🔍 Australian Crime Stories: The Investigators (2023) - Season 3 Episode 2
Behind every headline is a story of courage, investigation, and the relentless pursuit of justice. In Episode [2], [brief hook: see episode-specific hooks below]. Follow detectives, forensic experts, and survivors as they piece together the truth in some of Australia's most compelling cases.
🔹 Episode Highlights:
• [E01 Hook: "A cold case reopens: new evidence brings hope to a grieving family"]
• [E05 Hook: "The final piece falls into place: how investigators cracked the code"]
• Exclusive access: interviews with detectives, forensic analysts & key witnesses
• Investigative process: from crime scene to courtroom, the journey to justice
• Human impact: stories of resilience, loss, and the power of truth
🔹 Series Info:
• Format: True Crime Documentary / Investigative Series / Crime Journalism
• Original Network: 7plus / Seven Network (Australia) / International Streaming
• Series Launch: 2023 | Season: 3 | Episodes: 1 & 5
• Focus: Real Australian Cases, Police Investigations, Forensic Breakthroughs
• Setting: Across Australia – Urban & Regional Crime Scenes
• Language: English (Original Audio) + Subtitles Available
• Runtime: ~45-60 minutes (full) | Clip/Highlight version: ~10-15 min
🎧 Prefer audio? Listen to true crime recaps & investigative podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts.
👉 Enjoying the series? Hit LIKE, SUBSCRIBE, and comment: "What case would YOU like to see investigated next? 👇🔍" Turn on notifications 🔔 so you never miss the next breakthrough!
#AustralianCrimeStories #TheInvestigators #TrueCrime #CrimeDocumentary #SevenNetwork #S3E[X] #ColdCase #Forensics #BingeWatch #JusticeServed #AustralianTV #CrimeJunkie
⚠️ Copyright Disclaimer: This video is shared for promotional, review, and informational purposes only. All rights to "Australian Crime Stories: The Investigators" belong to Seven Network and the original production company. This upload complies with Fair Use guidelines (Section 107, U.S. Copyright Act). No copyright infringement intended.
Behind every headline is a story of courage, investigation, and the relentless pursuit of justice. In Episode [2], [brief hook: see episode-specific hooks below]. Follow detectives, forensic experts, and survivors as they piece together the truth in some of Australia's most compelling cases.
🔹 Episode Highlights:
• [E01 Hook: "A cold case reopens: new evidence brings hope to a grieving family"]
• [E05 Hook: "The final piece falls into place: how investigators cracked the code"]
• Exclusive access: interviews with detectives, forensic analysts & key witnesses
• Investigative process: from crime scene to courtroom, the journey to justice
• Human impact: stories of resilience, loss, and the power of truth
🔹 Series Info:
• Format: True Crime Documentary / Investigative Series / Crime Journalism
• Original Network: 7plus / Seven Network (Australia) / International Streaming
• Series Launch: 2023 | Season: 3 | Episodes: 1 & 5
• Focus: Real Australian Cases, Police Investigations, Forensic Breakthroughs
• Setting: Across Australia – Urban & Regional Crime Scenes
• Language: English (Original Audio) + Subtitles Available
• Runtime: ~45-60 minutes (full) | Clip/Highlight version: ~10-15 min
🎧 Prefer audio? Listen to true crime recaps & investigative podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts.
👉 Enjoying the series? Hit LIKE, SUBSCRIBE, and comment: "What case would YOU like to see investigated next? 👇🔍" Turn on notifications 🔔 so you never miss the next breakthrough!
#AustralianCrimeStories #TheInvestigators #TrueCrime #CrimeDocumentary #SevenNetwork #S3E[X] #ColdCase #Forensics #BingeWatch #JusticeServed #AustralianTV #CrimeJunkie
⚠️ Copyright Disclaimer: This video is shared for promotional, review, and informational purposes only. All rights to "Australian Crime Stories: The Investigators" belong to Seven Network and the original production company. This upload complies with Fair Use guidelines (Section 107, U.S. Copyright Act). No copyright infringement intended.
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:23The first time I interacted directly with Abizar Sultani
00:28was down at Goulburn.
00:30There's a lot of layers to him, I think,
00:33but his crimes are awful, horrific.
00:39A man's body has been found in bushland
00:41off the Pacific Highway.
00:43The 30-year-old father was shot in the head
00:46near his Kingswood home.
