Benji: Part1

life and crimes. It's been a season of twentieth anniversaries because over the last eighteen months two years, we've had so many anniversaries of the events that we now call the Underworld War or the Gangland War, or even the under Belly War. And coming up this week it's the twentieth anniversary of one of the biggest events of the Underworld War, and that is the shooting of Benji Venomon Andrew Venemon in a Carlton restaurant on the twenty third

of March two thousand and four. Now, the twenty third of March two thousand and four was a Tuesday, a fairly drowsy autumn afternoon in Melbourne, and it turns out, according to my colleague Mark Butler, who knows a lot of things about police related matters. It turns out that on that day the Purana Task Force, which of course was a specialist task force assembled to cope with the

Underworld War. The task Force had been busy all morning doing what it usually did, which was a surveillance of crooks, going through the product of surveillance. So they would have urdles of bugs on telephones, they'd have bugs on cars, they'd be doing all that sort of stuff. They'd also have specialist surveillance police following people, and they'd spent a lot of time going through that product and analyzing it, looking for patterns and connections and all the rest of it.

And of course, ultimately that amount of resources is what solved the Underworld War and got a lot of people behind bars. But at this stage in early two thousand and four, they had a string of unsolved murders behind them. They'd had six in two thousand and three alone, and it went all the way back in a particular chain of events to the death, the violent death of Mark Moran outside his home in Abbefeldi back in mid two thousand and two. So the police were like the boy

with the barrow. They had the job in front of them. On that afternoon, they were having a meeting at the Purana headquarters, and the meeting was really to swap ideas, swap a bit of underworld, a gossip and rumor, and basically compare notes on what they were achieving and how. And during the meeting, as happens when we have meetings anywhere, they bunk it down and talk to each other, and they tended to ignore phone calls because phone calls get

in the way of meetings. But at some point, shortly after two thirty that day to thirty pm, the phone in the inspector's office goes. It's a desk phone, and it rings. They ignore it because they're busy. Whoever's calling the phone doesn't give up. That person rings again and again, and the phone is starting to drive them mad. So of course, a senior person looks across at a junior

member of the task force. The junior member jumps up, walks into the boss's office, closes the door, picks up the phone, says hello, and as the other guys are watching him, they watch his body language and he stiffens up and looks very serious, and I think what's happened. And when he comes out of the office, he waves his hands, even though he's quite junior, this guy, this detective, waves his hands to sort of command the rest of the group to silence, and says, Benji Venamon's been shot

in Carlton, in a restaurant in Carlton. And the immediate reaction of most of those present was, well, that'll be bullshit, that'll be wrong. And they said, oh, yeah, who shot him? He said, mec Gatto, And there was a silence for a few seconds, and somebody called out, well, you better not be bullshitting. If this is a joke, it's not

a good joke. And it turns out he wasn't. Mick Gatto had, in fact shot Benji Venamon in very interesting circumstances in a very small storage area you could call it a room, but was more of a little corridor at the rear of La Porgella Italian restaurant, which is at the corner of Wrathdown and Faraday Streets in Carlton. And that was a landmark death in the Underworld War. It was allegedly at least an attempted hit by Venomon on gas. But if that were the case little Benji Venemon.

They're very prolific. Australia's busiest hit man had the tables turned on him by a much larger and much stronger man. What we all know is that Mick Gado was subsequently charged with murder and he was acquitted, and that is

something we'll go into as we explain this. The death of Benji Venamon, which we'll look into, was right up there in notoriety with the double shooting the previous winter of Jason Moran and he's unlucky mate, Patty Barbara, and of course everyone knows our listeners will know that Jason Moran, who was a target with his entire family actually of Carl Williams. He was silly enough to come back to Melbourne when he should have stayed overseas out of the way,

and he stayed out of the way very successfully. Because a lot of these career crooks are very good at account of surveillance. They get good at it from when they're teenagers. Essentially, they're taught how to do it by those around them and they're very difficult to follow and

to track and all that. But the people looking to kill him knew that Jason Moran would go to see his kids and other children playing football at particular venue, the cross Keys Park near the cross Keys Hotel in Essendon, and that is where they caught up with him after the game. As everyone knows, he got his kids and

