Dead man walking: the day hustler Michael McGurk predicted his own death

On the morning of August 24, 2009, my mobile rang. It had been exactly a month since The Sydney Morning Herald had run a front-page splash on the dubious exploits of the “wee hustler from Glasgow”, as one of his Scottish mates described him, and Michael McGurk was calling to voice his displeasure about the latest article, “A whodunnit for the rich and famous”, which I had co-authored with my colleague Vanda Carson, and which had appeared in the paper that morning. It was our third story in a month focusing on the colourful criminal tapestry of McGurk’s life, which appeared to be fraying at an alarming rate.

In a city obsessed with real estate and position, it was apt that at the heart of the Michael McGurk saga was a house. The house itself wasn’t anything special – it had clearly seen better days – but the location was to die for. It just happened to have glorious views of the harbour and was located on the most expensive street in the country, Wolseley Road, Point Piper. Yet for some peculiar reason, the old mansion at 42a Wolseley Road was the subject of a flurry of lawsuits as well as a firebombing.

The house had once been owned by extraordinarily wealthy property developer Ron Medich and his wife, Odetta. Without ever living in it, the Medichs had sold 42a to Sydney society couple Adam and Sally-Anne Tilley for $12.5 million. The Medichs had lent the Tilleys the money to buy the house and when the Tilleys defaulted on the repayments, they were sued. But not by the Medichs. Curiously, it was McGurk who’d chased the Tilleys for the money. Subsequently McGurk had broadened his legal attack to rope in Adam’s well-known brothers, Simon and Ben.

In January 2009, McGurk was charged with the firebombing of the house. However, as our article that August morning revealed, the firebombing and a raft of other criminal charges against McGurk had been dropped. In a sea of ever-shifting allegiances, Medich took over the pursuit of the Tilleys.

'The real battle, however, was between former friends Ron Medich and Michael McGurk. By that August, they were at each other’s throats via armies of lawyers. Each claimed the other owed him millions of dollars and, much to Medich’s fury, McGurk had won the early skirmishes. On top of his own legal bills totalling $850,000, Medich had been ordered to pay his nemesis’s court costs of $70,000.

The numerous threads of McGurk’s scheming were alluded to in our story, which also featured abandoned arson and assault charges, a lawsuit against one of the richest men in the world, dealings in Russia, legal threats against former NSW premier Neville Wran, and McGurk’s extensive and ongoing court battles with Medich.

That August morning McGurk, who had been seething at the beginning of the call, soon got his emotions in check. He indicated that he didn’t give a toss about being described as a “lender of last resort” or a would-be arsonist. He was, however, indignant at the suggestion that Ron Medich, his former business partner, was being portrayed as the victim. It was Medich I should be investigating, said McGurk, not him.

This wasn’t the first time I’d heard this from McGurk. “I don’t think you understand what this guy is like and what he is capable of doing,” he said now with some vehemence. He then told me that Medich had a “hit” out on him and that Medich’s lieutenant Fortunato “Lucky” Gattellari was going to make sure the contract killing happened.

I thought McGurk was embellishing these supposed threats in order to eke out his revenge on Medich by manipulating me into writing another story. I didn’t know at the time that he had only 10 days left to live. Not only had I been forewarned of his murder, I had been given the key to the identity of his assassins. McGurk knew he was a dead man walking.

Tersely, I told him that we couldn’t write a story on his unproven allegations and that if he had something concrete he should give it to me. He promised to deliver me a tape recording by the end of the week that would reveal that Ron Medich was involved in bribing politicians, government officials and councillors to smooth the way for developments. He said the tape could bring down the government. I took this with a grain of salt. It sounded about as credible as his murder by contract killing.

Numerous attempts to reach McGurk for comment before publication of our first article had failed. Even his mate James “Big Jim” Byrnes didn’t have his latest number; he muttered that McGurk was changing phones and numbers so often it was becoming impossible for people to keep track of him. This is exactly what McGurk was hoping to achieve.

McGurk’s bail conditions for his assault and arson charges had been changed for a week from July 19, 2009. He’d been given permission to report to police at Jindabyne, the closest town to the NSW ski resort of Perisher, where he’d taken his family for a holiday. It was later revealed that there was a plan to murder McGurk while he was at the snow, but the hitmen couldn’t get themselves organised in time. Instead, on July 24, his last day at the resort, McGurk found himself on the front page of the Herald.

