The Gangland War (51 page)

‘The law is male dominated. Until recently women who succeeded in it dressed in nondescript, sexless clothes and emulated men. A real woman with a good pair of legs is seen as somehow suspect. Attractive women are attacked and judged — and other women are the worst oppressors. It's been horrendous. People spread rumours all the time. I don't want to repeat them because that will only encourage it. I have threatened to sue over the things people say.

‘I know of male lawyers who have had relationships with female clients in prison, and it never causes a ripple. But if a female lawyer smiles at a client then she's bonking the whole jail … It's almost a tribal mentality in the legal profession: ‘how dare that tribe touch our white women' sort of thing. The whole Zarah thing is salacious. The fact is she was in fear of her life if she gave evidence. She looked around and everyone's being killed so she did not want to. Everything else is her own business.'

Proving the point that other women can be the toughest critics, a well-known practitioner who has seen Garde-Wilson at work has little sympathy. ‘She is so not a naïve, poor taken-advantage-of newcomer. It is hard to practise criminal law as a female but
you have to be sensible. Would I travel interstate and stay with someone like (Mokbel) while under surveillance? You are inviting a nightmare into your life. It is partly arrogance, like some of the crooks. They splash it in your face and have a catch-me-if-you can attitude. You can't drive around in flashy cars without having jobs and not expect some backlash from the authorities.' And any lawyer who takes the same attitude can expect trouble, too.

‘A magistrate tried to talk some sense into her but … she's a very difficult person to get to know, shy and aloof — unless you are a crim, apparently.' She then quotes a well-known criminal lawyer, Alex Lewenberg, who advises young lawyers: ‘Your duty to your client ends at the court steps.' Another way of saying: don't get too close because criminals are often narcissistic men with adolescent impulses who get crushes on their female lawyers.

‘I liken it to being twelve years old on the tram,' laughs the lawyer. ‘Blokes in custody develop crushes on you. It goes with the dependency on you while they're inside. It can be passionate but it sure ain't love. Maybe Zarah is attracted to that. And the TV cameras chasing you down the street can be fun the first time but why would you want it after that?'

An ABC reporter, Josie Taylor, had a ringside seat during court hearings on the gangland war and takes a gentler view. Originally from rural NSW, Taylor is of similar age and background to Garde-Wilson and built a natural and genuine rapport with her. During the contempt of court hearing in 2005, she persuaded her to do an exclusive television studio interview.

It was a big test for both. Taylor, then still relatively inexperienced, prepared thoroughly and asked a series of insightful questions, and Garde-Wilson did her best to answer them. Afterwards, Taylor was wondering how the lawyer would react to the robust professional encounter. Oddly enough, she recalls, Garde-Wilson's only real concern was whether the studio lighting had
flattered Taylor more than her. Appearances do matter, but in ways other than make-up, clothes and lighting. There are many tough judges in the law, not all of them in robes and wigs, and it's not necessarily the clients you have but the company you keep that influence the judgment they make.

At the time of writing, Garde-Wilson is still fighting what could be a losing battle for her right to practise law. She is under attack by a conservative profession and an outraged police force that agree that she crossed the line — not only of prudence, but of the law itself.

In June 2007, the Supreme Court dismissed her application for a judicial review of the Legal Service Board's original decision to withdraw her licence to practise. But she was still able to practise pending the outcome of proceedings before the Victorian Civil Administrative Tribunal. Three months earlier, in March, she had been committed to stand trial for giving false evidence to the Australian Crime Commission (in 2004) and for possessing an unregistered Mauser .25 calibre pistol ‘lent' to her boyfriend Lewis Caine by a crooked gun dealer. The dealer, who became a police informer after being caught with a cache of illegal weapons bought from a South Australian pornography king for the ill-fated Mario Condello, took part in a police operation to trap Garde-Wilson, who had asked him to take away the handgun Caine had left behind when he was killed.