I think something like ten others. There was a huge number of children all in this oz Kick footy team, put them in the back of his van and he and his mate Paddy Barbara, who just happened to be there with him watching the kids footy, are sitting in the front when a gunman armed with two weapons interestingly shot them dead. And of course some of those kids I think there were eleven in the back altogether were

spatted with blood, bone and brain matter. It was a shocking crime to do in public in daylight, not only in front of the public, but literally in a car full of kids. A terrible crime. That was one of the low lights or standouts of the Underworld War. But the shooting of benji Venamon in a restaurant in Carlton was the other one, not so shocking in its way, and also there were not a lot of tear shed for benji Venamon apart from his own loved ones. The

few people in his family and circle of friends. They loved him dearly naturally, but he was a violent and a erratic hit man. We're not sure how many people he killed, but I read a statement recently by a fellow criminal who knew him well, who said it seemed that he had killed a lot of people. Maybe he said a record, at least a record south of Queensland. There is a man in Queensland who is still alive who is reputed to have killed more than thirty people.

And I doubt that Benji, at the age of twenty eight, managed to do that many. But had he not fallen foul of mcgatto on that day, perhaps he would have because he was keen on it, very willing, clearly a sociopathic sort of guy who met his end probably because he was so willing to kill people. And in the end, those people that he considered his allies or colleagues or friends were just as wary of him as anyone else, because they realized that if the money was right, he'd

kill anyone. And that is a very dangerous reputation to have. So let's run through the two protagonists of this story. Now, we've got a great, big, strong, heavy weight metgatto now he's a heavyweights heavyweight. He was a heavyweight boxer once back in the day. Not an unbelievably good one, just a solid journeyman when he share of fights around Victoria.

But big, big, broad child of man. Even when he was fit, he was I think nudging the one hundred kilo mark probably or more probably, And by the time we're talking two thousand and four, he was a man that was probably walking around at something like one hundred and thirty plus killers. He was a very big guy and broad, and plenty of him. I'm not sure how high mcghatto is. He wouldn't be two meters high, but he'd be one one ninety odd probably big, big guy strong.

At that stage he was in his late forties. He'd still spar in his home gym. He could throw a big punch, he still had the you know, some of the reflexes that you get from boxing. And a guy that had essentially been able to make a living with a version of stand up at tactics for most of his adult life. So he's no pushover. In the red corner, ladies and gentlemen, we have Benji Venomon Bengji Venamon had been a flyweight kickboxer back in the mid nineties, so

ten years before he was shot dead. When he's eighteen, nineteen twenty, he's a kickboxer out of Sunshine. He's a little Greek guy. I'm not sure if his Greek straight Greek, Cypriot, Greek, whatever, but his parents were i think reasonably devout Greek Orthodox parents who had he and his siblings out there in Sunshine, Maine.

And he probably was always a small guy, and like a lot of small guys, he learned how to handle himself and was pretty fierce, pretty hard at it, like a blant And you know when he forty fifty two and a half killos, Now this is flyweight, it was a fly wait fighter fifty two and a half kilos. There are teenage jockeys, there are female jockeys, such as the apprentice Celine Gordray, who had to starve herself for two weeks to ride in the Newmarket handicap at fifty

two and a half kilos. That is how small Benji Venamon was when he was fit fifty two and a half and even after that, when he gave up boxing and took up eating and shooting people. He might have made, you know, fifty nine kilos. He was jockey size Jockey Waite.

