Crime seems to be woven into the very fabric of this city, though most passers-by wouldn’t know about the secrets bubbling under the surface. But John Silvester does.
When award-winning journalist, and host of The Age’s Naked City podcast, John Silvester started reporting on Melbourne’s criminal underworld, pubs closed at 10pm.
Almost 50 years later, the city is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But not much else has changed.
Tobacco wars, underworld infighting, strange links between police and crooks. There are crimes in every major city, but in Melbourne, it seems to be woven into the very fabric of the place.
Just about every suburb has a secret history, a hidden underbelly of crime that most passers-by wouldn’t know about. But Silvester sees it everywhere he looks – and now he’s giving you the magnifying glass in this exclusive video tour of Melbourne.
A bloody mafia power struggle, and the American investigator whose warnings were dismissed
Natural causes caught up with Melbourne godfather Domenico “The Pope” Italiano in December 1962, and his enforcer, Antonio “The Toad” Barbara, a few weeks later.
But mobsters Vincenzo Angilletta and Vincenzo Muratore weren’t so lucky. Italiano’s death left a power vacuum at Queen Victoria Market, and rival families settled it with shotguns.
With contestants Angilletta and Muratore disposed of, stallholder Liborio Benvenuto ultimately emerged as godfather. The Market Murders – as the battle for control over the lucrative mafia linchpin became known – were so violent that the Victorian government sent for American mafia expert John T. Cusack.
Cusack’s methods – punching market workers or hitting them with chairs – were considered “a bit far” by his homicide squad stablemates.
They did, however, result in a 17-page report on The Honoured Society, wherein Cusack exposed the fact that the Calabrian organised crime group was operating in Melbourne, and warned if action was not taken, its grip on Melbourne would grow.
Like Cassandra, Cusack was ignored. His 1964 predictions, once dismissed as alarmist, would come true one by one – starting with the Great Bookie Robbery 12 years later.
Melbourne’s most notorious heist and the mastermind’s brutal courthouse execution
It was over in 11 minutes, but the repercussions of the Great Bookie Robbery would rock Melbourne for years.
On April 21, 1976, six gunmen walked in and took 118 calico bags full of cash – a loot of at least $1.3 million ($10.3 million today) – from Queen Street’s Victorian Club.
In exchange, they left their weapons.
More than a decade before DNA profiling would be used in an Australian criminal investigation for the first time, the thieves knew the discarded arsenal could not be tied back to them.
That meticulously planned move is one of many that prompted senior police to describe the heist as the best organised and executed in Australia’s history.
It could only have been achieved with the help of an inside man. Just as the revenge-fuelled execution of the heist’s mastermind, Ray “Chuck” Bennett, could not have been pulled off without inside information three years later.
How else could standover man Brian Kane have escaped the rat’s nest that was Melbourne’s Magistrates’ Court after shooting Bennett in front of police, while the police ran after a mortally wounded Bennett?
When terror came for Melbourne – and the policewoman who paid the ultimate price
A coin toss determined who would fetch lunch for the watchhouse each day, and on March 27, 1986, 21-year-old Constable Angela Taylor lost.
The trip to the police cafeteria around the corner would end up taking her life.
Taylor became the first Australian policewoman murdered on duty after 60 sticks of gelignite, packed into a stolen Commodore and parked across the road from Russell Street Police Station with the clock ticking, exploded.
She was engulfed in the fireball and died 24 days later. Twenty-one others were injured.
It was a miracle more people weren’t killed.
Motivated not by a mutated religious mindset or twisted ideology but by career criminals’ blinding hatred for law enforcement, the attack marked Australia’s first brush with domestic terrorism.
The plush illegal casino turned groovy wine bar
It was Johnny “Guitar” Zollo who ushered Silvester through the police tape stuck to the broken-down reinforced steel door.
Inside was something the Black Prince of Lygon Street, Alphonse John Gangitano, had been prepared to sink his life savings into, until he brought in three investors including amphetamines trafficker John Higgs.
A luxurious, members-only casino, the plushest of its kind in the city, which would cement Gangitano’s position as a major underworld figure.
It was deserted.
For months, police watched from the second storey of the building across the road as Gangitano and his backers poured $1 million into the venture, before finally raiding it.
Gangitano never recovered financially. The place was left unused for 25 years, until Simon Denman discovered it, pokie tokens and all, and turned it into Neighbourhood Wine.
If you know what you’re looking for, you can glimpse remnants of Gangitano’s infamous Sunset Club today while sipping on a glass.
When shadowy underworld figures call you up for coffee – and a part in Underbelly
Immortalised by Vince Colosimo in Underbelly, Gangitano had an air of showbusiness about him in real life.
Unlike Benvenuto – who was crowned Godfather of the Honoured Society after the Market Murders, avoided publicity like the plague and died peacefully of old age – image-conscious Gangitano and his designer sunglasses courted the front page.
He was shot dead in 1998 in the laundry of his suburban house wearing only his underpants.
Silvester and Andrew Rule used a photo of Gangitano’s coffin being carried at his funeral for the cover of Leadbelly, the book Nine’s television drama was based on.
One of the men pictured in the photo rang Silvester and told the journalist he was a part-time actor. He thought he would be good on Underbelly, he said, and Silvester agreed. But when he auditioned, he didn’t get the part.
Celebrity crook Carl Williams was also not afraid to ring up Silvester.
“You could get someone killed writing that sort of stuff,” Williams told Silvester during their first phone call, after Silvester wrote a story about the origins of the Underbelly War.
Another call from Williams was a summons to a coffee meeting on the night he had organised the murder of Graham “The Munster” Kinniburgh in 2003. Six months earlier, Williams had organised rival gangster Jason Moran’s execution-style shooting.
Seven years later, Williams was bludgeoned to death by a fellow inmate inside the high security Barwon Prison.
The more things change, the more they stay the same
Bubbling underneath the surface of Melbourne’s most recognisable home of Italian food was once a gangster’s paradise.
Crooks spent decades gathering on Lygon Street to eat, socialise and plan their crimes. Sixteen years after the Underbelly War ended with Williams’ death, we are seeing history repeat itself.
Where there is demand, organised crime will supply. And what’s in demand now is illicit tobacco.
Legitimate cigarettes are too expensive for the average punter, who has a black market all too willing to embrace them. Nothing has changed.
A significant Catholic site – and the common thread linking generations of gangsters
Many would walk past this Roman Catholic church in West Melbourne every day without knowing its real history.
Funerals are all too common in gangland. What’s also common is the families of the underworld’s most notorious figures gathering at St Mary Star of the Sea to remember their dead.
Photos from Domenico Italiano’s 1962 funeral – held three blocks from the lucrative Queen Victoria Market – show future mafia identities acting as pallbearers.
Some of the victims of the power struggle Italiano’s death prompted were also farewelled at the church, as was Gangitano, who is believed to have been murdered by Moran.
Five years after Gangitano’s service, Moran’s funeral was also held at St Mary Star of the Sea.
While the church is a common thread linking generations of Melbourne’s underworld, what has changed over time is each affair’s solemnity.
Dark suits and ties were a staple of the Market Murder days. But by the Underbelly War, gangsters desperate to be on the news had started accessorising their mourning attire with bling.
With Matt Willis, Matthew Absalom-Wong, and Bronte Gossling.
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.
In the seventh season of crime podcast Naked City, Silvester talks to the cops and the crims. New episodes drop each Wednesday.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.smh.com.au