Most insiders would say she has only herself to blame for her troubles but, for the general public, the jury is still out on the solicitor who plays with snakes. The defence sees a vulnerable, shy and lonely girl marooned behind a brittle facade, too proud to ask for help; the prosecution damns her as a calculating, streetwise chancer with a perverse streak, riding for a fall.

The truth, rarely clear in legal matters, is probably somewhere in between. But it's clear she has toned down her act to suit new circumstances in which the high-flying gangsters in her professional
and personal life are either dead, in jail or broke. Maybe there's a message in there for Zarah Garde-Wilson. ‘Every time I see her picture in the paper lately,' notes one observer drily, ‘she's wearing more clothes.'

In court, that might be true. But the system has not quite beaten the maverick instincts out of the girl from Armidale. In late 2007 she astonished the editors of the
GQ
glossy men's magazine by offering herself for a provocative picture spread at no charge. Her outfit included a Jersey dress valued at $4355, Mary-Jane shoes valued at $1125 and Voodoo fishnet stockings that were priceless. Happily, the lighting was excellent.

While her own fate was still in the balance, Garde-Wilson was still practising at the time of writing. On November 23, 2007, she appeared in Melbourne Magistrates Court for two brothers charged by the Purana Taskforce for trafficking methamphetamines, possessing $67,000 cash — and an illegal handgun. Carl and George Williams are locked up, Tony Mokbel is facing charges and most of her other clients are behind bars or dead. But the drugs, guns and money go on.

‘You are a killer,
and a cowardly one who
employed others to do
the actual killing.'

 

CARL Williams spent years successfully avoiding an assassin's bullet only to commit legal suicide while giving evidence in the days leading to his final sentencing in the Supreme Court.

Stubborn to the end, the baby-faced killer turned his back on a sweet legal deal by ignoring his lawyer's advice to shut up and at least pretend to be sorry for launching a bloody vendetta that cost more than a dozen lives.

Williams was found guilty by a jury of the murder of Michael Marshall in October 2003. When he finally realised that the prosecution case was overwhelming, he pleaded guilty to the murders of Jason Moran (June 2003), Mark Mallia (August 2003) and Lewis Moran (March 2004). He also pleaded guilty to the 2004 conspiracy to murder Mario Condello.

In agreeing to plead guilty, Williams cut a deal that literally meant he got away with murder — many times.

He also killed or was connected to those who killed Mark Moran (June 2000), ‘Mad Richard' Mladenich (May 2000), Willie Thompson (July 2003), Nik Radev (April 2003) and Victor Peirce (May 2002). He was directly responsible for the death of Pasquale Barbaro, who was shot dead by one of Williams' hit men while murdering Jason Moran.

Williams is also suspected of ordering the murder of Graham Kinniburgh, who was shot dead outside his Kew home in December 2003, and has been linked to several more gangland killings.

Paranoid, frightened and self-deluded, he survived and prospered by surrounding himself with a gang of soldiers whose loyalty he won with a combination of drugs, money, power and women.

But once he was in jail, his trusted subordinates began to waver. One by one they broke the code of silence and became prosecution witnesses. Key members of the Williams camp crossed the floor leaving the man who called himself ‘The Premier' without the numbers to survive.

So why then did the prosecution accept a plea and do a deal with the multiple killer? Why didn't they convict him again and again for the murders he committed?

Because it would have taken up to ten years and cost millions of dollars.

It would also have given Williams the public platform and the media attention he craved. By locking him away they condemned him — as he declared himself — to a life of ‘Groundhog Days'. As it turns out — 12,783 of them.

Williams first made noises that he might be prepared to do a deal as early as November 2006. He implied he had information that could help crack the murders of police informer Terence Hodson and his wife Christine, shot dead in their Kew home in May 2004.

Detectives believed rogue police were responsible for the double murder so if Williams could provide information he would have been able to demand a big discount on his sentence.

But he was teasing. Williams did end up making a statement that seemed to implicate a former detective, but later he deliberately destroyed his own credibility so he could never be called as a prosecution witness.

