man who could order death with just a word, and seemingly get away with it.

In the end, he died as he lived: violently murdered in a maximum security jail by Matthew Johnson, the vicious criminal he called a mate in 2010.

In a taped prison phone call to air on Murder Uncovered on Monday night, Johnson describes Williams as a “sook” who bit off more than he could chew, and was a nobody in prison.

“He’s a fat f*****g sook. And he bit off more than he could chew,” Johnson says in the phone call made after he killed Williams with the metal bar from an exercise bike on April 19, 2010.

“In here mate he’s just another bare bum in the f*****g shower block ... or he was. Yeah, and out there the only reason he got away with so much is because no-one suspected he was a f*****g idiot.”

“In here mate, he’s just another bare bum in the f####g shower block,” said Carl Williams’ killer. Picture: News Corp

The sentiments aren’t new — many said Williams was a coward, and not the sharpest tool in the shed. But at the height of the gangland wars which ultimately claimed the lives of 29 gangsters, they feared his power.

It’s a summation echoed by Williams’ own lawyer, Peter Faris QC, who tells Murder Uncovered Carl “wasn’t academically gifted. He was stupid, I thought”.

“I don’t believe Carl killed anyone. Carl was gutless and I don’t think he had the guts to pull the trigger and kill anybody.”

Matthew Johnson was jailed for 32 years for the murder of Carl Williams. Picture: Herald Sun

In an intriguing insight into the client/lawyer relationship, Mr Faris says he never asked Carl “what’s going on here?” amid the escalating violence that gripped Melbourne during the gangland war, which boiled over with the execution of Jason Moran at a kids’ AFL footy clinic in June 2003.

That was when police said ‘enough’ and set up the Purana task force.

“Not my business. I’m his lawyer. It’s not (for) me to tell him how he should be living his life,” Mr Faris says.

“And I’ve got no evidence that he’s killed anyone.”.

“Did you ask him?” says journalist Steve Pennells.

“No, you never ask if your client has committed the crime ... the one thing you don’t ask them is did they do it. For all I know he’s got a bug on him. For all I know where we are is bugged, and suddenly I’m a witness because he’s confessed murders to me.”

Asked if that would be a bad thing, Faris hints at the reach Williams had.

“Yeah, it would be a bad thing for me. They’d kill me and I’d be no longer a witness, because they’d have me killed ... Carl would. Or Carl and his friends would.”

“Carl was gutless and I don’t think he had the guts to pull the trigger and kill anybody,” says Peter Faris QC. Picture: Channel 7.”

Asked why he believed Johnson killed Carl, Mr Faris has three theories.

“It could either be friends or relatives of gangsters that he had murdered. Revenge, pretty obvious ... Um ... Corrupt police who were concerned if he was now talking to police he could give evidence against them.

“Or (it could be) what was said about Matthew Johnson … who was just a madman who killed him because he didn’t like “dogs” — people who talked to police — so take your pick.”

The revelations come in a marathon two-hour edition of Murder Uncovered titled Two Weddings and 29 Funerals, which meticulously dissect the gangland wars in which five main gangs wrestled for control of Melbourne’s underworld.

It also reveals video from Carl’s father George, who married Carl’s mother, then left her for her sister, Kathleen.

Kathleen speaks for the first time about their relationship and her view on the wars, revealing the bitter, fractured relationship she has with Carl’s wife, Roberta Williams.

The show was twice pulled from the TV schedule to avoid influencing yet another gangland trial played out recently: that of Stephen Asling, found guilty of killing Graham ‘The Munster’ Kinniburgh.

In the end, George Williams — who feared for his life and went into witness protection after Carl’s murder, was one of the few main players not to die by blade, bomb or bullet.

His heart gave out near the front door of his home.

Murder Uncovered airs on Monday night at 9pm on Channel 7.

An artist-enhanced version of a CCTV still showing Matthew Johnson standing behind Carl Williams before he bludgeoned him to death. Picture: Supplied