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Australia – an island nation in the grip of a Crystal-Meth epidemic that triggered a war between ruthless outlaw motorcycle gangs and the cops. But there’s another player fuelling the lucrative meth business – the Triads. Drugs Inc s7e16: Aussie Ice Wars, 2012
He targeted the richest day in horseracing. And pulled off the biggest betting scam in the history of American sport. Masterminds: A Day at the Races, 2003
On Breeders’ Cup day 2002 one lucky better beat the odds and became the only winner of the Pick 6 Multi-Million Dollar Jackpot. ibid.
Mastermind Chris Harn had found a way to turn a 1,000,000 to 1 longshot into a $3,000,000 sure thing. ibid.
Armed with a degree in computer programming Chris Harn joins Autotote Systems. ibid.
He now manipulates the system to copy the winning serial numbers on to the test tickets. ibid.
His win turns out to be too big. ibid.
Autotote questions all employees. When Harn fails to explain his presence in the office on Breeder’s Cup Day he is immediately fired. ibid.
On a winter’s Saturday morning in 2003 ... Notorious gangster Jason Moran is sitting in his family van chatting with one of his men. In the back seat are five children including Moran’s six-year-old twins. A hired killer steps up to the car. Both men are assassinated. The killings are the latest and most brazen in a series of seventeen gangland murders over five years. They’ve been carried out on the orders of a man who’ll become known as a mass murderer, a killer with a perpetual smile, who never did his own dirty work but who paid others to ambush his enemies – Carl Williams. Australian Families of Crime s1e1: Carl Williams: Baby Face Killer, Nine Network 2010
In the late 1990s Carl Williams decides he wants a slice of the millions made from party drugs in Melbourne ... Carl’s new party drug generates enormous profits. ibid.
The Morans walk away laughing and suggest that he gets the bullet removed from his stomach and sends it back to them. ibid.
Their trial is delayed by a drugs squad corruption scandal. ibid.
Thompson is brazenly murdered in a crowded street. ibid.
Carl’s hitmen carry out the contract and shoot Michael Marshall outside his own home. ibid.
Carl Williams’ next target is the leader of the old guard of Melbourne’s underworld who are known as the Carlton Crew. ibid.
Lewis Moran’s public execution stirs a fresh wave of outrage. ibid.
On 19th April 2010 Carl Williams died from a heart attack after suffering traumatic injury caused by a brutal beating from a fellow inmate. ibid.
October 12 1988 is a stand-out date in the history of crime in Australia. On this day a line is crossed; a criminal taboo is broken. Two young constables are lured to Walsh Street, South Yarra in Melbourne and they’re executed. Australian Families of Crime s1e4: Mother of Evil: Pettingill
Police anger is immediately directed against one of the nation’s most ruthless criminal families: drug-dealers, rapists, armed robbers and murderers. All offspring of the notorious matriarch named Kath Pettingill. ibid.
Of her ten children five will become notorious criminals. ibid.
Kath is shot in the eye during an argument with two prostitutes. ibid.
Dennis – who by this time thinks he is all powerful and untouchable. His next murder is even more audacious. ibid.
Jason agrees to testify against his uncles. ibid.
Victoria Club Melbourne April 21 1976: Inside the Victoria Club in Queen’s Street, Melbourne, bookmakers and punters are meeting to pay off bets ... Security guards are delivering millions of dollars in cash. Australian Families of Crime s1e5: Dockers and Death
The Great Bookie Robbery was Australia’s largest single hold-up. ibid.
First in line for his cut – Les Kane – a member of the notorious Painters and Dockers Union whose reign over the Melbourne underground was at its peak in the 1970s. ibid.
Painters and dockers were frequently being murdered. ibid.
The three Kane boys were accomplished boxers. ibid.
Even the toughest cops were wary of [Ray ‘Chuck’] Bennett. ibid.
The bloody war that kills the Kane brothers and Ray Chuck Bennett has attracted a lot of media attention. ibid.
17,300. 1970 Sydney: too much blood on the streets had become an embarrassment to corrupt politicians and police who are paid to protect the city’s crime kings. Australian Families of Crime s1e6: Mr Bigs: Lenny McPherson & George Freeman
Rackets were divided between members of a powerful cartel of extortionists. ibid.
Lenny McPherson: a tough petty thief prone to fits of uncontrollable rage. ibid.
He met a small-time thief in George Freeman. ibid.
McPherson recorded a weekly underworld news report for police using an old tape recorder. ibid.
The tight links between McPherson and senior detectives undermined the public’s trust in the entire New South Wales police force and justice system. ibid.
Lenny McPherson killed again shooting a rival ten times. ibid.
New South Wales was awash with corruption. ibid.
Dozens of rival criminals were said to have been in the ocean off Sydney. ibid.
In 1991 George Freeman died of heart failure. ibid.
Lenny McPherson was finally arrested and sentenced to four years in prison. ibid.
On a hot February evening in 1986 a gang of five suburban thugs are drinking at a hotel near Blacktown in western Sydney. They are burglars, armed robbers and rapists. One is also an escaped prisoner on the run. At the same time forty kilometres away ... Anita Cobby, a twenty-six-year-old nurse and former beauty queen, is having dinner at a city restaurant with two of her workmates. Within a few hours she will be abducted by the gang, tortured, raped and murdered. Australian Families of Crime s1e8: Blood Brothers: the Anita Cobby Killers
Anita Cobby’s abduction in Newton Road is witnessed by two teenagers. ibid.
The murder makes international news. ibid.
The defendants shock Australia with their callous attitude – laughing and sniggering in the dock. ibid.
What made you think you had a fucking choice? Dirty Deeds 2002 starring Bryan Brown & Toni Collette & John Goodman & Sam Neill & Sam Worthington et al, director David Caesar, Barry
I’ve got everything under control. ibid.
You’re a bloody natural. ibid.
We got our own people in the government. Why else d’ya think we’d be fighting this war in the middle of nowhere? We set it up ... They’re all working for us and they don’t even know it. And d’ya know why? Heroin ... We got a ready-made market ... The whole thing’s set up ... We’re making a killing. ibid. Sal
Graham Abo Henry: I went bang! Just knocked him down. I had no other thought in my mind ... I went fucking crash!’
Reporter: So what did it feel like when you drove that knife into his throat? Sydney’s Underworld Enforcer, Vice 13.17
Violence has always been part of my life. I’ve been in streetfights, lost friends to gang violence and family the war. As a nation violence is justified, demonised and glorified. I want to explore violence but to do so I must understand our relationship to it. ibid.
Underworld enforcer Graham Abo Henry terrorised the streets of Sydney throughout the ’80s and ’90s. Together with his partner Neddy Smith they were involved in murders, commercial heroin operations and large scale robberies. Their gang was given the green light by the North South Wales police, allowing them to commit any crime they wanted as long as they shared the loot, kept civilians out of the way and didn’t kill any officers. But Graham couldn’t help himself; after a night of drinking he cut the throat of a police prosecutor. ibid.
‘There was [police] corruption at both senior and junior levels.’ ibid.
‘Violence served me, that was for sure.’ ibid. Henry
‘I wasn’t allowed to talk to the police. That is the code of the Australian underworld.’ Drug Lords s1e4: The Pettingill Clan: Australia’s Heroin Dynasty, Kath, Netflix 2018
Melbourne 1985: Australia’s second largest city is in economic and financial overload. But a rapid heroin epidemic is sweeping the city of three million fuelled by a nearly endless supply of cheap product from south-east Asia. Kath Pettingill and the lawless members of her offspring are capitalising on the thriving market. ibid.
‘I was never aware that Dennis was a police informant.’ ibid. Kath