Dead Famous (ATOM Study Guide)

In 2003, AUSTRALIANS WERE shocked by the brutal murder of two men at a junior football clinic in Melbourne's north. Jason Moran and Pasquale Barbaro were sitting in the front seats of a van at a suburban oval on a sunny Saturday morning in June. Moran's six-year-old twins and their two young cousins were in the back when a man approached and unleashed two blasts from a sawn-off shotgun through the windscreen. At almost point-blank range, he then fired several shots from a .45 automatic pistol, killing the two men instantly. Miraculously the children escaped physical injury, but the public was appalled by the brutality of the murder, committed in broad daylight in such close proximity to the victim's young children and to dozens of others playing football nearby. The circumstances of the shootings, plus the fact that Moran was a prominent member of a criminal family involved in the drug trade, ignited media and public interest.

For more than five years previously, Melburnians had been reading about a number of unsolved homicides: nineteen victims with underworld connections had already been shot in less spectacular circumstances. At the time Moran and Barbaro were killed, neither the police nor the media had connected the crimes and there had been scant public interest in the lengthening list of underworld deaths. The murder of Jason Moran, however, galvanised the police, the media and the public. As the headlines grew bigger and more colourful, the resulting frenzy saw the spawning of a new police task force called Purana, charged with the job of joining the dots between all twenty-one killings. The Gangland Wars had made their way firmly into the public consciousness, and the criminals had become media celebrities.

It was to take Purana another five years – and twelve more killings – to finally bring an end to the bloody battle over drug turf. By 2007, when babyfaced wannabe drug lord Carl Williams was jailed for his leading role in the slaughter, there were very few of the major players still standing. But alive or not, they were all Dead Famous. This documentary takes viewers behind the frenzied headlines to put the killings in their true perspective. Leading crime writers John Silvester and Andrew Rule analyse the causes and effects of the decade-long war. They investigate the reasons it began, and why it was allowed to escalate and flourish for so long. They point to the lessons that may or may not have been learned, by lawmakers and breakers alike.

It was a unique combination of circumstances that allowed the gangland wars to escalate and saw so many criminals turn the underworld into a glitzy public soap-opera, played out on newspaper front pages, nightly television news bulletins and popular magazines for months on end. Using a mix of archival footage of events, dramatic recreations in actual locations, interviews with major players from both sides of the law, and incisive and entertaining comment from Silvester and Rule, Dead Famous traces the history and character of a brutal episode that has become a key part of our recent social discourse.

Curriculum Links

Dead Famous could be used in senior secondary Legal Studies; Studies of Society and Environment (SOSE) or Human Society and its Environment (HSIE); Media Studies; Cultural Studies; and Australian History. It could also be used in English as part of a themed unit on identity; and Philosophy, as it gestures towards some knotty ethical and moral considerations. Tangentially, it could be used as an opportunity to discuss and provide information on so-called party drugs.