00:47The main line of inquiry for New South Wales police
00:50will be links to outdoor motorcycle gangs.
00:53Whilst he was part of the biking gang,
00:55he didn't get into the drinking and the drugs.
00:59A man has been shot dead in front of his fiancée
01:02in an execution-style ambush.
01:05It sounded to me like five gunshots.
01:07Underworld kingpin Pasquale Barbaro's body
01:11sprawled on a footpath.
01:12He's a serial killer hitman.
01:15He didn't leave it to the others, he did it himself.
01:26My name's Detective Senior Counsel Anthony Moore.
01:29In 2016, I was attached to the New South Wales Homicide Squad.
01:42Early in the morning on the 30th of March 2016,
01:46we were just finishing our on-call period
01:48when we were notified that there was a murder out at Kingswood.
01:55Michael Davey was shot and murdered in Stafford Street.
02:03He did have a criminal background.
02:07The 30-year-old father was shot in the head around midnight
02:11on the street near his Kingswood home.
02:15He told his girlfriend he was going outside to meet a mate.
02:20Neighbours heard up to six gunshots and raced to help.
02:24I heard a car up the road screeching past.
02:27So, yeah, I'm pretty sure that would have been a getaway car.
02:32Mick Davey was a rebel.
02:36The Penrith City chapter.
02:42He grew up out in Western Sydney.
02:45He had a couple of different nicknames.
02:49The Prince of Penrith, Mickey D.
02:53He was a local identity.
02:57He was a member of the Rebels.
03:00He also was, you know, a son.
03:02He was a brother and he was a father.
03:06He was a really genuine guy.
03:08An amazing father.
03:09He would drop anything for his son.
03:11Anything, no matter what.
03:16We went to the family home of Michael's father, Will Davey.
03:21I did tell Will Davey that no matter who his son was,
03:24we would investigate this just as we would anyone else.
03:27And I told him that we don't get to choose who our victims are.
03:30They're all investigated the same way.
03:33And reporter Gabrielle Boyle joins me from St Mary's police station.
03:36Gabby, do police have any suspects tonight?
03:38Peter, the main line of inquiry for New South Wales police
03:42will be Michael Davey's links to outlaw motorcycle gangs.
03:46They've set up Strike Force Glenorchy.
04:11Detective Senior Constable Luke McEnany, who was the officer in charge of Mark Easter's murder,
04:17came to us and said, I believe the crew that I'm looking at in relation to Mark's murder
04:23are involved in your murder.
04:26Who was this crew?
04:28It's the Sultani crew.
04:38Up until then, I never heard of Abizar Sultani.
04:42He was an ex-rebel.
04:44Burwood chapter they had originally formed, but that was now defunct.
04:49The Sultani crew were into drug dealing, weapons trafficking, fraud, money laundering.
05:04Stephen Hunt is my name.
05:07Back in 2016, I was at the Homicide Squad.
05:11Initially, I was called out to investigate the murder of Michael Davey.
05:17With the help of Luke McEnany, we were able to connect the Davey murder to the Easter murder.
05:23Starting with the fact both of those victims were patch members of the Rebels Outlaw motorcycle gang.
05:29Mark and Mick knew each other.
05:33They'd crossed paths.
05:34They were part of that greater Rebels OMCG group.
05:38Mark Easter lived at Little Bay in south-eastern Sydney.
05:42He was last seen alive three days before his body was found.
05:46He'd been out to dinner with his wife and then he'd been seen by a neighbour speaking to some people
05:52in his street.
05:54They were in a white van.
05:57The white van became a key part of the police investigation.
06:02We discovered it travelled north out of Sydney on the Pacific Highway
06:06before it was driven down a quiet bush track off the highway.
06:17So yeah, this is a photo of the van that was captured by a council camera that was looking into
06:22illegal dumping.
06:24And it was captured looking at the bush track.
06:29The white van returned back up the track past the same camera exactly seven minutes later.
06:36Council workers thought the van may have been used for illegal dumping, so they drove down the bush track to
06:41check it out.
06:42But instead of an illegal dump, they found the body of Mark Easter.
06:49A man's body has been found in bushland off the Pacific Highway at Cowan, north-east of Sydney.
06:55He hasn't yet been formally identified.
06:57Police are treating his death though as suspicious.
07:01Mark Easter had been shot four times in the head at close range.
07:06Finding the van was the best clue to finding his killers.
07:10That van was up at the central coast.
