On Tuesday night, Pasquale Barbaro was shot dead in his car in the backstreets of Earlwood in Sydney’s south.
On hearing the news, I first thought of the difficulties facing journalists working at news desks that night. The first question to answer was which Pasquale Barbaro had been murdered? There’s a small army of them and many are known to police. Two other relatives bearing the name had already been murdered. Another was serving a 30-year jail term over his role in the biggest ecstasy importation Australia has seen.
On this occasion it was 35-year-old Pasquale Timothy Barbaro who became the victim.
In 2003, Jason Moran a key combatant in Melbourne’s bloody underworld feud, knew he was in danger and with a contract out on his life. He came out of hiding briefly to watch his children kick a footy around at an Auskick clinic at Essendon in Melbourne’s north with his bodyguard, Pasquale ‘Pat’ Barbaro, Pasquale Timothy Barbaro’s cousin.
Full column here.
When I first moved up the to Melbourne from the very quiet and sedate Mornington Peninsula I lived in St.Kilda and it really was quite a scary place to live. When I got a job at Melbourne Airport I moved across to Essendon, Moonee Ponds etc and found it a bit boring really. I liked that side of the city so much I bought a place in Ascot Vale. Boring, no, scary,no…….until I witnessed some things going down in Union Road. I have to say I have seen photos of a lot of these “criminal types” since then and realized I used to see them in the supermarket every Saturday morning.
I do like this new website JTI
Glad to hear it, Penny. The main problem I found with Essendon and its environs was all the Essendon barrackers.
I moved from Box Hill to Carlton and Fitzroy in the late 1970s and saw a lot of very dodgy activity that appeared to be financing the nascent nightlife scenes in both those places. In Carlton it seemed to be established family businesses, but Fitzroy was a lot less organised — it was not the desirable destination it is now — and charismatic figures would come and go in flashy cars. Some of these people were infamous at the time, some became so later, some were even killed; but some I never heard of again, and maybe they just quietly got away with it.
Word was that quite a few well-known Fitzroy haunts got their start-up cash this way. They weren’t necessarily dodgy themselves, but just couldn’t get bank loans. I dread to think what happened to the ones that failed.
I certainly wish I’d bought a house there at the time! Around 1980 I seem to remember seeing a very small and decrepit two-storey Collingwood house with texta-on-cardboard sign in the window, “House For Sale $8,000”. Mind you, at the time it might as well have been 8 million as far as I was concerned. Maybe I could have borrowed it from one of those guys?
“Maybe I could have borrowed it from one of those guys?”
And you would be defending them in court as a favour’ to this day.
Cheers,
Linz
Yeah, it wouldn’t have been a good idea
JackSprat – I have no idea what WordPress sites are mate.
Shoot through another comment please, Milton. Your comments are going straight into spam. Not sure why but I have pressed some buttons and want to see if they have taken you out of the ether.
I suspect the WordPress author may have had a problem with the lyricist of “Thick as a Brick”
Do we need to put anything in the website column?
Great pic of Russ and the boys. I felt a surge of pride in my state and its peoples.
btw – Your old show is still in the tv guide as Tough Nuts, but the lovely Tara Moss is absent. Next Monday hard man, Chow.
And another thing, this site doesn’t say “message sent”.
There are a few of you going into spam, Milton. Not just you. Tracy, JOH one or two others. I’ll have my web man look at it later. I tipped this sort of thing would happen when Trump was elected POTUS.
I see then that the filter actually works, Jack.
Hooray for technology!
Very droll, TO.
Some overly-touchy spam filters get triggered by certain styles of “from” email addresses. Mine has a “don’t send these to spam” setting somewhere, but obviously YMMV.
man, i meant littl’ milt , i just got home, i’m really drunk again. i always thought you were the young milton. repect
repect to you too, FC
I see P Dutton has attributed some aspects of this wave of criminality to a former PM. And the rest of it to King George III, probably. The man is a genius, and with a remarkably small lexicon.
(What’s with the Login button, Jack?)
Secret business, mate. If I were you I’d follow my father’s sound advice: Don’t touch anything you don’t understand.
https://xkcd.com/242/
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-15/who-was-pasquale-barbaro/8027028
Pasquale Timothy appears to me to have been a ‘tad’ bulked-up but I guess he had to be.
I reckon he never stood a chance of a normal life from the get go did he.
Society is to blame.
I saw you on TV the other night on a show about McPherson.
That was made six years ago. By gee, I looked good.
