Ten underworld hits that shook Melbourne

When watching the TV series The Day of the Jackal, it is remarkable how quickly we can lose our moral compass and start barracking for the hitman.

But in real life, gangland executioners are underworld foot soldiers, motivated by greed and the desire to be respected.

When the underworld profits grow, instead of just enjoying the fruits of their illegal labour, crime gangs rid themselves of the unwanted, much like a snake sheds its skin.

Eddie Redmayne stars as the lone assassin in the TV version of The Day of the Jackal.

The long-anticipated murder of Sam “The Punisher” Abdulrahim is the latest in a long list of tit-for-rat-a-tat-tat killings that are as Melbourne as laneway graffiti.

The motives are many and varied, such as eliminating competition, culling police informers, getting in first or squaring the ledger. It is not an exact science. There have been many mistaken identity cases, such as that of the honest fruiterer Paul Virgona, 46, who in 2019 was shot dead on his way to work, proving that to be a hitman you must be ruthless and slightly stupid.

Which brings us to our top 10 hits.

1. Long before the Underbelly and tobacco wars, there was the fallout from the Great Bookie Robbery. In April 1976, a team led by Ray “The General” Chuck raided the Victoria Club, stealing more than $1.4 million of bookies’ money.

The feared standover brothers Les and Brian Kane wanted a slice and Chuck decided to strike first. The General and two of his soldiers burst into Les Kane’s Wantirna home in October 1978, shooting him with a machinegun, then putting the victim in his own car.

It is said a fourth team member, Rod Collins, who would become Melbourne’s most prodigious hitman, helped bundle the body into the car. Neither Kane nor his pink Ford were seen again. Doing the hit in front of Kane’s wife and two children was a major breach of manners.

2. The ambush was never going to go unanswered, and on November 12, 1979, Chuck was shot dead inside the Magistrates’ Court complex, where he was facing armed robbery charges. The killer was Brian Kane and the murder had been given the green light. Kane had already planned his escape route and had been allowed into the empty court the day before for a walk-through.

3. But, as we know in these circles, what goes around comes around, and three years and two weeks later, Kane was shot dead in the Quarry Hotel. The main suspects were Rod Collins and prison escapee Russell Cox

4. At 200 centimetres and 130 kilograms, Sydney gangster Percy Charles Neville was a giant of the Sydney underworld, but when he turned up in Melbourne wanting a slice of the illegal gambling protection money he was soon cut down to size.

To do so he would have to eliminate the competition, Melbourne gangsters Freddie Harrison and Normie Bradshaw.

It was April 1951 when the armed Neville first tried to shake down a baccarat school in Elizabeth Street, which resulted in the owner making a sneaky call to Bradshaw.

Harrison was driving with Bradshaw in the back carrying a rifle when they drove the wrong way up Flinders Lane after spotting their giant target.

The two Melbourne crooks always dressed like Hollywood gangsters, and it is legend that when Bradshaw alighted the vehicle, he removed his pocket handkerchief, placed it on the ground and dropped on one knee to take aim.

Killing may be a dirty business, but that doesn’t mean one needs to dirty one’s pressed trousers. The big man fell with two bullets in the back.

Bradshaw was acquitted of the murder.

In 1961, a light plane piloted by Bradshaw crashed into Port Phillip Bay, killing all four on board. There were rumours the carburetor had been sabotaged, starving the single engine of fuel.

This proves Isaac Newton’s law of crime (known as gangster gravity): what goes up must come down.

5. On February 6, 1958, Freddie “The Frog” Harrison pulled up at South Wharf in his 1953 Ford Customline to pick up his pay and return a borrowed trailer. As he was uncoupling the trailer, a gunman pulled out a shotgun and said “this is yours, Fred”, before shooting his target in the head.

There were 30 men near the car, yet even those splattered with blood told police they didn’t see anything. A dozen witnesses declared they were in the toilet at the time. It was a two-man toilet. The frustrated coroner threatened to have the toilet reconstructed in the court and invite all the reluctant witnesses to show how they fitted.

