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00:12they didn't start out as killers they were stick-up artists professional shoplifters
00:20pickpockets and stand-over guys the bottom rungs of the Melbourne underworld ladder
00:28but somewhere along the line it all changed when the underworld needed contract killers
00:34they signed up without hesitation there are five million stories in the naked city this is one of
00:52them it was a very very clinical clean execution of two people in their own home
00:59it wasn't committed by the people that we'd been tracking so closely they weren't part of this
01:05murder so who was pillows had been placed over their heads to muffle the shots from the heavy
01:11caliber handgun you know in its own way it was bizarre we didn't know what the target was we're
01:17talking about armed offenders serious armed robbers that's what they did for a living moving on to be
01:22hitman is just an extension of that because it's easy money for them pick up a gun take a contract
01:28out who do we know that would be able to provide the information we needed barwin prison goes into
01:36lockdown one thing you could say about carl williams was he just knew so much the piranha task force has
01:44been digging for days we had an archaeologist with us cadaver dogs and we searched everywhere
01:50carl williams was the cornerstone of the case if carl williams is talking what is he going to say
01:57about me without carl williams there was no case
02:27i went through uniform general duties and i loved it in the late 70s early 80s most general duties
02:37police officers aspired to become detectives and i was i was one of those
02:45and i became exposed to the homicide squad detectives and i was just so impressed by them
02:54the way that they would turn up to a murder scene their professionalism and i watched them
03:02do their thing and that was probably what uh convinced me that this is what i wanted to do
03:17my name is sarah morse and i'm a detective inspector currently in charge of our human source
03:22management unit i worked with sol solomon at the petra task force um and sol was a great person
03:28to learn from we would travel around victoria going to speak to older criminals and sol would have a
03:34story for every town that we went through about you know particular murders he'd investigated in every
03:39town so it was always very interesting to work with sol
03:49secrets of the past had laid dormant until now carl williams the self-declared premier was behind bars
03:58he was serving life with a 35-year non-parole period a sentence made heavier by the fact that those
04:06once
04:06closest to him had turned witness in the end the code meant little they lined up to testify
04:15trading loyalty for leniency but carl wasn't done if flipping worked for them
04:22he figured it might work for him too with carl's information cold cases could be reopened
04:30leads revisited and missing pieces found providing critical breakthroughs
04:37in these mysteries of melbourne's underworld
04:55terry hodson terry was a a larger than life character he was this big um affable sort of a guy
05:03quick-witted like to tell jokes he lived with his wife christine they had three children
05:13he was well liked by people that knew him but he was a he was a major drug dealer a
05:21main player in
05:22the drug scene and he was also a prolific police informer for the drug squad
05:30he was playing both sides of the fence
05:36he was involved in the dublin street burglary a house where drugs were being manufactured
05:44it came under the notice of the drug squad they were watching it for quite some time
05:50terry hodson and another fellow broke in looking for money and drugs
05:57terry hodson's arrested at the scene after he was arrested for the burglary in dublin street
06:04he provided a statement to victoria police because some further information had
06:10come to light indicating that there was uh police involvement in it
06:18in that statement he nominated the two police members were behind the plant to
06:22burglary the house where the drugs were made
06:26paul dale was a detective sergeant at the drug squad part of his team was dave meeschel
06:32terence hodson had been a police informer for dave meeschel and paul dale
06:38all that information from terence hodson was contained in what was known as his informer file
06:44and his informer file had been stolen from the drug squad office where it was kept by paul dale
06:50and had been circulated throughout the criminal community simon overland is dealing with rats in
06:56his own ranks people sometimes let you down and that's what's happened here police say at least
07:02one officer is behind the leaks terence hodson had been exposed as a police informer which put his life
07:11at risk there were a large amount of people who knew that terence hodson had been providing
07:16information about them to the police which meant there was a large amount of people who had a
07:20motive to harm terence hodson criminals do inform other criminals but it's a highly risky business
07:30informing to police
07:33he was offered witness protection but he didn't uh he didn't want it terence and christine hodson
07:40were really committed to staying in their own home and didn't accept any help from the police about
