The Gangland War (12 page)

But when he was young he was just a big, good-looking kid from Preston East State School with a ready smile and an eye for the girls.

One of his first girlfriends remembered: ‘All the girls had a crush on him. He had nice parents. I don't really know what went wrong for him.'

He once grabbed the author, then a tiny, but rather gifted, primary school boy, and threw him on his shoulders in what he considered to be a humorous street abduction.

At that moment in Wood Street, Preston, the budding author thought no good would come of Gregory John Workman. Neither knew their paths would cross again in tragic circumstances 30 years on.

The Workmans lived in a Housing Commission house in busy Albert Street — a few houses from a policeman who would one day become the head of the Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence and one of the country's few real experts on organised crime.

Even then, there were rumours around the teenage Workman that an older relative was dabbling in marijuana — a drug virtually unheard of in the suburbs in those days. Years later, there was no doubt Workman was into crime full-time.

‘He was one of the better crooks in the area,' a policeman who locked him up more than once would recall much later.

‘He would stay in the background and wouldn't do stupid things to bring police attention on himself. He had an air of confidence and a touch of class.

‘He was rumoured to be behind some good stick-ups in the area, but he wasn't convicted over them.'

He was a good crook but he wasn't always a good bloke. Just ask his family. One of his close relatives became a manager at a
successful Melbourne clothing business. Police later found a car boot full of clothes stolen from the factory. Workman was said to have stood over his relative to make him the inside man in a stolen clothing racket. The relative lost his legitimate job and gained a criminal record: a case of from rag trade to scallywag trade. It would have been an interesting Christmas Day at the Workmans' that year.

Workman was successful by his own lights but in underworld terms he was a middleweight and was finally caught fighting out of his division. It would not be the police who would stop him, but fellow criminals. One in particular.

On 6 February 1995, Workman and a crew of heavy criminals, including Alphonse John Gangitano, met for a wake at a Richmond hotel before heading to a party to celebrate the release of Mark Aisbett, who had been bailed on armed robbery charges earlier that day.

The party was already in full swing in a flat in Wando Grove, St Kilda, when the team from Richmond arrived around 1am.

After another three hours of drinking, the mood turned ugly. Gangitano was seen arguing with one of his old mates, Martin Felix Paul. According to a confidential police report: ‘Gangitano was identified by an independent person as being in possession of a pistol and arguing with another male. It was apparent that Gangitano was being restrained by another person and was highly agitated.'

One of Australia's most experienced investigators into gangland murders, Detective Senior Sergeant Gavan Ryan, was later to tell the coroner that someone at the party overheard a conversation between Workman and another man, in which the issue of Workman's gambling debts was raised.

Ryan would not know that he was to spend most of the next decade investigating gangland murders and eventually would run the Purana Taskforce.

The witness later told another man at the party that Workman was about to be ‘bumped' over the debt.

The witness left the party with the man and while in a taxi alerted the driver that he feared there was about to be a murder. The driver must have been convinced because he drove to the St Kilda police station to pass on his passenger's fears.

The argument was loud enough for neighbours to call the police. Several said they heard the name ‘Harry' being used — a nickname for Alphonse used by his closest friends.

Police arrived to the noisy party, unaware that a Who's Who of the underworld had gathered. They were told that the two men who had been arguing in the driveway had left and they were assured there would be no further problems.

It was an overly optimistic call.

When Workman walked out the front door onto the porch he was shot eight times.

The woman who lived in the flat and had organised the party drove Workman to hospital, but he died without regaining consciousness. Eight .32 calibre slugs will do that.

If Gangitano had planned to kill Workman over a debt, he picked a stupid time and place to do it. In hindsight, it was a sign that Al was spinning out of control and would one day be seen as expendable himself.

A woman later told police she saw Gangitano standing near the body holding a small silver pistol before being led away by another man.

Coroner Wendy Wilmoth later found that a witness ‘stated that she heard gunshots, went to the porch and saw Gangitano and Martin Paul standing almost at the feet of the deceased. She heard someone say, “Get him out of here” and saw Martin Paul lead Gangitano away.'

Ms Wilmoth said another witness, ‘saw Gangitano run from the porch holding a gun in the air, soon after she came out of
the front door, and saw the deceased collapse, injured, on the porch'.

It should have been an open and shut case. But it wasn't.

Two sisters who saw the shooting were whisked into a witness protection program to keep them away from the gangsters.

It seemed a huge breakthrough. The man who had become the public face of organised crime in Victoria was in deep trouble. His lawyer contacted homicide squad detectives and said his client was prepared to be interviewed.

Police said they were in no hurry. He may have fired the shots but now detectives were calling them.

But they made the mistake of not protecting what they had. They took their star witnesses for granted.

The sisters made statements implicating Gangitano and were then put under police protection and sent beyond Gangitano's influence — or so the theory went.

But it was not like the movies. Almost immediately, the sisters began to have doubts.

One was not allowed to visit her doctor for arthritis medication. They spent days in Carlton and were driven down Lygon Street several times, despite it being the area where Gangitano and his henchmen spent most of their time.

The witnesses were not allowed to collect clothes on layby at a department store and were forced to live on takeaway food. One of them told a detective they were ‘made to feel like we're the criminals, not him'.

They were shunted into a cabin in a Warrnambool caravan park in western Victoria with a promise that their protectors were only a phone call away.

But when they tried to contact their police protectors three times the supposed 24-hour number rang out.

Increasingly anxious and annoyed, the women felt they had been left for dead — not a comforting thought when you were
about to help police jail a ruthless gunman. ‘The witnesses formed an opinion that their safety was no longer a priority of the Victoria Police and that the police were not in a position to adequately protect them,' according to a confidential police report.