07:14It was pulled over by the police.
07:16The van and the face of it presents as just a tradie van.
07:22But, importantly, there was a locked cabinet in that van.
07:26And within that was firearms.
07:32A ballistic mask.
07:35We'd found bleach.
07:38There was drop sheets, gloves.
07:41Things that linked it to the murder of Mark Easter.
07:46So it was highly important to what we were investigating.
08:07Sultani became a person of interest in the Mark Easter murder.
08:11And then the Mick Davie murder.
08:13Because it turns out his company, Civic Traffic, owned another van.
08:20A vehicle that may have been used to travel out towards the area that Michael Davie was murdered.
08:28So, you know, they could be involved.
08:33So we've got two Rebels bikies murdered.
08:36And two vans owned by Abzal Sultani, an ex-Rebel bikie, linked to these murders.
08:45Luke McEnany's team were one step in front of us.
08:49They'd been surveilling Sultani and his crew at their Sydney HQ.
08:55They'd moved from Rye to Sydney Olympic Park.
08:59In one of the high-rises there, security building.
09:05Sultani and Amunchinzada were living there.
09:09Siamunchinzada was an interesting character.
09:11We came to understand he was Sultani's right-hand man.
09:16They'd both broken off from the Burwood chapter of the Rebels.
09:20And now they were flatting together in the high-rise on Australia Avenue.
09:27Luke's surveillance team had observed a couple of other guys coming and going from the high-rise.
09:32Joshua Baines and Mirwish Danashar.
09:36Danashar was Munchinzada's cousin.
09:39They were all ex-Rebels.
09:41And now they form the nucleus of the Sultani crew.
09:49The Savalinski placed inside the high-rise unit picked up all sorts of crew chatter.
09:54Most of it innocuous.
09:58But one short conversation recorded two days before the Mick Davie murder would become very important to our investigation.
10:13The name of the house is Michael Davie.
10:17They didn't take the contract, so I can take him.
10:23You know what I'm with.
10:24He was calling out of the house.
10:27What?
10:31Do it.
10:41Investigating the murders of Mick Davie and Mark Easter became evident our prime suspects
10:46were Abizah Sultani and his crew.
10:49This Sultani crew were working together, working as a team, and this group were very disciplined.
10:57We had the surveillance tape of the crew talking about Mick Davie before his murder.
11:02As helpful as that was, we needed more evidence and we needed to establish motive.
11:08If the Sultani crew did kill Davie, were they acting alone or were they taking payment from a third party?
11:16Some of the intelligence was around dispute that Mick Davie had had with a underworld criminal called Erkin Keskid.
11:25Erkin Keskid was very well known in the underworld.
11:29He was quite feared. He was rumoured to have quite a lot of money at a crane business.
11:34He had an apartment in the toaster down at Circular Quay and seemed to be emerging as
11:39quite a high level member of the organised crime groups in Sydney.
11:44We were hearing that Keskid was paying people to do murders for him.
11:53He would pay $750,000 to get someone killed because he didn't like him.
12:06Mark Morrie, I'm crime editor of the Sydney Daily Telegraph.
12:14Keskid was worth enormous amounts of money.
12:17He built his fortune as he rose through the ranks of the Lone Wolf Motorcycle Gang.
12:23Keskid became a major drug player. He was huge in that world.
12:27That's how he could afford to spend $9,000 a week renting an apartment in the toaster.
12:33Keskid partied pretty hard too.
12:35And one night he found himself exposed when he ran amok in Sydney's western suburbs.
12:40Staggering down a driveway and leaving nothing to the imagination.
12:46Police wondering why he wasn't wearing any pants and where his weapon was.
12:50The Glock pistol fired three times.
12:5538-year-old Erkin Keskin, a member of the Lone Wolf Bikey Gang, sparked this siege-like situation.
13:02We believe he may have been affected by something, but at this stage we're not sure.
13:07It's fair to say that Keskin didn't enjoy the spotlight, especially when it was shining bright on him.
13:12And let's face it, not looking his best.
13:16For that little escapade, he was tagged the naked bikey, and he hated it.
13:24Looking at Keskin the wrong way, you know, could be fatal.
13:29It was going to get me knocked at one stage, Keskin.
13:33Yeah.
13:46There was incidents there of fights in jail and firebombings of Keskin's interests out at Penrith.
13:54So that started to form the pattern of the intelligence and the information that we were getting from all various
14:00sources.
