Speaker 1: Frank Benvenuto tried to call Victor Pierce and couldn't get through,
Speaker 1: and then he died. Four minutes later, Victor Pierce called
Speaker 1: him back and said, oh sorry, mate, missed your call,
Speaker 1: but it was too late. Frank the greengrocer was brown bread.
Speaker 2: Police were called and.
Speaker 1: They pulled both bodies out of the river, and they
Speaker 1: concluded that this was secret mobster men's business. The clue
Speaker 1: was that Medici's ears had been cut off and he
Speaker 1: was shot twice in the head and stabbed in the stomach.
Speaker 1: I'm Andrew Rules's Life and Crimes. It's twenty five years
Speaker 1: since a guy called Frank ben Venuto was shot dead
Speaker 1: driving his blue Holden Statesman sedan very close to his
Speaker 1: home down in Beau Morris. I think he was pulling
Speaker 1: a load of rubbish to the tip and probably was
Speaker 1: backing out of his drive and was slowly turning a
Speaker 1: corner nearby. But whichever it was, he was going slowly
Speaker 1: enough a hit man with a pistol was able to
Speaker 1: step up beside him and shoot him. I think in
Speaker 1: the neck. I don't know that it hit him in
Speaker 1: the head because he lasted a few minutes, and we
Speaker 1: know that because he tried to call his own pet gunman,
Speaker 1: a guy called Victor Pierce. And we all know about
Speaker 1: Victor Pierce. He came to a bad end, as they
Speaker 1: all do. But this guy, Frank ben Venuto, tried to
Speaker 1: call Victor Pierce and couldn't get through and then he died.
Speaker 1: Four minutes later, Victor Pierce called him back and said,
Speaker 1: oh sorry, mate, missed your call, but it was too late. Frank.
Speaker 1: The greengrocer was brown bread. That shooting was on May
Speaker 1: the eighth of the year two thousand, so twenty five
Speaker 1: years ago, as we're speaking at the minute in our studio,
Speaker 1: and it turns out that May is actually a very
Speaker 1: dangerous month for mafia figures and their associates around on Melbourne,
Speaker 1: because just eight days after that shooting, another mafia associate,
Speaker 1: not actually a mafia member, but a guy who rubbed
Speaker 1: shoulders with the mafia, a standover man, gunman all round,
Speaker 1: no good guy, a guy called Richard Vladanitch. He was
Speaker 1: shot dead at the Esquire Motel in Saint Kilda, and
Speaker 1: although it's never been proven who shot him, it is
Speaker 1: understood that one of the last people to see him
Speaker 1: alive was a mister Rocco Arico, who most certainly was
Speaker 1: associated with the likes of Frank ben Venuto and the
Speaker 1: Mirror Toures and various other members of families which some
Speaker 1: people would associate with mobsters. Now Rocco Arico, as most
Speaker 1: of our listeners will recall, is currently in prison for
Speaker 1: quite a long time, and when he gets out of prison,
Speaker 1: if he's unlucky, he may well be deported back to Italy,
Speaker 1: because he's one of those unfortunate people who came to
Speaker 1: this country as a very small child, probably grew up
Speaker 1: almost with English as his first language. Really, who's an
Speaker 1: Australian in every other way except for his citizenship, And
Speaker 1: he could face being deported when he gets out of jail.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that police hold against him
Speaker 1: is the possibility, if not the likelihood, that he had
Speaker 1: a lot to do with the death of Richard Ladnich
Speaker 1: and many other things. But we'll see what happens. One
Speaker 1: of the problems the police and the prosecutors have in
Speaker 1: that case is that Rocque Arico could be the only
Speaker 1: person left alive who was around on the night of
Speaker 1: May sixteen, in the year two thousand, around the Esquire
Speaker 1: Motel where Richard Ladinich was shot dead. I think it's
Speaker 1: fair to say that other people at the police suspective
Speaker 1: possibly being involved. These would include Dino Dibbrah, the late
Speaker 1: Dino Dibbrah, the late Mark Morhan, and the late Carl Williams.
