Chopper Unchopped (208 page)

THE Beach Boys’ first real hit wasn’t about California girls or little red Corvettes. It was a Chinese gentleman who came visiting Australia and didn’t survive the trip. The less said about that the better, as even words smothered under the shadow of fiction from the pen of a self-confessed storyteller, leg puller and yarn spinner might be taken entirely the wrong way.

Their second job, acting as a back-up crew providing logistic support was the Gangitano hit in January, 1998. They were there to make sure the first crew went in and did the job.

Gangitano’s name was placed on the list by the Italian who replaced the third original thinker and as a personal favour to the same man. To have Alphonse Gangitano’s own friends carry out most of the mission by setting him up, took nearly three years of disinformation and inside spy work to convince the men closest to Alphonse that he had been acting as a Federal and NCA and DEA informer for the six years prior to his death. It was probably the greatest chess game played by the original thinkers, although by no means the only one.

At first, his friends would not believe the stories that he was an informer, but after the seed was sown the poisonous plant was always going to grow in the minds of the paranoid.

For the sake of this story I will call the Italian, who joined the original thinkers, ‘The Pizza Man’. Not very inventive, I know, but it will have to do.

Their third main hit was in 1999. The target was Dimitrious Bellas, nicknamed ‘Jimmy the Greek’. The Pizza Man himself, along with one of the original thinkers, Mr Blue Eyes, aided by the three Beach Boys went on to do Vince Mannella in January, 1999, and his brother Gerry or Gerardo Mannella in October 1999.

The Beach Boys helped a Rumanian crew kill Danny Boy Mendoza and seven other Rumanians who remain on the missing list to date. Some of them were illegal immigrants and so there were no records of them being here in the first place. They could hardly be missed. Those who knew they were on the missing list were too frightened to say anything. There were wives who would never mention that their husbands had disappeared. Many knew the truth but would never tell any authorities.

All together, the Beach Boys crew, Mr Blue Eyes and the Pizza Man have carried out approximately 15 murders since 1997 and that does not include the deaths of helpers brought in to dig graves, mix acid, drive trucks and getaway cars and provide safe house locations.

They even killed one helper for arriving 30 minutes late to a meeting and using a taxi to get to the motel where the Pizza Man was staying. He was told to travel by train and then walk and to be on time.

You can’t run a top hit team with your staff not showing up for work or showing up late and not following orders.

To top it off, he didn’t have the money to pay the taxi, which brought the driver to the motel front desk. The whole operation had to be cancelled – all because of a sloppy employee.

You might read this and question why I’m dancing over the deaths of targets in such a light-hearted manner and not spending pages and pages on each one, filling you with boring detail regarding what a dark night it was and how the moon light shone on the gun barrel. What I can say is that the video camera was turned off but not the automatic garden sprinkler system, meaning everyone arrived back wringing wet.

Yet, by the time the police arrived, someone had turned off the sprinkler. No, I won’t go into detail, or I’d have to say that Mad Charlie always kept his front doorway light on so his front door and garden area was well lit when he arrived home. But, the funny thing was that on the night he died the light was off. This great piece of good luck helped hide the killer, who was under the front hedge. It was a tight fit but Charlie’s old friend was not a heavy fellow so he could slip in there quite comfortably to wait to deliver the death sentence to a mate.

I will say that in some cases even the best hit crew cannot carry out their work without a little inside help.

Let me put this argument to you. If a woman is told that either her husband is to die or her children, one or the other, which one would she pick? This is not what happened with Mad Charlie but it could have been used in other cases. There is always a way to get someone to help you. You just have to find the way in each case. In Charlie’s case, there were friends and also people who pretended to be his friends. The underworld is full of people who pretend to be your friends and others who pretend to be your enemies.

I do not intend to waste my time or yours writing about the life and times and deaths of any particular individual. This book is meant to be a psychological, tactical and strategic overall view of certain deaths.

Take Mark Moran … please. Sorry, couldn’t resist the old Henny Youngman gag. But seriously, to get Moran killed, a person close to him, a very powerful friend and business partner, had to be totally convinced that he was guilty of a grievous wrongdoing.