07:44relocating or changing their names or moving interstate just didn't want to be part of it
07:53he took his chances
08:08we were called to a double murder in harp road q
08:15it was a very very clinical clean execution of two people in their own home
08:23they were both found lying side by side on their stomachs with their hands out in front of them
08:29and they'd both been executed by way of shots to the back of their head
08:40nothing was disturbed in the house no forced entry i realized that it would take a very very unique
08:49killer to be able to get himself into someone's home and i thought to myself well who who do we
09:00know
09:01that would be able of pulling a job off like that
09:06i recall a terrible double murder in 1987 a couple by the names of dorothy and raymond abbey
09:29raymond abbey was known to police for relatively minor matters and his wife dorothy was the homemaker
09:39they were murdered in their own home in the middle of the night by three people dressed up as police
09:48getting entry to the house by saying that they had a search warrant
09:53the abbey murders had taken place because abbey was suspected to have been an informant for the police
10:03pillows had been placed over their heads to muffle the sound of a number of shots
10:08from what police believe was a heavy caliber handgun both were in night attire and there was no sign
10:13of a struggle it was horrific
10:17but as it turned out they just never got the evidence
10:23looking at the nature of the hodsons and the abbeys nothing was disturbed in the house
10:31no forced entry and they'd both been executed the mo was so similar
10:39one day i was at home and i was reading the age and you'd written an article about rodney collins
10:48and i was reading through the article and as i'm reading through the article it suddenly dawned on me
10:59rodney collins rodney collins rodney collins was a bit of an enigma very difficult to work out and
11:12someone that you should never turn your back on he clearly had the reputation as a gun for hire and
11:18would do it for money he had immense disliking of police but an absolute hatred of police informers
11:27rod collins is a person who only was interested in rod collins and what he could do to manipulate
11:32people around him i never felt at ease in his company i always felt as if he was trying to
11:39get into
11:39my head he was a cocky little man that's for sure had no fear at all he's a narcissist he
11:47believes
11:47he's the smartest person in the room he did not care about the suffering of another person he only
11:53cared about himself he has absolutely no sympathy or empathy for anything
12:07still to come in the naked city the execution of terence and christine hodson ties together police
12:15corruption and some of victoria's most infamous criminals carl williams is talking and some very
12:20serious criminals started to wonder am i at risk it may be the breakthrough that solves a 10-year-old
12:28gangland murder mystery he's the only person that would be able to pull something off like that
12:33without the nerve to do it that's what he wanted to do more than anything else he had a hatred
12:39of the
12:39police nobody frightened me in a courtroom until he did carl had started to talk and when carl talked
12:53detectives listened he was sitting on information that could rattle the foundations of several major
12:59investigations none more explosive than the murders of terence and christine hodson
13:08the hodson's were shot dead in their queue home both were shot twice at close range to the back of
13:14the head found face down in front of the couch terence hodson was due to give evidence against two
13:19former detectives before hodson was executed
13:25but the leafy eastern suburb of kew had more than one investigation on the go
13:31just down the road another case was being worked on from five months earlier and it too had carl's
13:36handiwork written all over it 62 year old career criminal graham allen kinember arrived at his home
13:43in belmont avenue queue just after midnight when he was shot several times graham kinember's murder was a
13:50significant escalation in the war he was one of the most respected criminals in melbourne he was part of the
13:57establishment and a good friend of mick ghetto graham kinner had been out shopping and was coming home
14:04and as he pulled up towards his house two gunmen emerged and shot him dead obviously saw the criminals
14:13coming at him and uh fired one shot before uh before they mowed him down it looked like a professional
14:19hit
14:21graham kinnerborough's murder was not an easy one to solve it wasn't committed by the people that we'd
14:29been tracking so closely and ultimately that became a cold case
14:38i was given the investigation when i arrived at piranha this was really different because there wasn't a
14:44great amount of witnesses there were people who had gunshots but nobody really saw somebody in the
14:49street that night so the investigation relied heavily on a statement from the runner who had been
14:57arrested and charged with several murders and then decided to become a police witness
15:03most statements that we take from people we do then set out to corroborate independently as well
15:09in his statement he says that he was actually tasked by carl williams to kill graham kinnera but he had
