Chopper Unchopped (230 page)

Anyway, young Dom and Furlan had a blue over a number of things.

At one stage, Dom rented a car yard from Furlan in Sydney Road and when it went guts up Johnny still wanted his money.

Furlan was looking to sell out of his businesses and move to Tassie to go fishing and that should have been the end of it.

Trouble was, Italiano may have been as fat as an elephant but he had a memory like one too. For whatever reason, Italiano hired a young bloke to plonk a bomb in Furlan’s car and they blew him up.

It was such a big blast they probably saved him the airfare back to Tassie.

Johnny used to sell pretty dodgy cars. He sold bombs, then he died in one.

There was a little bit of poetry there.

Big Fat Mick was never charged over the bomb. The young fellow was about to tip a bucket on him when he mysteriously committed suicide.

Italiano went to jail for fraud, won a retrial and was really excited when he got out of jail in 2005. Too excited, as it turned out. He went and bought some Viagra to get rid of some pent-up frustration with an old girlfriend the next day.

It was too much for his ticker and he died on the nest, which happens more often than a lot of people reckon. Talk about a hard case to crack. All that time behind bars and then he died with one in his undies. He bombed out on both counts, Ha ha.

Shot dead in the front garden of his South Caulfield home on November 23, 1998

THE murder of Mad Charlie was for me a great personal sadness. I even named my first son after him. He was, in spite of fallouts from the past, an old and dear friend. But in my old line of work, friendships can be fatal.

A friend, a man who didn’t want to kill him but could see no other way out of this particular problem, killed Charlie.

Charlie had always said, ‘When my time comes, let it not be at the hands of a laughing enemy but at the hands of a crying friend.’ He got his wish. I can tell Charlie that the tears over what had to be done were flowing before his death and are still flowing.

It was a classic ambush. The killer lay in wait – literally. He hid under the bushes in the front yard, waited until Charlie came home that night and that was it.

I think Charlie knew it was coming. He rang me for a chat when I was still living in Tassie days before he was shot. It was like talking to a dead man. I knew he was gone and I think he did too.

The truth was Charlie had lost his army. When the barman calls last drinks, you leave. Charlie refused to leave. He was all alone and feeling a bit sorry for himself.

I felt a bit sad for Charlie myself after hearing all of that, but what could I do? Go back to Melbourne and hold his hand?

If I had done that, I knew we would both die. I would bring trouble to him, not protect him from it. I’d held Charlie’s hand for many years – for far too many years, some might say – and now it was up to Charlie to face his own demons all on his own. In the 1980s, Charlie was a powerful man, but only because of those who stood next to him.

Mad Charlie had the power of life and death because his crew was made up of psychopaths pretending to be businessmen, not businessmen pretending to be nutters.

In the classic
Chopper from the Inside
, I wrote, ‘Charlie studied Mafia crime books like a priest studied the Bible. In late 1989, he was shot in the guts in front of his $250,000 South Caulfield home.

He’s still alive, but his dreams of underworld glory never reached his teenage fantasies. All he has now are his Mafia books and his collection of gangster videos. But to the underworld kingpins who might laugh at Charlie now … in 1974 one word from him could have seen them all dead, and changed the face of the underworld forever. We had the death list, the guns and the insanity to carry it out.’

However, by the late 1990s Charlie was a General without an army. I felt sorry for him, but Charlie always forgot that it was other people who put him where he was and when those certain few people walked away from him, he was finished.

What happened had to happen. I’m surprised it took so long.

From this distance it was like watching a car crash in slow motion.

Goodbye Charlie – I still miss you.

Mad Charlie was very rich when he died, but no-one seems to have worked out what happened to his money. Funny, that.

Shot as he returned to his North Fitzroy home on January 9, 1999

I’LL tell you who killed poor old Hollywood Vince. They should charge Quentin Tarantino and the rest of the movie moguls who pump up the Mafia. I reckon clowns like Vince think gangster flicks are documentaries and not make-believe.

