The underworld’s coldest killers … and how they were caught

Some of my critics (I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention) say I am as ugly as a bagful of spanners, which makes the decision for me to host a three-part television documentary rather bizarre.

I have been told I have a good head for radio, while a friend and former colleague once remarked, “You have a head everyone wants to punch.”

For the mental and visual health of viewers my on-screen presence is limited to a fleeting glimpse at the beginning and end of every episode.

The truth is the series, Naked City: Hitmen (first episode goes to air on Nine, owner of this masthead, on March 4), is pretty good. I can say that because I have nothing to do with its editing and production, with most of my ideas being cheerfully ignored.

It helps the two driving forces, documentary makers Michael Venables and Graham Watson, were determined not to travel down the well-worn path of many local true-crime documentaries.

This means there are no shots of baggy-arsed reporters staring at white boards pretending to be investigators, no slow-motion images of the same reporter walking around with a stern look and a backpack and none of the journalist driving around talking to himself.

There are no excruciatingly bad reconstructions, using impossibly handsome young Sydney actors with bad wigs playing hardened Melbourne crooks with bad teeth.

Also, the handful of experts often dragged out to comment on cases they didn’t cover are nowhere to be seen.

What I brought to the project was not inspired questions, a stage presence or even iced donuts for the production meeting, but a contact book built over decades. And secret squirrel boxes of confidential documents, tapes and clandestine recordings that track the murders, the investigations and the convictions.

I rang 15 people I thought had real knowledge of the subject – 13 immediately said yes. These are the ones who still carry the stains from being in the engine room – the ones who stood face to face with the killers. The ones who arrested, interviewed, charged, and sentenced the coldest killers we have seen.

Why would you want to watch a haggard old reporter discuss cases when you can hear from the people who were there? You also hear from the crooks caught on secret tapes.

We begin with Stuart Bateson, a key member of the Purana underworld taskforce during Melbourne’s underworld war.

In the TV series Underbelly, Rodger Corser’s character Detective Senior Sergeant Steve Owen was based on Bateson.

Underbelly was so accurate Justice Betty King banned it in Victoria during the trials, creating a blackmarket that was filled – you guessed it – by one of the real crooks the series was about.

A quick recap. Underworld heavies Jason and Mark Moran wanted to teach up-and-coming drug dealer Carl Williams a lesson and on his 29th birthday in October 1999 they shot him in the guts.

Williams was not happy and fearing they would finish the job hired an assorted group of hitmen to kill the Morans and anyone connected with them.

At first, the homicide squad treated each case individually until in three murders there was one suspect – Andrew Veniamin.

Detective Senior Sergeant Phil Swindells recommended a taskforce, an entirely sensible initiative that was ignored, that is until Jason Moran was killed with his mate, Pasquale Barbaro, in a van full of kids on an Auskick morning.

The Purana Taskforce was formed and Bateson was a foundation member.

Stuart tells of the pressure to get results as the bodies kept turning up, trying to join the dots and finally turning some of the killers into witnesses.

He takes us into a hit-team’s bugged car. Police are listening on October 23, 2003, but are unaware of the target, thinking the gunmen are planning an armed robbery.

Too late they hear the driver say, “there he is, go”. You hear the shots and Michael Marshall, 38, lays dead in front of his five-year-old son.

“Get down,” yells the driver as the killer dives in the back seat. They later ring Carl Williams with the killer saying, “You know that horse you tipped me, it got scratched”.

It was the image of the boy, Bateson says, that drove Purana on, particularly Michelle Kerley, who was pivotal in turning some of Australia’s worst crooks into witnesses.

There is a bugged conversation between the colourful Mick Gatto and hitman Andrew Veniamin – friendly banter days before they have a fatal confrontation in a Carlton restaurant. Gatto said it was self-defence and Veniamin was in no position to dispute the argument.

When Gatto was charged with the murder a detective suggested Veniamin was no great loss. Police claim Gatto said, “Boys, sometimes when you hear the music you’ve gotta get up and dance.”

We watch a secretly recorded meeting as one of Williams’ hit team begins an elaborate fan dance – threatening to reveal matters of interest while concealing the good stuff.

Eventually, he accepted the deal of the century to turn on Williams. DPP and later Supreme Court Judge Paul Coughlan said, “We needed a breakthrough.”

As the interviews unfolded it became clear that many hitmen started as armed robbers – making the jump from terrorising people for money to killing them for cash.

Rod Collins was the perfect example. When his team was arrested by the SOG after a failed attempt to rob a Richmond bank the crooks looked as if they had attempted to use a grass cutter as a toothbrush.

Reminded of the incident, veteran SOG member Bruce Knight remarked with his trademark understatement, “It is fair to say they had a very bad day.”

As a long serving SOG member Knight has been in more gunfights than Wyatt Earp. I asked him once if it had impacted on his mental health. He looked at me as if I were suggesting he sit on a cactus. “Why?” he said. “They started it.”

Of all the hitmen Rod Collins may have been the worst. Twice, after he had killed his target, he murdered their wives so they couldn’t be witnesses.

Veteran homicide detective Sol Solomon told us of chatting with Collins at the crook’s kitchen table only to discover the hitman was holding a pistol suspended on a rail underneath, pointed directly at the cop’s groin.

Sol shows us Collins’ hitman kit that included disguises, police radio frequency, a mirror for seeing around corners and a point and shoot listening device.

In prison Collins was bashed for using another prisoner’s toothbrush, which shows he was a cold-blooded killer, with bad manners and an inability to floss.

Sol was the one who charged Collins with the 2004 murders of police informer Terence Hodson and his wife Christine, with the case collapsing when Carl Williams was murdered in 2010 inside Barwon Prison.

Williams had been sentenced to 35 years by Justice King. She tells us that when, after multiple delays, Williams agreed to plead guilty she wanted him brought to court for the formal change of plea only to be told he was on the road back to prison.

She told her associate to get the prison authorities to bring him back only to be told the van was on a freeway and wouldn’t do a U-turn.

King informed the authorities they would be doing Williams’ time if they did not reconsider. They reconsidered and Williams was back in the court within the hour.

What we learned is the crooks, cops and judges were all linked in an underworld village. Everyone seemed to know the others. You would talk to one detective about one hitman and then find he knew the others.

At the height of the war Williams was killing anyone connected with the Morans and one associate was Graham “Munster” Kinniburgh – Australia’s best safe breaker.

One of the few cops to get a conviction against Kinniburgh, Bernie Rankin, tells us we will never know his true influence in the underworld, describing him as a master criminal.

Bateson went to Kinniburgh’s home in a quiet Kew street to tell him he was on a hit list. The Munster calmly replied, “Better than cancer getting you.”

Weeks later he lay dead on the road in that quiet Kew street.

The murder remained unsolved for years until a detective named Sara Morse took it on.

She identified the hit team as Stephen Asling and Terrence Blewitt (both armed robbers) and became convinced Blewitt was buried at an old tip site in Thomastown.

Morse convinced her bosses to hire a 20-tonne digger and in January 2016, they started to excavate, and after removing 4000 cubic metres of soil (half the MCG) over three days they were still without a body. “I was getting a little nervous when I was being reminded how much it was costing,” Morse says.

She used her own money to get archived aerial shots from the time the body was dumped.

Then they found a three-metre-deep trench and human remains.

It was late in the day when the digger unearthed what could be a body. Her bosses ordered her to stop until the next day. She ignored the order as she had waited too long for this moment.

It was Blewitt, still wearing his balaclava.