Judy Moran: A fading underworld matriarch ... or maybe just a myth

Underworld author-turned-killer-turned-inmate Judy Moran is two-thirds of the way through her murder sentence but at 78, with failing health, she is unlikely to ever see the other side of the prison walls.

A prison source not authorised to speak to baggy-arsed reporters told us: “She’s pretty frail these days, I reckon she’s on her last lap.” But the source is no medical expert and Moran has proved many wrong before.

Judy Moran – not a great actor.Credit: Craig Abraham

The source says Moran – a former TV chorus girl who craved the spotlight – is now unknown to younger inmates, who couldn’t pick Judy Moran from Dame Judi Dench (although to be fair, both have put on star performances in their long and colourful lives).

While Moran is not queen of the convicts, she still knows how to get her views through to senior corrections officers – with any of her complaints heading straight up the chain of command.

Immobilised with multiple health problems, she was sentenced to a minimum of 21 years for organising the 2009 murder of her brother-in-law, Desmond “Tuppence” Moran, in a crime that would be laughable if it was not deadly.

If she were to make her earliest parole date, it would be granted as Judy Moran, at the age of 85, would not be a danger to anybody.

Dame Judi Dench – a great actor.Credit: Joel Ryan

Surfing the wave of her family’s notoriety and her own personal tragedy, there was a time when Moran and drug boss Carl Williams’ widow, Roberta Williams, were the go-to pair for commentary on the underworld.

Roberta Williams has bounced around for years on the outer ring of social media relevance while Moran got sucked into believing she was an underworld player rather than just another victim.

Truth is, Moran suffered terribly in her life. She has lost two husbands – Les Cole (1981) and Lewis Moran (2004) – and two sons – Mark Moran (2000) and Jason Moran (2003) – to underworld murders.

An anguished Moran at the scene of her son Jason’s murder in 2003.Credit: Paul Harris

Granted that Lewis Moran hated her and Cole had long moved to Sydney when he was killed, but Judy Moran’s grief was real. For all the hundreds of glamour shots, there is one picture taken 20 years ago that tells the truth. She is slumped near a park, her face etched with grief. Her son, Jason, along with his friend, Pasquale Barbaro, had been ambushed and murdered while sitting in a van at the Essendon North Auskick.

The bodies were still in the van when Judy Moran arrived. This was one of the rare times she let her mask slip. She had tried to build a contradictory image as a mother who refused to believe her sons had turned bad while being someone who could pull underworld strings.

Perhaps because I didn’t buy the Moran matriarch brand, she took offence.

Many years ago, after several requests for a radio interview with an on-air team in Adelaide hopelessly out of their depth, I jumped on the phone only to find they had Moran waiting in some form of ill-considered (and quite unethical) “ambush”.

Moran wanted to argue that her son, Jason, was not the man who had killed underworld figure Alphonse Gangitano.

Unfortunately for her, Gangitano and the radio team, the coroner had already concluded Jason Moran’s alibi was false. He was present at the time of the shooting and “implicated” in the murder.

Judy Moran has made it clear she doesn’t like me, once writing in her book, My Story: “Sometimes I feel I am at war with Silvester, that I am a soldier in the trenches with my bayonet fixed.”

On her book publicity tour, she was a nightmare, making more demands than Cleopatra. She required special assistance, including wheelchair access at airports. At the end of the trip, to the surprise of her handler, she got out of the chair and walked away.

On a late-night visit to the famous Supper Inn restaurant, a group of young men spent their time glaring at me before storming out, forgetting their fortune cookies. (To be honest, the chopped chilli in soy sauce was more dangerous.) When I rang Moran a few days later on a matter of no consequence, she volunteered: “How was the food at the Supper Inn? Always tasty, isn’t it?”

Moran, it seems, is a little like the Supper Inn’s lemon chicken – a bit sweet and a little sour.

She did have a story to tell: one of violence, victimisation and tragedy. Instead, she chose to promote the image rather than the reality.

Her father, Leo Brooks, was for years the doorman and one of the unofficial elders at the Carlton Football Club. Star interstate players often stayed with him when they arrived in Victoria. They soon found Brooks was the sort of character who could find anything you needed from a fork to a forklift at vastly reduced prices.

