Speaker 1: In the red corner. Ladies and gentlemen, we have Benji Venomon.
Speaker 1: Benji had shown a liking for guns and gunplay and
Speaker 1: showed that he was extremely willing to shoot people, and
Speaker 1: his reputation proceeded him. The police could also see from
Speaker 1: his footage that at the end of the proceedings that
Speaker 1: little Venomen had reached up and kissed Gatto on a
Speaker 1: cheek like Hollywood gangster style. I'm Andrew Rule is his
Speaker 1: life and crimes. It's been a season of twentieth anniversaries
Speaker 1: because over the last eighteen months two years, we've had
Speaker 1: so many anniversaries of the events that we now call
Speaker 1: the Underworld War or the Gangland War, or even the
Speaker 1: under Belly War. And coming up this week it's the
Speaker 1: twentieth anniversary of one of the biggest events of the
Speaker 1: Underworld War, and that is the shooting of Benji Venomon
Speaker 1: Andrew Venemon in a Carlton restaurant on the twenty third
Speaker 1: of March two thousand and four. Now, the twenty third
Speaker 1: of March two thousand and four was a Tuesday, a
Speaker 1: fairly drowsy autumn afternoon in Melbourne, and it turns out,
Speaker 1: according to my colleague Mark Butler, who knows a lot
Speaker 1: of things about police related matters. It turns out that
Speaker 1: on that day the Purana Task Force, which of course
Speaker 1: was a specialist task force assembled to cope with the
Speaker 1: Underworld War. The task Force had been busy all morning
Speaker 1: doing what it usually did, which was a surveillance of crooks,
Speaker 1: going through the product of surveillance. So they would have
Speaker 1: urdles of bugs on telephones, they'd have bugs on cars,
Speaker 1: they'd be doing all that sort of stuff. They'd also
Speaker 1: have specialist surveillance police following people, and they'd spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time going through that product and analyzing it,
Speaker 1: looking for patterns and connections and all the rest of it.
Speaker 1: And of course, ultimately that amount of resources is what
Speaker 1: solved the Underworld War and got a lot of people
Speaker 1: behind bars. But at this stage in early two thousand
Speaker 1: and four, they had a string of unsolved murders behind them.
Speaker 1: They'd had six in two thousand and three alone, and
Speaker 1: it went all the way back in a particular chain
Speaker 1: of events to the death, the violent death of Mark
Speaker 1: Moran outside his home in Abbefeldi back in mid two
Speaker 1: thousand and two. So the police were like the boy
Speaker 1: with the barrow. They had the job in front of them.
Speaker 1: On that afternoon, they were having a meeting at the
Speaker 1: Purana headquarters, and the meeting was really to swap ideas,
Speaker 1: swap a bit of underworld, a gossip and rumor, and
Speaker 1: basically compare notes on what they were achieving and how.
Speaker 1: And during the meeting, as happens when we have meetings anywhere,
Speaker 1: they bunk it down and talk to each other, and
Speaker 1: they tended to ignore phone calls because phone calls get
Speaker 1: in the way of meetings. But at some point, shortly
Speaker 1: after two thirty that day to thirty pm, the phone
Speaker 1: in the inspector's office goes. It's a desk phone, and
Speaker 1: it rings. They ignore it because they're busy. Whoever's calling
Speaker 1: the phone doesn't give up. That person rings again and again,
Speaker 1: and the phone is starting to drive them mad. So
Speaker 1: of course, a senior person looks across at a junior
Speaker 1: member of the task force. The junior member jumps up,
Speaker 1: walks into the boss's office, closes the door, picks up
Speaker 1: the phone, says hello, and as the other guys are
Speaker 1: watching him, they watch his body language and he stiffens
Speaker 1: up and looks very serious, and I think what's happened.
