Frank Benvenuto tried to call Victor Pierce and couldn't get through, and then he died. Four minutes later, Victor Pierce called him back and said, oh sorry, mate, missed your call, but it was too late. Frank the greengrocer was brown bread.
Police were called and.
They pulled both bodies out of the river, and they concluded that this was secret mobster men's business. The clue was that Medici's ears had been cut off and he was shot twice in the head and stabbed in the stomach. I'm Andrew Rules's Life and Crimes. It's twenty five years since a guy called Frank ben Venuto was shot dead driving his blue Holden Statesman sedan very close to his
home down in Beau Morris. I think he was pulling a load of rubbish to the tip and probably was backing out of his drive and was slowly turning a corner nearby. But whichever it was, he was going slowly enough a hit man with a pistol was able to step up beside him and shoot him. I think in the neck. I don't know that it hit him in the head because he lasted a few minutes, and we know that because he tried to call his own pet gunman, a guy called Victor Pierce. And we all know about
Victor Pierce. He came to a bad end, as they all do. But this guy, Frank ben Venuto, tried to call Victor Pierce and couldn't get through and then he died. Four minutes later, Victor Pierce called him back and said, oh sorry, mate, missed your call, but it was too late. Frank.
The greengrocer was brown bread. That shooting was on May the eighth of the year two thousand, so twenty five years ago, as we're speaking at the minute in our studio, and it turns out that May is actually a very dangerous month for mafia figures and their associates around on Melbourne, because just eight days after that shooting, another mafia associate, not actually a mafia member, but a guy who rubbed shoulders with the mafia, a standover man, gunman all round,
no good guy, a guy called Richard Vladanitch. He was shot dead at the Esquire Motel in Saint Kilda, and although it's never been proven who shot him, it is understood that one of the last people to see him alive was a mister Rocco Arico, who most certainly was associated with the likes of Frank ben Venuto and the Mirror Toures and various other members of families which some
people would associate with mobsters. Now Rocco Arico, as most of our listeners will recall, is currently in prison for quite a long time, and when he gets out of prison, if he's unlucky, he may well be deported back to Italy, because he's one of those unfortunate people who came to this country as a very small child, probably grew up
almost with English as his first language. Really, who's an Australian in every other way except for his citizenship, And he could face being deported when he gets out of jail. And one of the things that police hold against him is the possibility, if not the likelihood, that he had a lot to do with the death of Richard Ladnich
and many other things. But we'll see what happens. One of the problems the police and the prosecutors have in that case is that Rocque Arico could be the only person left alive who was around on the night of May sixteen, in the year two thousand, around the Esquire Motel where Richard Ladinich was shot dead. I think it's fair to say that other people at the police suspective
possibly being involved. These would include Dino Dibbrah, the late Dino Dibbrah, the late Mark Morhan, and the late Carl Williams.
They're all dead, That's why we say late.
Now. No matter who pulled the trigger on Richard Madnich, you'd have to say that he was the sort of guy that wasn't mourned much or by many people. Of course, he would have had a mother somewhere and a sister or brother somewhere, but it wasn't as if he had one of those massive funerals where everybody loved him and cried and all that stuff, because he was a very violent, unpredictable and in some respects unlovable person. You would say,
even in Pentridge he had that reputation. They call him mad Richard in Penridge Prison, which was full of mad people. This contrasts with two other people, two wholesale vegetable market identities well known to the ben Venuto family, who were greatly missed by their loved ones even before.
The police knew they were dead.
That double murder happened sixteen years before the killings of Benvenuto and Ladinich, But like theirs, it happened in May, which of course is just a coincidence, May and May. What's not a coincidence is that these two dead guys, the ones we are going to talk about in just a moment, they were Calabrians, well known to the Benvenuto
crime family. These murders came to light on May the sixth of nineteen eighty four when an angler fishing in the Murrumbidgee River near Griffith thought he took the biggest murray cod in the river system. In fact, it wasn't a murray cod, It wasn't a log, it wasn't a bullock.
It was the.
