Speaker 1: Fight knights have always attracted some colorful characters all the
Speaker 1: way back to Georgian times in England. But raves these
Speaker 1: days attract a different sort of colorful crowd, and raves
Speaker 1: can attract the people who go by the working title
Speaker 1: of rappers. We've often advised our listeners that nothing good
Speaker 1: happens after two am. I'm Andrew Rule his life and crimes.
Speaker 1: There was a time, way back in the old days
Speaker 1: when I lived in Kensington, which is one of the
Speaker 1: old inner Western suburbs. In those days it had stockyards
Speaker 1: and sheep selling pens and all that sort of stuff,
Speaker 1: and you could smell a cattle and the sheep when
Speaker 1: you live there. It was like a little country town.
Speaker 1: Had pepper trees around the sale yards and you could
Speaker 1: hear dogs barking all that sort of stuff. Now and
Speaker 1: again cattle would jump out of the yards and run
Speaker 1: down the streets. Which is another story. But I used
Speaker 1: to drive in from Kensington to my then place of work,
Speaker 1: which was on the Spencer Street side of town. It
Speaker 1: was about a five minute.
Speaker 2: Drive, perhaps it was about.
Speaker 1: Seven on the train. Usually I'd take the train, but
Speaker 1: sometimes drive and I'd take a shortcut. I would come
Speaker 1: down McCauley Road, and before I got to the old
Speaker 1: North Melbourne football ground where they used to play there.
Speaker 1: Then I would turn right down Langford Street and cut
Speaker 1: through sort of factory blocks and warehouses to Arden Street,
Speaker 1: and then pick up Arden Street and take the short
Speaker 1: cut back through North Melbourne, past North Melbourne Station, pass
Speaker 1: Festival Hall and to the city. And this was a
Speaker 1: common shortcut if you lived out that way. Langford Street
Speaker 1: was interesting. This shortcut just dove on the west side
Speaker 1: of the North Melbourne footy Ground because sometimes in the
Speaker 1: evenings you'd be driving down there and you would see
Speaker 1: someone standing at the front of unallegedly empty warehouse an
Speaker 1: old brick joint, and it'd be somebody having a smoke
Speaker 1: and looking a bit.
Speaker 2: Sort of watchful and bit furtive.
Speaker 1: And you might think, I wonder what that bug's doing. Well,
Speaker 1: I know what he was doing. He would have been
Speaker 1: a cocker tooo a lookout for the floating two up
Speaker 1: game that used to sometimes set up in that street,
Speaker 1: because Nappy Olington's famous floating two up game would move
Speaker 1: from venue to venue around town, and the officionados of
Speaker 1: the two up school, many of them crooks, knock about
Speaker 1: scaley wags, rogues, unfrocked priests and rogue police and sometimes
Speaker 1: undercover coppers.
Speaker 2: They would know where it was.
Speaker 1: And they would head off and play two up, which
Speaker 1: of course is a most excellent homegrown Australian gambling game
Speaker 1: which is now almost extinct. And Nappy Ollington's game was
Speaker 1: like the famous Tomo's Two Up School in Sydney. It
Speaker 1: was sort of part of the furniture. It was well known.
Speaker 1: Probably most Melbournians would never have been near it, but
Speaker 1: they had all heard of it, and that was what
Speaker 1: used to happen sometimes in Langford Street, North Melbourne. But
Speaker 1: I'm here to say that times change and so do crimes,
Speaker 1: because these days in Langford Street, North Melbourne, forty years later,
Speaker 1: we have a different scene altogether. Ollington's Two Up School
Speaker 1: has gone to God.
Speaker 2: It died well.
Speaker 1: Before Nappy did, and in its place comes from other
Speaker 1: activities in Langford Street, North Melbourne. And one of those activities,
Speaker 1: in possibly even the same building, is another floating enterprise
Speaker 1: called a rave. And the raves are another money making
Speaker 1: concern that attracts people to the district. They turn up,
Speaker 1: some of them probably bring pockets full of cash just
Speaker 1: like their forefathers that went to the tuo Op school.
Speaker 1: And sometimes the cash might be cash that they obtained
Speaker 1: in some naughty way, and they attend the rave and
Speaker 1: they might buy or sell certain substances. I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: but possibly and certainly some of those same people might
Speaker 1: get along to another event a few blocks away up
Speaker 1: in Racecourse Road, up in Newmarket, Racecourse Road, new Market
Speaker 1: or South Kensington if.
Speaker 2: You wish where.