Speaker 1: And when he comes out of the office, he waves
Speaker 1: his hands, even though he's quite junior, this guy, this detective,
Speaker 1: waves his hands to sort of command the rest of
Speaker 1: the group to silence, and says, Benji Venamon's been shot
Speaker 1: in Carlton, in a restaurant in Carlton. And the immediate
Speaker 1: reaction of most of those present was, well, that'll be bullshit,
Speaker 1: that'll be wrong. And they said, oh, yeah, who shot him?
Speaker 1: He said, mec Gatto, And there was a silence for
Speaker 1: a few seconds, and somebody called out, well, you better
Speaker 1: not be bullshitting. If this is a joke, it's not
Speaker 1: a good joke. And it turns out he wasn't. Mick
Speaker 1: Gatto had, in fact shot Benji Venamon in very interesting
Speaker 1: circumstances in a very small storage area you could call
Speaker 1: it a room, but was more of a little corridor
Speaker 1: at the rear of La Porgella Italian restaurant, which is
Speaker 1: at the corner of Wrathdown and Faraday Streets in Carlton.
Speaker 1: And that was a landmark death in the Underworld War.
Speaker 1: It was allegedly at least an attempted hit by Venomon
Speaker 1: on gas. But if that were the case little Benji Venemon.
Speaker 1: They're very prolific. Australia's busiest hit man had the tables
Speaker 1: turned on him by a much larger and much stronger man.
Speaker 1: What we all know is that Mick Gado was subsequently
Speaker 1: charged with murder and he was acquitted, and that is
Speaker 1: something we'll go into as we explain this. The death
Speaker 1: of Benji Venamon, which we'll look into, was right up
Speaker 1: there in notoriety with the double shooting the previous winter
Speaker 1: of Jason Moran and he's unlucky mate, Patty Barbara, and
Speaker 1: of course everyone knows our listeners will know that Jason Moran,
Speaker 1: who was a target with his entire family actually of
Speaker 1: Carl Williams. He was silly enough to come back to
Speaker 1: Melbourne when he should have stayed overseas out of the way,
Speaker 1: and he stayed out of the way very successfully. Because
Speaker 1: a lot of these career crooks are very good at
Speaker 1: account of surveillance. They get good at it from when
Speaker 1: they're teenagers. Essentially, they're taught how to do it by
Speaker 1: those around them and they're very difficult to follow and
Speaker 1: to track and all that. But the people looking to
Speaker 1: kill him knew that Jason Moran would go to see
Speaker 1: his kids and other children playing football at particular venue,
Speaker 1: the cross Keys Park near the cross Keys Hotel in Essendon,
Speaker 1: and that is where they caught up with him after
Speaker 1: the game. As everyone knows, he got his kids and
Speaker 1: I think something like ten others. There was a huge
Speaker 1: number of children all in this oz Kick footy team,
Speaker 1: put them in the back of his van and he
Speaker 1: and his mate Paddy Barbara, who just happened to be
Speaker 1: there with him watching the kids footy, are sitting in
Speaker 1: the front when a gunman armed with two weapons interestingly
Speaker 1: shot them dead. And of course some of those kids
Speaker 1: I think there were eleven in the back altogether were
Speaker 1: spatted with blood, bone and brain matter. It was a
Speaker 1: shocking crime to do in public in daylight, not only
Speaker 1: in front of the public, but literally in a car
Speaker 1: full of kids. A terrible crime. That was one of
Speaker 1: the low lights or standouts of the Underworld War. But
Speaker 1: the shooting of benji Venamon in a restaurant in Carlton
Speaker 1: was the other one, not so shocking in its way,
Speaker 1: and also there were not a lot of tear shed
Speaker 1: for benji Venamon apart from his own loved ones. The
Speaker 1: few people in his family and circle of friends. They
Speaker 1: loved him dearly naturally, but he was a violent and
Speaker 1: a erratic hit man. We're not sure how many people
Speaker 1: he killed, but I read a statement recently by a
Speaker 1: fellow criminal who knew him well, who said it seemed
Speaker 1: that he had killed a lot of people. Maybe he
Speaker 1: said a record, at least a record south of Queensland.
