Gangland boss Carl Williams sent a paranoid letter from his jail cell outlining his fears lawyer Nicola Gobbo had turned his inner circle against against him, just before he was executed in prison.
The letter, written on August 14th, 2009, can now finally be revealed by Daily Mail Australia in its entirety after court imposed gag orders protecting Ms Gobbo’s identity were lifted on Friday.
In neat cursive handwriting, the convicted gangster – who sparked Melbourne’s bloody underworld war that left at least 30 dead – outlined his fears of betrayal from prison.
Eerily, what at the time appeared to be the paranoid ramblings of a desperate criminal turned out to be 100 per cent correct, with police receiving information about his crimes and associates.
Carl Williams was never one to shy away from the spotlight and would pose outside court. While in jail for multiple murders he wrote of his anger at lawyer Nicola Gobbo, whom he feared had gone rogue and began informing on him
A letter sent by Carl Williams (pictured) before he was murdered in jail. He signed off: ‘Be good or be good at it’. He had feared lawyer Nicola Gobbo was a rat and police informant
Carl Williams at the height of his powers is followed closely by wife Roberta Williams. Roberta split with Carl before his murder in jail. She later tried to use the Nicola Gobbo scandal to save the tax office from claiming her family home but was unsuccessful
The prison letter revealed Williams believed Ms Gobbo was a double agent who helped police turn his hitman into a cop snitch.
Williams was murdered in April 2010 in a secure unit of Barwon Prison after he agreed to turn rat against fellow criminals in exchange for extraordinary concessions from Victorian authorities – some eight months after writing the letter.
Roberta Williams took to Instagram on Thursday blaming Ms Gobbo for her husband’s death.
‘Thanks to her my daughter has no father and thanks to her many innocent men are in prison,’ she wrote.
‘She played both sides of the fence and played it well, although I knew all along there was something strange about her.’
Ms Williams said Ms Gobbo’s actions made her sick.
‘How could someone in her position betray the way she did is beyond me’.
Carl Williams had started his meteoric rise to criminal fame in the 1990s, working as a ‘gopher’ for Melbourne’s notorious Carlton Crew.
Police had already agreed to pay for his daughter Dhakota’s school fees at Melbourne’s exclusive $20,000 Penleigh and Essendon Grammar School when he was killed.
News of the deal was splashed across a Melbourne newspaper on the day Williams was bashed to death by notorious prison gang boss Matthew Johnson.
Dhakota Williams (right), and Williams’ step-daughter Breanne Williams, arrive at the funeral for Carl’s father George Williams at Saint Therese’s Parish in 2016. George left her his house when he died, but the tax office took it over unpaid debts
Matthew Johnson prepares to kill Carl Williams in a CCTV image captured from prison. Carl is reading a copy of a newspaper that reported he was a police snitch
Carl Williams claimed there was a ‘lot more stuff’ that he could not say in the letter. He was referring to his lawyer Nicola Gobbo. Who he suspected was informing on him to police and turning his mates against him
Carl Williams, who called himself ‘The Premier’ signed off: ‘be good or be good at it’
In chilling CCTV footage captured from Barwon Prison, Williams is seen reading the newspaper with his killer standing behind him with the weapon that would be used to bludgeon him to death.
Various conspiracy theories and investigations into why Williams was murdered have amounted to nothing.
Williams, who proudly named himself ‘The Premier’ during his period at the top of Melbourne’s underworld, signed off the letter ‘Be good or be good at it’.
The hitman Williams feared was turned by Ms Gobbo gave a detailed statement against him and drug lord Tony Mokbel, telling police how the murderous crew met, how they chose and targeted victims for assassination, and also identified corrupt police.
It was the crucial police break that ended Melbourne’s bloody underworld war which claimed at least 20 lives.
The hitman – who can now only be referred to publicly as ‘Witness B’ – received a discounted jail sentence, which he served in a secret location.
‘Gobbo admitted to Milad that she told or advised (Witness B) to go with the police and make a statement against me,’ Williams wrote.
He went on to claim Ms Gobbo visited Witness B and advised him to strike a deal with police.
The body of Carl Williams after it was dragged from the spot where he was bludgeoned to death. He had been reading a copy of a Melbourne newspaper that suggested he was himself a rat
Carl Williams was buried in a gold casket before a who’s who of colourful identities. His body lay in an unmarked grave for months while his ex-wife scrounged up the cash to give him a tombstone
Williams wrote that he believed Gobbo was a police plant who was used to end Melbourne’s brutal underworld war.
‘Believe me I am 100 per cent right, as much as I don’t want to think I was right, the writing was on the wall,’ Williams wrote.
Williams wrote of his affection for Gobbo, stating he would go into battle for his friend.
‘I had a lot of time for Nicola and stuck up for her quite a lot of times with different people,’ he wrote.
The pole removed from an exercise bike used to murder Carl Williams inside prison. He was murdered by the leader of a brutal prison gang who hated police rats
Carl Williams’ killer Matthew Johnson on one of his many visits to the Supreme Court. He beat Williams to death from behind after reading Williams had himself become a police snitch
Williams’ killer, one of the state’s most feared criminals who was bizarrely housed with Williams, said he murdered the tubby drug dealer in self defence.
Johnson is part of the notorious Prisoners of War jailhouse gang which despises snitches and is known for its brutal hazing rituals.
An official autopsy report showed Williams – who was wearing Calvin Klein underwear – was struck once to the right side of the head from behind while he sat reading the newspaper in the high-security unit’s common area he shared with two other prisoners.
He then fell to the ground where he was struck up to seven times to the left side of his head.
‘He was later dragged, face down by the offender to his cell where he remained for almost 30 minutes before being located by prison guards,’ forensic pathologist Melissa Baker wrote in a report soon after the murder.
The brutal attack saw Williams die almost instantly.
Johnson was sentenced in 2011 to life in jail with a non-parole period of 32 years.
Matthew Johnson had convinced Carl Williams they were mates before killing him. He was sentenced to a further 32 years in jail.
Only four years earlier, Williams was sentenced to life in jail with a minimum term of 35 years for the murder of three rivals.
Williams pleaded guilty to the murders of underworld figures Mark Mallia (August 2003), Jason Moran (June 2003) and Lewis Moran (March 2004).
He had previously been found guilty of the murder of Michael Marshall, who was shot dead outside his Toorak home in October 2003.
The murders happened at the height of Melbourne’s notorious gangland war that raged between 1998 and 2006, leaving 27 dead.
But the mention of those murders last week to Williams’ ex-wife Roberta sent her into a violent rage.
Mrs Williams allegedly grabbed A Current Affair reporter Reid Butler by the neck and slammed him into a wall during the feisty television interview.
Carl Williams in the prison dock on being sentenced to life in jail. He enjoyed a love hate relationship with the media while at the peak of his criminal powers.
Lewis Moran, 58, was shot dead in the inner-city Brunswick Club on March 31, 2004.
Jason, 36, was shot dead as he sat in a car watching a children’s football clinic in Essendon in June 2003.
Mallia’s charred corpse was found in a drain in Sunshine, in Melbourne’s west, in August 2003.
At the time, Williams’ barrister David Ross QC told the court there should be a minimum term fixed for his client.
‘That is, he should not leave prison in a box, that he should be able to walk out at some stage,’ he said.
He needn’t have worried.
A snap of Carl Williams relaxing on the couch back when he ruled Melbourne’s underworld. He rightfully believed Nicola Gobbo had turned his mates against him