The killer was the feared dockie John Eric Twist, who spent his retirement years taking in the sea air down at San Remo.

A teenager named Charlie Wootton was nabbed at the docks carrying a box of shotgun shells with a couple missing. Wootton would go on to run the underworld’s favourite illegal casino, Red Aces, in St Kilda. He still has a motto: “To have a gun and not need it is far better than to need a gun and not have one.” Makes sense in that line of work.

6. Judy Moran was a successful shoplifter who thought she was a crime matriarch, which is why she thought she could hire a hit team to kill her brother-in-law and get away with it.

Judy Moran going to court in 2011.Credit: Wayne Taylor

Moran was no stranger to murder. She lost two husbands, Les Cole (1981) and Lewis Moran (2004), and two sons – Mark (2000) and Jason (2003) – to underworld murders.

Yet, she chose to take out a contract on Lewis’ brother Des “Tuppence” Moran because he was considering changing his will, leaving her out in the cold.

So when in May 2009 she borrowed $400,000 from the Westpac bank to hire a hit team, she thought it was the best investment since bitcoin. Trouble was, she left a bigger trail than a tuna fisherman with a bucket of berley.

Within days, she bought two Chrysler Sebring convertibles and a Land Rover Discovery. Two of the cars were advance payments for the hit. On June 15, 2009, the ninth anniversary of Mark Moran’s death, Des was at his usual Ascot Vale cafe when ambushed by the hit team.

He managed to say “Oh shit” before he was shot dead. Judy was soon on the scene crying: “It should have been me.”

Onlookers said the acting was more Broadmeadows amateur theatre than Broadway. She wasn’t helped when police found the getaway car in the garage of her house.

7. Routine is the enemy of a hit target, something Lewis Moran should have known. He was well aware he was on drug boss Carl Williams’ death list and was warned by police to be careful. They even went to court to have his bail curfew altered, so his movements would be less predictable.

What was predictable was that Lewis liked beer and was tight. Which is why he insisted on going to the Brunswick Club, where sympathetic bar staff would sling him the occasional free beer. And it was there he was shot dead in December 2004.

Officers inspect the van in which Jason Moran and Pasquale Barbaro were shot in Pascoe Vale in June 2003.Credit: Paul Harris

8. There was a code that a professional hit would be carried out when the victim was alone. This was for two reasons: lack of witnesses and not to put other people at risk. That changed at the Essendon North Auskick in June 2003, when the killer known as “The Runner” turned up to blast Jason Moran, who was in a van with his friend Pasquale Barbaro and half a dozen kids.

Both Moran and Barbaro ended up dead, and the children subjected to unspeakable trauma. The game had changed and now hits are public, while arson attacks and drive-by shootings are carried out with no concern for bystanders.

9. Before Sam Abdulrahim made too many enemies, there was a gangster who also started a war on too many fronts. Gavin Preston was called Capable because he was capable of anything - except, as it turned out, ducking bullets.

He was shot dead having brunch in September 2023 in a Keilor East cafe. The killers wore black, the victim wore black and he was having a latte. What could be more Melbourne than that?

Gavin Preston, with his nickname, “Capable”, tattooed on his neck.Credit: Facebook

10. Drug boss Carl Williams hired hitmen like a government hires consultants. Trouble was he often forgot to pay them. Jailed for four murders, he tried to cut a deal with police to give up an ex-detective allegedly involved in a double homicide, but when it became clear he was talking, some crooks felt the need to silence him.

On April 19, 2010, the fearsome inmate Matthew “The General” Johnson, who had already collected more than 150 convictions, walked up behind him in a maximum security Barwon Prison unit and struck him eight times over the head with the metal stem of an exercise bike.

The irony was that Williams was on a fitness kick at the time.

John Silvester lifts the lid on Australia’s criminal underworld. Subscribers can sign up to receive his Naked City newsletter every Thursday.