Speaker 1: There is a man in Queensland who is still alive
Speaker 1: who is reputed to have killed more than thirty people.
Speaker 1: And I doubt that Benji, at the age of twenty eight,
Speaker 1: managed to do that many. But had he not fallen
Speaker 1: foul of mcgatto on that day, perhaps he would have
Speaker 1: because he was keen on it, very willing, clearly a
Speaker 1: sociopathic sort of guy who met his end probably because
Speaker 1: he was so willing to kill people. And in the end,
Speaker 1: those people that he considered his allies or colleagues or
Speaker 1: friends were just as wary of him as anyone else,
Speaker 1: because they realized that if the money was right, he'd
Speaker 1: kill anyone. And that is a very dangerous reputation to have.
Speaker 1: So let's run through the two protagonists of this story. Now,
Speaker 1: we've got a great, big, strong, heavy weight metgatto now
Speaker 1: he's a heavyweights heavyweight. He was a heavyweight boxer once
Speaker 1: back in the day. Not an unbelievably good one, just
Speaker 1: a solid journeyman when he share of fights around Victoria.
Speaker 1: But big, big, broad child of man. Even when he
Speaker 1: was fit, he was I think nudging the one hundred
Speaker 1: kilo mark probably or more probably, And by the time
Speaker 1: we're talking two thousand and four, he was a man
Speaker 1: that was probably walking around at something like one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty plus killers. He was a very big guy
Speaker 1: and broad, and plenty of him. I'm not sure how
Speaker 1: high mcghatto is. He wouldn't be two meters high, but
Speaker 1: he'd be one one ninety odd probably big, big guy strong.
Speaker 1: At that stage he was in his late forties. He'd
Speaker 1: still spar in his home gym. He could throw a
Speaker 1: big punch, he still had the you know, some of
Speaker 1: the reflexes that you get from boxing. And a guy
Speaker 1: that had essentially been able to make a living with
Speaker 1: a version of stand up at tactics for most of
Speaker 1: his adult life. So he's no pushover. In the red corner,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen, we have Benji Venomon Bengji Venamon had
Speaker 1: been a flyweight kickboxer back in the mid nineties, so
Speaker 1: ten years before he was shot dead. When he's eighteen,
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty, he's a kickboxer out of Sunshine. He's a
Speaker 1: little Greek guy. I'm not sure if his Greek straight Greek, Cypriot, Greek, whatever,
Speaker 1: but his parents were i think reasonably devout Greek Orthodox
Speaker 1: parents who had he and his siblings out there in Sunshine, Maine.
Speaker 1: And he probably was always a small guy, and like
Speaker 1: a lot of small guys, he learned how to handle
Speaker 1: himself and was pretty fierce, pretty hard at it, like
Speaker 1: a blant And you know when he forty fifty two
Speaker 1: and a half killos, Now this is flyweight, it was
Speaker 1: a fly wait fighter fifty two and a half kilos.
Speaker 1: There are teenage jockeys, there are female jockeys, such as
Speaker 1: the apprentice Celine Gordray, who had to starve herself for
Speaker 1: two weeks to ride in the Newmarket handicap at fifty
Speaker 1: two and a half kilos. That is how small Benji
Speaker 1: Venamon was when he was fit fifty two and a
Speaker 1: half and even after that, when he gave up boxing
Speaker 1: and took up eating and shooting people. He might have made,
Speaker 1: you know, fifty nine kilos. He was jockey size Jockey Waite.
