Women of the crime world

THESE strong, powerful women all fell for men with blood on their hands.

Women of the crime world

THESE strong, powerful women all fell for men with blood on their hands.

You may wonder what the wives and girlfriends of Australia’s most notorious gangsters see in their men. The drugs, the murders, the bashings: how do you sleep next to someone with the potential for so much violence?

The women often tell stories of a softer side to the criminals they love, but it is also true that they are equally tough. It takes real courage to raise kids amongst the mayhem of gangland wars, facing the daily fear of retribution and solo parenting while partners languish for years in jail.

Some love the notoriety, the lifestyle and the thrill, taking on the role as matriarch with relish. For others it is a slippery slope into the death and destruction that surrounds them.

Roberta Williams

At the height her relationship with Carl Williams, she lived a life of lavish luxury funded by drug money and underworld dealings. The couple was cashed-up and ready to party, reportedly splashing out on fast cars, designer clothes worth thousands and lavish events at top Melbourne venues.

But when Carl first came into her life, Roberta was living a nightmare. Her childhood and previous relationships had been marred by violence, and with three young children to protect, Carl was the friend she turned to for help. “Carlos… came into my life when I was broken and in need of some repair,” she said in 2010.  Eventually friendship turned to love but it was no easy ride.

Carl’s push for drug lord dominance during the notorious Melbourne gangland wars in the late 1990s became part of a killing spree that brought down 36 underworld figures. The power play delivered violence and then murder to Roberta’s front doorstep, putting their new baby daughter Dhakota at risk when Andrew “Benji” Veniamin hid in the roof of the family home after being ordered to carry out a hit on her.

“She woke up for her feed, and I fed her and I was comforting her and rocking her to sleep,” Roberta revealed earlier this year. “Andrew told me later that he heard me comforting my daughter and he just couldn’t bring himself to do that. Dhakota saved me.”

Of course, Roberta was no shrinking violet. She’s served time for drug trafficking after being busted in an undercover police sting, she’s been declared bankrupt and is famously foul-mouthed and flamboyant.

Divorce followed a marriage rocked by affairs and admissions to murder. Carl pleaded guilty to three of the gangland killings and was then himself bashed to death by another inmate while in Barwon Prison in 2010.

Even before Carl’s savage end, Roberta suffered many personal tragedies, including losing her sister to cancer and her mother to a brain haemorrhage. Now aged in her late forties, she says her focus is raising her youngest son Giuseppe, who has autism.

JUDY MORAN

Judy Moran knows loss like no other underworld wife and mother. She has seen two husbands murdered and two sons shot dead, taken from her during the gangland turf war on the streets of Melbourne.

As a child star, Judy loved to dance and perform, appearing on popular TV shows and loving the limelight. As a teenager she left school to work in a factory sewing uniforms before moving into fashion and retail jobs, which suited her flashy style and colourful personality.

She met local criminal Leslie John Cole, a gangster connected to the Painters and Dockers Union, aged 18 and the whirlwind romance bore her first child Mark. Les was later murdered in Sydney — and Judy once bragged that it was her new lover, Lewis Moran, who had him killed as a way of making him prove his loyalty.

She never married Lewis but took his name and together they had her second son Jason. The half-brothers would go on to build a crime and drug syndicate that attracted the ire of Carl Williams, who wanted to make a name for himself in underworld circles. Jason shot Carl in the stomach in an altercation over an unpaid debt that sparked violent retribution.

In 2000, the next year, Mark was shot dead getting out of his car. Three years later, Jason died in a brazen double shooting in front of a car load of children at the hands of Carl Williams. Then Lewis was gunned down in his favourite watering hole. Carl was found guilty of the murders of Jason and Lewis but never convicted over the death of Mark despite being a prime suspect.

You have to wonder what this would do to a wife and mother to see her family executed one by one. Would it make you pack up and leave? Or, like Judy, would you stay and fight? One thing is for sure: the Moran family matriarch didn’t back down, instead hiring celebrity PR agent Harry M Miller and writing a tell-all book.

But it all came crashing down when a family dispute escalated, and she ordered the shooting murder of her brother-in-law Des Moran in a café in suburban Melbourne. Judy was behind the wheel of the getaway vehicle and hid the gun used by the killer she contracted.

Sentenced to 26 years in jail for the public execution the judge said he just couldn’t understand why, after all the trauma Judy had been through, she would order such a callous killing.

The gangland widow is reportedly very ill and is likely to die in prison before her parole.

ZARA GARDE-WILSON

Zara Garde-Wilson was a glamorous young lawyer when she rose to fame representing a number of gangland members accused of the string of retribution killings in Melbourne.

Known for her good looks and sexy style, she met Lewis Caine, a convicted murderer, when she was his legal counsel on drink-driving charges. Zara has said it was love at first sight — despite his criminal history.

Two and a half years later, in 2004, Lewis’s body was found in a Melbourne laneway with a gunshot wound to the head. Zara fought to have his sperm frozen in a bid to have his children but has since had the sample destroyed after finding love again.

Then, in 2013, the father of Zara’s three children, Lansley Simon, was accused of murdering a hospitality worker in a drug deal gone bad. He was cleared of the crime after arguing it was self-defence.

These days, Zara is a working mum who runs her own criminal law firm in Melbourne.

Originally published as Women of the crime world