15:16several other murders on the go at the time that he was also planning and so in the end he
15:21outsourced
15:21or subcontracted this murder to terence bluart and stephen asling
15:28stephen asling was a very violent career criminal he had spent very little time outside of prison he had
15:35committed defenses from a very early age does seem to be a training ground that you would start with
15:41armed robbery and very easily progress to murder
15:49name's bruce knight i was a member of the victoria police from 1973 to 2010 of that time i had
15:5718 years
15:58with the special operations group the primary role of the special operations group was counter
16:07terrorism and deal with high risk offenders or do tasks that were beyond the capability of
16:17other members of victoria police members of the special operations group have a variety of skills
16:23weapons weapons skills entry technique surveillance communication so they can carry out any duties
16:31that do come up early july 1992 victoria police approaches for operation thorn
16:48to work on normie lee stephen bachie and stephen asling who they suspected were going to commit
16:56armed robberies surveillance had been following them and they'd shown interest in telemarine and went
17:03out there and would surveil and watch the ants at freight terminal
17:11we had 21 sog members deployed in a variety of locations the offenders parked adjacent to the front of the
17:21answered air freight
17:22we saw an armor guard truck drive into the air freight terminal and back up to the front door
17:29and they were unloading bags out the back of the armored car
17:35two men with masks on were seen running towards the armored car they then grabbed a bag each of money
17:44and a white panel van reversed up the offenders with masks and guns were out of the armor guard van
17:51heading towards the white ford panel van i gave the order for them to be intercepted
17:58asling then floored the car as he took off with such haste normie lee and bachie fell out of the
18:05back of the van stumbled to the ground jumped up surrounded by sog members they then pointed their weapons
18:12at the sog members and both were shot asling took off in the van
18:21one of the sog vehicles could see the white panel van approaching them they crossed the median strip
18:27and rammed the white ford panel van head on at a speed of about 80 kilometers an hour
18:35he was bounced around in the car they got him out put him on the ground and handcuffed
18:47just before 2pm two bandits entered the anset freight terminal adjoining the main airport complex
18:53and ordered two armor guard personnel and several staff to lie on the floor the robbers armed with
18:59magnum revolvers and wearing rubber masks seized a large amount of cash and were leaving the building
19:04when police swooped bachie was wounded several times and normally was hit twice normally subsequently died
19:15at the scene bachie was taken to hospital for treatment for gunshot wounds in the back of the
19:23white panel van they had two military semi-automatic assault rifle we believe that their plan was if
19:30they'd been followed by anybody they would have just kicked the back door of the van open
19:34and open up on whoever was behind them 32 year old steven john asley one of the alleged bandits in
19:42yesterday's thwarted million dollar cash and gold bullion robbery appeared in the city court today
19:49a number of armed robbers as their confidence grow go on to bigger and better things and i think moving
19:55on to be hitman is just an extension of that because it's easy money for them
20:06steven asling is similar to rod collins in that sense of paranoia that he always believed that he
20:10was being followed and targeted by the police he had a hatred of the police and would definitely kill
20:16somebody for money in the early 80s in melbourne the main thing that crooks were looking for was
20:26fast money it's all about armed robberies uh quick money from banks who probably didn't have the security
20:33that they've got nowadays
20:41crooks in those days would gravitate to that easy money and rod collins was one of those
20:48i'd got word that he was so-called tooling up to do a job of some description no idea what
20:58we followed rod to a place in st kilda another car rolls up with two other people so we got
21:08this
21:08nest of crooks gathering together there were four of them and they were all well-known serious armed
21:18robbers that's what they did for a living and they had decided big plans they were going to take out
21:22a bank
21:26it lives forever in my memory because it was so spectacularly bad and idiotic they follow in convoy
21:33in two cars to the ringwood area in maroondah highway ringwood there's a group of banks all together
21:41so we put some surveillance there we had our sag team to take them out if they did something wrong
21:49we had several teams out there watching they were proceeding that way when the surveillance units
21:54lost them and they just got a bit distracted so they let the time go past and then they were
22:03running a bit late they dropped one car around the corner and drove to the back of the bank
22:10they break into the bank and they're going to take out all of the safety deposit boxes but they didn't
