In September 1939, New York bookmaker Irving Feinstein was strangled to death by members of Murder Inc., the enforcement arm of the American organised crime syndicate. His body was set alight and dumped in a vacant lot, a signature disposal method of the organisation.
The killing was ordered after Feinstein was accused of doublecrossing a criminal associate. He was one of dozens of victims claimed by Murder Inc. during its brutal reign as a contract killing operation for the mob.
On the evening of 3 September 2009, millionaire businessman Michael McGurk was shot dead in the driveway of his home in Cremorne, Sydney. His young son witnessed the killing. McGurk had been embroiled in a bitter legal dispute with property developer Ron Medich over a failed business deal.
The murder triggered one of the most complex organised crime investigations in New South Wales in years. Ron Medich was ultimately convicted in 2019 of arranging the killing, and sentenced to a minimum of 30 years in prison.
On Father’s Day, 2 September 1984, a heavily armed convoy of Comanchero motorcycle club members descended on the Viking Tavern car park in Milperra, a south-western suburb of Sydney.
The Comancheros had been at war with the newly formed Bandidos, a breakaway chapter, whose split from the Comancheros founder had curdled into open conflict. When both clubs converged on a swap meet that day, gunfire erupted in the car park. Seven people died, including a 14-year-old girl caught in the crossfire, and twenty-eight others were wounded.
The Milperra Massacre became the bloodiest single clash in the history of Australian outlaw motorcycle clubs.
Sydney‘s Long Bay Gaol opened in 1909 on the shores of Botany Bay, and over the following century it would become one of the most storied prisons in the country. Its walls held razor gang queens Tilly Devine and Kate Leigh, escape artist Darcy Dugan, and gangsters Chow Hayes and Neddy Smith.
Long Bay also housed some of the darkest figures in modern Australian criminal history, including corrupt former detective Roger Rogerson and serial killer Ivan Milat, who died there in 2019. Russell ‘Mad Dog’ Cox staged a daring breakout from the prison’s maximum-security unit, cementing the gaol’s reputation as a place where Australia’s most dangerous and notorious converged.
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