14:01In order to launch a prosecution, we needed hard evidence that Keskin had paid Sultani to kill Mick Davie.
14:08Did you ever form a clear link between Keskin and the Sultani group?
14:14Yeah, they met at a restaurant in Sydney.
14:18We had surveillance of them together at that time.
14:23The story goes that Keskin would pay for a hit, pay Ab Sultani,
14:29fly over to Dubai or wherever he wanted to be and have a very perfect alibi.
14:36The contract to kill theory became a plausible line of inquiry.
14:41Police spent a lot of time listening to the surveillance devices we'd planted in the high-rise apartment used by
14:47the Sultani crew.
14:48They were very conscious of the police methodology, so we had some devices in there,
14:54but they were very savvy with the way they'd operate in that apartment.
15:04They wouldn't speak about any of these matters.
15:06They'd communicate by Blackberry sitting at a table within the apartment,
15:10not actually communicate across the table, so they were very cautious.
15:18The best way to close the net around the Sultani crew was to watch and wait and then strike when
15:23ready.
15:25So on September the 1st, 2016, we made an operational decision to go and have a look at what we
15:32call a safe house.
15:36We identified a safe house at Ada Street in Concord. It was a unit.
15:45Strike Force Raptor made a covert entry.
15:49And during that search, they identified that there were a large number of different type of weaponry,
15:56semi-auto rifles and pistols, ammunition.
16:03There was methamphetamine, heroin.
16:07There was ballistic vests, police shirts, license plates.
16:12They're basically ghost plates for different vehicles.
16:18Because of the complexity of what they were doing, they were utilising numerous vehicles,
16:24potentially up to 30 vehicles.
16:27They would have plates made for it that mirrored that car,
16:32but were of a vehicle that wouldn't attract attention.
16:36And then they would go and park that car in a suburban street.
16:41So it was inconspicuous.
16:43And when they wanted to use it, they'd go along and they'd jumpstart the car.
16:48That car could be sitting there for months.
16:52Of course, what we didn't realise at the time was that another hit was in the works.
16:58This is Nine News with Georgie Gardner.
17:03Good evening. A man has been shot dead in front of his fiancée
17:07in an execution-style ambush on a street at St Mary's.
17:13A white sheet covers the body of 29-year-old Mehmet Yilmaz
17:18after he was gunned down, shot at point-blank range by men in balaclavas.
17:25Investigators say they have no doubt this was a targeted attack.
17:31They certainly wanted to make sure that this individual was deceased.
17:41September 9, 2016, Mehmet Yilmaz went to an address in St Mary's
17:50and when he came out, he was ambushed.
17:55This brutal murder all happened right in front of a large number of CCTV cameras.
18:00Police say they are now reviewing the footage as they try to hunt down those responsible.
18:07So the video I'm watching here, this is CCTV of the murder of Mehmet Yilmaz.
18:16He walks outside. He goes to get in the car and the back of the car is illuminated by
18:22some headlights. It pulls up beside him, man leans out of the window and fires some shots at him,
18:30which hit Yilmaz. When an injured Yilmaz falls behind his car,
18:36the shooter jumps from the other car and fires twice to finish him off.
18:49Mehmet's de facto gets out.
18:57There's a passerby that comes and helps.
19:02That was a pretty callous murder, that one.
19:11Until then, we didn't know who Mehmet Yilmaz was.
19:17Investigations revealed he was a small-time dealer who'd been purchasing drugs from Keskin.
19:23Mehmet owed about $20,000 to Keskin and had been ordered to pay it
19:32and he decided that he didn't want to pay it.
19:39Mehmet had been kidnapped sometime earlier and taken to a warehouse in Western Sydney
19:44where he had been tortured. A finger was partially amputated.
19:51One thing we discovered about Erkin Keskin was he liked to be paid, sometimes at any cost.
19:58With Mehmet Yilmaz, he either refused to pay his debt or was unable to procure the funds.
20:08And that was ultimately what we believe was his reason for being killed.
20:16We identified that it was very likely that our Sultani crew was involved.
20:24Following the murder of Mehmet Yilmaz, police rewound the surveillance audio that had been recorded
20:30in Sultani's unit in the hours before the shooting.
20:35Police were not listening to the audio in real time.
20:38We only heard the tapes after the murder.
20:51What we were hearing was pretty damning evidence, but not enough to charge a Sultani crew.