Speaker 2: They're all dead, That's why we say late.
Speaker 1: Now. No matter who pulled the trigger on Richard Madnich,
Speaker 1: you'd have to say that he was the sort of
Speaker 1: guy that wasn't mourned much or by many people. Of course,
Speaker 1: he would have had a mother somewhere and a sister
Speaker 1: or brother somewhere, but it wasn't as if he had
Speaker 1: one of those massive funerals where everybody loved him and
Speaker 1: cried and all that stuff, because he was a very violent,
Speaker 1: unpredictable and in some respects unlovable person. You would say,
Speaker 1: even in Pentridge he had that reputation. They call him
Speaker 1: mad Richard in Penridge Prison, which was full of mad people.
Speaker 1: This contrasts with two other people, two wholesale vegetable market
Speaker 1: identities well known to the ben Venuto family, who were
Speaker 1: greatly missed by their loved ones even before.
Speaker 2: The police knew they were dead.
Speaker 1: That double murder happened sixteen years before the killings of
Speaker 1: Benvenuto and Ladinich, But like theirs, it happened in May,
Speaker 1: which of course is just a coincidence, May and May.
Speaker 1: What's not a coincidence is that these two dead guys,
Speaker 1: the ones we are going to talk about in just
Speaker 1: a moment, they were Calabrians, well known to the Benvenuto
Speaker 1: crime family. These murders came to light on May the
Speaker 1: sixth of nineteen eighty four when an angler fishing in
Speaker 1: the Murrumbidgee River near Griffith thought he took the biggest
Speaker 1: murray cod in the river system. In fact, it wasn't
Speaker 1: a murray cod, It wasn't a log, it wasn't a bullock.
Speaker 2: It was the.
Speaker 1: Body of Rocco Medici, who had traveled to Griffith with
Speaker 1: his extremely unlucky brother in law, Giuseppe Farina, just a
Speaker 1: few days earlier. Police were called and they pulled both
Speaker 1: bodies out of the river, and they immediately concluded that
Speaker 1: this was secret mobster men's business. The clue was that
Speaker 1: Medici's ears had been cut off and he was shot
Speaker 1: twice in the head and stabbed in the stomach. It
Speaker 1: was widely reported then and since that these men have
Speaker 1: been tortured before they were murdered, and I think he
Speaker 1: would have cut the ears off Rocco Medici as a
Speaker 1: symbolic warning. It was the custom of the Calabria mafia,
Speaker 1: the real name of which is Danghetta, to cut off
Speaker 1: ears if it was said that the victim had been
Speaker 1: hearing too much. He had been listening too much. Other
Speaker 1: people might have their tongue cut if they talk too much,
Speaker 1: and so on. Others perhaps had their eyes pulled out
Speaker 1: because they saw too much. You get the drift. So
Speaker 1: the mutilation of Roco Medici's body was a message to
Speaker 1: all of the mafia members and family and associates. Don't
Speaker 1: do what this guy did, or you could end up
Speaker 1: like him. The other guy was very stiff in every
Speaker 1: respect because his name was such as Seppie Farina, and
Speaker 1: his only connection really was that he was Rocco Medici's
Speaker 1: brother in law. And when Roco Medici was lured the
Speaker 1: Griffith on a promise, a false promise of a drug deal,
Speaker 1: that this other guy, his brother in law, went up
Speaker 1: for the ride, just went for the trip, a trip
Speaker 1: to the country, and when they got there they were
Speaker 1: either met by the killer killers or they went with them.
Speaker 1: I'm not clear which way it happened, because no one
Speaker 1: really has explained that, but clearly they did run into
Speaker 1: I believe, two people, one of them who may well
Speaker 1: have driven them up was a guy called Joe Rossi.