No-one would ever have heard of Vince if he hadn’t made the papers by having his brains splattered over his own welcome mat. In the underworld, he was a doorman who ended up thinking he owned the hotel. The truth is he was just another deluded dago who lived on the scraps thrown from Alphonse’s table.

Way back in the ’70s, Vince was a regular around the gambling joints in Carlton but the would-be wise guy was always wise enough to look the other way when I popped in for some walk-around money.

He used to carry knives and guns back then, but he knew that when he put his hands in his pockets around me back then, it was only to pull cash out as a gesture of friendship.

Vince was a man with a reputation for being able to get anything, from amphetamine chemicals for a cook to truckloads of food or stolen cigarettes. He was like an olive oil version of Arthur Daley.

He shot some poor wog seven times when he was banned from playing cards in a coffee shop in Carlton. The bloke survived and Vinnie got about seven years. That’s one year per shot, which is about the going rate.

When he got out, he thought he was some Mafia hood. If he had just stuck to being a good honest thief, he may be still with us, but with Alphonse gone he thought he could move from being a waiter to sitting at the head of the table.

Too arrogant to know his limitations and too dumb to see it coming, he didn’t know he was a member of an endangered species: Melbourne wogs who want to be mobsters.

He was a bit of a night owl, but killers know if they wait in the bushes at the victim’s home, it will never be a matter of if, just when.

When they found him, his head was on the welcome mat. At least it kept the blood off the imported Italian tiles. They can be buggers to clean. I know.

Shot dead as he arrived at work at a Toorak supermarket at 3am on May 28, 1999

JOE was as regular as clockwork and that made him an easy target when his time came. He pulled up as he always did outside the supermarket where he worked and they were waiting. It was clean as a whistle. Joe was once a rich greengrocer who had once owned his own shops, but he went belly up. He owed people money and they were sick of waiting. What nobody knew was that he had cancer and was dying, anyway. The killers just hurried the process a bit.

Joe might have known the price of grapefruit, but he didn’t know much about gangsters.

Notice how many people connected with the fruit and vegetable industry end up getting murdered? I reckon all vegetarians are closet homicidal maniacs. No-one kills butchers, do they? Funny, that.

Shot dead as she slept with her six-year-old son in the Bendigo suburb of Long Gully on June 12, 1999

HOW a nice kid like Vicki Jacobs got dragged into this is a disgrace. Now, I’ve done plenty of things I now regret. Like shooting one guy in the leg. He didn’t deserve it. And not shooting Nick Apostolidis in the head. He did.

Most underworld killings are a case of right whack. Men who choose to make a living through violence can hardly complain when they become victims. Of course, they can’t because they are dead. Who wants to listen to a dead bloke complaining that he is stiff?

If I had copped it before I retired, then so be it.

Underworld killings are usually just good sport, but every now and again the line is crossed. Vicki Jacobs was a girl who had cleaned up her act. To kill her was an act of cowardly revenge for no good purpose.

Sure, she had run with the wrong crowd, but she had built a new life – until someone took it from her.

She knew bikies and dabbled in drugs and her husband was into everything he could find.

She had the brains to split from him, but Gerald Preston just kept on trying to be a tough guy. He went over to Adelaide to kill a couple of blokes for the bikies but didn’t have the brains to plan it properly and it was just a matter of time before he got snipped. He got paid $10,000 to do the job and as you know, if you pay peanuts you end up with a hairy chimp rather than a professional hitman.

He ended up getting 32 years after Vicki gave evidence against him. He blamed her for his predicament when he should have blamed those who got him to do the job in the first place.

She was offered police protection, but she thought she could disappear to go to Bendigo with her young son and leave the underworld forever. While Preston was in jail his hatred fermented. I can tell you that from inside jail, it is easy to reach out and touch someone. There is no doubt someone did him a favour. Almost certainly it would be the bloke who got him to do the double whack in Adelaide. That bloke is a Hells Angel who was out of the country at the time. Must have got someone else to do the dirty work again. Vicki was asleep with her son when someone just blew her away.