Now these are two very different men. There's no doubt that Mick Gaddo, who is still out and about and doing the best he can, that he would know most movers and shakers in the Melbourne underworld and to some extent the Australian underworld, but especially Melbourne, and especially some pockets of Melbourne. And I would have said, you know, the Inner West, the Inner North and central area around

Carlton and the inner suburbs was his patch. Mic Gatto of course is famous, as you know, being one of the main men in what is called the Carlton or was called the Carlton Crew. By two thousand and four, Alfons Gangatano was long dead, Mark Moran was dead and Jason Marine was dead. So the ranks were starting to thin a bit in the Carlton Crew and that would have left Mick Ghadow as an even more dominating figure in that group. Gatdo doing what he did, which was

to notionally broker peace settlements between warring parties. You know, he would have builders on one side and unions and workers on the other and he would negotiate industrial settlements in talking marks. When developers would be having trouble getting their buildings built on time and on budget, they would pay Uncle Mick, you know, five thousand to have a cup of coffee, and then another large amount of money if he could settle something for them and thrash out

a compromise with unions or whatever it might be. So he was a guy that knew a lot of people, but ultimately some of the people he knew would have to be the sort of people that were willing, as they say in Underworld, willing to shoot people. And one of those people that he knew on his rise from the kickboxing ring was Benji Venemon, because Benji had moved on from the kickboxing into bodyguarding, standover that sort of stuff,

pinching cars, the usual sort of criminal progress. But Benji had shown a liking for guns and gunplay and showed that he was extremely willing to shoot people, and his reputation preceded him. And there is no doubt that people like Mick Gatto not only knew of him, but knew him because they made it their business to know people like Benji Venemon for good reasons. One is that they'd like to know if they saw him coming. And the other is that sometimes they might be able to advise

someone to throw a bit of work Benji's way. This is the way that underworld works. So you can rest assured that Mick Gatto knew plenty about Benji, even if he was later able to tell police that he hardly ever met him, etc. Etc. But in the underworld, most friendships are for sale. In the end, everyone's pretty well out for themselves to look after themselves and their own family,

and perhaps they're very closest friends. Outside that circle, they're pretty cold blooded and they take a coldly economic view of other members of the underworld. Last month's friend, ally colleague might become next year's enemy. And this happened with ghadow Envenoment, and it happened pretty well. Back in mid two thousand and two, there was a very ugly scene at this same restaurant, l'a Purcella, the one in the

corner of Rathdownen Faraday. Clearly it was the restaurant where business was done, and on this day in two thousand and two, there was a meeting of around ten very interesting figures underworld figures and among them was the Bulgarian drug dealer, evil bad, violent, nasty, brutal man called Nick Radev. Later ended up dead and he had an imported bodyguard. I bought a muscle a guy called Troy mccanty who

was from Perth. Troy mccanty was a member of the Coffin Cheet, his motorcycle gang in Perth and regarded him Perth as a very dangerous and capable stand over man and all the rest of it. And for Nick Radev to have him at this meeting probably meant something. What happened was there was a disagreement between Radev and the rising drug baron Tony Mockbell at this meeting in mid two thousand and two. And what happened next was Troy mccanty was slipped off the leash like a pitbull terrier

and he bashed Tony Mockbell after death. He really savagely bashed him. And at this meeting, apart from Mick Gaddo and others, there was a little Benji Venamon and Benji Venamon I'm not sure if he was there at the invitation of Mockbell. He may well have been their sort of bodyguarding it's hard to say, but in the event, he wasn't able to prevent mcanty from doing what he did, but he took Mockbell straight to a doctor to they say, a woman doctor that he knew, and she was able

to treat Mockbell and possibly haven't saved his life. He might have been bleeding a lot or whatever. He was in a bad way and Venamon was able to get him to treatment on time and pretty well save him. Now that connection built a relationship between those two, between Venomon and Mockbell, so that they were friendly after that. And this was a friendship which became probably a thorn in the side of people like Gatto who were in the carl And crew, because Mockbell was friendly with the

non Carlton crew people. Mockbell was friendly with Carl Williams. Carl Williams, of course, had started the whole Underworld War, the main bit of it as basically a vendetta of revenge after the Moran Brothers had shot him in the belly with a small pistol back in nineteen ninety nine. And really the whole Underworld War was a war of extermination paid for by Carl Williams, who sent various gunment out to bowl over his enemies, and one of his

