Dockers & Death

Painter and docker, Les Kane was described by his widow, Judi, as "the most violent man in Australia". Les came to prominence when he declared war on the armed robber Ray Chuck, the mastermind of what is known as the Great Bookie Robbery in 1976. But Chuck struck first. Les was machine-gunned by Chuck, within a few feet of his horrified wife and children in their Wantirna home and his body removed and never found. Les’s older brother, Brian Kane, was once Melbourne's top standover man, before he was gunned down in the Quarry Hotel in Brunswick in November, 1982. Mourners at his funeral included the entire Moran clan. Kane's niece Trish later married Jason Moran, who was shot dead with Pasquale Barbaro in 2004. Judi Kane today speaks of how she fell for a man whose cocky self-assurance hid a psychopathic streak. By the time she realised they would never live happily ever after, she was in too deep. Billy Longley is a veteran of the waterside crime war that gripped Melbourne and Sydney finally ended in the early 1980s, it was a war that led to at least 40 people being murdered. Longley, one of the most feared men on the docks, was known as "The Texan" because he wore a Stetson and carried a Colt .45. He was a Painters and Dockers Union presidential candidate and the leader of a union faction at war with his rival, Pat Shannon. In 1970, Longley was convicted in connection with Australia's biggest armed robbery to that time, the Mayne Nicholas heist in the Sydney suburb of Guildford, which netted $587,870. He disappeared in 1973 and a few months later Pat Shannon was gunned down in a South Melbourne's Hotel. Longley, Kevin James Taylor, Gary Leslie Harding were convicted of Shannon's manslaughter. . Now aged 83 Longley lives quietly in suburban Melbourne, he goes ballroom dancing and counsels school children against getting involved in violence.