In a Richmond pub in the 1970s, Brian Kane, a former Golden Gloves boxer and one of Melbourne's most feared standover men, was losing a fight to Vinnie Mikkelsen, who had refused a drink from him. When it was over, Mikkelsen had a piece of Kane's ear in his mouth. He knew that when Brian's brother Les found out, somebody would die. This film traces that fight back to a laneway and forward to a war that killed five men and convicted no one.
The laneway
The hatred began 18 years earlier, when Brian Kane was 16 and Les 13. Down a nearby laneway lived the Mikkelsens, fatherless and penniless. The eldest boy, Reg, fed the family from other people's bins. The Kane boys came to watch and mocked them as the Midget Mikkelsens.
One afternoon Reg told them to get out of his laneway. Brian said no midget was going to tell him what to do. Vinnie put Les on the ground and knocked out a tooth. Reg, much smaller than Brian, stamped on his shin until the bone broke, then put his dead father's pocket knife to Brian's face and told him that if he ever came back he would cut his throat.
Ray Chuck
Vinnie Mikkelsen worked for Raymond Patrick "Ray Chuck" Bennett. In the early 1970s Bennett went to England, where an Australian firm known as the Kangaroo Gang worked the West End's stores and jewellers with charm, false names and coats with hidden compartments. Chopper Read said Bennett was one of its leaders, and Freddie Foreman wrote in his book Respect that his firm bought the Australians' stolen goods.
Bennett ended up in Parkhurst alongside Reggie Kray. He told Read in Pentridge in 1975 that he had fought Kray and won. Read did not believe it, and Linus Driscoll, Jimmy the Pom, who had friends in London, laughed: he had heard Kray won, and that Kray's men later gave Bennett a hiding in the showers.
The Victoria Club
Back in Melbourne, Bennett's firm called him the General. His target was the settling room of the Victoria Club in Queen Street, where bookmakers paid each other in cash once a week. He rented an office upstairs, watched for months, and chose the first banking day after Easter. His crew sabotaged the lift and the fire escape. In 11 minutes, 118 people were put on the floor and eight metal boxes holding 118 calico bags of cash were carried out.
No one agrees on the total. The Victoria Club told police $1 million, the bookmakers later said 1.4 and the press said 8. The film says the bookmakers understated it to hide their untaxed cash from the tax office. It remains the biggest robbery in Australian history, and no one was convicted.
The Kanes
Les, Brian and Ray Kane were members of the Federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union, by then, the film says, less a union than a criminal enterprise controlling the Melbourne docks: standover, smuggling, gambling, prostitution and drugs. The Kanes were the most feared men in that world, and they demanded a cut of any crime in Melbourne. Brian was the boxer. Les, by all accounts, was worse.
When they came for a share of the robbery, Bennett told them no. Mikkelsen had been on the robbery and was Bennett's muscle. After the ear, Mikkelsen knew the Kanes would come, and not for a fight. So Bennett's crew struck first.
No body, no case
Les Kane's wife came home one evening to find three men with machine guns in her bedroom. One held her and the children in another room while the other two went down the hall, where Les was in the bathroom. He was machine-gunned to death, and his body was put into the boot of his own pink Ford Futura and driven away. Neither the car nor Les Kane has been found. Bennett, Mikkelsen and Laurie Prendergast were charged, and the trial in September 1979 fell apart: no body meant no proof he was dead.
Bennett had eight weeks. One morning, under police escort at the Melbourne City Court for a committal hearing over a payroll robbery at Yarraville, he was shot by a man dressed as a barrister. He ran down a flight of stairs and died in the courtyard. The gunman walked out and was never caught. The film gives three answers. Most books say Brian Kane. Others suggest police let the escort fail; the detective Brian Murphy, known as the Skull, had a known feud with Bennett, has said Kane was the shooter, acknowledges he was near the court, and has always denied any involvement. A rumour names Jimmy the Pom.
The children
Brian Kane had three years. At the Quarry Hotel in Brunswick East, two men in balaclavas came in with revolvers. He pushed the woman beside him under the table to save her, and they shot him dead. Police have long suspected Russell Cox, Bennett's close friend and brother-in-law.
Among Brian Kane's death notices was one from a 15-year-old: "Uncle Brian, your little mate Jason Moran." Moran grew up, married Les Kane's daughter, and in 2003 was shot dead at a junior football ground on the orders of Carl Williams. Five men died in the Bennett and Kane war. There was not one conviction. The war, the film ends, never finished. It just had children.