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increasingly isolated.
    He knew if he pleaded guilty he would be entitled to a discount. Aged 35, he wanted a chance to be out of jail at 70.
    But the first tentative approaches were not encouraging. His team floated a prison sentence of around twelve years. ‘They were looking for a ridiculous bargain basement sentence,’ Paul Coghlan, QC, would recall.
    As the trial date came closer, so too did the negotiators. In February the two sides spent ten days talking. Then the apparently promising talks collapsed.
    Coghlan: ‘We were very cross. We thought Williams had been fooling around and was never serious. He was wasting our time because they came up with various proposals that were absolutely laughable.”
    On Wednesday 28 February at midday the court process began before Justice King with pre-trial discussions.
    It was legal tent-boxing with a few slow punches thrown and none landing.
    First, Williams’ team asked for an adjournment because of pre-trial publicity, but the same argument had been tried before and failed. Next gambit was a suggestion of judicial bias — another move doomed to fail.
    Then it was agreed the star protected witnesses could give video evidence for security reasons. There would be a few more pre-trial details to be cleared up then a jury would be selected.
    On Monday, 5 March, Geoff Horgan was scheduled to begin his opening address to declare that Williams organised the murders of Jason Moran and Pasquale Barbaro.
    Once the jury was empanelled any chance of a deal for Williams would be over.
    It was 2.10pm on 28 February when Horgan received a call in his chambers from Williams’ barrister, David Ross, QC. The message was brief: ‘We may have a deal.’
    A message was passed to Justice King’s associate Helen Marriott and a decision made to reconvene the court that day.
    But Williams had left the court and was heading down the Princes Freeway to Barwon Prison. Then Justice King intervened and ordered the bus back.
    This was no sweetheart deal. The prosecutors agreed they would make no recommendations on a jail sentence althoughthey acknowledged Williams should be set a minimum due to his decision to plead. ‘His sentence will be totally up to the judge,’ Horgan said.
    The charge sheet was quickly typed, documents signed and Williams led back into court.
    But the crime deal of the decade that resulted in Williams pleading guilty to three murders was teetering on the point of collapse when Justice Betty King reconvened her court after being told of his decision.
    While it had taken nearly seven months of secret negotiations to get Williams to the point of being prepared to admit his guilt, the final deal was nearly derailed in the final minutes.
    The man linked to ten underworld killings had just told his relieved lawyers he would plead to the murders of Lewis Moran, Jason Moran and Mark Mallia and conspiracy to murder Mario Condello. (He did not plead over Barbaro, arguing he had not ordered his death and the victim was killed accidentally. The Mark Moran murder charge was dropped.)
    But the agreement was worth nothing until he said the words, ‘I plead guilty’, in open court.
    He had been brought up from the court cells to sign a document instructing his defence team of his intentions to enter guilty pleas.
    Outside the court, members of the police Purana taskforce stood waiting. One nervously said, ‘I won’t believe it until I hear him say it.’
    Williams’ mother, Barbara, and father, George, were also there and were allowed in to see their son before the hearing began. While George remained quiet, Barbara was animated. She pleaded with her son not to plead.
    George Williams didn’t apply any pressure. He was then still facing drug trafficking charges himself and part of the deal wasthat he would plead guilty if the prosecution would not demand a jail sentence. Carl’s hope that his 61-year-old father would get a