Speaker 1: There is a place called the Melbourne Pavilion, which is
Speaker 1: a rather grand name for a recycled factory. Essentially that
Speaker 1: is used for fight nights. Now that's boxing, but also
Speaker 1: all the other forms of fighting for which members of
Speaker 1: the public will pay money at the door to go
Speaker 1: and watch. So you would be having your kickboxing as
Speaker 1: well as your orthodox boxing and anything else that will
Speaker 1: put bumps on seats, and the fight nights there I
Speaker 1: think attract a let's say, a vibrant multicultural crowd is
Speaker 1: one way to put it. And among those vibrant multicultural
Speaker 1: aficionados of the martial arts and the boxing and pugilism,
Speaker 1: a lot of colorful people who like to bet on
Speaker 1: the results, who like to see who else is there,
Speaker 1: who like to rub shoulders and stare down other people
Speaker 1: that they don't like, and so sometimes we have trouble
Speaker 1: at the fight nights and occasionally.
Speaker 2: People get shot there, which is very sad.
Speaker 1: I think there might be currently an ongoing investigation into
Speaker 1: a shooting at such a fight night. Fight knights have
Speaker 1: always attracted some.
Speaker 2: Colorful characters all the way back.
Speaker 1: To Georgian times in England, but raves these days attract
Speaker 1: a different sort of colorful crowd, and raves can attract
Speaker 1: the people who go by the working title of rappers.
Speaker 1: These are rap artists who can rhyme stories into songs
Speaker 1: in a very ingenious way. The best of them are
Speaker 1: very good at it, and in Melbourne we have some
Speaker 1: people who may not be as good at it as
Speaker 1: their brothers in Los Angeles and in Brooklyn and other places,
Speaker 1: but they do have a go. It was one of
Speaker 1: these young fellows, a young bloke called Pell Bedong now
Speaker 1: pell Bedong Pell is his correct name. It's not a nickname.
Speaker 1: His nickname is, or was, sadly, Peasy, and Peas is
Speaker 1: no longer with us because he was shot in the
Speaker 1: early hours of a recent Saturday morning a few weeks ago,
Speaker 1: just around Halloween. We've often advised our listeners that nothing
Speaker 1: good happens after two am, and I have to say
Speaker 1: that it's not improved by an extra hour, because pas
Speaker 1: was found shot dead in Langford Street, North Melbourne at
Speaker 1: three point fifteen on this particular Saturday morning, and whatever
Speaker 1: had happened to lead PZ to be shot dead had
Speaker 1: happened shortly before that in or about Langford Street, North Melbourne,
Speaker 1: which tells us that that old shortcut through from Kensington
Speaker 1: to the city still attracts its share of skulduggery and
Speaker 1: crime and all the rest of it. In fact, there
Speaker 1: was a time when a very well known and notorious
Speaker 1: figure had some building so like old army huts or
Speaker 1: similar down at the Arden Street end of Langford Street.
Speaker 1: And this fellow was a neo Nazi, and he was
Speaker 1: a neo Nazi who actually converted to Islam, which was
Speaker 1: an intriguing transition, but I guess we can all transition
Speaker 1: if we want to. And he ran these sort of
Speaker 1: army hut things and he would take in I think
Speaker 1: officially what he was doing was taking in perhaps ex
Speaker 1: prisoners and offering them a place to stay. I think
Speaker 1: unofficially what he was doing was running a gathering point.
Speaker 2: To put crooks together so.
Speaker 1: That he could organize them into doing crimes for him,
Speaker 1: for him.
Speaker 2: More with him, and so on.
Speaker 1: And he had a lot to do with a lot
Speaker 1: of very bad things, including murder, but we won't dwell
Speaker 1: on that because we're talking about a far more recent event.
Speaker 1: So who was pell Bidong? Well, he was a twenty
Speaker 1: year old Sudanese migrant kid who took on rapping in
Speaker 1: recent years. He's not the only Sudanese rapper around town.
Speaker 1: The death of Pasi Bidong remains a bit of a mystery.
Speaker 1: At the point that we're recording this podcast, the police
Speaker 1: are still looking for the shooter or shooters. The reaction
Speaker 1: to his death is a little intriguing, it seems to me.
Speaker 1: On the night it happened, this is after three o'clock
Speaker 1: in the morning, so we're talking the hours before dawn
Speaker 1: on a Saturday morning, the police who gathered at the
Speaker 1: scene were I won't say besieged, but I'm tempted to
Speaker 1: use that word. They were certainly forced to line up
Speaker 1: a line of police around the crime scene to protect
Speaker 1: the crime scene from the throng of angry young people.