Isolated, alone and frightened, they rang one of Gangitano's closest associates, Jason Moran, who arranged to meet them in Melbourne the next day. It was exactly two months after the murder.

Moran was a negotiator. His opening gambit, according to police, was to advise one of the women that if she gave evidence she and her family would be killed. He then took the sisters to his solicitor, Andrew Fraser, and to another lawyer's office where the witnesses made an audio tape recanting their original police statements.

Gangitano paid for them to fly out of Australia on 20 May to England and the United States. The murder case collapsed. Eventually, Gangitano's lawyer billed police for $69,975.35 over the failed prosecution.

But Coroner Wendy Wilmoth was able to investigate the case at Workman's inquest, even though the key witnesses had ‘flipped'.

‘It is beyond doubt that Gangitano was at the premises where the shooting occurred, at the relevant time, that he was in possession of a gun and that he was in an agitated state of mind. The retraction of their statements by the (sisters) can be explained by their extreme fear of Gangitano,' she said.

‘Having considered this evidence, and taking into account the required standard of proof, I find that Alphonse Gangitano contributed to the death of the deceased by shooting him.'

In other words, Al had got away with murder. But, a few years later, it would be his turn. Another example of the truth of the saying, ‘What goes around, comes around', a fitting epitaph for most standover men.

In a business where attention
can be fatal, Gangitano was
a publicity magnet.

 

IT was just after midnight when the two men in the green hire car cruised over the empty Westgate Bridge, heading away from Melbourne's city skyline.

The driver took little notice as his passenger casually picked up a McDonald's paper bag, apparently containing the remnants of their late-night snack, and threw it out the window.

It was only later that the driver would wonder why the bag wasn't sucked behind the fast moving car and, instead of fluttering onto the roadway, flew straight over the railing into the mouth of the Yarra River, 54 metres below.

And it would be months before police would conclude that the weight in the bag thrown from the bridge equalled that of a .32 calibre handgun — the one used to kill one of Australia's most notorious gangsters less than an hour earlier.

Alphonse John Gangitano was still lying dead in the laundry of his home with two bullet wounds in his head and one in the back when the two men crossed the bridge, but it would take four years before the events of that night were exposed.

GANGITANO was not Melbourne's best gangster, but he was the best known and certainly one of the best dressed. Glamorous, charming and violent, he played the role of an underworld identity as if he had learned it from a Hollywood script. Which, to some extent, he had. He watched a lot of films. Too many, maybe.

The sycophants would call him the Robert De Niro of Lygon Street. His critics — and there were many — called him the ‘Plastic Godfather'.

In a business where attention can be fatal, Gangitano was a publicity magnet, first as a boxing manager, photographed with world champions such as Lester Ellis, and then as a crime figure whose court appearances were routinely followed by an increasingly fixated media.

He posed for photos and loved the crime boss image. He craved the centre stage and shunned the shadows. The only time he became outraged was when one of the authors said on radio, ‘Alphonse Gangitano has the brains of a flea and the genitalia to match.' It is not known which part of the barb he found most offensive. He sued using his favourite lawyer, George Defteros, but when Al died, so did the legal action.

Some gangsters are born into the underworld, driven there by a cycle of poverty, lack of legitimate opportunities and family values that embrace violence and dishonesty. But that was not Gangitano's background. He came from a hard-working, successful family. His father had run a profitable travel agency and invested astutely in real estate.

Young Alphonse was given a private school education — at De La Salle, Marcellin and Taylor's College — but struggled to justify his parents' investment. He was remembered as a big kid with attitude, but not much ability and no application.

He was quick with his fists but not with his wits, though he was cunning enough to fight on his terms, usually king-hitting his opponents. He was charged with offensive behaviour when he was nineteen and, over the next five years, he graduated from street crimes to serious violence. Along the way he started to gather a group, which for two decades was known as the Carlton Crew.

Most young men eventually grow out of being fascinated with violence. Gangitano didn't. He was 24 when police first found him with a gun.

A confidential police report warned of Gangitano and his team: ‘They approach (police) members and assault them for no apparent reason. They are all extremely anti-police and are known to be ex-boxers. They often frequent in a group numbering approximately fifteen. They single out up to three off-duty police and assault them, generally by punching and kicking them. On most occasions in the past, members have been hospitalised due to injuries received from these persons.' Gangitano was described as ‘extremely violent and dangerous.'

In the early 1980s, Gangitano worked as a low-level standover man using an old tactic. He would walk into a club with a small group and tell the owners that he expected protection money or he would begin bashing patrons. Many quickly paid — others were slow learners. He was making more than $1000 a week. Not huge money, but enough for a young man on the make.

He was charged with hindering police, assault by kicking, assaulting police, resisting arrest, and other crimes of violence. Each time, the charges were thrown out. The fact he was able to beat charges helped build his reputation. Some suggested he had influence inside the police force.

Before long, he started to take on the trappings of a crime boss — wearing expensive clothes, reading biographies on Al Capone as if they were DIY manuals and watching videos such as
The Godfather
. He didn't seem to grasp that in Hollywood, the good guys almost always win and the bad guys end up behind bars. Or dead.

BEFORE poker machines and government-sanctioned casinos creamed off the easy money, the illegal gaming business was the underworld's most consistent money-maker. Gangitano might have been bored at school, but he was a quick learner on the street. He bought into a profitable baccarat school in Lygon Street and, some say, either part-owned or ran protection on Victoria's then lucrative two-up school.

Police intelligence reports listed him as a big punter and suggested he was a race-fixer in Victoria and Western Australia. He allegedly sold guns at an old Brunswick nightclub.