Speaker 1: Now these are two very different men. There's no doubt
Speaker 1: that Mick Gaddo, who is still out and about and
Speaker 1: doing the best he can, that he would know most
Speaker 1: movers and shakers in the Melbourne underworld and to some
Speaker 1: extent the Australian underworld, but especially Melbourne, and especially some
Speaker 1: pockets of Melbourne. And I would have said, you know,
Speaker 1: the Inner West, the Inner North and central area around
Speaker 1: Carlton and the inner suburbs was his patch. Mic Gatto
Speaker 1: of course is famous, as you know, being one of
Speaker 1: the main men in what is called the Carlton or
Speaker 1: was called the Carlton Crew. By two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: Alfons Gangatano was long dead, Mark Moran was dead and
Speaker 1: Jason Marine was dead. So the ranks were starting to
Speaker 1: thin a bit in the Carlton Crew and that would
Speaker 1: have left Mick Ghadow as an even more dominating figure
Speaker 1: in that group. Gatdo doing what he did, which was
Speaker 1: to notionally broker peace settlements between warring parties. You know,
Speaker 1: he would have builders on one side and unions and
Speaker 1: workers on the other and he would negotiate industrial settlements
Speaker 1: in talking marks. When developers would be having trouble getting
Speaker 1: their buildings built on time and on budget, they would
Speaker 1: pay Uncle Mick, you know, five thousand to have a
Speaker 1: cup of coffee, and then another large amount of money
Speaker 1: if he could settle something for them and thrash out
Speaker 1: a compromise with unions or whatever it might be. So
Speaker 1: he was a guy that knew a lot of people,
Speaker 1: but ultimately some of the people he knew would have
Speaker 1: to be the sort of people that were willing, as
Speaker 1: they say in Underworld, willing to shoot people. And one
Speaker 1: of those people that he knew on his rise from
Speaker 1: the kickboxing ring was Benji Venemon, because Benji had moved
Speaker 1: on from the kickboxing into bodyguarding, standover that sort of stuff,
Speaker 1: pinching cars, the usual sort of criminal progress. But Benji
Speaker 1: had shown a liking for guns and gunplay and showed
Speaker 1: that he was extremely willing to shoot people, and his
Speaker 1: reputation preceded him. And there is no doubt that people
Speaker 1: like Mick Gatto not only knew of him, but knew
Speaker 1: him because they made it their business to know people
Speaker 1: like Benji Venemon for good reasons. One is that they'd
Speaker 1: like to know if they saw him coming. And the
Speaker 1: other is that sometimes they might be able to advise
Speaker 1: someone to throw a bit of work Benji's way. This
Speaker 1: is the way that underworld works. So you can rest
Speaker 1: assured that Mick Gatto knew plenty about Benji, even if
Speaker 1: he was later able to tell police that he hardly
Speaker 1: ever met him, etc. Etc. But in the underworld, most
Speaker 1: friendships are for sale. In the end, everyone's pretty well
Speaker 1: out for themselves to look after themselves and their own family,
Speaker 1: and perhaps they're very closest friends. Outside that circle, they're
Speaker 1: pretty cold blooded and they take a coldly economic view
Speaker 1: of other members of the underworld. Last month's friend, ally
Speaker 1: colleague might become next year's enemy. And this happened with
Speaker 1: ghadow Envenoment, and it happened pretty well. Back in mid
Speaker 1: two thousand and two, there was a very ugly scene
Speaker 1: at this same restaurant, l'a Purcella, the one in the
Speaker 1: corner of Rathdownen Faraday. Clearly it was the restaurant where
Speaker 1: business was done, and on this day in two thousand
Speaker 1: and two, there was a meeting of around ten very
Speaker 1: interesting figures underworld figures and among them was the Bulgarian
Speaker 1: drug dealer, evil bad, violent, nasty, brutal man called Nick Radev.
Speaker 1: Later ended up dead and he had an imported bodyguard.