Titled “Point Piper feud, a firebomb and a $17 million lawsuit”, the story detailed an extraordinary chain of events embroiling some famous families. “On one side of the stoush are the Tilley family – brothers Ben, Adam and Simon. On the other is BRW’s rich-lister Ron Medich and his wife, Odetta.

Also caught up is Ron Medich’s former associate Michael McGurk, who has been charged with firebombing the house at the centre of the dispute, a charge he intends to defend,” the article read.

McGurk assured his friends at the snow that there was nothing to the story and that the charges wouldn’t stick. The way things turned out, it might have been better for him if they had stuck.

When McGurk returned from his slope-side jaunt, he received the messages we’d left at his office and with his associates. No doubt he was unhappy with the story, but he didn’t let on. Instead, with the con artist’s supreme confidence in his sales pitch, he said he wanted to meet in person. There was a far bigger story, he said, but one that could not be discussed over the phone. Could we have lunch?

On July 29, Vanda and I met McGurk for lunch at Mad Cow in the city. Wearing a well-cut navy suit and a crisp white open-necked shirt, McGurk, who was fashionably late, slid into our booth, which was upholstered in white leather dimpled with canary-yellow buttons. Despite his recent holiday at the snow, his complexion had a sallow tinge, and his receding greying hair and the hint of jowls along his jawline made him seem older than his claimed 45 years.

Although we’d been told McGurk was furious about having his alleged penchant for negotiation via firebombing splashed across the front page of the Herald, he was charm personified. Over the years, I have dealt with my fair share of spivs and urgers, and it was clear to me he was hoping to use us to his advantage. If he could just turn our attention to the ill deeds of his adversary, Ron Medich, there might be some upside in this for him.

His travails hadn’t affected his appetite. He ordered the most expensive item on the menu – the $68 wagyu sirloin – and a fine bottle of white wine. McGurk, who’d been to rehab several times for drug and alcohol abuse, didn’t touch a drop.

The first thing he asked was whether we were recording the conversation. Although it struck me as odd at the time, given his propensity for secret recordings, I later wondered whether he had taped our conversation. Once we’d assured him that there were no secret recorders, McGurk embarked on a long explanation as to why Vanda and I were focusing our attention on the wrong person.

For the next hour or so he detailed a litany of complicated deals, dodgy developments and double-crosses. Trusts, percentage points, foreign mining plays, caveats, put and call options were all terms that rolled easily off McGurk’s tongue. His voice sounded like he’d once been a two-packets-a-day smoker who gargled rocks for breakfast. His accent was hard to pinpoint. His intonation seemed to be more East London Cockney than Scottish brogue. McGurk’s almost 20 years in Australia had added a mix of unmistakably flat Aussie drawl, most noticeably his pronunciation of his favourite word – “dollar”.

As we ate, he was reluctant to talk about the widely rumoured existence of a tape recording. In the four days since our first story had appeared, numerous people had rung to tell us about the existence of this mysterious tape. When I asked McGurk about the recording, he took a sip of his mineral water and tried to change the subject. We persisted, recounting the various versions that had been related to us, in the hope that he would offer to set the record straight. He remained tight-lipped. The only thing he confirmed was that he had legally recorded his one-time friend and business partner Ron Medich. He couldn’t help but add that there was some amazing material involving Medich’s own corruption on the tape. He promised that when the time was right, he would provide us with a copy of the recording.

In the meantime, he gave us a list of names of business and political figures and suspect deals that were worth looking at. I jotted down notes. He specified several NSW Labor politicians and one federal politician. Among the state Labor politicians he mentioned was Eddie Obeid. (Several years later, Obeid was declared corrupt and, at the time of writing, the former Labor powerbroker is in prison for misconduct in public office.)

In particular, McGurk advised us to concentrate on land the Medich brothers had bought from the CSIRO at Badgerys Creek. Ron and his younger brother, Roy, stood to make $400 million if this land was rezoned, he said. Lang Walker, another developer, had offered the brothers that amount but it was conditional on rezoning. McGurk also claimed that the former controversial Labor senator turned lobbyist Graham Richardson was on the Medichs’ payroll and that Ron and Richardson occasionally lunched together at Tuscany, an Italian restaurant below Ron’s office in Leichhardt.
According to McGurk, the rezoning of the Medichs’ Badgerys Creek land had hit a snag, though, because Ron had “blabbed”. Just who Ron had blabbed to or when he had blabbed was something McGurk was not keen on revealing.