Speaker 1: Now Joe Rossi was in fact a henchman of the Benvenutos,
Speaker 1: and Rossi was dying of cancer many years later, about
Speaker 1: twenty four years later, in two thousand and eight, and
Speaker 1: he actually supposedly made a deathbeg confession to an unknown
Speaker 1: person who spoke to police I think later, and said,
Speaker 1: I was there when these two guys were killed. I
Speaker 1: didn't do it, but I was there. I was present,
Speaker 1: and the killer, the shooter, the gunman was a Calabrian
Speaker 1: gunman who is still alive and still living in Melbourne
Speaker 1: at that time two thousand and eight.
Speaker 2: And possibly Joe Rossi had.
Speaker 1: Some sort of guilty conscience about the whole thing, because
Speaker 1: he said that when he realized that this guy roc
Speaker 1: O Medici, who he'd helped set up to be murdered,
Speaker 1: when he realized he had a second person with him
Speaker 1: who had nothing to do with it, it worried him
Speaker 1: and he called he called his boss in Melbourne, Liboio Benvenuto,
Speaker 1: the old Godfather. Now this is the father of Frank,
Speaker 1: the one we mentioned earlier that was shot dead in
Speaker 1: the year two thousand. Liboreo was the big godfather back
Speaker 1: in the day from the nineteen sixties until his death
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty eight. And it was Liborio who ordered
Speaker 1: the death of Roco Medici. And he did that because
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty three, just the year before this double killing,
Speaker 1: the Boreo's four WLL drive car was blown sky high
Speaker 1: with JELLYG. Knight at the Melbourne Fruit and Vegetable Markets.
Speaker 1: I think it was parked outside somewhere and up it went.
Speaker 1: And whether he was supposed to be in it or
Speaker 1: whether it was just a warning to him, it would
Speaker 1: appear that there was a lot of unrest about who
Speaker 1: should be running the Melbourne markets and who should be
Speaker 1: the big boss and therefore getting the most money out
Speaker 1: of the rackets that they ran at the markets, and Laboreo,
Speaker 1: although he told the police that he had no enemies
Speaker 1: and that he had many friends and that he had
Speaker 1: no idea who blew his car up, it would appear
Speaker 1: that he actually blamed Rocco Medici and a sort of
Speaker 1: a splinter group of the Collabrium mafia, and that he
Speaker 1: arranged for Roco Medici to be killed and have his
Speaker 1: ears cut off in order to send a lesson to
Speaker 1: the others. And it was Joe Rossi, a henchman of
Speaker 1: his a driver. I think he described as like a
Speaker 1: bodyguard guy who did the sort of dirty work of
Speaker 1: conning Medici to go to Griffith. But when Rossi's faced
Speaker 1: with this dilemma of Giuseppe Farina turning up, he sneaks
Speaker 1: off and calls Bernuto the Boreo, the Boss, the Godfather.
Speaker 1: It says, Boss, we's that effect. There's another guy here,
Speaker 1: his brother in law. What do I do about him?
Speaker 1: He's got nothing to do with it. And apparently what
Speaker 1: Laboio ben Bernuto said was bad luck. He's just a
Speaker 1: guy that's in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Speaker 1: He's got to go to because he's going to be
Speaker 1: a witness. So they both got killed and that was that,
Speaker 1: which tells you the cold bloodedness of the brotherhood. The
Speaker 1: brothers aren't all that good to each other. When push
Speaker 1: comes to shove, and he becomes an interesting point that
Speaker 1: I've never forgotten. When the New South Wales police hooked
Speaker 1: the guys out of the river and identified them and
Speaker 1: then contacted their Victorian police to tell the families the
Speaker 1: next of kin. The Victorian police go around and knock
Speaker 1: on the doors of these two dead guys in East Keelor.
