1 case tagged “organized crime matriarch”
Convicted: Judith Maryanne Moran
On the morning of June 15, 2009, a small deli on Union Road in Ascot Vale erupted in gunfire. Desmond 'Tuppence' Moran, 68, was shot seven times as he reached for his wallet to pay for lunch. He was dead before ambulances arrived. Within minutes, a woman appeared at the scene, wailing his name over and over: 'Dessie, Dessie.' That woman was Judy Moran, his sister-in-law. Police would later allege she had driven the hitman to the cafe herself. Judy Moran was already one of the most recognizable figures in Australian criminal history. She had buried a husband, two sons, and a former partner, all victims of the Melbourne gangland war that consumed more than thirty lives between 1998 and 2010. She had written a memoir, given interviews, become something close to a tabloid fixture. And according to a Supreme Court jury, she had decided that grief was no longer enough, that the time had come to collect what she believed she was owed, in blood and in cash. This is the story of a woman who survived everything Melbourne's underworld could throw at her, only to become its instrument at last.