Speaker 1: These would be rap fans or the sort of people
Speaker 1: that go to raves where rappers perform, and they were
Speaker 1: very agitated and very angry and upset that their friend,
Speaker 1: mental mate, relative, whatever, mister Bidong was no longer with
Speaker 1: us and the police. And I don't think they can
Speaker 1: be blamed for this. They have been blamed for it,
Speaker 1: but I don't think it's fair. The police thought that
Speaker 1: they were looking after a murder scene, a crime scene,
Speaker 1: and that had to be preserved at all costs so
Speaker 1: the forensic people could get there and check what was left.
Speaker 1: You know, the bullet shells, blood, you name it, DNA,
Speaker 1: all that stuff, all the clues, and so they stood
Speaker 1: in a line and protected the crime scene despite the
Speaker 1: fact that a couple of dozen of these young people
Speaker 1: were there milling around.
Speaker 2: They started a brawl.
Speaker 1: They were fighting, they were punching on and it wasn't
Speaker 1: a very good look. The police have been criticized from
Speaker 1: some quarters for not stopping the brawls and the fights,
Speaker 1: but I think in the circumstances, it was one of
Speaker 1: those situations where they were damned if they did, and
Speaker 1: they were damned if they didn't, because we all know
Speaker 1: that as soon as the police moved in on that
Speaker 1: gathering of brawling young men, mostly that they would have
Speaker 1: to be forcibly detained and forcibly arrested, and that would
Speaker 1: mean that they would be filmed by various people media
Speaker 1: or otherwise forcibly handcuffing young African men, and that those
Speaker 1: images would be used against the police as some sort
Speaker 1: of suggestion or proof or evidence that the police are
Speaker 1: a terrible, wicked, bullying, racist group of people, which is
Speaker 1: probably deeply unfair to the police, but that is the
Speaker 1: situation in which they have to work, and so their
Speaker 1: choice was not to do anything active against the agitated
Speaker 1: young people, but to get on with the investigation, which
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: Was probably the wisest course.
Speaker 1: Now, we got some interesting reactions afterwards, because on one hand,
Speaker 1: we had what appeared to be very sensible.
Speaker 2: People such as police.
Speaker 1: Spokespersons and a Sudanese community spokesman who is a lawyer
Speaker 1: called kott Manoah. Now Kotmanah is a lawyer I think
Speaker 1: out in the Western suburbs. He I think belongs to
Speaker 1: the South Sudanese group of people, and he's regarded by
Speaker 1: the media as a spokesman for at least one group
Speaker 1: of Sudanese citizens.
Speaker 2: He is, as far.
Speaker 1: As I know, a person of impeccable reputation and character,
Speaker 1: and he joined in with the police in warning against retaliation, saying,
Speaker 1: retaliations are a very real possibility in this situation. Parents,
Speaker 1: please do not let your sons and daughters out late
Speaker 1: at night on the streets because they could easily get
Speaker 1: involved in this retaliation sort of payback stuff. Now, that
Speaker 1: would seem to be a very sensible warning to the
Speaker 1: entire community. But the dead man's brother, whose name is
Speaker 1: Bidoon Bedon, came out pretty strongly and said that wasn't
Speaker 1: a good thing to do. He said that such warnings
Speaker 1: against retaliation spread a false narrative, is what he said,
Speaker 1: a false narrative that African youths were violent thugs and
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. I reckon he probably overstated
Speaker 1: the case a bit, but anyway, that was his case
Speaker 1: to state it as he saw fit, And of course
Speaker 1: he is a grieving, concerned relative of the dead man.
Speaker 1: He described his brother predictably enough, as a gentle soul, kind,
Speaker 1: lovely and all that good stuff, which tends to be
Speaker 1: the sort of phrases most of us use about the
Speaker 1: recently departed. He also seemed totally at a loss to
Speaker 1: explain why his brother was shot. He seemed to have
Speaker 1: no idea. He couldn't explain anything about it except the
Speaker 1: interesting proposition that he didn't think there would be any retaliation. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't know how he could not know anything about
Speaker 1: it and then predict there'd be no retaliation. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure why he knows a little bit but not the rest.
