Paul Anderson - Dirty Deeds. Justice Prevails

Contents

How Matthew Charles Johnson was able to kill Carl Williams in Barwon Prison

Mild-mannered account manager Anthony Sherna kills his wife after years of mental torment

Ramazan Acar stabs his daughter to death and taunts the mother on social media

Double murderer John Leslie Coombes strangles and dismembers his third victim in a bathtub

Who is Arthur Freeman, the man who threw his own daughter off the West Gate Bridge?

The murder of an everyman in cold blood is a terrible thing to witness

Eileen Creamer kills her sex-crazed husband

A young woman pushed to the brink by years of abuse kills her stepfather with his own gun

Lovelorn lad Leon Borthwick mows down his perceived love rival

Victorian detectives foil a Gold Coast mans plot to kill his wife, thanks to a randomly bugged public telephone

Carl Williams was a chatty bloke. Watch CCTV footage of him in Barwon Prisons high-security Acacia Unit 1 and there he is nattering away to either or both of his two fellow inmates: career criminal Matthew Charles Johnson and a convicted killer we shall call Mr Red, for legal reasons. On another occasion he sits at the units dayroom table, his hands gesticulating as fast as his mouth can move. In the concrete recreation yard he jabbers away while cutting laps with his two criminal pals. And there he is, still humbugging away only minutes before Johnson crowns and kills him with the steel stem of an exercise bike. While Williams may have been an annoying cellmate because of all his chit-chat, what really got under Johnsons skinaccording to Crown prosecutor Mark Rochford, SCwas the fact that Carl Anthony Williams was assisting police with an investigation. In Johnsons eyes Williams had turned into what criminals colloquially term a dog. And Johnson, quite possibly the most fearsome and influential prisoner in the Victorian jail system at that point in time, hates dogsmake no bones about it. Much to Matty Johnsons surprise, he was able to smash Williams eight times in the head with his heavy makeshift weapon without any immediate reaction from prison guards.

In my mind I thought the officers would have got there before I finished hitting him, Johnson would say in court.

A convicted drug trafficker, Williams was serving life in jail with a minimum term of thirty-five years for organising the gangland murders of mortal enemies Jason and Lewis Moran and perceived foes Michael Marshall and Mark Mallia, as well as conspiring to murder a man, when Johnson walked up behind him and bashed his head in like it was a watermelon. While Williams may have built a reputation as an unlikely crime boss on the outside, he was a nave sitting duck in jail. As one prison Intelligence Unit supervisor would explain to Ombudsman George Brouwer:

He was very high profile but at the end of the day he had no prison sense And then all of a sudden Johnson comes out of nowhere. And Johnson wasnt part of the gangland set up; he was a prison thug How they [Corrections Victoria] ever let it happen [Johnson and Williams being housed together in the same unit] I will not know. Because basically as soon as Johnson found out that Williams was cooperating with police to either get years off his own sentence or help his father out, he was doomed. He appointed his own assassin are the words that Ive used, and I stick by it.

George Williams knew his son Carl was fond of a chat.

He was a talker, yes, George would say in court.

Apparently Williams was also a prolific letter writer.

Yeah, Carl wrote a lot of letters, Matt Johnson would confirm while giving evidence at his own murder trial. He was always running out of stamps.

When George was jailed mid November 2007 for drug trafficking, he immediately began to ask to be housed with his son, the gangster who called himself The Premier and who was considered by his dad to be a big time drug dealer.

[Carl] said he made the hard decisions, George would say during Johnsons trial in the Victorian Supreme Court. I think he liked the notoriety a lot.

Carl Williamss former wife Roberta also gave some rare insights during Johnsons trial. She painted Williams as a caring and generous man despite the fact he once fired a gun at her while she was pregnant with their daughter. Under cross-examination by one of Johnsons two defence barristers, David Drake, Roberta told how Williams often lavished her with gifts and expensive jewellery. The couple lived a high life obviously well beyond any lawful meansand they milked it hard.

DRAKE: You had a fairly extravagant lifestyle, would you say?

ROBERTA: To some extent, yep.

DRAKE: There was plenty of money floating around?

ROBERTA: Yes.

DRAKE: Holidaysdid you take holidays together?

ROBERTA: Yes.

DRAKE: Stay at the best places?

ROBERTA: Not necessarily the best places. Whatever we liked at the time we chose and stayed there.

DRAKE: Regularly go out and wine and dine?

ROBERTA: Yeah.

Drake asked Roberta if it ever crossed her mind to wonder what her husband did for a living.

Of course it crossed my mind, she replied, but I just pushed it to the back of it.

DRAKE: Well, theres a lot of money that was flowing through that house, wasnt there?

ROBERTA: There was, yes.

DRAKE: And you believed that it was just from buying and selling jewellery?

ROBERTA: No I didnt but, like I said, I didnt really think about it.

DRAKE: Was there any mention ever of selling drugs?

ROBERTA: Any mention? We were arrested for selling drugs.

In court, George Williams spoke of the hatred his son bore toward half-brothers Mark and Jason Moran. The Moran boys shot Williams in a park over a drug debt in October 1999. The Morans were into Williams for $1 million, according to Roberta, and it was Jason who pulled the trigger. Jasons decision to shoot and wound Williams in the guts instead of acing him in the head sparked Melbournes gangland war, a war Roberta denied any knowledge of.

It wasnt apparent to me that some drug war was happening, no, she told the Supreme Court. I dont believe everything I read in the newspapers.

The Moran boys created a paranoid and vengeful monster when they shot Williams, who would go on to develop a knack of befriending ultra-violent criminals and convincing them to do his deadly dirty work. (While it is believed Williams may have organised seven or more gangland murders, police suspect he pulled the trigger on one manMark Moran in June 2000).

Many times he said that hed like to kill Jason Moran, George told Justice Lex Lasry. He had a passion to kill Jason Moran. He had a hatred for the man.

Nearly three years to the day after Mark Moran was shot dead, a hitman working for Williams blasted Jason and his mate Pasquale Barbaroat a Saturday morning kids footy clinic. George Williams said of that shooting: I dont condone the killing of someone in front of kids but I didnt say it was a horrible thing to happen.

Roberta told Johnsons trial that Williams never told her of any of his kill plots.

Carl was the most placid, quiet person you could ever come across, she said with a straight face. Even with my ranting and raving and yelling and screaming that I often did, Carl would sit there quietly and not even answer me back. Thats how quiet he was.

In December 2008, well into his prison sentence, George Williams was moved to Acacia Unit 4 at Barwon Prison. He spent one night there before being taken to a location outside jail where his son was meeting with detectives. Williams Junior and Senior spent eight nights at that location with the cops. Johnson told the Supreme Court he believed Williams was allowed to see his girlfriend and have sex with her during the organised outing. In an investigative report compiled by George Brouwer about Carl Williamss murder, Brouwer wrote: [The lead detective with whom Carl Williams was dealing] denied that prostitutes visited Mr Williams, however confirmed that Mr Williams then girlfriend and his fathers partner had a supervised visit at the permit location. Upon their return to Barwon, Williams and his dad were placed in the Melaleuca Unit. Johnson formally requested that he be housed with Williams as, according to Ombudsman Brouwers report, they had formed a friendship. Williams, meanwhile, wrote to Corrections Victoria requesting he be accommodated with Johnson. The placement of prisoners is the responsibility of the Sentence Management Unit. A range of factors is considered before certain prisoners are housed together.