Handscomb averaging 38 may have played himself into the 11 with a double ton. Maxi. Failed unfortunately and the SACA’s in all sorts of trouble at the GABBA good bowling squad the Maroons, no room for Neser. Young Alex Carey the future Australian keeper trying to stick around by the looks of it. Young Patterson at the crease for NSW now. I get the feeling there wont be as many changes as I hoped. Probably 3 only. Even though Sayers didn’t get a wicket he must come in for Adelaide.
Selectors in the past have picked a keeper from nowhere but I would have thought Whiteman and Hartley are ahead of him, Dismayed.
You looked pretty good the other day on Insiders…
When I saw the report of the murder I wondered whether this was a family feud, a gang war or an Omerta violation. Hard to tell the players without a scorecard.
It could be any of the above, Dwight, perhaps all. I’ve written ‘Ndrangheta before. They have a global turnover estimated around $80 billion. They’re bigger than BHP-Billiton. Think about that for a minute.
Then think about the various Mexican cartels.
I don’t want to quibble and in a sense it doesn’t matter but on turnover, ‘Ndrangheta is the top of the heap.
If nothing else, more relevant to Australia.
It would be fascinating to determine where the profit from that turnover is going.
As I understand it, some of the ill-gotten gains have gone on commercial property developments in Europe, Linz.
Doesn’t the ‘Ndrangheta have its origins in the Abruzzese region of Italy? Where they have been bandits for literally hundreds of years?
The very same, Eccles.
So, in other words, crime is in their DNA? And therefore, the only long term solution is genetic engineering …
I don’t know that we can make that conclusion. I think the best one is nature, nurture and choice.
I think many of us secretly admire the crims in the Underworld Mr Insider for doing something at times we would not – the big boys anyway, not the filth. And we love Gangster movies don’t we, so many to choose from. One of my favs is “Carlito’s Way” , short clip linked, starring Al Pacino. My guess is Police wont be too quick to solve Mr Barbaro’s death as am sure the killer was at pains to be, as we would say, “discreet”. Nice new Website indeed Mr Insider, congratulations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-043a58Mgo
I know but Carlito’s Way is a tragedy, Henry. The protagonist dies trying to escape the clutches of the criminal world. That’s not something I’d want to emulate.
Carlito’s Way is an excellent movie.
Another great movie about a crim seeking to leave the life after one last job is Heat.
Jack the Insider, distinguished guests, not yet distinguished guests, a warm hello. It’s very flash in here and I note the smoking area has gotten smaller and I will not drink anything from a former jam jar, or similar.
Regarding the article, I preferred Hanna Barbaro – the funny one.
ps. I like having the last word!
You ended up in the spam pile, Milton. Seems the internet takes a dim view of you. Hopefully that won’t happen again.
I was beginning to despair that I couldn’t figure out the new site (us conservatives loathe change). I had no idea what the website window was for so eventually I had the bright idea of putting jacktheinsider in the slot. A good thing I can remember my comments almost word for word!
You came through as spam again, dammit. The site is working fine but I just have to keep an eye on the spam pile, unspam them and post them. There must be a better way and I will investigate it with my web guy over the weekend.
I suspect there will also be language filter
Geez, with this new set up of replies, long contributions and replies are going to drive people crazy just getting paging past them.
Methinks short and succinct will become the order of the day.
What have you been doing on WordPress sites Milton?
Short and succinct works for me, JS.
Nice new joint Jack, it’s very posh in here, clean lines and all. I especially like the threading.
JS, I think once you get used to the threading, it will save time — It doesn’t take up any more space, and if you’re not interested in the topic of the first comment of a thread, you can just scroll past the whole thread in one go. It’s the way the kids do things these days.
I preferred Hanna Barbaro, the funny one.
JTI,
Now where were we before technology interrupted?
Oh Yes!! At the risk of establishing iconic status in the Grumpy Old Man stakes – the situation you describe is so typical of our current society, in so many of its facets, political, social, economic and even bureaucratic!!
Standards have just dropped, no longer are participants interested in maintaining values and the ‘rules of the game’; flippancy, instant expertise and instant gratification are now the norm.
Oh for the ‘Good old days’!!
That being said – Welcome to the new world order!!
Here we are, PLMO. In the course of studying a few of the luminaries, one of the characteristics that was almost universal was grandiosity. Many hero worshipped the protagonist in Scarface or watched the Godfather movies over and over, had the posters on the walls and did their best to emulate their screen heroes. I’m not sure that we can blame Hollywood but it was very strange behaviour.
It was everywhere JTI. Roger Rogerson had a cult following amongst some Detectives in most states during the 80’s and 90’s. These blokes, in the main, weren’t corrupt either. I could never work it out.
It’s about power, mate. Those who have it revel in it and those who don’t want to be close to those who do.