22:16get anything because they'd closed down for the day so they left there and went back to where the other
22:22car
22:22was the police meantime send in what is known as the soggies which is special operations group
22:32near the guys that go and come in and cause maximum damage and as they went to change getaway cars
22:40we pounced on them and arrested them and they did just that they arrested them with force one could say
22:48um the photos that we had for the court showed all of them with black eyes they had torn clothes
22:58their
22:59pants were down around their ankles they stripped them down caught literally with their pants down
23:09having a look at them in the photos they hadn't had a good day
23:14in those days i think they felt i were professional crooks we were the professional police this is
23:22business
23:24and rod was the same he had no fear he didn't care too much about going to jail being caught
23:32didn't worry
23:38we had other encounters along the way rod collins and me i was present when a search warrant was
23:47executed in his house the warrant was for firearms and i sat with him at the kitchen table he had
23:57a thing
23:57where he called me solly all the time which is a little on the disrespectful side but i didn't mind
24:04um it's good to keep on talking terms with people like collins but i suddenly became conscious of the way
24:13he
24:13was the way he was sitting at that table and the look that he was giving me and it was
24:18it all seemed a bit strange
24:19and i had this feeling and i looked under the table and uh got the shock of my life when
24:25i saw
24:26he had a handgun it's pointed directly at me the whole time
24:34he clearly had the reputation as a gun for hire and easy money for someone who has no conscience
24:39is to pick up a gun and take a contract out that's what he wanted to do more than anything
24:45else
24:46he was always a suspect for the abbeys always and to my mind was number one for the hodgson's murders
24:55number one for sure and you know right from the word go you can see it was his mo and
25:01uh it was just
25:02about getting the evidence there's a big difference between knowing and improving it in court as i'm sure
25:08most people are aware of in my view collins is the only person that would be able to pull something
25:15off like that would have the nerve to do it so i mentioned it to uh the team and we
25:25decided that
25:25we'd have a look at rodney collins
25:31as cole's stature grew we actually had people coming to him offering their services as hitmen
25:39we know rod collins felt quite left out and he said to carl on one particular day hey i'm willing
25:46to do whatever you need me to do just bring me in fairly soon we were able to link rodney
25:56collins
25:56to carl williams carl williams was meeting rodney collins and having walk and talks less than a week
26:05later the day before he was going to give evidence terry and christine were dead
26:19carl williams as you would expect was in maximum security uh he didn't have access to a lot of other
26:26prisoners he was kept uh in what was pretty much isolated detention he had one or two others in the
26:33cell with him at any one particular time he wasn't particularly strong individual and to survive in
26:41jail he needed to surround himself with people who were stronger and perhaps a more experienced jailhouse
26:48enforcers he chose tommy ivanovich and matthew johnson people he thought he could trust
27:00lex lasry former barrister former supreme court judge in victoria matthew johnson was a very imposing
27:08man and uh you know in its own way it was bizarre because he was in a high security section
27:14of
27:15barwin with williams but he has a very strong view about people who give information to the police
27:22one thing you could say about carl williams was if there was one person who knew about it he knew
27:31about all of it he'd been all the way along complaining about people giving evidence about him
27:37he suddenly uh decided that perhaps he could get on this and get a reduced sentence by giving evidence
27:44against a police officer and he started to uh make a deal and make statements to do just that
27:51in exchange for telling police this information he'd be eligible for a one million dollar reward
27:57for solving the hodson's murders and crucially police would support his appeal to have his 35
28:04year sentence potentially cut by up to 15 years and he was it was only ever going to be
28:10another criminal white carl williams that was going going to be able to provide the information we
28:15needed so that was a big breakthrough and the case just got stronger against rodney collins detective
28:23senior sergeant sol sol solomon was central to the attempt to prosecute one of his own
28:28paul dale over the execution of terence hodson and his wife he had carl williams taken from prison
28:35to interview him carl williams finally admitted to us that yes he was approached by someone who i won't
28:46name who wanted terry hodson dead and offered up some money to have it done carl williams then told us
28:56that he approached rodney collins to see if he was interested in doing the job and collins took the
29:03contract it's very difficult to trust someone like carl williams we look to see what phone records we