During the long pre-trial process before Williams was due to face the court for murdering Jason Moran and Pasquale Barbaro, his lawyers asked Justice King: If he pleaded guilty, would the sentence be ‘crushing'?

While no promises were made, they were told Williams could expect to see some light at the end of the tunnel.

Justice King is no bleeding heart. She is a common sense judge who made her ruling on the basis of hard legal precedent. The former hard-hitting prosecutor and senior member of the National Crime Authority was well aware of the case law surrounding guilty pleas.

Some examples. Paul Charles Denyer is a serial killer who stalked and murdered three women in Frankston in 1993. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life with no minimum by Supreme Court Justice Frank Vincent, but on appeal he was given a minimum of 30 years on the grounds he should receive a discount for his guilty plea — no matter how reprehensible his crimes.

Leslie Alfred Camilleri, who killed two Bega schoolgirls in 1997, pleaded not guilty and was given life with no minimum. His partner, Lindsay Hoani Beckett, pleaded guilty and received a minimum of 35 years.

Justice King knew that if Williams pleaded she would be required to set a minimum sentence. The maximum of life was never in doubt.

Williams said he wanted a sentence that would give him some chance of getting out by the age of 70. Purana Taskforce police
said they would push for a lighter sentence if he was prepared to become a witness in subsequent trials.

They wanted him to turn on his former role model, multimillionaire drug boss Tony Mokbel, who fled Australia in March 2006 only to be recaptured in Greece in June the following year.

Mokbel allegedly paid Williams to organise the murder of Michael Marshall and police claimed he was also linked to the murder of Lewis Moran. They wanted Williams to become a star prosecution witness.

While Williams may be many things, he remains an oldschool crook who believes in the code of silence. And while many of Williams' old pals turned on him, he remained determined to stay staunch.

After he decided to plead guilty he pretended to co-operate, but anything he said was carefully crafted to lack real evidentiary value. He made sure no-one would do jail time on the basis of what he said.

So, without a promise to become a Crown witness, Williams' negotiating position was weakened. The final deal struck was that prosecutors would not demand a crushing sentence and would not oppose a move for Williams' father, George, to receive a suspended sentence for pending drug charges.

In effect, sentencing was to be left to Justice King without the prosecution lobbying for the longest jail term possible.

When Williams finally agreed to the deal on 28 February 2007 — just days before the jury was to be selected — the prison van taking him back to jail was called back so the papers could be signed and the plea formally entered before he changed his mind again.

In the minutes before the court was convened, his mother, Barbara, urged him to abandon the deal and take his chances before a jury. He would have been stupid to listen. With the open and shut case against him, it was virtually certain he would have
been convicted and given life with no minimum. George, whose own legal fate rested on his son's decision to plead, remained silent.

Once he pleaded, the rest should have been easy. He was to attend court for a public showing of
mea culpa
. He was to sit behind glass with a sad face and moo-cow eyes while his lawyers said how sorry he was. They would say he thought the Moran family was out to kill him; that he would leave jail as an old man and would miss seeing his daughter Dhakota grow into an adult; and that he should receive a hefty discount because of his remorse.

But, against legal advice, Williams insisted on giving evidence. The move was so stupid that his own legal team made him sign a waiver that he was doing it against their expert advice.

For just about an hour he gave ridiculous testimony contradicting known facts. He denied ever being paid money for the Marshall hit by Mokbel and tried to discredit Crown witnesses who were to give evidence against some of his mates.

Perhaps Williams' attempt to protect Mokbel was motivated by more than mateship. The runaway drug boss had been paying his daughter's private school fees after Williams was locked up. He also knew that when Mokbel was caught, the convicted drug dealer would still be a major influence in the prison system. Carl knew Mokbel could be a good friend and a bad enemy.

Williams' testimony could not remain unchallenged. In the 90-minute cross-examination, prosecutor Geoff Horgan, SC, filleted him to protect the integrity of future Crown cases. Certainly, Justice King questioned whether Williams was showing any remorse for his actions.