After draining his hot chocolate, and making no mention of the bill, he stood to leave. He promised he would have further information for us soon. As we waited to pay, Vanda and I chewed over possible scenarios as to how McGurk could have legally taped Medich discussing his involvement in political corruption. Who in their right mind would agree to such a thing?

That afternoon, McGurk rang me with a funny story he’d heard about Medich being set upon by his wife, Odetta, after she’d sprung him chatting to a young blonde the previous Saturday night. And by the way, we should pay close attention to Ron’s associate Lucky Gattellari. If we ever wanted to find Lucky and Ron, we only need hang around outside their favourite brothel, Babylon in Chinatown, which they frequented most afternoons, McGurk said.

The following day, he rang me again. This time the bonhomie was absent. “Who did you tell that you were having lunch with me? Who did you tell?” McGurk’s gravelly voice was frantic and angry. Within hours of the lunch, he said, someone had broken into his house and ransacked the joint. They were obviously looking for something. “Things are getting out of control,” he said, his usual bluster momentarily gone.

He was rattled enough to go to the police – this was the second break-in, his office having been done over earlier that month. He also told them of a curious incident a few weeks before, when he’d seen two suspicious characters in a silver hatchback near his house. He wasn’t to know how close he’d come to being murdered that night by the occupants of the hatchback.

McGurk was unnerved by the break-in and he was clearly worried that someone knew he was talking to journalists. That same day he rang his solicitor, Richard Allsop, and asked for an urgent meeting. McGurk walked the short distance from his office to Allsop’s, which was on the 17th floor of Angel Place, a smart city tower that was home to lawyers, insurance and investment companies.

Allsop, the brother of the Chief Justice of the Federal Court, James Allsop, had had his share of interesting clients over the years, but nothing had prepared him for a character as complex or as cunning as Michael McGurk. McGurk handed him a sealed envelope, telling him that it contained a digital recording of explosive information about Medich paying money to government officials.

As he handed over the envelope, McGurk warned Allsop not to open it, and to keep it somewhere safe as certain people were desperate to get their hands on it.

A former solicitor of McGurk, Andrew Williams, had also been given a copy of the recording back in February. Williams, a fast-talking, wisecracking solicitor originally from the NSW Southern Highlands, was one of the merry-go-round of lawyers whom McGurk used, abused and didn’t pay. Williams had been fired in March when Medich’s lawyers had made a pre-emptive strike, freezing McGurk’s assets. McGurk was furious – this could have sent him to the wall. Although the orders were overturned, McGurk axed Williams and refused to pay the $120,000 he owed the lawyer’s firm.

It was late in the afternoon on Thursday, September 3 when Williams was called out of a meeting in Brisbane. McGurk was on the phone, he was told, and his former client said it was urgent. Williams hadn’t heard from McGurk for almost two months and because he’d been chasing him for fees, he took the call.

McGurk was upbeat. “Mate, mate, I really want to get together to talk about this money I owe you.” Naturally, Williams greeted the suggestion with enthusiasm. “That’d be great. I’d really like to do that, Michael, I’d really like to sort it out. How have you been?” In the circumstances, not so bad, said McGurk. He suggested they meet up the following morning. Williams explained he was in Brisbane but said they could speak first thing Monday morning to arrange a time. “Yeah, mate, not a problem,” said McGurk and the pair enjoyed a laugh about something.

It was one of the last calls McGurk made. Not long after dawn the following morning, Williams was woken in his hotel room by a call from his personal assistant. “Have you seen the news?” she asked. “McGurk’s been shot outside his home.” Williams was stunned. He worked out that McGurk had called him only 20 to 30 minutes before his murder.

Sydney businessman Michael McGurk.Credit: AAP

Williams arrived back in Sydney on the Friday night, surprised that police had not contacted him. Surely his number would’ve come up on McGurk’s phone records. Then again, Williams had seen McGurk on numerous occasions when he was juggling four different mobile phones and a pocketful of SIM cards.

On Saturday morning, Williams called in at his regular cafe for his morning coffee. He picked up the Herald and almost choked when he saw the headline across the front page: “It could bring down the government: secret tape blamed for killing”. Saturday’s Daily Telegraph also screamed, “Did he know too much? – execution bombshell: political corruption claims”.