Body of Rocco Medici, who had traveled to Griffith with his extremely unlucky brother in law, Giuseppe Farina, just a few days earlier. Police were called and they pulled both bodies out of the river, and they immediately concluded that this was secret mobster men's business. The clue was that Medici's ears had been cut off and he was shot
twice in the head and stabbed in the stomach. It was widely reported then and since that these men have been tortured before they were murdered, and I think he would have cut the ears off Rocco Medici as a symbolic warning. It was the custom of the Calabria mafia, the real name of which is Danghetta, to cut off ears if it was said that the victim had been hearing too much. He had been listening too much. Other people might have their tongue cut if they talk too much,
and so on. Others perhaps had their eyes pulled out because they saw too much. You get the drift. So the mutilation of Roco Medici's body was a message to all of the mafia members and family and associates. Don't do what this guy did, or you could end up like him. The other guy was very stiff in every respect because his name was such as Seppie Farina, and his only connection really was that he was Rocco Medici's
brother in law. And when Roco Medici was lured the Griffith on a promise, a false promise of a drug deal, that this other guy, his brother in law, went up for the ride, just went for the trip, a trip to the country, and when they got there they were either met by the killer killers or they went with them.
I'm not clear which way it happened, because no one really has explained that, but clearly they did run into I believe, two people, one of them who may well have driven them up was a guy called Joe Rossi. Now Joe Rossi was in fact a henchman of the Benvenutos, and Rossi was dying of cancer many years later, about twenty four years later, in two thousand and eight, and he actually supposedly made a deathbeg confession to an unknown person who spoke to police I think later, and said,
I was there when these two guys were killed. I didn't do it, but I was there. I was present, and the killer, the shooter, the gunman was a Calabrian gunman who is still alive and still living in Melbourne at that time two thousand and eight.
And possibly Joe Rossi had.
Some sort of guilty conscience about the whole thing, because he said that when he realized that this guy roc O Medici, who he'd helped set up to be murdered, when he realized he had a second person with him who had nothing to do with it, it worried him and he called he called his boss in Melbourne, Liboio Benvenuto, the old Godfather. Now this is the father of Frank, the one we mentioned earlier that was shot dead in
the year two thousand. Liboreo was the big godfather back in the day from the nineteen sixties until his death in nineteen eighty eight. And it was Liborio who ordered the death of Roco Medici. And he did that because in nineteen eighty three, just the year before this double killing, the Boreo's four WLL drive car was blown sky high with JELLYG. Knight at the Melbourne Fruit and Vegetable Markets. I think it was parked outside somewhere and up it went.
And whether he was supposed to be in it or whether it was just a warning to him, it would appear that there was a lot of unrest about who should be running the Melbourne markets and who should be the big boss and therefore getting the most money out of the rackets that they ran at the markets, and Laboreo, although he told the police that he had no enemies and that he had many friends and that he had no idea who blew his car up, it would appear that he actually blamed Rocco Medici and a sort of
a splinter group of the Collabrium mafia, and that he arranged for Roco Medici to be killed and have his ears cut off in order to send a lesson to the others. And it was Joe Rossi, a henchman of his a driver. I think he described as like a bodyguard guy who did the sort of dirty work of conning Medici to go to Griffith. But when Rossi's faced with this dilemma of Giuseppe Farina turning up, he sneaks off and calls Bernuto the Boreo, the Boss, the Godfather.
It says, Boss, we's that effect. There's another guy here, his brother in law. What do I do about him? He's got nothing to do with it. And apparently what Laboio ben Bernuto said was bad luck. He's just a guy that's in the wrong place at the wrong time. He's got to go to because he's going to be a witness. So they both got killed and that was that, which tells you the cold bloodedness of the brotherhood. The
brothers aren't all that good to each other. When push comes to shove, and he becomes an interesting point that I've never forgotten. When the New South Wales police hooked the guys out of the river and identified them and then contacted their Victorian police to tell the families the next of kin. The Victorian police go around and knock on the doors of these two dead guys in East Keelor. I think they lived, certainly one of them did. I
think they both did. And when they knocked on the doors at these two houses, the doors were opened by in both cases widows who were in tears and wearing black already they knew before the Victorian police knew that their husbands were dead. And that is how it works inside the Calabriam mafia. No one says nothing, but they know very well what's going on. And that is an insight into the workings of the Calabrium mafia that we've
seen before in different ways. I think we've told the story before, but we might repeat it that when a trotting trainer just outside Melbourne, east of Melbourne out at officer I think it was out near Crambon when he fell foul of the mafia guys who were rigging races in the harness racing shock horror. They rigged racist at the harness racing in the bad old days. This a good old trainer. He actually won a race on it Merits without stopping his horse or doing whatever it was
that the mafia guys wanted him to do. And next thing his stable is set alight, which was very sad because it burnt to death several horses, a whole heap of horses. It was in the evening, I think it was just in the early evening that this happened. And he just put the horses in a fraction early. It might have been a cold night and he put them in a faction early and he'd gone up to the house a bit earlier than he usually would, or else he would have been in the stable as well and
he could have been burnt. It was a terrible crime and the you know, the police were most concerned about it. The family were outraged. It was a terrible thing and the police had a fair idea who you know, who was behind this or could be behind it, and they said, that's the Godfather up near Mildura. And so four police got in a car and they drove to Milderier to see the Godfather, not Laboreo of in Venuto, a different
Godfather altogether. This was a mill dura Godfather. And when they got up there, they go out to the Godfather's big house, which is by way of being called a grass castle, as they call them up there, because they're very big, massive, expensive, you know, ninety three squares of bad taste houses that cost a lot of money to build, because these guys got a lot of cash to spend on tradesmen. And the reason they've got a lot of cash to spend on tradesmen is that they sell a lot of marijuana.