Speaker 1: I think they lived, certainly one of them did. I
Speaker 1: think they both did. And when they knocked on the
Speaker 1: doors at these two houses, the doors were opened by
Speaker 1: in both cases widows who were in tears and wearing
Speaker 1: black already they knew before the Victorian police knew that
Speaker 1: their husbands were dead. And that is how it works
Speaker 1: inside the Calabriam mafia. No one says nothing, but they
Speaker 1: know very well what's going on. And that is an
Speaker 1: insight into the workings of the Calabrium mafia that we've
Speaker 1: seen before in different ways. I think we've told the
Speaker 1: story before, but we might repeat it that when a
Speaker 1: trotting trainer just outside Melbourne, east of Melbourne out at
Speaker 1: officer I think it was out near Crambon when he
Speaker 1: fell foul of the mafia guys who were rigging races
Speaker 1: in the harness racing shock horror. They rigged racist at
Speaker 1: the harness racing in the bad old days. This a
Speaker 1: good old trainer. He actually won a race on it
Speaker 1: Merits without stopping his horse or doing whatever it was
Speaker 1: that the mafia guys wanted him to do. And next
Speaker 1: thing his stable is set alight, which was very sad
Speaker 1: because it burnt to death several horses, a whole heap
Speaker 1: of horses. It was in the evening, I think it
Speaker 1: was just in the early evening that this happened. And
Speaker 1: he just put the horses in a fraction early. It
Speaker 1: might have been a cold night and he put them
Speaker 1: in a faction early and he'd gone up to the
Speaker 1: house a bit earlier than he usually would, or else
Speaker 1: he would have been in the stable as well and
Speaker 1: he could have been burnt. It was a terrible crime
Speaker 1: and the you know, the police were most concerned about it.
Speaker 1: The family were outraged. It was a terrible thing and
Speaker 1: the police had a fair idea who you know, who
Speaker 1: was behind this or could be behind it, and they said,
Speaker 1: that's the Godfather up near Mildura. And so four police
Speaker 1: got in a car and they drove to Milderier to
Speaker 1: see the Godfather, not Laboreo of in Venuto, a different
Speaker 1: Godfather altogether. This was a mill dura Godfather. And when
Speaker 1: they got up there, they go out to the Godfather's
Speaker 1: big house, which is by way of being called a
Speaker 1: grass castle, as they call them up there, because they're
Speaker 1: very big, massive, expensive, you know, ninety three squares of
Speaker 1: bad taste houses that cost a lot of money to build,
Speaker 1: because these guys got a lot of cash to spend
Speaker 1: on tradesmen. And the reason they've got a lot of
Speaker 1: cash to spend on tradesmen is that they sell a
Speaker 1: lot of marijuana.
Speaker 2: Was really what they did. Mostly.
Speaker 1: They call it up there, they call it Calabrian corn.
Speaker 1: And when they get out to the Godfather's house, they
Speaker 1: drive a long and tiring journey, you know, many hours driving.
Speaker 1: They drive up the drive, long drive, and they pull
Speaker 1: up in their dusty police car and they get out
Speaker 1: and they go in and there's the Godfather and he
Speaker 1: opens the door before they even knock on it. He says,
Speaker 1: hello John, Hello Andrew, Hello Sergeant Smith, and hello Brett
Speaker 1: or whatever he named them all. And then he said,
Speaker 1: come in and have a cup of coffee. You've had
Speaker 1: a very very exhausting trip. And he said you, of course,
Speaker 1: John will have a short black, and you Brett will
Speaker 1: have a flat white, and you Charlie will have a
Speaker 1: latte and so on. What he was showing them was
Speaker 1: he knew their names, he knew they were coming, he
Speaker 1: knew their names, and he knew what coffees they drank.
Speaker 1: And this was a very chilling reminder to these guys
Speaker 1: that the Godfather had more information about them than they
Speaker 1: had about him. And that really did put a bit
Speaker 1: of a chill on these guys about the way they
Speaker 1: proceeded with that investigation, because it probably made them think, well,
Speaker 1: if he can burn down a stable full of horses,
Speaker 1: you know, four hundred kilometers from here, and he knows
Speaker 1: who we are and what coffees we drink, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of other stuff he could do as well. And
Speaker 1: I think it might have slowed them down a bit.