Speaker 1: It's intriguing, but it did remind me a little bit
Speaker 1: of a scene with another group of people. Twenty five
Speaker 1: years ago, a fellow called Carl Williams was shot in
Speaker 1: the belly in a small park out in the Western Suburbs,
Speaker 1: and he was shot in the belly by the late
Speaker 1: Jason Moran, who became the late Jason Ran mainly because
Speaker 1: he did shoot Carl Williams in the belly, because it
Speaker 1: led to retaliations funnily enough, and Carl Williams was probably saved,
Speaker 1: as we've observed here before, by the fact that his
Speaker 1: diet consisted heavily of red rooster and other fried products,
Speaker 1: which gave him a large padding around his stomach. When
Speaker 1: Jason Ran produced a small twenty two pistol and shot
Speaker 1: him in the belly. The small slug, which is capable
Speaker 1: of killing you if it hits you in the right spot,
Speaker 1: the small slug did not penetrate his belly sufficiently to
Speaker 1: injure him in any vital organ. Didn't get his liver,
Speaker 1: didn't get his heart or his life. It just lodged
Speaker 1: in his guts. And so he was able to very
Speaker 1: lucky man at that stage. It was his twenty ninth birthday.
Speaker 1: He was able to walk off, walk home, bleeding from
Speaker 1: the belly. And when he got to a hospital where
Speaker 1: I think his mother drove him when she noticed the bleeding,
Speaker 1: the doctors removed the twenty two bullet and then they
Speaker 1: called the police and they interviewed Carl Williams. He got amnesia.
Speaker 1: Now this is a very rare side effect of a
Speaker 1: bullet wound. He got amnesia and he couldn't remember how
Speaker 1: he been shot or who by. And he said, as
Speaker 1: far as seeing you, he was walking down the street
Speaker 1: when he felt a sharp pain and noticed some blood
Speaker 1: on his T shirt and he said, sorry, doctor and
Speaker 1: officer and detective, I just don't know what happened or
Speaker 1: who shot me. And I didn't even realize I'd been shot. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't believe Carl. I think Carl was telling absolute porkies.
Speaker 1: And there's no doubt he covered his memory soon afterwards
Speaker 1: because he engaged a very willing hit man to go
Speaker 1: out and shoot the Morans. And in fact, the entire
Speaker 1: Underworld War is our listeners will know because they've heard
Speaker 1: it so often. The entire Underworld War was essentially begun
Speaker 1: by Carl Williams's revenge attacks on the Moran family and
Speaker 1: all their supporters and friends and hired guns and all
Speaker 1: the rest of it. Why am I bringing that up.
Speaker 1: I'm bringing it up because my feeling about the shooting
Speaker 1: of our rapper mate is that possibly someone somewhere and
Speaker 1: knows exactly why that has happened, and knows probably who's
Speaker 1: done it or who's ordered it, and that indeed it
Speaker 1: will lead to retaliations, probably retaliations gunplay, unless certain people
Speaker 1: are detained, arrested and locked up before all the bad
Speaker 1: things can happen. That is our prediction here at Life
Speaker 1: and Crimes. Interesting stuff about the connection between rappers and gangsters.
Speaker 1: We know that the rap culture is inextricably entwined with
Speaker 1: gangster culture. In the gang culture in America, not just
Speaker 1: the West Coast, but also the East Coast, where gangs
Speaker 1: are very big deal gang members in the cryps and
Speaker 1: these other big gangs, these hundreds and hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 1: of them, thousands of them, probably not only on the
Speaker 1: streets and in the tenements and in the bars and
Speaker 1: all the rest of it, but in jail where the
Speaker 1: big gangs dominate the American jails. And they divided fairly
Speaker 1: well along ethnic lines in many ways, and they they
Speaker 1: all are very fond of harming each other and often
Speaker 1: killing each other. And the rapper culture is tied into
Speaker 1: that in such an extraordinary way that two of the
Speaker 1: biggest rappers in America, two of the sort of pioneers
Speaker 1: of rap, who sold extraordinary numbers of what we say records,
Speaker 1: but you know, extraordinary numbers of their songs, were a
Speaker 1: guy called the Notorious Big, Notorious Big Biggie Smalls, I think,
Speaker 1: real name Christopher Wallace. He was a big, fat guy
Speaker 1: who was very good at English when he was at
Speaker 1: a private Catholic school in Brooklyn, and he was able
Speaker 1: to write rap songs and make them up on the spot.
Speaker 1: And I'm a very fluent and very good. He had
Speaker 1: a good voice and a good brain, but sadly he
Speaker 1: also did a lot of drug dealing and that got
Speaker 1: him involved in that whole sort of scene, and he
Speaker 1: ends up being a bitter enemy of another rapper from
Speaker 1: the West Coast.
Speaker 2: Called Tupac Tupac Shakur.
Speaker 1: And Tupac ended up getting shot, not fatally first time round.
Speaker 1: He gets shot, and it's often thought that it was
Speaker 1: his former friend and bitter enemy, Biggie Smalls, the Notorious
Speaker 1: Big who sent the guy to shoot Tupac, and ultimately
Speaker 1: Tupac was shot dead, and a second attack sometime later,
Speaker 1: and then Biggie Smalls.