21:02To directly link these guys to the Yilmaz shooting, we had to examine the car used by the assassins on
21:08the night.
21:11That car was a Commodore.
21:16So we found the Commodore at an associate of this group in the underground car park over at Rhodes.
21:25We seized the Commodore, swabbed it for DNA and sent the samples off to the lab.
21:34At the same time as we're investigating Abizal Sultani, we're looking into his background.
21:41There's a lot of layers to him, I think. He's an interesting person.
21:46His parents emigrated from Afghanistan and he grew up in a loving household in Western Sydney.
21:52His family was actually, I think, quite well-to-do over there.
21:57But in 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of Afghanis were killed and the Sultani family
22:05fled Afghanistan.
22:09They fled over here and he had a bit of a struggled upbringing.
22:23He didn't smoke, didn't drink, and was above average in English and maths.
22:28However, he fell in with the wrong crowd. He got into a bit of criminality early.
22:36People were blowing up ATMs to get the cash tins out of them.
22:43Sultani was part of one of the groups that were doing that.
22:46Did a little bit of time in jail.
22:51While Sultani was in jail at Silverwater, he met Sia Munchezada,
22:56who would ultimately go on to become his right-hand man.
23:01Munchezada's family had fled the Taliban for a life in Australia.
23:05And the two young inmates bonded over their shared Afghani heritage.
23:22I've met Abs plenty of times.
23:25I thought he was devoid of two very important qualities that you and I have,
23:32and that's compassion and kindness.
23:36Because he was controlled by George and Joe.
23:46George Alex has the magic dust, which he just gets out of his pocket,
23:50and he goes, blows it in your eyes, and then sells you a dream.
23:56George Alex is at the centre of a web of unsavoury characters,
24:00including outlaw bikers, violent standover men and convicted terrorists.
24:04Just this week, his name was dragged into the Royal Commission into union corruption,
24:09with claims his labour hire companies paid weekly kickbacks to the CFMEU.
24:18Joe Antoon was a very violent person.
24:21He once told me about how he was doing a collection on somebody, and he sort of hacksaw blade,
24:28and cut the guy's little finger off. And I said, okay, is that supposed to scare me?
24:34He's a standover man, and he's a nasty fellow.
24:38Joe and George were an interesting couple.
24:41It was like Laurel and Hardy.
24:43My mum was devilishly smart and cunning, and the other one had Braun.
24:48Burns worked with George Alex and his partner, Joe Anton,
24:51between 2011 and 2012 in a labour hire company,
24:55but had a falling out over money. Burns said the pair owed the business.
24:59They didn't pay the money, and it was just as simple as that.
25:03I'd had a heated discussion with Joe Antoon, and about four hours later,
25:09there was a drive-by shooting on my house.
25:12During the night, gunfire rang out in the most unlikely of neighbourhoods.
25:17Cranbrook Road, Bellevue Hill, opposite Exclusive Scots College.
25:21Up to five shots hitting the front of the Burns family's palatial home.
25:26Well, I was in bed, and I hear bang, bang, bang. I get up.
25:34I actually saw the car drive off.
25:37You look a bit shaken today, Mr. Ben.
25:39Well, you know, shooting at you will do that, you know.
25:43One bullet passing through a bedroom where one of his three children was sleeping.
25:49Missed her head by about 30 centimetres.
25:53Family's OK?
25:54My family's fine, and the police are doing a thorough investigation.
25:597.30 has learned a key suspect in the shooting
26:02is a rebel's biker chief called Abuzar Sultani.
26:06Also known as Abs, he's a convicted criminal and a close associate of George Alex.
26:12Maybe it's a switch that just gets flicked and somebody goes from being a mild-mannered accountant
26:20to a mild-mannered murderer.
26:35Police are investigating possible gang links to a man who was shot dead on the doorstep of
26:40his Strathfield home last night in front of his twin daughters.
26:44Just five years old, these little girls watched as their father was shot dead.
26:53Joe Antoon was hit by at least four bullets at close range when he answered a knock at the door
26:59of his Strathfield home.
27:02Joe Antoon was a standover man.
27:05Although, I don't believe he deserved to be shot and murdered in front of his children.
27:10I mean, those kids are traumatised for life.
27:15So the murder of Joe Antoon, I think, is a turning point for Abuzar Sultani.
27:21This was a person who he respected enormously and almost loved like a father.