Williams recoiled. He recalled McGurk telling him the recording was “really hot” when he’d handed it over. McGurk had told him it was audio of Ron Medich, it was explosive, and the government could fall if it was ever made public.

“I thought if somebody has pissed someone off enough that there has been an Italian-style hit in broad daylight in Mosman, on a Thursday afternoon, in front of a kid, there’s some seriously ugly people involved in this.” He called a colleague who, months earlier, had spent five hours trying to transcribe the recording before she passed it over to someone else as the audio quality was so poor.

They agreed that they had to go to the police. But Williams was worried that the murderer could be keeping tabs on who was going in and out of North Sydney Police Station, where the homicide investigation was based. He rang his mate Robert Newlinds, SC, who had once acted for McGurk.

Newlinds brokered a deal with police to meet Williams in a park in the nearby suburb of Waverton at 1pm that day. Williams handed over the disc. No one asked about his conversation with McGurk just before his death or why McGurk had wanted to see him so urgently.

Of all the dirty little secrets that McGurk took to his grave, the existence of a supposedly explosive audio recording involving Medich and corrupt politicians and planning officials was without doubt the worst-kept. For months, rumours of it had been swirling in the groups in which Medich, McGurk and the Tilleys moved. But would someone kill for it?

Ron Medich.Credit: Mick Tsikas

I was at home with my family when the Herald news desk rang me about 7pm on September 3. The desk had just received a tip: a Michael McGurk had been shot outside his Cremorne home about half an hour earlier.

I felt like vomiting. I immediately rang my editor, Peter Fray, and told him about my conversation with McGurk 10 days before, when he’d told me there was a hit out on him and Ron Medich was behind it. “I just can’t believe this has happened,” I kept repeating.

Our police reporter Dylan Welch was on the way to the murder scene, as was our well-known sports commentator Peter FitzSimons, who lived only a few hundred metres away from Cranbrook Avenue, Cremorne, where McGurk lived. I rang Dylan and told him to ask the officer in charge to call me as soon as possible. Dylan kept trying to talk to Detective Inspector Mick Sheehy of the State Crime Command’s Homicide Squad, but speaking to journalists was the last thing on the burly detective’s mind. I also rang and left a message at North Sydney Police Station.

For legal reasons, we couldn’t report that McGurk had told me he thought Ron Medich was going to have him killed. If Medich sued for defamation, we would effectively have to prove that he was the murderer. However, Blind Freddy could tell from our front-page story on September 4 that Medich was a person of interest to police because of his ongoing legal feuds with McGurk.

A confronting photo accompanied the story. The front door of McGurk’s blue Mercedes was wide open. Police floodlights illuminated McGurk lying on his back, his left foot pointing skywards, his right foot at an angle of 45 degrees. You could see that the soles of his polished black shoes were well worn; his navy-blue jumper had ridden up, exposing a glimpse of his pale stomach. A smattering of french fries surrounded his right wrist. Fortunately, the car door hid the pool of blood emanating from the bullet wound behind his right ear.

Neighbours said that his nine-year-old son had leapt out of the car and, screaming hysterically, had sprinted down the path towards the french doors which led into the kitchen. His wife Kimberley and her older son rushed out. They performed CPR on McGurk, but he was already beyond help.

From left: Ron Medich, Lucky Gattellari, Andrew Howard and Pamela Medich lunching at Tuscany restaurant in Leichhardt the day after Michael McGurk's murder.Credit: Edwina Pickles

You might think that being named on the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald, a major metropolitan newspaper, as a person of interest in his former associate’s murder would have made Ron Medich think twice about going to a very public lunch in his favourite restaurant less than 24 hours after his business enemy had been gunned down. And not just going to lunch, going to lunch with the very man who, it turned out, had organised the murder for him.

It was hard to tell whether Ron Medich had a tin ear when it came to the questionable characters with whom he associated, or perhaps was drawn to like-minded unscrupulous souls. Whatever the case, by 2009 he had squandered millions of dollars on bad business deals, usually with not a shred of paperwork and with a changing cast of dubious partners.

