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As the bullets flew and bodies piled up, few imagined a baby-faced suburban dad would emerge as the lynchpin in the brutal gangland war that destroyed Melbourne's chic and genteel reputation.

Chubby Carl Williams usually dressed in shorts and T-shirts and loved dining out on chicken and chips at his local fast-food outlet.

He was like a young version of Tony Soprano; the central character in a real-life drama that gave the American TV hit's scriptwriters a run for their money.

The speed of his metamorphosis from mid-ranking drug-dealer to gangster kingpin and serial killer stunned his police pursuers.

Protected by the criminals' most valued code - silence - Williams laughed in their faces. He was untouchable.

Until, that is,  detectives in Victoria got the green light to seduce hitmen into becoming star witnesses, in exchange for ratting on 'Mr Big'.

First a killer known as 'The Driver' rolled, then 'The Runner'. Eventually five henchmen turned, leaving their boss facing the next 35 years behind bars.

With Williams locked away in a high-security cell, police chiefs have finally declared Australia's bloodiest gangland feud over.

'The culture in the underworld has changed,' said Victoria's director of public prosecutions, Paul Coghlan QC, who declared Williams' conviction the most important in the state's history. 'We have, for at least the foreseeable future, broken the model that there is honour among thieves.'

His statement came almost a decade after the assassination that led to Australia's longest and bloodiest gang feud.

Williams was only 27 when self-styled godfather Alphonse Gangitano  was gunned down in his laundry in 1998. Gangitano was 'almost certainly' killed by Jason Moran, the hot-headed son of Lewis Moran, the patriarch of a drug-dealing clan, according to The Age, the Melbourne newspaper which has been following the case for years.

The war that followed Gangitano's death began as a struggle for control of Melbourne's booming amphetamines trade, but personal feuds and paranoia quickly fuelled a tit-for-tat killing spree that accounted for almost 30 victims. All along, 'Big Carl' smiled for the cameras and charmed interviewers, insisting he was just an innocent family man targeted by corrupt police.

In reality, the Williams clan had been manufacturing and trafficking drugs for years and Carl Williams was intent on filling the vacuum left by Gangitano's demise. But the main barrier to those big-time ambitions was the Moran family.

That came to a head on October 13, 1999, when Lewis' sons, Jason and Mark Moran, met Williams in a public park to discuss, among other matters, the ownership of a pill press used to make amphetamines.

It was  Williams' 29th birthday, but Jason Moran, a hot-head with a short temper and a tendency to extreme violence, wasn't in the mood for celebrating.

Jason pulled a gun and, after Williams blurted, 'No Jason', shot him in the stomach with a .22 Derringer.

'Shoot him in the head,' urged Mark.

'No, we'll never get our money,' replied Jason.

It was a  decision that would  lead to the destruction of the Moran family. Williams may have adopted the code of silence (he told police he  realised he'd been shot only after feeling a pain while out walking) but was immediately planning revenge.

Eight months later Williams gunned down Mark Moran  as he stepped out of his car, but it would be some time before the Moran clan knew for sure who was responsible.

'We still didn't know we were in a war,' one family insider later told a reporter.

By the time Jason Moran  was shot in 2003 the body count of underworld figures and small-time criminals was into double figures.

The hitman Williams recruited for the job, The Runner, told police how much his new boss had come to  loathe the Morans.

'Carl developed a deep-seated hatred of the Moran family - there is no doubt it was an obsession with him,' he said. 'Carl told me on numerous occasions that he wanted everyone connected with the Moran family dead.'

The Runner got his nickname because of a reputation among the criminal fraternity for legging it quickly from the scene of violent hold-ups, rather than using a getaway car.

But the plot to murder Jason Moran was proving to be difficult as the intended victim knew he was a target and was proficient in counter-surveillance.

Increasingly desperate, Williams and The Runner came up with a series of bizarre plans. One was for The Runner to dress up as a mother with a pram and shoot Moran as he walked past. Another was to lie in wait at the grave of his brother. The pair finally settled on an ambush at a cricket oval where Moran took his boys to Australian rules football training every Saturday morning.