27:27And I know the killing rocked him and I think made him even a little bit more ruthless than he
27:33already was because he'd already showed signs of ruthlessness.
27:38It was Joe Antoon who had introduced Sultani to bikey culture.
27:44By the time Antoon was murdered, Sultani had become president of the Burwood chapter of the
27:49Rebels. Whilst I think he was part of the bikey gang, I don't know if it suited him
27:55to a great extent. He was the square peg in the round hole with a lot of the OMCGs, you
28:02know.
28:04He didn't get into the drinking and the drugs.
28:08Some of the rebels were racists. And there's a story that he went into the Burwood clubhouse
28:13at one stage and was threatened to kill the whole lot of them.
28:17Because they had disrespected one of the crew that he kind of adopted.
28:22And so, Sultani went out on his own and formed a crew with some of these young guys.
28:28Sultani was the leader, with the inner circle being Sia Munchezada, his cousin Moe Stanashar,
28:35and Joshua Baines. There was a bit of muscle there, there was a bit of technical expertise there
28:42for doing legitimate activities, but a lot of criminal activity as well.
28:55He had a very tight crew around him with disaffected young guys who had become
29:03a black ops killing squad.
29:08They really did consider themselves a cut above everybody else.
29:12They were smart, but not that smart.
29:16And by November 2016, police were closing the intelligence gaps on a very dangerous group.
29:26We'd worked out that the Sultani crew were probably responsible for about
29:30at least three murders that we were looking at. Mark Easter, Davey, and now Yilmaz.
29:41With the Mehmet Yilmaz murder, DNA evidence obtained from the Commodore
29:45had confirmed a link to the Sultani crew.
29:50So the shooter in that video uses his left hand, which becomes very important.
29:59Our surveillance identified that Sultani is left-handed.
30:05Also the clothes he's wearing.
30:11Our investigators hone in on the fact that the particular shoes are worn and we go back to
30:16footage of Sultani leaving the address at Sydney Olympic Park and he's wearing the same shoes and clothing.
30:24So those little pieces of the puzzle become really important.
30:31The bottom line, we're very close to a resolution stage when there's another murder.
30:45Underworld kingpin Pasquale Barbaro's body sprawled on a footpath, gunned down execution style.
30:54Barbaro was ambushed in his car after paying a visit to the Elwood home of another underworld figure, George Alex.
31:04When Barbaro was shot outside George Alex's house and there's this image of this mafioso lying in the street dead.
31:17It hit the headlines in such a big way.
31:24People are going, what the hell's going on here?
31:34Pasquale Barbaro's cold-blooded execution on a Sydney street has our top cops worried.
31:41My number one concern always will be that a poor innocent person becomes a victim in the exchange of gunfire.
31:48Nine reporter Gabrielle Boyle is at the scene in Irwood where Pasquale Barbaro was gunned down.
31:54This is, Pete, a very complex investigation. Not only do they have to speak with a lot of associates,
32:00but they've got to speak with a number of neighbours who saw things in the street in the hours before
32:04and afterwards.
32:07Pascal was a pretty prominent member of the Sydney underworld.
32:18He wasn't really affiliated to any particular bikey gang.
32:23We quickly learned, however, that he was well known to the target of our investigation, Abizar Sultani.
32:31There was a lot of conflict between Sultani and Pasquale Barbaro.
32:39There was intelligence that both of them had had a go at each other at various stages.
32:45One of the first things we did was to look at the surveillance cameras in the apartment at Sydney Olympic
32:50Park.
32:53What we saw, they take the lift down to the car park and exit the building by car.
33:01Sultani and the group, including Baines and Simon Shazada, Danashar, they head out in a vehicle,
33:10in a WRX, and they head over towards Belmore. They go and pick up a car that they had stashed
33:18there,
33:19and then they drive that car over to Earlwood and they commit the murder.
33:28And how did we know for sure?
33:30The first thing is we established the timelines, starting with Pasquale Barbaro.
33:37What we learned was that about 4pm on that day, he goes to Larkal Avenue.
33:43He's certainly in the house of George Alex's mum.
33:48George Alex was evasive as to why Barbaro had been invited to his mother's place.
33:53We eliminated him as a suspect in the murder inquiry.
33:59However, we were able to establish the exact movements of the Sultani crew when they swapped
34:04out the WRX for an Audi Q7 at Belmore. What we learned was that Joshua Baines was in the back
34:13of
34:14the Audi, the Audi driven by Simon Shazada, and Sultani was in the front seat.