Speaker 1: That's according to one of the police who told me
Speaker 1: the story one of the guys that went there, and
Speaker 1: I've never forgotten it, and it is a reminder in
Speaker 1: all these Collabrian stories of what goes on behind the
Speaker 1: scenes from Mildeura back to the Murum Bidjie. So when
Speaker 1: the police pull the bodies out, they realize that not
Speaker 1: only the ears are hacked off roc O Medici, but
Speaker 1: that he's been a shot a couple of times in
Speaker 1: the head, and that he's been stabbed in the stomach.
Speaker 1: And what I think my take on that is that
Speaker 1: it wasn't actually torture. It was probably an attempt to
Speaker 1: make sure that that body didn't float. That they tend
Speaker 1: to rip the guts open in something that they don't
Speaker 1: want to float, so that it won't bloat. If the
Speaker 1: stomach he's cut open, it won't the body bloat and
Speaker 1: won't float. Why they didn't do it to the other fellow,
Speaker 1: I don't know, or maybe they did and it just
Speaker 1: wasn't reported. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Interesting thing, I doubt.
Speaker 1: It was actually an active torture might have been hard
Speaker 1: to know. The fact that this was essentially a Victorian
Speaker 1: mafia murder but it occurred interstate in Griffith, in the
Speaker 1: River area in New South Wales shows you how difficult
Speaker 1: it is for interstate police to get a grip on things.
Speaker 1: Because it's the New South Wales police that have called
Speaker 1: to the event, you know, some days after it's happened. Whatever,
Speaker 1: they haul out the bodies, they've got to do the
Speaker 1: coronial thing and all the rest of it. Then they've
Speaker 1: got to pass it to the Victorian police to investigate
Speaker 1: who might have had a motive to do it and
Speaker 1: who actually did it.
Speaker 2: So it just is.
Speaker 1: Another layer of complication for the police that they don't
Speaker 1: need when they're dealing, you know, with mafia people who
Speaker 1: are fairly efficient at what they did and also extremely
Speaker 1: good at staying quiet about it. The tradition of omita
Speaker 1: of silence was taken very seriously by nearly all of
Speaker 1: these people, particularly in that era. This is forty odd
Speaker 1: years ago now and it was a different generation and
Speaker 1: they took.
Speaker 2: Their vows very seriously.
Speaker 1: Of course, Victorian detectives had the same problems when they
Speaker 1: were investigating Frank ben Venuto's death that won in bo
Speaker 1: Morrison the year twenty twenty five years ago. There were
Speaker 1: plenty of people around who might have had a grudge
Speaker 1: against Frank, including friends and relatives of his estranged brother
Speaker 1: in law, the late Alfonso Muratore. And I say the
Speaker 1: late because he had been shot dead in Hampton just
Speaker 1: a few years earlier, not in May, though he was
Speaker 1: shot in August I think, so that was a little
Speaker 1: bit different. But Alfonso Miratore was a member of a
Speaker 1: basically a Victorian mafia family, and he, like a lot
Speaker 1: of people in those families, married sort of inside the clan.
Speaker 1: He married a ben Venuto girl.
Speaker 2: He married one of.
Speaker 1: The godfather's daughters, as in Laboreo Benvenuto, as in the
Speaker 1: guy who had his car blown up, as in the
Speaker 1: guy who ordered the murders of the two guys in Griffith.
