Melbourne’s most notorious underworld figures remembered with saintly grave sites
THEY were among the most notorious gangsters in Melbourne’s history — but for all bar one, in death these underworld figures’ graves resemble those of saints. SEE THE PICTURES
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THEY were among the most notorious gangsters in Melbourne’s history, but their graves resemble those of saints.
With one notable exception, violent crooks such as Carl Williams, Alphonse Gangitano and Mark Moran — killed during the gangland war that raged at the turn of the millennium — are remembered as loving husbands, fathers and brothers, with no expense spared on their lavish sites.
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And such is their notoriety, that suburban cemetery graves are attracting interstate true crime enthusiasts in droves.
At Keilor Cemetery, one worker said visitors from across Australia came searching for convicted murderer and drug lord Carl Williams’ final resting place “every week”.
“I could run a bus service down to the grave,” the worker joked.
“They ask: ‘Where’s Carl? We want to see Carl’ — they’re very curious.”
CARL WILLIAMS
The drug trafficker was a key figure in the war that claimed at least 36 lives — many at his behest.
In 2007, Williams was convicted of four murders and sentenced to life imprisonment, but was bashed to death in Barwon Prison in April 2010.
He now lies in a gold coffin beneath a polished granite headstone worth at least $16,000. Last month, a half-full can of Guinness was left on the grave, possibly as a tribute. Or out of spite.
ANDREW “BENJI” VENIAMIN
A close friend of Williams, Andrew Veniamin, is buried just metres away.
The revolver-toting amateur boxer built a reputation as a fearsome enforcer with a hair-trigger temper.
He was the prime suspect in many underworld murders, including eliminating former friends and allies.
But he never faced trial for any of his suspected hits and was shot dead by businessman Dominic ‘Mick’ Gatto at a Carlton restaurant in March 2004.
Gatto was charged with murder but a jury found him not guilty, after he argued he acted in self defence.
Engraved on Veniamin’s granite and marble headstone are golden boxing gloves initialled ‘AV’.
The graves of both Veniamin and Williams are immaculate, perpetually adorned with fresh flowers.
ALPHONSE GANGITANO
Many know of the extravagant Gangitano’s frightening exploits thanks to his portrayal by Vince Colosimo in the television series Underbelly.
The man known as “the Black Prince of Lygon St” was facing charges over an infamous King St nightclub brawl that involved another gangland figure, Jason Moran, when he was shot dead in January 1998.
His wife returned from taking their young daughters to the beach to find him dead in their Templestowe laundry, most likely at the hands of Moran himself. His gravesite at Fawkner Memorial Park is carefully tended, boasting bunches of fresh daffodils and roses.
MARK MORAN
Williams managed to almost entirely wipe out his enemies, the Morans, during the gangland war.
Drug dealer Mark Moran was the first to go, gunned down outside his Aberfeldie home in June 2000.
The original plan was to have the next Moran on his list, Jason, shot dead as he visited the grave on the anniversary of half-brother Mark’s death.
But he didn’t show up and Williams’s hitman had to come up with a new plan, instead picking a sports oval where local kids were doing Auskick a week later in June 2003.
Mark’s father, Les Cole, was shot dead in Sydney in 1982. His stepfather Lewis Moran was ambushed in a Brunswick hotel in 2004. And uncle Des “Tuppence” Moran were also murdered. Moran matriarch and Judy was jailed for Tuppence’s murder.
But Mark lies virtually alone beneath a heart-shaped headstone that reads: “Always in the hearts of your family & friends today, tomorrow and forever — rest in peace.”
The remains of Jason, Lewis and Tuppence were quietly removed from the cemetery years ago.
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PASQUALE BARBARO
Only Pat Barbaro, who died by Jason Moran’s side, rests nearby, remembered with a modest plaque.
The brazen June 2003 hit on Jason and Barbaro stunned the nation, breaking the unspoken underworld code that kids be kept out of the ugly business of eliminating rivals. It ultimately led to the formation of the Purana taskforce.
Barbaro and Moran were sitting in a van at Cross Keys Reserve in Essendon — with Moran’s twin children in the back seat — when they were shot at point blank range.
NICOLAI “THE RUSSIAN” RADEV
Others buried at Fawkner include Nik “The Russian” Radev, a Bulgarian-born mobster with convictions for armed robbery, assault and drug trafficking.