34:23We established the Audi came to a stop a few doors down the road from George Alex's mother's house,
34:28where the crew lay in wait for Pasquale Barbaro to leave the house.
34:33He did so at 9pm, walking to his Mercedes parked on the street.
34:39CCTV from across the road picks up the Mercedes headlights coming on,
34:44closely followed by the arrival of the Audi Q7.
34:48The first shots are fired by Baines from the rear of the car, and they strike Barbaro,
34:53who gets out of his car. And Sultani gets out and runs around the front, chases Barbaro down the road.
35:02Pascale collapses, and he's shot further by Sultani.
35:13It sounded to me like five gunshots.
35:17The gunman flared in a stolen Audi Q7, which was later abandoned and torched in Concord.
35:23Well, there was an explosion, and the car was fully lit.
35:32Investigating the Barbaro murder, we soon realised there was a more personal element to it.
35:39There was a personal relationship between Barbaro and Sultani. Sultani had a hatred for him.
35:46He believed that Barbaro was involved in the Joe Antoon murder.
35:55Joe Antoon was a mentor and a friend to Ibizao Sultani, and Sultani looked up to him very much,
36:03and was very upset by his murder when that occurred.
36:0950-year-old standover man Joseph Antoon was gunned down at the door of his Strathfield home
36:14in December 2013. The court heard evidence that the hit on Joe Antoon was ordered by
36:20Pasquale Barbaro and Les Elias.
36:25On the afternoon that Pasquale Barbaro was killed, the tracking device is found
36:31by Sultani's crew in a car, about two o'clock in the afternoon.
36:35They still went ahead and killed him at nine o'clock that night, even knowing that the cops are on
36:39tour.
36:45I actually think he probably knew the net was closing and just thought,
36:48I'm going to get this guy before I go in. I really believe that, you know.
36:58Two days later, they track Absoltani to a cemetery where he's putting down red roses on the grave of
37:06Joe Antoon, as if to say, I got him for your boss.
37:14This is Nine News with Deborah Knight.
37:19Good evening. A massive police operation has swept through Sydney Olympic Park,
37:23as heavily armed officers hunted those responsible for a series of underworld murders.
37:30Olympic Park in lockdown. The tactical response unit in control.
37:36Weapons drawn as detectives arrest two men.
37:40There was the SWAT team and they had all the guns and all the police were running around.
37:46Every arrest today in full view of the public.
37:50Initially, I thought it's like a movie shooting or something.
37:56Thanks.
37:59So, yeah, this is a photo of the tactical operations police having arrested Sultani in the street.
38:10That was the point in time he hasn't seen the public again.
38:19And then there was this photo came through, Absoltani.
38:25And his eyes just looking up as if to say, it got me.
38:35I remember watching Abs. He's sitting down on the footpath, looking a little bit bloody.
38:41He didn't go easily.
38:44A total of five men are thought to have been arrested.
38:47They are now being questioned over the execution of Barbaro and several others.
38:53And of great importance to us is capturing items of evidence that we think are going to have
38:58information about these murders, i.e. the Blackberries.
39:03They seized 11 vehicles, more than 40 mobile phones and nine men with alleged links to the
39:09Rebels Outlaw motorcycle gang were charged with a long list of offences.
39:14Where were you on that day?
39:16I was actually at another search warrant at the address of Joshua Baines over at Wentworth Point.
39:29Of those arrested, 27-year-old Abuzar Sultani, 28-year-old Sia Munazada, 24-year-old Joshua Baines,
39:37and 23-year-old Mirway Danashar faced court today.
39:42And then I hear he's linked to three murders.
39:45And we came out the next day with Murder Inc.
40:05With the surveillance you had, could you have stopped the Barbaro murder?
40:13Yeah, the question of could we have prevented Barbaro's murders being asked and we ask ourselves,
40:19you know, as investigators.
40:23The answer from our point of view is no.
40:27You know, we didn't have the evidence to jump on them at the time.
40:31That evidence just wasn't available and it wasn't available really in a lot of them until we got into
40:37the BlackBerrys. We'd seized the BlackBerry devices used by the Sultani crew when we arrested them.
40:44But in order to build a brief of evidence for the murder trials, we had to crack all the encrypted
40:49messages they'd been sending each other. And out of those BlackBerrys was a whole treasure trove of
40:57information. Some amazingly candid conversations about what they had done came out.