Was really what they did. Mostly.
They call it up there, they call it Calabrian corn. And when they get out to the Godfather's house, they drive a long and tiring journey, you know, many hours driving. They drive up the drive, long drive, and they pull up in their dusty police car and they get out and they go in and there's the Godfather and he opens the door before they even knock on it. He says, hello John, Hello Andrew, Hello Sergeant Smith, and hello Brett or whatever he named them all. And then he said,
come in and have a cup of coffee. You've had a very very exhausting trip. And he said you, of course, John will have a short black, and you Brett will have a flat white, and you Charlie will have a latte and so on. What he was showing them was he knew their names, he knew they were coming, he knew their names, and he knew what coffees they drank. And this was a very chilling reminder to these guys that the Godfather had more information about them than they
had about him. And that really did put a bit of a chill on these guys about the way they proceeded with that investigation, because it probably made them think, well, if he can burn down a stable full of horses, you know, four hundred kilometers from here, and he knows who we are and what coffees we drink, there's a lot of other stuff he could do as well. And I think it might have slowed them down a bit.
That's according to one of the police who told me the story one of the guys that went there, and I've never forgotten it, and it is a reminder in all these Collabrian stories of what goes on behind the scenes from Mildeura back to the Murum Bidjie. So when the police pull the bodies out, they realize that not only the ears are hacked off roc O Medici, but that he's been a shot a couple of times in the head, and that he's been stabbed in the stomach. And what I think my take on that is that
it wasn't actually torture. It was probably an attempt to make sure that that body didn't float. That they tend to rip the guts open in something that they don't want to float, so that it won't bloat. If the stomach he's cut open, it won't the body bloat and won't float. Why they didn't do it to the other fellow, I don't know, or maybe they did and it just wasn't reported. I don't know.
Interesting thing, I doubt.
It was actually an active torture might have been hard to know. The fact that this was essentially a Victorian mafia murder but it occurred interstate in Griffith, in the River area in New South Wales shows you how difficult it is for interstate police to get a grip on things. Because it's the New South Wales police that have called to the event, you know, some days after it's happened. Whatever, they haul out the bodies, they've got to do the
coronial thing and all the rest of it. Then they've got to pass it to the Victorian police to investigate who might have had a motive to do it and who actually did it.
So it just is.
Another layer of complication for the police that they don't need when they're dealing, you know, with mafia people who are fairly efficient at what they did and also extremely good at staying quiet about it. The tradition of omita of silence was taken very seriously by nearly all of these people, particularly in that era. This is forty odd years ago now and it was a different generation and they took.
Their vows very seriously.
Of course, Victorian detectives had the same problems when they were investigating Frank ben Venuto's death that won in bo Morrison the year twenty twenty five years ago. There were plenty of people around who might have had a grudge against Frank, including friends and relatives of his estranged brother in law, the late Alfonso Muratore. And I say the late because he had been shot dead in Hampton just a few years earlier, not in May, though he was shot in August I think, so that was a little
bit different. But Alfonso Miratore was a member of a basically a Victorian mafia family, and he, like a lot of people in those families, married sort of inside the clan. He married a ben Venuto girl.