He wasn’t the type to be argued with — he once dangled a man from a seventh-floor balcony by his ankles to make his point. He never ventured into public without a gun, but was shot dead in a Coburg street in April 2003.
His headstone remembers only the “much loved father” who is “missed by family and friends”.
A stubby of VB sat on top of his grave last month.
DINO DIBRA
Western suburbs drug dealer Dino Dibra’s plaque features pictures of him as a young boy and a toy Ferrari race car.
He ran with the Sunshine boys, a former mate of Williams and Veniamin who dabbled in guns, car rebirthing and nightclub violence.
Known for his flashy tracksuits, Dibra and his cronies once kidnapped a man and bundled him into a car boot in a busy street in the middle of the day.
He was murdered aged 25 by two balaclava-clad gunmen outside his Sunshine West home in October 2000.
Nobody has ever been charged with his murder.
His parents left a card wishing him a “Happy 43rd birthday” last month.
WILLIAM “WILLIE” THOMPSON
Drug dealer and small-time actor William Thompson, shot dead in his car in Malvern East in July 2003, rests less than several hundred metres away.
Police in March offered a $1 million reward in a bid to catch Thompson’s killers.
Thompson, a martial arts expert, has a small part in local sci-fi film The Nightclubber, which was filmed at Melbourne’s Tunnel Nightclub and the Men’s Gallery.
LIBORIO BENVENUTO
Liborio Benvenuto rose to the top of the Calabrian mafia in Melbourne in the 1960s, which were a time of violent upheaval in the criminal underworld.
He was a major figure at the Queen Victoria Market, which was a hub of illegal activity.
Benvenuto survived several assassination attempts before dying of natural causes in June 1988.
He is buried at Springvale Botanical Cemetery.
CHARLIE PETER “MAD CHARLIE” HEGYALJIE
Charlie Hegyaljie was a Hungarian-born drug dealer mainly involved in the amphetamine trade.
He lived up to his nickname with a series of violent assaults and served time for rape.
He was a close friend of Mark “Chopper” Read.
Hegyaljie was gunned down in a Balaclava street in November 1998.
He is buried at Springvale Botanical Cemetery.
JOSEPH ‘PINO’ ACQUARO
Gangland lawyer Joseph ‘Pino’ Acquaro had links to senior Calabrian mafia figures.
He was gunned down outside his Brunswick gelati restaurant in a March 2016 murder that remains unsolved.
He is buried inside a magnificent locked family tomb at Footscray Cemetery.
MARIO CONDELLO
Another lawyer, Mario Condello, is buried at Melbourne General Cemetery.
The “Carlton Crew” member and money launderer for Italian organised crime groups was a close friend of Mick Gatto during the gangland war. Condello was charged with conspiring to murder Carl Williams, but the trial never happened.
He was instead delivered gangland justice — shot in the driveway of his Brighton home in 2006, a day before he was to appear in court. It was considered the last of the gangland murders.
MARK MALLIA
Drug trafficker Mark Mallia was another crook who got in Williams’ way.
Mallia’s burnt and mutilated body was found stuffed into a wheelie bin in a storm drain in Sunshine West in 2003.
Williams paid $50,00 for Mallia to meet his gruesome end after being gagged, tied to a chair and tortured.
Mallia, who had been an associate of Nik Radev, is buried at Altona Cemetery.
VICTOR PEIRCE
Notorious Pettingill clan member Victor Peirce also lies in Altona with daughter Katie, who died of a drug overdose at 24.
Peirce was charged with murder over the 1988 Walsh St police killings, was acquitted, and was later gunned down in Port Melbourne in May 2002.
Andrew Veniamin was the suspect in Peirce’s murder.
MARK “CHOPPER” READ
A stone’s throw away from the opulent graves of Gangitano, Moran, Radev and Dibra at Fawkner, Australia’s best-known and most colourful standover man rests.
But for Mark ‘Chopper’ Read, it’s a different story.
Read, immortalised by Eric Bana in the 2000 film Chopper, died in 2013 after a cancer battle.
‘Uncle Chop Chop’ is remembered with a peeling wooden cross draped with a faded Collingwood scarf, a lonely mark for the standover man who had his own ears cut off in jail, and once tried to kidnap a judge at gunpoint.
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