Speaker 1: Alfonso married that guy's daughter. Now that's good if you
Speaker 1: want a big wedding and you want to have a
Speaker 1: bit of spending money, and you want to have big
Speaker 1: Sunday lunches and kiss people on the cheeks and all
Speaker 1: that good mafia stuff. It's wonderful. But it brings with
Speaker 1: it some pressures. And one of the pressures that brings
Speaker 1: is a there's pressure on Alfonso to step up and
Speaker 1: take part in the home sort of mafia ritual and
Speaker 1: maybe take over a role in the crime family. And
Speaker 1: there's also another problem. Those a you guys lived by
Speaker 1: a very strict moral code in the sense that while
Speaker 1: a lot of them were a bit inclined to have
Speaker 1: girlfriends on the side, tony soprano sort of stuff, they
Speaker 1: were very much against marriages, breaking up, etc. And Alfonso
Speaker 1: Mirotore was sort of the modern young guy. I think
Speaker 1: he was probably born in Australia at came when he
Speaker 1: was two years old or something, and he took it
Speaker 1: upon himself to leave his wife, the godfather's daughter. And
Speaker 1: this went down like a lead balloon. I was going
Speaker 1: to say like something in a swimming pool, but no,
Speaker 1: like a lead balloon. And he also put another hole
Speaker 1: in his manners. Apart from his personal bedroom adventures, his
Speaker 1: other problem was that he had approached Cole's or Cole's
Speaker 1: as it was, who you know, they run big supermarkets,
Speaker 1: and he told in a very secret meeting, really secret,
Speaker 1: really dangerous high level staff, he said, you guys have
Speaker 1: been paying millions a year to subsidize a racket because
Speaker 1: and he explained to them the racket that there's a
Speaker 1: fifty cents per case of fruit and vegetables at the
Speaker 1: wholesale market payable to the mafia and have been paid
Speaker 1: on every case, every day of the year for decades.
Speaker 1: And this ran into millions of dollars a year. This
Speaker 1: little tax, not a little tax, really are quite a
Speaker 1: hefty tax that the mafia guys imposed on the wholesale
Speaker 1: fruit and vegetable market. How they did this is that
Speaker 1: they had corrupt buyers from the supermarkets, and the corrupt
Speaker 1: buyers from the supermarkets were told, you will only buy
Speaker 1: from these suppliers, that the wholesaler there, that one and
Speaker 1: that one, you won't buy from the others.
Speaker 2: And what it was that those wholesale suppliers.
Speaker 1: Were paying the fifty cents to the mafia to get
Speaker 1: favored status. And of course the mafia guys would pay
Speaker 1: a backhanded to the Coals and other supermarket buyers. They
Speaker 1: give them a backhander for going along with it and
Speaker 1: buying from their favored suppliers. It was all very cozy,
Speaker 1: and it was all very corrupt, and in the end
Speaker 1: it was costing the supermarket's money, and that money was
Speaker 1: being passed on to the consumer. You know, every time
Speaker 1: you bought a banana, there was a built in cost
Speaker 1: on it. Not a lot per banana, of course, but
Speaker 1: it all adds up. Alfonso Miro Torre Bright Young Spark
Speaker 1: thought it was a good idea to talk to Coals
Speaker 1: about this and to come up with an alternate plan.
Speaker 1: Now I don't know what his idea was. I don't
Speaker 1: think he was doing it because he's just a really
Speaker 1: good bloke and a really honest plug. I think probably
Speaker 1: he was saying, you're spending millions a year on this
Speaker 1: fifty cents a case racket. I can source you wholesale
Speaker 1: fruit and vegetables a bit cheaper than that, but you've
Speaker 1: got to deal with me or something. He was basically
Speaker 1: selling out the mafia, his own family and friends and
Speaker 1: associates in order to enrich himself. Now, this is a
Speaker 1: very high of his strategy. If you've also left the
Speaker 1: godfather's daughter to live with your ossie skip girlfriend whose
Speaker 1: name was Karen Mansfield, in the same suburb where they
Speaker 1: all live, this was really rubbing people's nose in it.
Speaker 1: So there were quite a few people who weren't fond
Speaker 1: of Alfonso Miratore, which is why in nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: Alfonso Miratore gets out of bed with Karen Mansfield and says,
Speaker 1: see you, lay of love. I'm off to the markets again.
Speaker 1: It's two am or whatever time they go to the
Speaker 1: market and he steps outside. I think with Karen Mansfield's stepfather,
Speaker 1: he has outside to.
Speaker 2: Get in his car.