To convince an already paranoid man that he has been betrayed by a close friend isn’t as hard as it sounds, especially when the powerful criminal in question is married to a slut former junkie whore who has never told the truth in her life.

The very fact that she screamed her innocence while being bashed only proved her supposed guilt. Then, when she screamed in rage, ‘Yeah, I fucked him and I loved it. Why wouldn’t I?’ the fact that Moran wouldn’t touch the ugly old slag with a 40-foot pole was beside the point.

If either of the Morans was screwing the wife then they might have been behind a police raid that cost this particular gangster and his team millions in lost goods and legal fees. All of this, of course, was disinformation put out by Blue Eyes and the Pizza Man via the Chinese, a good 12 months before Moran’s death.

The gangster in question did big business with Chinese and Vietnamese. Why would they lie? They were making good money together. Well, they weren’t lying – they were simply repeating what they had been told by an Italian visiting Thailand on holiday

The disinformation about Moran originated in Thailand but was set in place in Melbourne. You see how a Chinese Whisper campaign works. Even if it’s not believed.

The named person has to be killed because there is simply too much at stake to risk. After all, these men aren’t running a charity and you can forget all the loving death notices in the newspaper. There were pages of death notices for Mark Moran and Alphonse Gangitano. Many of the mourners were sincere but there were as many who were as happy to see them dead.

Tears mean nothing when they are insincere. Even real tears can conceal a murderer. The deep thinkers who put Mad Charlie off still miss him greatly, but sometimes things have to be done. The sentimental gangster will die or spend his life in jail. Only the cool heads and the cold hearted survive.

None of these men really trust each other. The game is so easy it is almost child psychology. Add the use of cocaine to this mix and the psychology of fear, using death, paranoia and disinformation, is damn near foolproof.

The enemy simply cannot afford not to take action – they have too much to lose. Fortunes, friends and family. The more you have, the more frightened you become of losing. There is an old saying that property makes cowards of us all. It’s true, even in the criminal world. The up-and-coming gangster is the most dangerous because he has nothing to lose. Once he has made a mark, settled down with a family and begun raking in the cash, he is terrified. Frightened someone will target him, take his spot, take his money, tell the cops, and ruin his party. Most of the time he is right.

In that world, you can’t afford to let a man live just because he might be a good bloke and might not be an informer. Might not means that he also might be. Only death will make sure he isn’t. Simple as that. You are the Weakest Link – bang! It takes the guess out of the guessing game.

We are riding the surf now, dear reader. Are you standing up yet, or have you lost your balance and fallen in? Be careful, the sharks are everywhere, and not just in the water.

It is also true that most of the top drug criminals in Melbourne and Sydney have some form of relationship with some police. So it is not hard to convince a paranoid drug boss that so and so is an informer because he thinks to himself, ‘Well, I’ve got my police that I talk to, why should he be the odd man out.’

The fire is already set, you just have to find the right match. It’s simply a matter of knowing thy enemy and know him very well. Are you seeing now how the original list of 60 men to be killed over a 15 to 20 year period wasn’t really so far-fetched at all?

Think of the murders that remain unsolved. Freddie the Frog lost half his head in the docks back in the 1950s. His mate, Big Normie, fell out of the sky not long after. The Ferret went swimming in his Valiant. It wasn’t roadworthy, or sea worthy. Painters and Dockers painted themselves into dark corners, drug dealers went on missing lists and crooks retired into shallow graves. The police didn’t try too hard. Many thought the crims got their right whack. The coppers, meanwhile, were trying to solve murders of innocent people. When they deal with crims who either won’t talk or talk bullshit, they lose interest pretty quickly. In fact, in the light of the psychology used, I think 60 was quite modest.

LET us now return to 12 November, 1979, and a man by the name of Raymond Patrick Chuck, head of the crew that carried out the Great Bookie Robbery on the Victorian Club in Queen Street on 26th April, 1976. The papers said between $1 and $12 million was believed taken. I have always believed it was $6 million but some very good judges, who know how much bookies were holding and how much they owed, calculate that it was a bit less than that. In any case, it was still plenty of money for those days, so who’s counting?