29:09might have or what even surveillance information we would have that corroborates the movements and
29:15the things that carl williams said he did whilst we were working on collins he was being looked at
29:24for the abbey murders but he got away with it um one of the things i thought we may
29:33be able to use to our advantage is is to reopen the case against the abbeys and see if we
29:42can
29:42progress it further than what the original investigators did
29:50we reopened the abbey double murder investigation we utilized some electronic surveillance on collins
30:00and collins's girlfriend at the time she was speaking to collins during visits and collins was saying
30:10things to her making admissions that he was involved in the abbey murders that he'd done it and we were
30:17able to hear what was being said we managed to get three or four of collins's prisoner buddies that he
30:25served time with to come forward and uh make statements that collins had actually made admissions
30:31that he'd um he'd murdered the abbeys there was an offender called mark mcconville when he was in
30:39prison for another matter and he was dying he made a statement and he implicated himself and rod collins
30:44in the murder of dot and ray abbey but because he wasn't able to give that evidence because he
30:50ultimately died we said about corroborating every aspect of mark mcconville's statement for the murder
30:56of dot and ray abbey that implicated rod collins we're able to progress it to a point where we got
31:03what
31:03we needed it was an amazing uh result when you think of it you know to be able to reopen
31:10a case
31:10after so many years and to get the evidence any cold case murder especially a double murder that's
31:19solved you know just gives the public a lot of confidence and we did it purely to try and get
31:25into
31:25collins's head to see if we can get him to say something to incriminate him for the hodson murders
31:31we decided to go and arrest rod collins in fairfield for the abbey murders
31:38it was decided that we would just make the arrest and do the search no sog would be used and
31:44it would
31:44be a fairly low level knock on the door and take him into custody it was extremely risky but would
31:52stand a better chance to get something out of him not necessarily that day but maybe in the future
32:05this is what we found in his little flat it's his little one better a 45 semi-auto loaded
32:14australian federal police target profile a document that had about 60 pages that contained hundreds of
32:20names car numbers addresses i've no doubt one of those names on that list was uh was his next target
32:28binoculars night vision gear ballistic vest he had a surveillance device you pointed in a direction
32:37and you could hear what's being said from long distance he had portable two-way radios he had a
32:44government frequency book so he could patch into he knows what frequency police and other government agencies
32:51are working on balaclava mask week and he had these collapsible adjustable mirrors that you can see
33:00around corners now i would call that a pretty good assassin's kit
33:10finally we got collins for the abbey murders now we had to try and get into collins's head to
33:18incriminate him for the hodson murders the execution of melbourne couple terrence and christine hodson
33:26eight years ago ties together police corruption and some of victoria's most infamous criminals
33:32collins has now been returned from the melbourne custody center to barwin prison
33:38i had about five meetings with him at um barwin prison the way i got to him was just he
33:47liked to
33:47have his ego stroked and he had a saying he used to say um just remember one thing i hold
33:53all the aces
33:54and i can remember those words every time i would go and see him he would always say i hold
34:00all the aces
34:01and then i would ask him questions like you know who do you think would be capable of
34:08committing a crime like the hodson's double murder because it was done by somebody very professional
34:14very cool very clinical he'd smile and say yes that's right sol it was and he he reminded me that
34:22you know he holds all the aces and we eventually charged him with killing christine and terry hodson
34:39he was in court and myself and some other detectives were down executing a search warrant in his cell
34:49when he got back to his cell that night and he found under his pillow the ace of spades from
34:55the
34:56playing cards he was not very happy about that he's not very happy about that at all
35:12so carl williams is in jail he's now become known publicly it's in the paper that he's informing
35:19to the police supposedly about corrupt police officers but for others they're starting to say
35:26well he knows what i've done and some very serious criminals started to wonder am i at risk so there's
35:34two things one he's in jail with matthew johnson a guy that hates police informers and two there's
35:40other people on the outside worried like hell about what he's talking about to the police all of a sudden
35:47he's in grave danger
35:57carl's testimony is critical to a conclusion in the hodson case but the pressure around it has
36:03been ramping up reaching crisis point the word of a man who knows it all is invaluable