Speaker 1: Next thing, kabluey, there's a couple of shotgun blasts and
Speaker 1: he's shot extremely dead in Hampton, and this had happened
Speaker 1: an exact facsimile of his own father's death. His father,
Speaker 1: Vince Mirrortore, had been shot dead with a shotgun in
Speaker 1: the same suburb of Hampton at two o'clock in the
Speaker 1: morning when he was going to the market back in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four. Back in nineteen sixty four, Alfonso's dad,
Speaker 1: Vince Mirrortore, big wheel in the Melbourne mafia market business.
Speaker 1: He's going to work and he gets shot with a shotgun.
Speaker 1: History repeated itself. Both father and son, their murders remain unsolved,
Speaker 1: and they are cold cases that will remain cold, probably forever.
Speaker 1: It's just one of those funny things. Now the mirror
Speaker 1: Toure's father and son killed twenty eight years apart. They
Speaker 1: were not killed in May, which is unusual because other
Speaker 1: people were. And we're just getting to a couple. One
Speaker 1: was a Calabrian green grocer called Joe Kuadara. Now Joe,
Speaker 1: a lot of our listeners will remember this. He was
Speaker 1: shot dead outside a two rak supermarket. Now this is
Speaker 1: this is not out in Thomastown somewhere, listeners, this is
Speaker 1: tu Rak. It was in Track and he was there.
Speaker 1: He was about to open up the green grocery part
Speaker 1: of the supermarket very early in the morning to unload
Speaker 1: a truckload of green groceries and somebody pops up and
Speaker 1: shoots him, and that was very sad. His name Joe Quadhara.
Speaker 1: His name is interesting. This happened on May the twenty eighth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine. His name is interesting because there was
Speaker 1: also involved in the fruit and veggie market, another man.
Speaker 2: Called Joe Quadhara.
Speaker 1: And what the police to this day I believe aren't
Speaker 1: sure of is whether the killers intended to shoot the
Speaker 1: Joe Kuadaro who got shot, or whether they mixed him up,
Speaker 1: whether he was just an average Joe and they meant
Speaker 1: to shoot the other one. It wouldn't be the first
Speaker 1: time that a gangland target had been murdered by mistake
Speaker 1: if that's what happened. But it's unclear. Because both these
Speaker 1: guys were Calabrian greengrosser market guys. They both involved, to
Speaker 1: a gag or lesser extent in the doings of the
Speaker 1: wholesale fruit and veggie market, and it was possible that
Speaker 1: somebody had a grievance against either of them, so we'll
Speaker 1: never be sure why he was shot or if it
Speaker 1: was a mistake. The police are fairly confident that the
Speaker 1: person that did the shooting was probably Andrew Veneman, the
Speaker 1: late Benji Venamon. They're pretty confident that he was the
Speaker 1: guy that shot Frank ben Veernuto over in Bow Morris,
Speaker 1: and they're fairly sure that Benji Veneman was also responsible
Speaker 1: for shooting Victor Pierce. Victor Pierce was the one we
Speaker 1: mentioned fifteen minutes ago. He was the gunman, Ozzie gunman,
Speaker 1: bag guy, Wall Street killer, thoroughly bad unit. He was
Speaker 1: the guy that Frank ben Ernudo tried to call as
Speaker 1: Frank was dying after he was shot, and the relationship
Speaker 1: there was not a cozy one. It says that Victor
Speaker 1: Pierce was a gun for hire and he acted as
Speaker 1: a heavy for ben Veernudo around the market. You know,
Speaker 1: he'd stalk around with the gun and lean on people
Speaker 1: and all the rest of it. It could be that
Speaker 1: somebody somewhere, one of the ben Venudo family might have
Speaker 1: thought that Victor Pierce might have flipped their brother Frank
Speaker 1: and sold Frank down the river, and that maybe Victor
Speaker 1: Pierce had double crossed his employer, Frank Benvenuto, because these
Speaker 1: things do happen in the underworld. There is no real