He married one of.
The godfather's daughters, as in Laboreo Benvenuto, as in the guy who had his car blown up, as in the guy who ordered the murders of the two guys in Griffith. Alfonso married that guy's daughter. Now that's good if you want a big wedding and you want to have a bit of spending money, and you want to have big Sunday lunches and kiss people on the cheeks and all that good mafia stuff. It's wonderful. But it brings with
it some pressures. And one of the pressures that brings is a there's pressure on Alfonso to step up and take part in the home sort of mafia ritual and maybe take over a role in the crime family. And there's also another problem. Those a you guys lived by a very strict moral code in the sense that while a lot of them were a bit inclined to have girlfriends on the side, tony soprano sort of stuff, they were very much against marriages, breaking up, etc. And Alfonso
Mirotore was sort of the modern young guy. I think he was probably born in Australia at came when he was two years old or something, and he took it upon himself to leave his wife, the godfather's daughter. And this went down like a lead balloon. I was going to say like something in a swimming pool, but no, like a lead balloon. And he also put another hole
in his manners. Apart from his personal bedroom adventures, his other problem was that he had approached Cole's or Cole's as it was, who you know, they run big supermarkets, and he told in a very secret meeting, really secret, really dangerous high level staff, he said, you guys have been paying millions a year to subsidize a racket because and he explained to them the racket that there's a fifty cents per case of fruit and vegetables at the
wholesale market payable to the mafia and have been paid on every case, every day of the year for decades. And this ran into millions of dollars a year. This little tax, not a little tax, really are quite a hefty tax that the mafia guys imposed on the wholesale
fruit and vegetable market. How they did this is that they had corrupt buyers from the supermarkets, and the corrupt buyers from the supermarkets were told, you will only buy from these suppliers, that the wholesaler there, that one and that one, you won't buy from the others.
And what it was that those wholesale suppliers.
Were paying the fifty cents to the mafia to get favored status. And of course the mafia guys would pay a backhanded to the Coals and other supermarket buyers. They give them a backhander for going along with it and buying from their favored suppliers. It was all very cozy, and it was all very corrupt, and in the end it was costing the supermarket's money, and that money was being passed on to the consumer. You know, every time you bought a banana, there was a built in cost
on it. Not a lot per banana, of course, but it all adds up. Alfonso Miro Torre Bright Young Spark thought it was a good idea to talk to Coals about this and to come up with an alternate plan. Now I don't know what his idea was. I don't think he was doing it because he's just a really good bloke and a really honest plug. I think probably he was saying, you're spending millions a year on this
fifty cents a case racket. I can source you wholesale fruit and vegetables a bit cheaper than that, but you've got to deal with me or something. He was basically selling out the mafia, his own family and friends and associates in order to enrich himself. Now, this is a very high of his strategy. If you've also left the godfather's daughter to live with your ossie skip girlfriend whose name was Karen Mansfield, in the same suburb where they all live, this was really rubbing people's nose in it.
So there were quite a few people who weren't fond of Alfonso Miratore, which is why in nineteen ninety two, Alfonso Miratore gets out of bed with Karen Mansfield and says, see you, lay of love. I'm off to the markets again. It's two am or whatever time they go to the market and he steps outside. I think with Karen Mansfield's stepfather, he has outside to.
Get in his car.
Next thing, kabluey, there's a couple of shotgun blasts and he's shot extremely dead in Hampton, and this had happened an exact facsimile of his own father's death. His father, Vince Mirrortore, had been shot dead with a shotgun in the same suburb of Hampton at two o'clock in the morning when he was going to the market back in nineteen sixty four. Back in nineteen sixty four, Alfonso's dad, Vince Mirrortore, big wheel in the Melbourne mafia market business.
He's going to work and he gets shot with a shotgun. History repeated itself. Both father and son, their murders remain unsolved, and they are cold cases that will remain cold, probably forever. It's just one of those funny things. Now the mirror Toure's father and son killed twenty eight years apart. They were not killed in May, which is unusual because other people were. And we're just getting to a couple. One was a Calabrian green grocer called Joe Kuadara. Now Joe,
a lot of our listeners will remember this. He was shot dead outside a two rak supermarket. Now this is this is not out in Thomastown somewhere, listeners, this is tu Rak. It was in Track and he was there. He was about to open up the green grocery part of the supermarket very early in the morning to unload a truckload of green groceries and somebody pops up and shoots him, and that was very sad. His name Joe Quadhara. His name is interesting. This happened on May the twenty eighth,
nineteen ninety nine. His name is interesting because there was also involved in the fruit and veggie market, another man.
