Alphonse Gangitano was a Melbourne criminal, known as the Black Prince of Lygon Street and the public face of the underground organisation called the Carlton Crew. He was an associate of alleged organised crime figures in Sydney and Perth, and until his death in January 1998 he was one of the most unpredictable men in the Melbourne underworld. This film tells his story through the words of a man who knew him for years: Mick Gatto, whose extract from his book with Tom Noble is read here almost in full.
Gatto was portrayed in the first Underbelly series, which chronicled around 30 gangland killings in Melbourne between 1998 and 2010.
A good bloke who changed
Gatto says that when they first met, Gangitano was a really good bloke. They socialised, went to parties and had fun. But as he grew older he took on the gangster image, and later in life, Gatto says, he changed completely. Gatto did not see it himself, but everyone told him Gangitano was using a lot of drugs. People would look at him the wrong way and he would attack them.
The warning signs came early, after a night out at a club in St Kilda that almost ended in a fatal shooting. After that Gatto kept his distance. He respected him, he says, but the friendship was often tested.
He made his money collecting debts, looking after venues, gambling, racing trotters, from a share in a King Street nightclub and from fight promotion. He promoted the world champion boxer Lester Ellis, who was beaten in the ring by Barry Michael. Not long afterwards Gangitano attacked the much smaller Michael in a Melbourne nightclub and tried to bite off his nose.
A rivalry over small things
Between the two men there was always an unspoken competition. If someone lit Gatto's cigarette first, or shook Gatto's hand first, Gangitano would be furious. When Chopper Read was quoted in one of the Underbelly books praising Gatto and saying Gangitano was not fit to work in a Turkish bath, Gangitano was frothing at the mouth. Gatto told him he had paid Chopper five thousand to say it. He had not.
Apart from a baccarat game in the early 1980s, which Gatto calls a disaster, they never did business together. He was, Gatto says, way too volatile.
Footscray and the police
Gangitano's hatred of the police began after a fight at a Footscray club called Bunnies. Gatto was not there, but he was told it was a bloodbath: all the bouncers were attacked and someone drove a car through the front door. Police took Gangitano back to the station. He told Gatto he was sitting with his hands on a desk when an officer smashed them with a typewriter. A week later his head was so swollen, Gatto says, that he looked like the Elephant Man. He took it on the chin, but he wanted to even it up.
He chased reputations, seeking out high-profile criminals from all over Australia. He was friendly with Chris Flannery, a hitman who made his name in Sydney in the 1980s before disappearing, presumed murdered, in May 1985. He once bashed Flannery too.
Not every story about him was true, Gatto says; one shooting he was blamed for was someone else's. But he did shoot a standover man in the leg, and Gatto watched him break the nose of a young woman who answered back to one of his jokes. That, he says, was the worst thing he saw him do.
King Street, 1995
A few days before Christmas 1995, Gangitano got into trouble at a sports bar in King Street with Jason Moran and another man. Thirteen people were injured. Moran was later recorded on a police listening device saying he had to shower to wash the blood off, and that he had started the fight. Gangitano was arrested at the scene; Moran got away. The case against Gangitano was the stronger one.
In 1996, bouncers at Monsoon's nightclub refused him entry and he threatened to kill them. Police charged him with threats to kill, and when they raided his house he was hit on the head with the butt of a shotgun. By the end, Gatto says, he had gone right off the rails.
Templestowe, January 1998
On 16 January 1998 Gangitano was shot dead in his home in Templestowe, in Melbourne's eastern suburbs. He was 40. Police believe the killer was Jason Moran, who had been his friend, and that three bullets were fired after an argument.
When the radio reported that a well-known underworld figure had been shot, some people thought it was Gatto. It came as a shock, he says, but he knew it would happen one day. Whenever they fell out they finished up friends again, and they were mates until the day he died.
The extract ends with Underbelly. Gatto learned that Simon Westaway, cast to play him, had been a police officer twenty years earlier and at first told him he could not take the part. He slept on it and rang back: do the best you can.
The film closes on Gatto himself: a big man and a good boxer, loosely affiliated with the Carlton Crew, who was later charged with murdering a hitman after an argument and was cleared on the grounds of self-defence, having said the other man pulled the gun first.