Speaker 1: I bought a muscle a guy called Troy mccanty who
Speaker 1: was from Perth. Troy mccanty was a member of the
Speaker 1: Coffin Cheet, his motorcycle gang in Perth and regarded him
Speaker 1: Perth as a very dangerous and capable stand over man
Speaker 1: and all the rest of it. And for Nick Radev
Speaker 1: to have him at this meeting probably meant something. What
Speaker 1: happened was there was a disagreement between Radev and the
Speaker 1: rising drug baron Tony Mockbell at this meeting in mid
Speaker 1: two thousand and two. And what happened next was Troy
Speaker 1: mccanty was slipped off the leash like a pitbull terrier
Speaker 1: and he bashed Tony Mockbell after death. He really savagely
Speaker 1: bashed him. And at this meeting, apart from Mick Gaddo
Speaker 1: and others, there was a little Benji Venamon and Benji
Speaker 1: Venamon I'm not sure if he was there at the
Speaker 1: invitation of Mockbell. He may well have been their sort
Speaker 1: of bodyguarding it's hard to say, but in the event,
Speaker 1: he wasn't able to prevent mcanty from doing what he did,
Speaker 1: but he took Mockbell straight to a doctor to they say,
Speaker 1: a woman doctor that he knew, and she was able
Speaker 1: to treat Mockbell and possibly haven't saved his life. He
Speaker 1: might have been bleeding a lot or whatever. He was
Speaker 1: in a bad way and Venamon was able to get
Speaker 1: him to treatment on time and pretty well save him.
Speaker 1: Now that connection built a relationship between those two, between
Speaker 1: Venomon and Mockbell, so that they were friendly after that.
Speaker 1: And this was a friendship which became probably a thorn
Speaker 1: in the side of people like Gatto who were in
Speaker 1: the carl And crew, because Mockbell was friendly with the
Speaker 1: non Carlton crew people. Mockbell was friendly with Carl Williams.
Speaker 1: Carl Williams, of course, had started the whole Underworld War,
Speaker 1: the main bit of it as basically a vendetta of
Speaker 1: revenge after the Moran Brothers had shot him in the
Speaker 1: belly with a small pistol back in nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 1: And really the whole Underworld War was a war of
Speaker 1: extermination paid for by Carl Williams, who sent various gunment
Speaker 1: out to bowl over his enemies, and one of his
Speaker 1: gunmen was Venomin. His favorite gunment was Venomin. The fact
Speaker 1: that Venamon was increasingly friendly with mock Bell and hence
Speaker 1: with Carl Williams, meant that Gatto and his friends in
Speaker 1: the Carlton Crew would start to look at Venomin Askance
Speaker 1: as a potential enemy. Now, notionally, he's a freelance gunman,
Speaker 1: he's a gun for hire, but Gatto and those other
Speaker 1: fairly wise fairly seasoned crooks would realize that he was
Speaker 1: potentially dangerous to basically anyone if someone paid him. And
Speaker 1: so there was an escalating sense of hostility and unease.
Speaker 1: And this came to some sort of head in early
Speaker 1: December two thousand and three, when Graham Kinneborough, alias the Munster,
Speaker 1: was shot dead outside his house towards midnight in Belmont
Speaker 1: Avenue in kew Kinneborough was a grandfather, lived a quiet life.