Things had not gone well for Medich since he had split from his younger brother, Roy, following the sale in 2007 of their Norton Street Plaza shopping centre in Leichhardt for $112 million. When the brothers were in business together, Roy had tried to keep Ron’s hangers-on at bay. Since then, Ron had fallen in and out with a succession of shysters who’d leached away millions of dollars of his fabulous wealth. His dining companions were the best measure of which sycophant was benefiting from his millions at any given time. Medich was a creature of habit and invariably his dodgy new best friend and business partner would be eating and drinking daily at Medich’s expense, while plotting the ruination of the jilted predecessor.

Much of the scheming was done at Tuscany Ristorante in Leichhardt, which sat just outside the Norton Street Plaza and served as Medich’s office canteen even after the brothers had sold the shopping centre they’d developed. As Medich was to later tell a parliamentary inquiry: “Why would I run 10 kilometres away when we can go downstairs, have our lunch and go back upstairs to continue working?”

Having worked on the McGurk–Medich feud in the six weeks leading up to McGurk’s murder, Vanda and I knew a hell of a lot about Ron Medich. Before McGurk’s body had arrived at Glebe morgue, we were on his tail, organising journalists and photographers to be in situ. No doubt Medich’s wife, Odetta, was horrified and angry when, the morning after the murder, her picture was taken by a Herald photographer as she drove her black Porsche convertible into the Medichs’ palatial waterfront digs. And when Ron’s shiny black Mercedes-Benz E500 nosed out of their steep driveway, Ron was also photographed, and followed into the city, where more shots were taken as he stopped to collect derivatives trader Andrew Howard, who at the time described himself as Medich’s financial adviser.

Given the circumstances, it was indeed surprising that Medich turned up to his usual lunch spot at Tuscany, which was open to Leichhardt’s busy Norton Street. But turn up he did, and as he slumped into the curved beechwood chair in the restaurant, he was visibly upset. He’d just been trying to park his Mercedes in the private section of the Coles car park underneath, but in his agitation he couldn’t get his pass to work. He was pressing the button at the boom gate, desperate for someone to let him in. Erik Jensen, a young reporter at the Herald, appeared from nowhere and, since Medich’s car window was down, asked if he had anything to do with McGurk’s murder.

“I didn’t do it. F… off!” squealed Medich heatedly.

“Do you know who did it?” persisted Erik.

“How would I know? Christ almighty! You people are low-life. You’ve upset me, you’ve upset my wife. Now, f… off!”

The boom gate opened and Medich roared into his reserved car spot. Erik watched as Medich darted over to the service lift and made good his escape up into the shopping centre. A worker from a nearby business said Medich was in tears as he got out of the lift.

Perhaps it wasn’t the best idea, either, to meet at a restaurant that was open to the elements on three sides. There were TV cameras, boom mikes, photographers and journalists out on the street watching the luncheon party. Apart from the media throng, the 438 bus kept rumbling by, and the traffic was slowing down to see what drama was unfolding there.

As Medich relayed his woes about the intrusions of the press, 59-year-old Gattellari surveyed the gathered media out on the street. In his fashionably distressed Dolce & Gabbana jeans and a loose-fitting cream shirt, unbuttoned to reveal a tuft of dark chest hair, he was trying to keep his cool. A lick of thick black hair, which he wore parted down the middle, flopped lazily across his left eye every time he leant forward to check the caller ID on his mobile phone.

Medich and Howard sat with their backs to the street but Gattellari, on a banquette upholstered in olive-and-gold-striped corduroy, was directly in the firing line of the Herald’s photographer. Every time he looked up, a camera shutter whirred. Howard, casually dressed in a red-and-white-striped business shirt and chinos, was deputised to step outside the restaurant and tell the media to clear off. He was not successful.

Needless to say, the previous night’s slaying of Michael McGurk was the topic du jour. Ron’s old silver Nokia mobile, with its classical guitar ringtone, was ringing continually. And if Ron’s phone wasn’t ringing, Lucky’s or Andrew’s was.

At one point, Gattellari leant over and said quietly to Medich, “Are you happy it’s done?” Medich grumbled, “It’s taken long enough.”

In June 2018, Ron Medich was sentenced to a maximum 39 years in jail for ordering the execution-style murder of Michael McGurk and intimidating his widow, Kimberley.

This is an edited extract from Dead Man Walking by Kate McClymont with Vanda Carson (Penguin/Random House Australia, $35), out Monday.

To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Brisbane Times.