Australian Penthouse

If TV series Underbelly is anything to go by, a life of crime is a heady mix of violence, fast cars and faster women. But if you live by the sword, you can expect to die by the sword. Or in the case of today’s crims, at least get yourself a lucrative book deal.

Story: Denise Mooney

He looks like a gentleman about town, with his well-cut suit and expansive smile. A cigar dangles from the corner of his mouth. When he enters a room, heads turn and autograph hunters stop him in the street. But this guy is no movie star. In the words of Melbourne journalist and author John Silvester, he’s more of a ‘gang-star’. Thanks to the television show Underbelly, Mick Gatto, Melbourne identity, businessman and former member of the infamous Carlton Crew, is now a living legend.

Gatto, who is managed by celebrity agent Max Markson, launched his autobiography I, Mick Gatto at a trendy Melbourne restaurant late last year. Former journalist Tom Noble, who co-wrote the book with Gatto, says that unlike other players in Melbourne’s gangland wars, Gatto has not so much courted fame as had it thrust upon him. “His whole world changed when Underbelly came out. Like it or not, he was front and centre.”

There’s no denying our obsession with celebrity has expanded to include a few crooks. We’ve been fascinated with the Australian underworld since Mark Brandon ‘Chopper’ Read, former street fighter and standover man, burst onto the scene in the early ’90s. His first book, From the Inside, sold more than 250,000 copies, and he went on to write 10 more, including How to Shoot Friends and Influence People, which detailed his exploits as a commando who terrorised drug dealers. A movie starring Eric Bana followed, and Read is now a regular on the public-speaking circuit. The cult of Chopper shows no sign of abating – even his impersonator, comedian Heath Franklin, is a hit with fans.

Following the release of the television series Underbelly (about the 1995-2004 Melbourne gangland wars), thousands of people befriended jailed drug boss Carl Williams on Facebook, while wife Roberta has made regular appearances in women’s magazines and gossip columns. Not one to miss out on the limelight, Williams is said to be planning his own tell-all book. Many blame Underbelly and the media’s obsession with gangsters for giving crims too much attention, but are there other reasons for our fascination?

Folklorist Professor Graham Seal says celebrity criminals have been around since Ned Kelly and his gang of bushrangers hit our shores. He calls it the “Robin Hood principle” that’s evident in every culture. From US outlaw hero Jesse James to 1920s Melbourne gangster Squizzy Taylor, it seems we have a tendency to make heroes of our villains. Seal says crooks like Kelly were seen as underdogs who defied authority for good reason, whether that was actually true or not: “They all had something out of the ordinary about them, a bit of style or panache.”

Another famous Aussie outlaw, Brenden Abbott, was dubbed the ‘Postcard Bandit’ after sending postcards taunting police with his whereabouts while on the run after a jailbreak. A prolific thief, Abbott escaped prison several times until his eventual recapture in 1998. Seal says on some level characters like Abbott and Kelly give people hope in a more just society, where wealth and power are not just the preserves of a select few. They’re closely related to the idea of the ‘Aussie Battler’ that’s so prevalent in our culture.

“With Chopper, a lot of people identify with his [tough] background, that’s what makes him stand out,” Seal tells us. Crooks don’t always have to be winners for us to consider them heroes, either. Like Ned Kelly, they can come to a gruesome end and still end up a national icon. “What’s considered heroic is that they fight on despite the odds against them,” explains Seal.

Criminologist Derek Dalton says the new breed of celebrity criminals can be traced back to 1950s London, when the notorious Kray twins ruled the organised crime scene in London with violence and intimidation. But as the owners of a West End nightclub, Ronnie and Reggie had a veneer of respectability. They mixed with celebrities and were widely regarded as sophisticated and charming. “There was also the whole working-class-boys-made-good angle to it,” says Dalton.

Along with our Aussie larrikin crooks like Chopper and the Postcard Bandit, we have another type of outlaw – the gangster. A far more complicated individual, the gangster appears legitimate on the surface, but there’s a suggestion he might not be all he seems. Mick Gatto is the living embodiment of the Aussie gangster, according to Dalton, who says the viewing public tend to identify him with a well-known TV character. “We see Gatto as the archetypal Tony Soprano larger-than-life businessman,” he says. “All that stuff we know about the Mafia, we tap into when someone like him comes along. Both men are charming and masculine. They drive luxury cars. They share traits that are important in terms of celebrity.”

To be a celebrity crook, you need more than just a shady past and a winning personality. To appeal to the public, they must have a soft side to counterbalance their perceived criminality. In the case of the Kray twins, they adored their mother Violet. In Gatto’s case, he donates large sums of money to charity. Not easily forgotten is his sojourn to Singapore to chase down missing funds for former clients of failed stockbroking firm Opes Prime. “The idea that Mick is going to heavy these crooks overseas appeals to the man and woman on the street,” says Dalton. “Good old Mick is doing a public service.” The fact that Gatto shot hitman Andrew Benji Veniamin in self-defence (he was acquitted of murder in 2005) is also important to the way the public views him. “It was either kill or be killed. People understood that.”

Jason Wilson, lecturer in Digital Communication at the University of Wollongong, says Australians have always been fascinated with true crime. “Anti-authoritarianism is ingrained in the Australian character,” he tells us. “We tend to identify with that aspect of criminals more than we do with the police.” He says we love dramas like Underbelly because they expose a side of our neighbourhoods we know little about: “There’s a glamour to it that most of us don’t have in our lives.”

Former Sydney gangland cop Roger Rogerson says our fascination with the underworld is nothing new: “I think we have a morbid interest in blood and guts. As a kid, I went to the pictures to watch cowboys and Indians or war movies with John Wayne.” Rogerson, who recently launched his own memoirs, titled The Dark Side, traces the new breed of flashy gangsters back to the emergence of drugs in the ’70s and ’80s. “I saw these guys in Sydney who were shit-pot crims doing small stuff like a bit of shoplifting or maybe breaking and entering,” reveals Rogerson. “Suddenly drugs became the fashion, and the next thing they’ve got the latest model Merc and their wives are all decked out in flash jewellery.”

Noble says Gatto only decided to write his autobiography after a television network threatened to make a film about him, with or without his co-operation: “In many ways, he’s an old-school crook, he’s got those values as opposed to the young, flashy wannabe gangsters.” Of course, the true-crime market has exploded since Noble first started writing in the genre 20 years ago. Back then, bookstores didn’t know which shelf to put his books on. Then again, he says, “Twenty years ago, crooks were more old-school. They didn’t tell their stories.”

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