Speaker 1: He was, as our listeners had been regarded as a
Speaker 1: genius safecracker, a career criminal, smart guy, not necessarily a
Speaker 1: violent man most of the time, probably had been once
Speaker 1: but not any more two wise for that, and he
Speaker 1: was shot dead in his own driveway by unknown assailants
Speaker 1: in December two thousand and three, and although the assailants
Speaker 1: at that point were unknown, later identified Kinnerborough's friends, including
Speaker 1: Mick Gatto, who really liked Kinneborough. They saw it as
Speaker 1: an act of war by Carl Williams and his crew,
Speaker 1: and they saw Venomon as being part of that crew. Now,
Speaker 1: the the truth is that the police that were watching
Speaker 1: Venamon and watching all the bad guys at this point,
Speaker 1: within about a week or two, they knew from their
Speaker 1: surveillance product, you know, car staff for telephone tapes, all
Speaker 1: the rest of it, they knew that Venamon was nowhere
Speaker 1: near Graham Kinniber's house and not Kinnebre was killed. So
Speaker 1: the police actually knew pretty quickly that Venamon had not
Speaker 1: pulled the trigger. However, even if Gatto had heard that
Speaker 1: from a friendly police source, which he might have, he
Speaker 1: knew very well that whoever paid somebody to pull the
Speaker 1: trigger on his friend Kinneburgh was probably Carl Williams, and
Speaker 1: therefore that Venomon presented a threat, an ongoing threat. Only
Speaker 1: nine days after Kinnibur's shooting, they had a bit of
Speaker 1: a council of war and they called this Council of
Speaker 1: War in the Crown Casino. And the reason for that
Speaker 1: is the casino is absolutely full of surveillance cameras, and
Speaker 1: the warring parties knew that no sane person would take
Speaker 1: a gun into Grand Casino or produce it because you'd
Speaker 1: be seen and filmed and that'd be that. So it
Speaker 1: was a safe space for all concern to meet and talk. Also,
Speaker 1: the noise in the bars there would make it very
Speaker 1: difficult or impossible for police or anyone else to record
Speaker 1: what they were saying, because the cacophony of noise would
Speaker 1: drown out things and they'd be able to talk into
Speaker 1: each other's ears without anybody hearing it. It's quite a
Speaker 1: secure place. Of course, there are these security cameras which
Speaker 1: are filming them, and the police were very interested in
Speaker 1: that meeting, and they could see Carl Williams talking fairly
Speaker 1: guardedly with mcgaddow, and they could tell that it wasn't
Speaker 1: overly friendly. The police could also see from this footage
Speaker 1: that the end of the proceedings that little Venomin had
Speaker 1: reached up and kissed Gatto on the cheek like Hollywood
Speaker 1: gangster style. Bit hard when you're five foot six to
Speaker 1: kiss a guy that's six foot five or something. But
Speaker 1: he did because he'd send the films. And although he's
Speaker 1: not a made man in the mafia, because he's a
Speaker 1: Greek boy, he did it anyway, which shows you these guys,
Speaker 1: you know, they watch too many movies. I suspect. The
Speaker 1: police were able to get a lipbreader to play back
Speaker 1: the security tapes on the cameras from the casino and
Speaker 1: to see what was actually said, and they were very
Speaker 1: interested in this. The lipbretting experts were able to tell
Speaker 1: the police that Gatto told Williams Carl Williams, anything with you,
Speaker 1: that's your problem. But if anything comes my way, then
Speaker 1: I'll send somebody to you. I'll be careful with you. You
Speaker 1: be careful with me. I believe you, You believe me.
Speaker 1: Now we're even. That's a warning clear that this was
Speaker 1: although the language was reasonably careful, it was a warning.
Speaker 1: And the warning, of course, although directed at Williams, who
Speaker 1: was the paymaster, was also for Venomin, the guy that
Speaker 1: Williams paid to knock off so many people. I don't
Speaker 1: know what mcado would make have been kissed by a
Speaker 1: crazy sawn off little Greek hitman, but he might have thought,
Speaker 1: having been to mass all those years with his mum,
Speaker 1: that it was a Judas kiss. In our next episode,
Speaker 1: we will show how this relationship went south, very quickly
Speaker 1: and very violently. Thanks for listening. Life and Crimes is
Speaker 1: a Sunday Herald Sun production for true crime Australia. Our
Speaker 1: producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns, features and more,
Speaker 1: go to Heroldsun dot com dot au forward slash Andrew
Speaker 1: rule one word. For advertising inquiries, go to news podcasts
Speaker 1: sold at news dot com dot au. That is all
Speaker 1: one word news podcasts sold And if you want further
Speaker 1: information about this episode, links are in the description