Notorious Australian mobster Carl Williams was buried in a golden coffin yesterday after a lavish funeral which drew a large crowd of mourners and blanket media coverage after his savage jailhouse murder.
The plump Williams, known as the baby-faced killer, was killed in Victoria state’s highest security prison earlier this month by a fellow inmate who attacked him with part of an exercise bike.
The 39-year-old was a key figure in Melbourne’s brutal underworld war of the 1990s and immortalized in the popular TV series Underbelly. His ex-wife Roberta Williams and their daughter Dhakota arrived for the funeral and left in a black stretch Hummer limousine.
PHOTO: AFP
“You gave me self-belief and confidence when it had been ripped away years before,” the black-clad Roberta, eulogizing her ex-husband, told about 100 mourners at St Therese’s Catholic Church in the Melbourne suburb Essendon.
A woman impersonating Melbourne underworld matriarch Judy Moran, whose husband Lewis and son Jason were killed on Williams’ orders, also turned up at the service clutching an urn before being led away by police.
The woman said Judy Moran, who is in jail awaiting trial for the murder of her brother-in-law, would have loved to have seen the funeral of her gangland nemesis.
The dead mobster’s casket, reportedly a gold-plated coffin which cost A$30,000 (US$27,885) and based on the model used for Michael Jackson, was carried out of the church under gray skies.
A heavy police presence guarded the church, which was previously used for the service for Lewis Moran as well as Williams’ mother, who died last year from a drug overdose, while the primary school next door was in lock-down.
Williams was serving a life sentence with a 35-year non-parole period for ordering the murders of several rivals.
He was a central figure in Melbourne’s violent criminal war which began in the late 1990s and eventually claimed more than 25 lives, with a sentencing judge describing him as a “puppet master” who decided who lived and who died.
A 36-year-old man, who cannot be named, has been charged with his prison murder.
Williams once said he acted to protect his family, comparing his situation to soldiers fighting a war.
“Every day soldiers have to kill the enemy, otherwise the enemy will kill them, and no-one calls soldiers murderers,” Williams wrote in correspondence given to a commercial television station. “The people I killed were far worse people than I will ever be ... I never killed or harmed any innocent people.”
A humanoid robot that won a half-marathon race for robots in Beijing on Sunday ran faster than the human world record in a show of China’s technological leaps. The winner from Honor, a Chinese smartphone maker, completed the 21km race in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, said a WeChat post by the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, also known as Beijing E-Town, where the race began. That was faster than the human world record holder, Ugandan Jacob Kiplimo, who finished the same distance in about 57 minutes in March at the Lisbon road race. The performance by the robot marked a significant step forward
Four contenders are squaring up to succeed Antonio Guterres as secretary-general of the UN, which faces unprecedented global instability, wars and its own crushing budget crisis. Chile’s Michelle Bachelet, Argentina’s Rafael Grossi, Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan and Senegal’s Macky Sall are each to face grillings by 193 member states and non-governmental organizations for three hours today and tomorrow. It is only the second time the UN has held a public question-and-answer, a format created in 2016 to boost transparency. Ultimately the five permanent members of the UN’s top body, the Security Council, hold the power, wielding vetoes over who leads the
An earthquake registering a preliminary magnitude of 7.7 off northern Japan on Monday prompted a short-lived tsunami alert and the advisory of a higher risk of a possible mega-quake for coastal areas there. The Cabinet Office and the Japan Meteorological Agency said there was a 1% chance for a mega-quake, compared to a 0.1% chance during normal times, in the next week or so following the powerful quake near the Chishima and Japan trenches. Officials said the advisory was not a quake prediction but urged residents in 182 towns along the northeastern coasts to raise their preparedness while continuing their daily lives. Prime
South Korea’s air force yesterday apologized for a 2021 midair collision involving two fighter jets, a day after auditors said the pilots were taking selfies and filming during the flight and held them responsible for the accident. “We sincerely apologize to the public for the concern caused by the accident that occurred in 2021,” an air force spokesman told a news conference, adding that one of the pilots involved had been suspended from flying duties, received severe disciplinary action and has since left the military. The apology followed a report released on Wednesday by the South Korean Board of Audit and Inspection,
RSS