In front of dozens of kids and parents, The Runner jogged up to a parked van and  fired a shotgun through the closed window, killing Moran and his bodyguard, small-time crook Pasquale Barbaro. Moran's children were also in the van.

The following year Lewis Moran was dead too, gunned down as he drank beer at his local club.

The killing came less than 24 hours after Williams' kick-boxing bodyguard, Andrew Veniamin, was shot dead in a pizza restaurant by a Moran clan associate, Mick Gatto, whose claim that he acted in self-defence was accepted by a jury at a later trial.

Before the war broke out, underworld killings generally took place in the shadows, a kind of alternate universe that gentrified Melbournians considered  excluded from their daily lives.

But the brazen public nature of the executions - and particularly that of Jason Moran - shocked the city.

The police taskforce created to stop the rot was under intense pressure to deliver results and it was Jason Moran's murder that gave them their first big break. Calls made from a public phone near the cricket field led them to Williams' trusted associate, The Driver, and the next hit - again carried out by The Runner - was caught by electronic surveillance.

Although The Driver had found a listening device in one car, Williams - who was now calling himself 'The Premier' because he felt he ran the state of Victoria - told them to go ahead.

If that was one sign of his misplaced confidence, the hit itself was another.

Williams was aligned to an even bigger Mr Big, Antonio 'Fat Tony' Mokbel, who was seeking revenge for the murder of a dealer friend, Willy Thompson.

He believed another dealer, Michael Marshall, was responsible, and offered Williams and The Runner A$300,000 (HK$1.82 million) to carry out the hit.

Williams agreed, which surprised The Runner, who later told police: 'I knew that Carl was behind Thompson's murder.'

Detectives also learned just how ruthless Williams could be. They were told he ordered the murders of two hitmen who initially agreed to kill Jason Moran but didn't go through with it.

The police surveillance efforts were enormous, bugging suspects for 53,000 hours and logging half a million telephone conversations, most of which were mundane. 'It was like being subjected to the Jerry Springer show 24 hours a day,' said one officer of the eavesdropping on the Williams clan.

But the hard work paid off and eventually the taskforce had enough evidence to put Williams behind bars without the risk of him getting bail.

The key to keeping him there, though, was persuading his foot soldiers to break the criminals' most sacred code, and turn against their boss.

The offer of reduced sentences - a first for murderers in Victoria - did the trick.  Perhaps the fact that Williams and Mokbel had short-changed The Runner also helped, but he told detectives about crimes they knew about, and others they didn't.

He is one of several figures who cannot be identified because  they are protected witnesses.

In total he implicated Williams - whom police nicknamed 'Fat Boy' - in at least six murders.

The 36-year-old suddenly faced life without parole and earlier this month cut a deal with prosecutors to plead guilty to the murders of Lewis and Jason Moran and Mark Mallia. Last year he was convicted of the murder of Michael Marshall.

Police believe Williams may be responsible for a total of 10 deaths. He faces at least 30 years in prison.

By last week the war had become a soap opera as the gangsters' other halves paraded in garish designer outfits outside court and verbally abused each other on talkback radio.

Williams' now estranged wife, Roberta, has reportedly found Islam and been replaced by a young blonde called Renae, who was seen sporting a diamond ring on her engagement finger.

Lawyer Zarah Garde-Wilson, who represented Williams and Mokbel,  has been charged with giving false evidence and possessing an unlicensed handgun.

Fat Tony remains elusive. A year ago he was on trial for cocaine trafficking, but is believed to have fled the country when he found out he was to be charged with Michael Marshall's murder.

Last week, prosecutors added Lewis Moran's murder to his charge sheet.

Police deputy commissioner Simon Overland is confident Mokbel will eventually resurface and face justice.

And although he considers the present war at an end, he believes there will be more gangland feuds.

'It never ends,' Mr Overland told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 'As we take one individual or group out, others take their place.'



Rise and fall  of a gangster