At times, his house was full of so much stolen property, it became known as Leo’s Emporium. Moran was a keen student and became a first-class shoplifter. Once, in later years, when she was interviewed in her home about the latest underworld rumblings, someone from her side of the fence rang to tell me everything in the background of her neat house had been stolen to order.

Lewis Moran was involved in SP bookmaking, major thefts and later drug manufacturing with his sons.

According to his mate, Bertie Wrout, Lewis Moran was a tight-arse who, following a feed at the Flower Drum (a step up on the Supper Inn), would insist on picking pockets on the way home so that he wasn’t out of pocket.

He also beat Judy Moran before they separated, although he continued (begrudgingly) to support her caviar and champagne lifestyle. “Beluga [$350 for 50 grams] and Cristal [$450 a bottle] are more my style,” she bragged in her book. (If it is a consolation, they sell tins of tuna with lemon pepper, and orange cordial at the prison canteen at most reasonable prices.)

Lewis Moran’s legendary frugalness would cost him his life. When he decided to fight back against drug boss Carl Williams, who had ordered the murders of Mark and Jason Moran, he put out a contract well under market rates and found no takers.

(In fairness to Williams, he went to war with the Morans after Jason and Mark lured him to a park for a business meeting only to shoot him in the guts. The exact details are unclear; minutes are not usually kept on such occasions.)

The police, knowing Lewis Moran was on a list to be murdered, took the unusual step of asking the court to alter curfew bail conditions to make his routine less predictable.

Even so, Lewis Moran and Wrout went to the Brunswick Club every day between 5.30pm and 8pm to drink Carlton Draught from seven-ounce glasses. The added incentive was that one of the staff would slip them a few free ones.

You could set your watch on their arrival and a hit team certainly did. They burst in on March 31, 2004, killing Lewis Moran and wounding Wrout, who later mused they were shot for “cheap beer”.

Judy Moran leaves court with Des “Tuppence” Moran in 2004.Credit: Craig Abraham

Judy Moran was convinced Lewis Moran had left a hidden fortune and that his brother, Des “Tuppence” Moran, was holding out on her.

Despite hating her, Des Moran gave her a regular allowance, slinging her four grand a month. Eventually, he froze her, cutting her out of his will.

With media appearance money drying up and book royalties from the self-styled queen of the underworld reduced to a trickle, she decided to take matters into her own hands – or rather hired hands – to deal with pressing matters.

After one slapstick attempt on Des Moran’s life that involved a mistaken identity, a balaclava that was too big and a scarecrow, Judy Moran backed up for a second.

In May 2009, she borrowed $400,000 from Westpac, not volunteering on the paperwork she wanted the money to hire a hit team.

Over the next couple of days, she bought two Chrysler convertibles and a Land Rover Discovery. Two of the cars were advanced payment for the hit.

Cynically, she picked the date of the murder to be June 15, 2009 – the ninth anniversary of Mark Moran’s killing. She hoped Carl Williams would be blamed – her alibi was that she had been at the cemetery.

Des Moran was at his favourite Ascot Vale cafe when he saw the killers. All he could say was “Oh shit” before he was shot dead.

Judy Moran’s last ride from freedom in 2009.Credit: Justin McManus

Judy Moran arrived to perform as the grieving relative. One witness told police: “Judy was crying and saying things like, ‘It should have been me, not Des. It’s all about drugs and money’.”

She hugged a female acquaintance who later remarked that while Moran was sobbing, there were no tears.

Police went to Judy’s four-bedroom home where a Purana detective spotted the Fairlane getaway car in the garage. A rookie error.

Later, Moran jumped in the car wearing knitted white gloves and drove two kilometres to dump the Fairlane.

As she walked home, an unmarked police car pulled up and a Purana investigator called from the window: “Hi Judy, do you want a lift?”

It was a rhetorical question. It would turn out to be a one-way trip.

Coming soon: Naked City (the book) via Pan Macmillan. The perfect Christmas gift for someone you don’t like.