Speaker 2: Was shot dead.
Speaker 1: I think he was only twenty five or something when
Speaker 1: he was shot. I think he was born in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two. Died in nineteen ninety seven, shot dead. Point
Speaker 1: of all that is, the rapper culture is choc, a
Speaker 1: bloc with images of violence. Guns, sex, bashings, prison are
Speaker 1: the subjects that rap songs are about and that the
Speaker 1: rap culture is all about. And so it would seem
Speaker 1: that even out here in the outposts of rap culture,
Speaker 1: that guns and violence are entwined with the rap culture.
Speaker 1: And we've seen that in our very own North Melbourne
Speaker 1: in recent times. Interesting point here there is another Sudanese
Speaker 1: rapper in Melbourne, a guy who rejoices in the rap
Speaker 1: moniker of BBG Smoky. Now BBG Smoky has another name,
Speaker 1: surprisingly the one on his passport or his driver's license
Speaker 1: or whatever. And his other name is Sean Deng, and
Speaker 1: Sean Deng is a tall, skinny fellow who's a pretty
Speaker 1: good at spitting out the rap lyrics. If anybody wants
Speaker 1: to look up Sewan Deng's that is BBG Smokey's main video,
Speaker 1: you will find that there is. It's very sort of
Speaker 1: la You actually think you're looking at something shot in
Speaker 1: a luxury suburb of Los Angeles. That's what it looks like,
Speaker 1: the sort of big white Spanish style luxury home, and
Speaker 1: parked out in front of it all these very ostentatiously
Speaker 1: gangsterish cars. There's a I think a Lamborghini. There's various
Speaker 1: luxury Jeeps or decked out. There is a gold platedd
Speaker 1: Harley Davidson, and many Mercedes and all these things. And
Speaker 1: some of these cars. Now, this was actually shot in
Speaker 1: Melbourne because this guy's I think he records in Collingwood
Speaker 1: so he's in a suburban boy and the cars he
Speaker 1: used to do that promotional song video were supplied by
Speaker 1: members of or associates of what we call the Notorious
Speaker 1: Crime Family in cf. The Notorious Crime Family is a
Speaker 1: Middle Eastern crime group headed by let's say, a guy
Speaker 1: called George Morogi. George Morogi is in jail and has
Speaker 1: been for a while, for a very long time, for
Speaker 1: thirty years whatever, because he hunted down and shot a
Speaker 1: rival drug dealer a while back, and he was caught, convicted,
Speaker 1: locked away. But it is said that he conducts from
Speaker 1: inside jail a massive international drug dealing network which involves friends, associates,
Speaker 1: relatives and so on.
Speaker 2: And it was George Murogi whose gang has been dubbed.
Speaker 1: He dubbed it, I think notorious crime family that shares
Speaker 1: that name like Notorious Big. It's that sort of wrap connection.
Speaker 2: He supplied all these cars to our.
Speaker 1: Good friend BBG Smoky to do his video and not
Speaker 1: just cast but the gold platted Harley of course. And
Speaker 1: this tells you something about the connection in Melbourne between
Speaker 1: genuinely notorious, genuinely bad, genuinely murderous drug dealing criminals and rap.
Speaker 1: There is also a PostScript. BG Smoky is still rapping.
Speaker 1: Where he stands on the death of his fellow artist
Speaker 1: p Z Bedong is a matter for him. Maybe he
Speaker 1: should study the acknowledged godfather of the form, the late Coolio,
Speaker 1: whose rap classic Gangster's Paradise includes one warning line that
Speaker 1: can be repeated in a family newspaper, whereas most rap
Speaker 1: lyrics cannot be because they are very very violent, and
Speaker 1: very sexist and very misogynist. And in fact, most rap
Speaker 1: lyrics make the Taliban look like methodist feminist missionaries. Here's
Speaker 1: the line, the warning line from Coolio. You better watch
Speaker 1: how you're talken and where you're walkin, or you and
Speaker 1: your homies might be lined in chalk.
Speaker 2: And that I have to say is a rapper.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald
Speaker 1: Sun production for true crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton.
Speaker 1: For my columns, features and more, go to Heroldsun dot
Speaker 1: com dot Au forward slash Andrew rule one word. For
Speaker 1: advertising inquiries, go to news podcasts sold at.
Speaker 2: News dot com dot au. That is all one word
Speaker 2: news podcast's soul and if.
Speaker 1: You want further information about this episode. Links are in
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