Speaker 1: loyalty except to greed and to money. And amazingly, exactly
Speaker 1: two years after Frank Benvenuto was shot in by Morris,
Speaker 1: Victor Pierce is shot in his car in Bay Street,
Speaker 1: Port Melbourne in May two thousand and two. The smart
Speaker 1: money says that Andrew Veneman did that as well. He
Speaker 1: did them all they reckon. But what the police were
Speaker 1: really interested in knowing is who paid him to do it,
Speaker 1: who was involved in the conspiracy. In the end, venomin
Speaker 1: was just a rat bag trigger man who was rattling
Speaker 1: his cage, who was paying him And interestingly, about six
Speaker 1: years afterwards, the police arrested some people over the Victor
Speaker 1: Pierce murder and one of the people they arrested was
Speaker 1: Vince ben Venuto, brother of Frank, son of Laboreo and
Speaker 1: a middle aged mafia figure. Of middle aged mafia figure,
Speaker 1: and he was put under intense pressure to talk about
Speaker 1: what he knew about the shooting of Victor Pierce and
Speaker 1: why and all that he said exactly nothing. One of
Speaker 1: the main suspects at the time was a fellow called
Speaker 1: Mick Gatto, but it was never prosecuted because there was
Speaker 1: never any useful evidence forwarded about who planned it.
Speaker 2: A prosecution was pulled off successfully.
Speaker 1: Against Farouk Ormond now fruk Rman was allegedly.
Speaker 2: The police alleged that he was the.
Speaker 1: Getaway driver for Andrew Bennerman and that he had pulled
Speaker 1: up in a I think a Holden Commodore and driven
Speaker 1: off nice and slowly, as you must if you are
Speaker 1: getting away from a hit. Do not speed away, do
Speaker 1: not run red lights. Drive a white Commodore or another
Speaker 1: plane car, probably a Toyota Camry would be a good choice.
Speaker 1: Will be white in color, and use your blinkers. Don't speed,
Speaker 1: turn left, turn right, do everything nice and slow so
Speaker 1: you don't stand out. And that's what happened. But Fruit
Speaker 1: Corman was indeed arrested for his alleged to part in
Speaker 1: this murder plot, this hit. But he was convicted partly
Speaker 1: on the evidence of the information that flowed from lawyer
Speaker 1: x Nicola Gobbo and as our devoted listeners and readers
Speaker 1: of the Herald Son will know, as a result of that,
Speaker 1: fru Corman, through the work of a very energetic advocate.
Speaker 1: He was released from prison. Several years later, his conviction
Speaker 1: was overturned. He was released from prison. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if he's got a big payout now. He may well
Speaker 1: have got a payout anyway. He ended up, of course,
Speaker 1: in the welcoming arms of the CFMEU. And just for
Speaker 1: the record, Vince ben Venuto, who may still be with us,
Speaker 1: be reasonably old now. But Vince was not convicted. He
Speaker 1: was acquitted and released and he lives a quiet life
Speaker 1: these days. One hopes there's not a lot of morals
Speaker 1: in the fruit and vegetable market mafia. But if there
Speaker 1: is a moral in this story, this is it that
Speaker 1: fruit and vegetables are good for you, but only if
Speaker 1: you eat them instead of trying to corner the market.
Speaker 1: As for the month of May, it's the one month
Speaker 1: of the year when Melbourne mobsters ought to consider a
Speaker 1: trip to Vegas or Chicago or New York or anywhere
Speaker 1: that's safer than Melbourne. Thanks for listening. Life and Crimes
Speaker 1: is a Sunday Herald Sun production for True crime Australia.
Speaker 1: Our producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns, features and more,
Speaker 1: go to Sun dot com dot au forward slash Andrew rule.
Speaker 1: One word.
Speaker 3: For advertising inquiries, go to news Podcasts Sold at news
Speaker 3: dot com dot au. That is all one word news
Speaker 3: podcasts sold And if you
Speaker 1: Want further information about this episode, links are in the description.