Called Joe Quadhara.
And what the police to this day I believe aren't sure of is whether the killers intended to shoot the Joe Kuadaro who got shot, or whether they mixed him up, whether he was just an average Joe and they meant to shoot the other one. It wouldn't be the first time that a gangland target had been murdered by mistake if that's what happened. But it's unclear. Because both these
guys were Calabrian greengrosser market guys. They both involved, to a gag or lesser extent in the doings of the wholesale fruit and veggie market, and it was possible that somebody had a grievance against either of them, so we'll never be sure why he was shot or if it was a mistake. The police are fairly confident that the person that did the shooting was probably Andrew Veneman, the
late Benji Venamon. They're pretty confident that he was the guy that shot Frank ben Veernuto over in Bow Morris, and they're fairly sure that Benji Veneman was also responsible for shooting Victor Pierce. Victor Pierce was the one we mentioned fifteen minutes ago. He was the gunman, Ozzie gunman, bag guy, Wall Street killer, thoroughly bad unit. He was the guy that Frank ben Ernudo tried to call as Frank was dying after he was shot, and the relationship
there was not a cozy one. It says that Victor Pierce was a gun for hire and he acted as a heavy for ben Veernudo around the market. You know, he'd stalk around with the gun and lean on people and all the rest of it. It could be that somebody somewhere, one of the ben Venudo family might have thought that Victor Pierce might have flipped their brother Frank and sold Frank down the river, and that maybe Victor Pierce had double crossed his employer, Frank Benvenuto, because these
things do happen in the underworld. There is no real loyalty except to greed and to money. And amazingly, exactly two years after Frank Benvenuto was shot in by Morris, Victor Pierce is shot in his car in Bay Street, Port Melbourne in May two thousand and two. The smart money says that Andrew Veneman did that as well. He did them all they reckon. But what the police were really interested in knowing is who paid him to do it,
who was involved in the conspiracy. In the end, venomin was just a rat bag trigger man who was rattling his cage, who was paying him And interestingly, about six years afterwards, the police arrested some people over the Victor Pierce murder and one of the people they arrested was Vince ben Venuto, brother of Frank, son of Laboreo and a middle aged mafia figure. Of middle aged mafia figure, and he was put under intense pressure to talk about what he knew about the shooting of Victor Pierce and
why and all that he said exactly nothing. One of the main suspects at the time was a fellow called Mick Gatto, but it was never prosecuted because there was never any useful evidence forwarded about who planned it.
A prosecution was pulled off successfully.
Against Farouk Ormond now fruk Rman was allegedly.
The police alleged that he was the.
Getaway driver for Andrew Bennerman and that he had pulled up in a I think a Holden Commodore and driven off nice and slowly, as you must if you are getting away from a hit. Do not speed away, do not run red lights. Drive a white Commodore or another plane car, probably a Toyota Camry would be a good choice. Will be white in color, and use your blinkers. Don't speed, turn left, turn right, do everything nice and slow so
you don't stand out. And that's what happened. But Fruit Corman was indeed arrested for his alleged to part in this murder plot, this hit. But he was convicted partly on the evidence of the information that flowed from lawyer x Nicola Gobbo and as our devoted listeners and readers of the Herald Son will know, as a result of that, fru Corman, through the work of a very energetic advocate. He was released from prison. Several years later, his conviction
was overturned. He was released from prison. I'm not sure if he's got a big payout now. He may well have got a payout anyway. He ended up, of course, in the welcoming arms of the CFMEU. And just for the record, Vince ben Venuto, who may still be with us, be reasonably old now. But Vince was not convicted. He was acquitted and released and he lives a quiet life these days. One hopes there's not a lot of morals
in the fruit and vegetable market mafia. But if there is a moral in this story, this is it that fruit and vegetables are good for you, but only if you eat them instead of trying to corner the market. As for the month of May, it's the one month of the year when Melbourne mobsters ought to consider a trip to Vegas or Chicago or New York or anywhere that's safer than Melbourne. 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 Sun dot com dot au forward slash Andrew rule. One word.
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