Preston even had the gall to put a death notice in the paper that said, ‘Soulmates once, you gave us a beautiful healthy son and blossomed as a proud, devoted mother. Truly.

And while we grew apart I always admired your strength and never stopped missing you … You will always be in our hearts.’

That’s Gerald Preston: a louse, a hypocrite and a tosser. It’s enough to give killers a bad reputation.

There is still a million-dollar reward for anyone who can help solve the murder. I’ll do it for nothing.

They may never prove it, but a man connected with the Angels came down from Darwin to Adelaide, then jumped in a hire car and drove to Melbourne.

A local bikie drove the killer up to Bendigo and the job was done. It was on the night that Melbourne Angels had a big party, so they could all alibi each other.

Funny that. I can understand if they had killed her before she gave evidence, as it could have stuffed the case. But after? Just cold-blooded revenge. She couldn’t hurt them any more, but they just wanted her dead as a warning to others.

But justice works in mysterious ways. Preston lost his appeal and will rot in jail until he is an old man.

As for the bloke who organised it on the outside, he has had a big falling out with his old bikie crew and has been thrown out of the gang. When you leave the Hells Angels they take all your mementos. Things like your jacket, stubbie-holder and belt buckle have to be returned so you can’t sell them on eBay. But what about the Hells Angels tatts? Sorry, they have to go too. So do you think they would hire a gentle plastic surgeon with a light touch in laser surgery?

Well, the Angels may be many things, but they are not New Age Fairies. No, they do it the old-fashioned way. The tatts were removed with an angle grinder and a steam iron.

No wonder he was permanently de-pressed. Ha, Ha.

Found by cleaners in a pool of blood below a St Kilda Road office on September 9, 1999

GOODBYE Jimmy the Greek, a small-time bit player in a much larger production. Dimitrios Belias, thirty-eight years old, got it on the 9/9/99 in the carpark of a St Kilda Road office complex. Interesting date, good postcode, bad head wound.

Mad Charlie called Jimmy the Greek his money mover. He acted as a front man in card games, using Mad Charlie’s money, many years ago.

He also bought and sold property for Charlie. He also did work for Alphonse and a few others over the years. He was not a full-time, full-on criminal. He would go to the edge without getting his hands dirty.

Jimmy the Greek was a small cog in an organised crime wheel, simply part of the machine. He would not be worth a mention except for the way he died.

It is just that the death of Alphonse, then Mad Charlie, has made a lot of mice turn into lions overnight. The reserves are now getting a game in the seniors and some of them won’t be up to it when the going gets tough.

In the old days, Jimmy the Greek could be controlled with a back hander. The fact that he was put off indicated he had risen to a level where he was important enough to kill.

Some of the shit kickers have been promoted over the graves of their former bosses.

Jimmy would borrow money to gamble. He was a good gambler, but he wasn’t as good at keeping his word of honour.

When he broke his word, he may have received a slap in the mouth a few years ago from men who are now dead. Lions can afford to forgive, mice can’t afford such grand gestures. You didn’t know when to fold and walk away. You kept playing and they carried you out feet first.

Bang, bang, see you later, Jimmy.

Shot dead as he left his brother’s North Fitzroy home on October 20, 1999

KILLING peanuts in the underworld is a little like eating peanuts with beer: one is never enough.

Poor old Gerry wasn’t a bad bloke and he would have lived a long life if his brother hadn’t been a nuisance. But those who killed Vince found that Gerry was making enquiries and they decided that they were going to put a full stop on the debate.

They thought that if Gerry found out who killed his brother, he might want to do something about it. He was telling people he was going to square up for his brother. It is most unwise to speak openly about these matters because if people take you seriously, they will be forced to get in first. Dead men can’t hurt anybody.