36:11the word spreads fast in the underworld and fear even faster
36:20there'd been a lot of media publicity at the time around the fact that carl williams was getting a lot
36:27of benefits he was in with two particular individuals and there was pressure being brought to bear upon them
36:35to get themselves moved from that unit because to stay there with carl any longer would mean that
36:41they are tarred with the same feathers as carl that is a police informer so carl's day is the number
36:49coming forward to give evidence against dale you might think that that's how he would
36:55solve his conscience i'm just giving evidence against the policeman but he just knew so much there must
37:01have been people who feared that if he got into the witness box almost anything could come out
37:09if carl williams is talking what danger does he pose for me so i don't care if he gives evidence
37:15against the police officer but what if he decides to give evidence against me and there's no doubt in
37:20my mind those concerned people from the outside had conversations with people on the inside
37:31one of the most intimidating characters i think i've ever dealt with was matthew johnson
37:41i have never seen anyone of his size or his ferocity he'd been up on a charge of murder in
37:48front of me
37:49and he actually gave evidence so he was really up close to me he had a look of malevolence that
37:55i've
37:56not seen before or since he was charged with killing a man by setting fire to him having made a
38:05funeral pyre
38:06on which he could place the body poured petrol down his throat slit his chest open so he could get
38:15more in
38:16and then through a match it was supposedly the motive was that he owed him 20 dollars for
38:21cannabis nobody frightened me in a courtroom until he did he's the scariest man i think i've ever come
38:43carl williams he was in the common area reading a copy of the herald sun the tables in the center
38:51of the
38:51room on the front page of the herald sun that day which he was reading was the story about the
38:56assistance the government were giving him for his children's private school fees and at that stage
39:04there were a lot of rumblings in the unit that carl was in tom was just walking around in the
39:12unit
39:14the next thing that anybody knew matty johnson had removed the seat post from the exercise bike
39:23hit it in his cell and an opportune moment came up behind carl williams matthew johnson standing
39:30behind williams with the seat post in his hand and uh bludgeoned him to death as he was reading the
39:36paper
39:40and carl was probably dead before he fell off the chair and hit the floor
39:47and that other fellow was there uh turned his back and just didn't watch it
39:54so that's what happened there
40:00carl's lying dead on the floor 10 15 minutes goes past johnson and ivanovic are walking around
40:07waiting for someone to come no one came eventually johnson i think got on the phone and said something
40:15like i think carl's had a bit of a problem you better send somebody but don't send a woman because
40:21he didn't want any women to see the gory mess that he'd made of carl williams here barwin prison goes
40:28into lockdown as a steady stream of homicide detectives arrive to investigate the death of
40:34notorious underworld kingpin carl williams the face of melbourne's bloody and long-running gangland war
40:40he was serving a minimum 35 year sentence for three underworld murders despite the efforts of paramedics
40:46he could not be revived he was pronounced dead at 1 47 pm
40:54talk us through the the murder of carl williams do you remember that i can indeed i was sitting in
41:02court and my associate stood up put a note in front of me and said carl williams murdered
41:13whatever time it was and i wrote a note back that said i'm surprised he lasted that long how did
41:22you feel
41:25in some ways uh it was in actually how did i feel let me start that again you know i'd
41:34always said to
41:35carl williams carl don't invest in superannuation you're never going to get it collected so i was not
41:40surprised where was i i was on a treadmill at my local gym when my phone rang in my gym
41:51bag said i
41:52thought i better answer this that it was someone from work and he said you better sit down carl i've
42:01just been murdered
42:15okay this is a tape recorded interview conducted at the barland prison on uh the 19th day of april 2010
42:24what's your full name and address please matthew charles johnson had been arrested and charged
42:35with the murder of carl williams have you got any comment to make about that no comment no comment
42:45johnson was charged with murder you know in its own way it was bizarre because this is all on cctv
42:51are you aware um that there is um video within the prison complex no comment some of the photos
43:01that were released from the court show matthew johnson standing behind williams with the seat
43:06post in his hand uh carl's lying dead on the floor well at this stage i'll advise you that you're
43:13going
43:13to be charged with the murder of carl williams you do not have to say or do anything unless you
43:19wish
43:19to do so but whatever you say or do may be recorded and given it evidence do you understand that
43:25yes
43:27in terms of you know the fact that it was matthew johnson i went well that doesn't really