41:05Straight after the Barbaro murder, they are gloating, if you will, about it.
41:18There was a lot of, you know, nearly high fives, I suppose you'd say, from the group.
41:24The first time I interacted directly with Abizar Sultani was down at Goulburn when I got him out to be
41:32interviewed.
41:34He's an interesting human.
41:37He's clearly intelligent. He was studying a Bachelor of Business at Macquarie University.
41:44His crimes are awful, horrific. But at the end of the day, he pleaded guilty to five murders.
42:06In June of 2019, we started to review Strike Force Bandala, which is the murder of Nicholas Stribben.
42:14He was a 19-year-old kid that had been viciously assaulted in Redfern in May of 2013.
42:23Stribben deals drugs with his dad in and around the Redfern area.
42:28There's another drug dealer that's dealing for Sultani, but he was also dealing with the Stribbens.
42:36He had a $400 drug debt, and he was assaulted by the Stribbens. And he made a phone call to
42:45Abizar Sultani, saying that he was being stood over and assaulted. And Abizar Sultani, obviously
42:51needing to exert his dominance in that area, got the crew together, and they went into Redfern to deal
42:58that situation.
43:10Nicholas Stribben was assaulted by this group of men,
43:15during which he was hit with a baseball bat. And he died as a result of that.
43:39Abizar Sultani and Sia Munshisada won't just serve one life term, sentenced to three for each of the
43:47lives they took away. Two men in their 30s who will never see the outside of prison again.
43:57Munshisada defiant until the end, waving a post-it note with the words,
44:01biased dog, before he was led away.
44:16Joshua Baines will be 56 when he's eligible for release,
44:21Murwaz Danesha jailed for a minimum 11 years. A once invincible hit squad, outnumbered and
44:29outsmarted by police.
44:31I can sit in their jail cell and contemplate the murderous section.
44:39There is no middle riddles, they're playing on me
44:47The cat plays fiddle, she do, she do as she please
44:55They're falling to the left, falling to the right of me
45:03The Sultani crew actually set the template for the modern day hits that we're seeing now.
45:11Sultani was very clever. He would have cars stashed all over Sydney, multiple cars.
45:17When you see someone shot and then a car set on fire five kilometres away, that is the Sultani template.
45:27Interestingly enough though, Ab Sultani did the shooting.
45:31He was always one pulling the trigger.
45:39He didn't leave it to the others, he did it himself.
45:43Now the suburban executions and hit men terrorise in quiet neighbourhoods.
45:48It's Australia's new gangland war.
45:51There's a hundred more of those young guys out there today,
45:55who are all taking instructions and doing things.
45:58And the contract killings today are sort of a million dollars and more.
46:03It's a lot of money for some of those kids.
46:07I actually feel sorry for Abs.
46:11That boy will never see the light of day.
46:14He'll never be able to walk on grass again.
46:16He'll never be able to hold a child, his child, because he won't be having any.
46:20His life is over.
46:25Joe Antum sold him a dream.
46:29George Alex, he's a liar.
46:32He's a cheat.
46:33He's a thief.
46:35And he's about ready to spend the next seven to ten years in the right place.
46:40Police have smashed an alleged crime syndicate, arresting construction identity George Alex,
46:45as part of the multi-million dollar tax evasion and money laundering scheme.
46:51George Alex was sentenced today to nine years and three months.
46:55The maximum jail term for conspiring to defraud the ATO of more than ten million dollars.
47:01He will be eligible for parole in October 2030.
47:05There'll be a lot of people in there that won't like George.
47:08It's not going to be a very comfortable life for George.
47:1338-year-old Erkin Keskin, a member of the Lone Wolf Bikie Gang, sparked this siege-like situation.
47:19And what eventually happened to Erkin Keskin?
47:24Apparently he's dead.
47:27He died in Turkey.
47:30So yeah, he's not with us anymore.
47:37In relation to whether or not we've heard the last of Ablazar Sultani, I'd probably have to say no.
47:46He's a serial killer hitman.
47:49He's already admitted to five murders.
47:52From what I understand, he's under investigation for quite a few more.
47:58It'll go into double figures.
48:00So, the Ablazar Sultani story isn't finished yet.
48:05You never know.
48:08You never know.
48:10There is no middle riddles, they're playing on me.
48:17The cat plays fiddle, she do, she do as she please.
48:25They're falling to the left, falling to the rod of me.
Comments