On 9 September 2023, Gavin Preston was sitting with an associate outside Sweet Lulu's cafe in Keilor, a quiet suburb in Melbourne's north-west. At about 10.20am a black SUV pulled up nearby. A masked gunman got out, moved quickly towards the two men and opened fire. Preston died at the scene. His companion was wounded and survived. The car was later found dumped a short distance away. Police treated it as a professional hit. To understand why someone wanted Preston dead, the film says, you have to understand the man.
Born bad
Preston grew up in Melbourne's western suburbs and spent most of his teenage years in and out of juvenile detention. He was not a drug addict and he did not blame his parents. Asked why he did what he did, he gave a blunt answer: he was born bad.
By 19 he had put several men in hospital. His violence was impulsive and explosive. On 30 November 1991, asked to move from a packing bench in a Northcote shop, he headbutted the shopkeeper, told him that if he was going to be charged he had better do a proper job, then knocked him down and kicked him repeatedly in the head. Soon afterwards he beat a man unconscious with a stick for looking at him in the street after a football match. In court he said he was sorry, and that he had had this problem for a while. Years later, sentenced for a jailhouse assault, he told a judge he would not claim a drug problem or an unhealthy childhood as excuses. What followed was a 30-year trail through the prison system: assaults, armed robberies and a growing reputation among Victoria's most dangerous men.
Prisoners of War
Preston and Matthew Johnson first crossed paths in Pentridge in the 1990s. Both were young and volatile, and they did not like older prisoners throwing their weight around. According to reports, they and other younger prisoners formed the Prisoners of War gang, with a creed that promised no limits to its violence. By the 2000s both men were among the highest-risk prisoners in Victoria.
The gang's secrecy means hard facts are scarce. It is reported that Preston and Johnson tried to smash their way into a unit to reach Greg Brazel, a veteran prisoner who had once stabbed Chopper Read and who they regarded as an informer. Neither man was a sophisticated criminal; both were jailed for violence and petty crime rather than big-time crime. But in prison, the film says, there are two sources of power, money and pure physical violence, and they had the second.
At some point in the 2000s the alliance ended and they became enemies. Tensions rose after Johnson killed Carl Williams in Barwon in 2010, when Preston was not in the unit. Rumours suggest the split was over that, or over an attack by Preston on a friend of Johnson's.
North Melbourne, 2012
In the early hours of 11 February 2012 Preston shot and killed Adam Khoury, a major Melbourne ice dealer, in a flat in Canning Street, North Melbourne. Prosecutors alleged it was premeditated, driven by a $2,500 drug debt and Preston's fear that Khoury was about to inform on him. Preston had been under police surveillance that night, but officers following him were ordered to stand down at 12.25am, 29 minutes before Khoury was killed. Khoury was shot twice in the head and once in the arm. Prosecutors said Preston tried to create an alibi by having his partner send a text from his phone in Cranbourne. But the flat was under separate surveillance for another investigation, and that footage, with forensic and phone evidence, placed him there.
Nine days into his murder trial, Preston pleaded guilty to defensive homicide, a now-abolished offence covering killings committed in a genuine but possibly unreasonable belief that lethal force was necessary. He said Khoury produced a revolver first. The judge accepted that Preston believed he was under immediate threat and sentenced him to 11 years, with a non-parole period of nine. The same sentence covered recklessly causing serious injury, after Preston shot another man in the leg at a garage in Sunshine 12 days before.
The tide turns
Back in prison, Preston was now a target. In 2016 he was attacked by five prisoners, all reportedly affiliated with the gang he had helped found. He was stabbed at least nine times with improvised weapons, and the attack was filmed and circulated online. Prison sources linked it to his falling-out with Johnson. From then on he was held under strict management, often in isolation. He never named his attackers and never cooperated with investigators. He kept the code, however far outside its protection he now lived.
Keilor
Some sources say that after his release Preston was living fast and stirring up old tensions. Others point to unfinished business inside. Two men were later arrested and charged with his murder and with attempted murder. Both have pleaded not guilty, and at the time of the film a Supreme Court trial was expected, with pre-trial hearings due in September 2025. Much of the case remains suppressed.
His funeral was private. Preston, the film concludes, was a product of violence, shaped by the system and determined to master it. What decades in prison could not do, the outside world did.