A shooting in front of children at a footy clinic shifted everything in the notorious Underbelly war

There are big benefits in being Australia’s longest-serving crime reporter. When researching the gangland war that dominated Melbourne for years from 1995, involving underworld figures such as Carl Williams and the Moran family, and would later be made into a TV drama miniseries, Underbelly, John Silvester turned to his trusty dog-eared and rather hefty contact book.

Of the 15 people Silvester contacted to interview, from police to those in the law, 14 said yes.

One of them was Stuart Bateson, who was a detective with the Purana taskforce.

Now, Naked City podcast host Silvester talks to Bateson about his near-decade investigation into this violent web of notorious criminals.

Like many gangland wars over real estate, drugs and reputation, much of it at the beginning did not cross over to the mainstream. Bateson says everything changed when Jason Moran (son of crime matriarch Judy Moran) and Pasquale Barbaro were murdered in front of children.

Moran and Barbaro were shot dead as they sat in a blue Mitsubishi van in a car park in North Essendon on a Saturday morning in 2003.

Five children, including Moran’s six-year-old twins, witnessed the double-execution killing from the back seat of the van, while many more children were taking part in an Auskick football clinic just 50 metres away.

“That murder of Jason Moran and Pasquale Barbaro happened at an Auskick clinic in front of all those kids, who were variously sprayed with blood,” Bateson tells Silvester on the podcast.

“I remember Christine Nixon, who was the chief commissioner at the time, going ‘this is it, we’ve got to stop this’. And at that point there was a big recruitment into the taskforce.”

In this episode of Naked City, Silvester talks to Bateson about investigating such infamous criminals, and airs part of a recording of a real gangland hit.

John Silvester is a columnist for The Age. He has covered Melbourne’s crime beat and justice system since the 1970s, winning numerous accolades, including three Walkley Awards and six Melbourne Press Club Quill Awards. He has written or co-authored more than 30 books, including the Underbelly series, which was made into a TV series.

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