gunmen was Venomin. His favorite gunment was Venomin. The fact that Venamon was increasingly friendly with mock Bell and hence with Carl Williams, meant that Gatto and his friends in the Carlton Crew would start to look at Venomin Askance as a potential enemy. Now, notionally, he's a freelance gunman, he's a gun for hire, but Gatto and those other fairly wise fairly seasoned crooks would realize that he was

potentially dangerous to basically anyone if someone paid him. And so there was an escalating sense of hostility and unease. And this came to some sort of head in early December two thousand and three, when Graham Kinneborough, alias the Munster, was shot dead outside his house towards midnight in Belmont Avenue in kew Kinneborough was a grandfather, lived a quiet life.

He was, as our listeners had been regarded as a genius safecracker, a career criminal, smart guy, not necessarily a violent man most of the time, probably had been once but not any more two wise for that, and he was shot dead in his own driveway by unknown assailants in December two thousand and three, and although the assailants at that point were unknown, later identified Kinnerborough's friends, including

Mick Gatto, who really liked Kinneborough. They saw it as an act of war by Carl Williams and his crew, and they saw Venomon as being part of that crew. Now, the the truth is that the police that were watching Venamon and watching all the bad guys at this point, within about a week or two, they knew from their surveillance product, you know, car staff for telephone tapes, all the rest of it, they knew that Venamon was nowhere

near Graham Kinniber's house and not Kinnebre was killed. So the police actually knew pretty quickly that Venamon had not pulled the trigger. However, even if Gatto had heard that from a friendly police source, which he might have, he knew very well that whoever paid somebody to pull the trigger on his friend Kinneburgh was probably Carl Williams, and

therefore that Venomon presented a threat, an ongoing threat. Only nine days after Kinnibur's shooting, they had a bit of a council of war and they called this Council of War in the Crown Casino. And the reason for that is the casino is absolutely full of surveillance cameras, and the warring parties knew that no sane person would take a gun into Grand Casino or produce it because you'd be seen and filmed and that'd be that. So it

was a safe space for all concern to meet and talk. Also, the noise in the bars there would make it very difficult or impossible for police or anyone else to record what they were saying, because the cacophony of noise would drown out things and they'd be able to talk into each other's ears without anybody hearing it. It's quite a

secure place. Of course, there are these security cameras which are filming them, and the police were very interested in that meeting, and they could see Carl Williams talking fairly guardedly with mcgaddow, and they could tell that it wasn't overly friendly. The police could also see from this footage that the end of the proceedings that little Venomin had reached up and kissed Gatto on the cheek like Hollywood gangster style. Bit hard when you're five foot six to

kiss a guy that's six foot five or something. But he did because he'd send the films. And although he's not a made man in the mafia, because he's a Greek boy, he did it anyway, which shows you these guys, you know, they watch too many movies. I suspect. The police were able to get a lipbreader to play back the security tapes on the cameras from the casino and to see what was actually said, and they were very

interested in this. The lipbretting experts were able to tell the police that Gatto told Williams Carl Williams, anything with you, that's your problem. But if anything comes my way, then I'll send somebody to you. I'll be careful with you. You be careful with me. I believe you, You believe me. Now we're even. That's a warning clear that this was although the language was reasonably careful, it was a warning.

And the warning, of course, although directed at Williams, who was the paymaster, was also for Venomin, the guy that Williams paid to knock off so many people. I don't know what mcado would make have been kissed by a crazy sawn off little Greek hitman, but he might have thought, having been to mass all those years with his mum, that it was a Judas kiss. In our next episode, we will show how this relationship went south, very quickly and very violently. Thanks for listening. Life and Crimes is

a Sunday Herald Sun production for true crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns, features and more, go to Heroldsun dot com dot au forward slash Andrew rule one word. For advertising inquiries, go to news podcasts sold at news dot com dot au. That is all one word news podcasts sold And if you want further information about this episode, links are in the description