Ray Chuck was shot dead as he was escorted through the Melbourne Magistrates Court. The rumours put about were that the late criminal gang leader and standover merchant, Brian Kane, pulled the trigger as a payback for the death of his brother, Leslie Herbert Kane.

Whispers were then heard that professional hitman, Christopher Dale Flannery, nick named ‘Rent-A-Kill’, did the job, setting in place probably the greatest disinformation campaign ever conceived. If Ray Chuck was killed by Flannery then the answer to who killed Flannery is too fucking easy.

Who was Ray Chuck’s best friend in the world? I won’t name him, as he is still alive and remains one of the best crooks in Australia. He isn’t a bad bloke at all and certainly doesn’t deserve to do a life sentence over a maggot like Flannery.

To add punch to the party you had all these razzle-dazzle Sydney gangsters either bragging that they shot Flannery or that they knew who did. So the disinformation campaign put in place to protect the true identity of the man who did kill Flannery wasn’t hard, but it was massive, and went on for years.

It’s hard to come back and say, ‘Oh, by the way, to prove my point on the psychology of criminal gang warfare, fear and the sheer power of disinformation, I’d now like to confess that I invented 90 per cent of the crap people now believe to be fact surrounding the Flannery case.’ That would be stupid, wouldn’t it?

Now, it is true that the team carrying out the inquest into the death of sad old Chris did come down to Risdon Prison in sleepy Tassie to have a chat. They asked me many questions. I can understand why they would want my views on such a serious matter. After all, with due modesty, I do possess the greatest criminal mind of any (living) underworld identity. Which proves mainly that there aren’t that many heavy thinkers in criminal ranks.

Anyway, so they rocked down for a chat. I spoke for a great deal of time. They listened, took more notes and nodded gravely. I nodded gravely. They asked more questions and took more notes. Each one of them got more than a grand a day for asking questions. I got bugger-all for answering them. They went back to their five star hotels to mull over what I had said with the help of a cheeky Pinot and a local lobster. I had rissoles for tea washed down with some prison hooch. You work it out.

They seemed happy. I was happy. Did I feed them some disinformation? Perish the thought. As a law-abiding citizen – not – I did my best to help, but no-one (including me) has done a day’s jail over Chris, who, rumour suggests, may have given a white pointer shocking heartburn.

The beauty of being a known killer and an alleged author is that you can have an opinion on any murder and people don’t know if it is a theory based on experience or the facts based on inside knowledge. Sometimes I don’t know myself. I prefer not to. It’s less complicated.

Take poor Alphonse. Some pretty young television thing wanted me to debate him when I got out of jail. I told the little vixen that it was not to be unless it was done through a ouija board, as Al was about to cop a couple of lead injections in his cranium.

As suspected, Alphonse ran out of breath rather suddenly just a few weeks later. Was that inside knowledge or just a lucky guess? Any fool could see that Alphonse was running red hot and couldn’t be allowed to keep going. But then again, I’m no fool.

Whether I had inside knowledge or just suspected what was going to happen doesn’t matter. He is dead and I am not. I can’t be blamed as I was inside Risdon, well out of harm’s way.

The same applies to the murder, still unsolved, of Tony Franzone, shot six times in May, 1992. His death is so long ago and so unsolved it has been forgotten. Shrouded in the mist of time and disinformation, but an important key to unlocking the coffin that Alphonse Gangitano finally went into.

Underworld hits are never solved unless, of course, your name is Billy ‘The Texan’ Longley and your hit squad is made up of mental retards with mouths like running taps.

But, in general, a professional hit will go unsolved forever, shrouded in a sea of bullshit, created by men who know psychology. What the police and media are willing to believe. The police and media are pretty black and white thinkers, so any red herring tossed their way must be big enough to catch and small enough to eat. Disinformation within the criminal world must be in the size of a fucking battleship as paranoid people eat, drink live and sleep on a never-ending diet of conspiracy theories. All you have to do is create a story that links their name into it all and they will believe anything.