43:32surprise me what surprised me was that he was in a cell with matthew johnson
43:50matthew johnson is a brutal killer carl believed that he'd be protected by matthew johnson but what
43:58he underestimated is that matthew johnson would never put up with protecting a police informer
44:04that went against everything he stood for
44:22carl was not the type to survive a long time in jail particularly once he was cooperating with
44:28the police you it's a real death wish in places like barwin another blow in a long wait for answers
44:38paul dale was charged with the hodson murders the charges were dropped when gangland boss carl
44:44williams was killed in prison carl's family aside the petra task force were the only other people
44:50in victoria who were absolutely devastated that day it was devastating absolutely devastating i knew then
44:58that that was a massive hole being blown into the prosecution case we had in relation to the clods and
45:05killings the the whole prosecution case was built on the foundation of carl williams and it wasn't
45:17there anymore without carl there was no case me and my fellow lead investigator had been working on
45:26this case now the best part of six years and it just went very demoralizing
45:36carl's brutal bludgeoning at the hands of an inmate seemingly unraveled the cold case detectives had been
45:42so close to solving carl initially ordered the hit on graham kinebra in his ongoing war against the
45:50carlton crew and the morans the alleged killers of kinebra were named by the runner the talk alone
45:57doesn't make a case the evidence wasn't strong and one of the accused hitmen conveniently disappeared
46:04making a difficult job even harder the file remained open but progress was slow
46:12in this city secrets don't stay buried they just wait for someone to dig
46:23surely after the murder of graham kinebra terence blue went missing
46:27we set about investigating the suspicious disappearance of terence blue we had information that led us to
46:35an illegal tip in thomastown for the right amount of money you could dump whatever you wanted on that
46:41site it had since been rehabilitated it looked like a beautiful untouched field far from what it
46:49had looked like at the time that terence blue went missing so we decided that that site was fairly interesting
46:57for us
47:09i was given permission to hire a very big digger and we went there and started excavating that massive site
47:17unfortunately after two and a half days we uncovered nothing
47:22and i'd been told that if we didn't come home with terry then i should probably look for some other
47:28line of work very soon i did feel a great amount of pressure
47:34i ordered some aerial photographs of the site around the time that terence blue went missing
47:41we'd noticed in the photographs there was two diggers and one of them had never moved
47:48and we could see before and after that the digger was in the same place
47:52so we were able to line up where we thought that digger was using the rooftops of the nearby factories
48:02and as soon as we started scraping back the layers we could see a trench
48:07and so i rang my boss and said we think we've found where he's buried and he said stop digging
48:14no i couldn't wait
48:16so we kept digging and because the site that they had dug into had house bricks and asbestos and all
48:24sorts of things in it there was the normal soil profile but then persisting through the layers
48:29was other material that shouldn't have been there and then on the last scoop of the day
48:35and in the bucket was terence blue
48:42i was so relieved
48:46so we compiled the brief and we took that to the office of public prosecutions for an opinion
48:51and the crown prosecutor's response to us was what are you waiting for go and charge him more than
48:5713 years after graham kinneborough was executed outside his queue home one of his alleged killers
49:03is finally on trial jury was told asling was acting on behalf of carl williams who had a powerful hatred
49:09of the moran family and their associates
49:15because i'm naturally a pessimist i thought he would be acquitted
49:19so when the jury returned a verdict and they looked straight at me when they said guilty
49:23he was sentenced to life in prison with a non-parole period of 27 years
49:28steven asling made no comment was impassive and he was removed from the court i've never felt so overjoyed
49:43melbourne's gangland war ran on drugs money and a steady supply of hired guns
49:50at the center was carl williams a suburban nobody who built an empire by unleashing hitmen
49:57to erase rivals and grab the lion's share of the city's drug trade
50:04the time it worked bodies dropped carl got rich and fear did the heavy lifting
50:12but loyalty in the underworld has a short self-life
50:16his gunman flipped hard-working police cracked the code of silence and his empire finally imploded
50:26in the final twist the man who ordered so many killings met his own end not on the street but
50:33in
50:34a prison unit bashed to death becoming just another victim of the violence he once commanded in the underworld
50:43dead men tell no tales
50:48there are five million stories in the naked city this has been one of them
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