Australia is a country founded off the backs of convicts. No one is ignorant of this fact and perhaps that's why we have always had a deep fascination with crooks. Ned Kelly is a National Hero - he was also an armed robber and murderer. 'Chopper' Read is now a stand up comic, artist and author - he too was an armed robber and murderer. So it is no wonder that the death in custody of Carl Williams is front page news around this Great Brown Land of ours.
Williams' antics over a five year period captivated the Nation. His was a twisted, multi-faceted tale of double crosses, gun shots, drugs, police corruption and triple crosses. Williams was eventually convicted of four (4) killings, but the police claim he was an integral part of at least eleven (11) shootings around Melbourne, and let's be fair, they're probably bang on.
Now let's get down to brass tacks - fair enough, Williams was a convicted drug trafficker, but he was no devil incarnate. Push come to shove, if I were shot in the guts by a pair of maniacal siblings, I would probably go a bit sideways in the head too. Unleashing a savage reign of vengence throwing an entire city into fits of fear wouldn't be out of the scope of possibility for me either.
Williams has become such a cultural phenomenon that Channel Nine, in their infinite wisdom, based an entire television show on him. There were Carl Williams T-shirts, a Carl Williams Facebook page and half a dozen books about him.
But alas, now he is dead. Pummeled about the head by some sort of prison gargoyle with a piece of metal wrenched from an excercise bike. It's hard for one not to lament whether five years of drug and sex crazed homicidal lunacy was worth a couple of years in jail and being bludgeoned to death.
Anyway, now he's dead and so is the end of an era.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment