The last remaining patriarch of Melbourne’s most notorious mob family was laid to rest at a wedding reception house yesterday, closing one of the bloodiest chapters in Australia’s gangland history.
Desmond “Tuppence” Moran, 60, was gunned down by men in balaclavas in the city’s Ascot Pasta and Deli Cafe last week, the latest violent episode in a nine-year turf war so sensational it inspired a smash-hit television series.
Moran’s brother Lewis and nephews Jason and Mark were among the 25 gangland murders fictionalized in the drama Underbelly, and he was the last remaining male in the Moran family.
Well-known mobsters and figures from the horse-racing world were among about 300 mourners who packed the Roselyn Court wedding reception rooms to pay their respects to Moran in an intensely private service.
Security was tight, with uniformed police guarding the doors and media barred from entry, press reported.
Close relatives and colorful associates have been implicated in Moran’s murder, including Lewis’s widow and family matriarch Judy, in a plot allegedly fueled by simmering bad blood and grudges over money.
Geoffrey “Nuts” Amour is accused of pulling the trigger, while his girlfriend Suzanne Kane — a member of another crime family closely linked to the Morans — has been charged as an accessory.
Victoria state police Commissioner Simon Overland has described the murder and subsequent suspicious fire at Judy Moran’s house as “stranger than fiction.”
“If you were a scriptwriter and sat down and wrote this stuff you’d probably say: ‘Look, no, it’s a bit far-fetched. No one will believe it,’” Overland said this week.
Underbelly, one of Australia’s top-rating shows last year, could not be shown in Melbourne because some of the characters depicted were still facing trial in real life.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS