As in an earlier aggravated burglary, Johnson had targeted the wrong house with the wrong victims. Several months after his arrest in 2007, he was charged with the murder of 18-year-old Bryan Conyers, but was found not guilty in 2009 after a jury deliberated for 27 hours. That verdict could not be reported because of the unresolved charges that were finalised last year. Johnson could not be identified last year when he received that long sentence because of the pending trial for murdering Williams. The 38-year-old pleaded not guilty to murdering Williams at Barwon Prison on April 19 last year. Williams was serving time in the unit after he was sentenced to life with a minimum of 35 years for the murders of Michael Marshall (October 25, 2003), Mark Mallia (August 18, 2003), Jason Moran (June 21, 2003) Lewis Moran (March 31, 2004) and conspiracy to murder Mario Condello (June 2004), who was later gunned down in 2006.

Johnson admitted killing Williams when he repeatedly struck him over the head with the metal stem of an exercise bike seat, but claimed he did so in an act of self defence after being told the previous afternoon by the unit’s only other inmate, Tommy Ivanovic, that Williams was going to kill him by hitting him over the head with pool balls in a sock. He described this as a ‘‘known prison weapon’’. Johnson told the jury that when he attacked Williams, he ‘‘intended to try and kill him’’ and had struck him a further seven times as he lay motionless on the floor, after the initial blow knocked him off the chair he was sitting in, to ‘‘make sure he was dead’’. The jury’s verdict means they also rejected Johnsons’s defensive homicide claims, that is, that he was in a situation of ‘‘kill or be killed’’ and felt he had no alternative but to get Williams first. The court heard that Williams was co-operating with authorities about the unsolved murder of police informer Terence Hodson and his wife, and had implicated a former drug squad detective, Paul Dale, as the man who had requested and financed the hit on the couple. In three statements Williams made to police, he claimed to have been approached by Dale to ‘‘get’’ Hodson to stop him from testifying against Dale about his alleged involvement in a drug burglary.

Williams also named the gunman who pulled the trigger after he claimed to have approached the veteran hitman about the job. The hitman cannot be named for legal reasons. The jury heard that Johnson — who dubbed himself ‘‘The General’’ of a jail gang that called themselves Prisoners of War — despised ‘‘dogs’’, the name given to people who provided police information about others. But the trial heard that Williams felt he was able to explain and reassure Johnson about why he was assisting them, and justified his actions because it was connected to police corruption. Johnson claimed that Williams was ‘‘pulling the wool over the eyes of police’’ and was going to ‘‘shaft’’ them, so he said he didn’t really consider him a dog at all.

But George Williams, Carl’s dad, testified that Johnson’s attitude towards his son’s co-operation with police changed after the second meeting his son had with investigators — outside the prison — to sign his statements against the defendants. He said Williams had always kept Johnson and Ivanovic informed about what he was telling investigators. Johnson had also told Williams he should get what he could out of authorities for his co-operation. On the day of his death, a page one article in the Herald Sun detailed several benefits Williams was receiving from police for his co-operation. They included having his daughter’s school fees paid and clearing a $750,000 debt George Williams had with the tax department. Williams spoke to his barrister over the phone that morning but did not mention any concerns about Johnson or Ivanovic. The court heard it was common knowledge within the prison system that Williams was providing police with information, and that it had been widely known before the article was published that he was receiving benefits in return.

Johnson said he had some of Williams’s legal documents in his cell and on his computer, because that was nothing unusual for him, Ivanovic and Williams to share information with each other about up-coming court cases. The jury was shown graphic CCTV footage of Johnson approaching Williams from behind as he read the newspaper in the day room at 12.48pm on April 19, 2010. Johnson struck him to the right side of his head with the heavy metal seat pole, causing Williams to fall to the floor. He then struck him another seven times in the head, before dragging Williams’s limp body into his cell and closing the door behind him. Ivanovic, who was in the day room at the time of the attack, watched on. Security vision shows Johnson and Ivanovic walking laps of the exercise yard and entering the day room a number of times before they approached a prison guard about 1.15pm to tell her she should press her panic alarm because Williams had ‘‘hit his head’’. Several prison officers then entered the unit and located Williams in his cell, covered in blood and with extensive head injuries.

He was dragged into the day room as guards and medical staff performed CPR for more than 30 minutes. Williams could not be revived. Johnson was interviewed by homicide detectives later that night. He remained tight-lipped and answered ‘‘no comment’’ to most of the questions, but then told them: ‘‘I acted alone’’. Multiple witnesses — including Corrections Victoria staff responsible for prisoner placement, and detectives from the police taskforce set up in the wake of Williams’s death to investigate why he had been killed — told the trial they had found no evidence to suggest any animosity between Williams and Johnson. Nor had they found anything to suggest that Johnson was being threatened by the convicted multiple murderer and drug trafficker. Johnson took the stand in his defence and described Williams during his testimony as ‘‘an underworld kingpin and serial killer’’. He said from the moment Ivanovic moved into the Acacia unit with him and Williams, his relationship with Williams — a man who the trial heard nicknamed himself ‘‘The Premier’’ because he said he ‘‘made all the hard decisions’’ — changed.

Johnson said Williams was always ‘‘flexing his muscles’’ and ‘‘hanging s---’’ on him and went out of his way to intimidate him in front of Ivanovic. He said Williams treated him ‘‘second-rate’’ and talked down to him and ‘‘pushed my buttons’’ whenever he had the opportunity. Johnson also spoke of Williams ‘‘boasting’’ about the number of murders he had carried out and ordered. He said Williams claimed that he first killed when he was 22, when he fatally bashed a man with a hammer over a drug deal gone wrong. He claimed to have killed three people with his own hands and said he was responsible for up to 15 murders, Johnson said. He ‘‘was proud of it’’. He even claimed to have organised at least one murder from jail, the court heard.

Johnson testified that Williams was ‘‘normal’’ when he spoke about such bloodshed. ‘‘I’d be talking about footy and he’d be talking about having people murdered,’’ he said. He believed this was a deliberate ploy by Williams to ‘‘keep people at bay’’ and ensure they were frightened of him and what he was capable of. On one occasion, Johnson said he was inside his cell sitting at his computer one day, when Williams walked in and ran his fingers across Johnson’s throat. ‘‘He said: ‘that’s how easy it would be’,’’ Johnson said, adding that Williams then walked away laughing. Johnson said didn’t think it was very funny. ‘‘I wanted to punch him but what could I do?’’

The court heard this was not the only time that Johnson wanted to punch Williams. But he said he knew if he did, he would have to kill him or he would be risking the lives of his family and friends.

That, Johnson said, was how Williams — and every other criminal — knew they could get back at their rivals. He added that Williams knew where his family lived.

Johnson told the court that in mid-2009, when he was applying for bail, Williams began making plans for him to become his father’s bodyguard and requested that Johnson ‘‘do something for him’’ if he got out. He said Williams asked him to ‘‘go to Wangaratta and kill Paul Dale’’.

‘‘He said he’d pay me $200,000,’’ Johnson said, adding that Williams was under the impression that if Dale was dead, he could receive a $1 million reward on offer for information about the Hodson murders.

Johnson said when he refused, ‘‘He wasn’t very happy. He said you’re supposed to be loyal to me’’. Johnson said he told Williams he was not interested in doing anything like that, which he claims was met with a ‘‘we’ll see’’ from Williams.

And on a separate occasion, again to do with the prospect of Johnson being released on bail, he told the jury that he commented to Williams that he did not want to apply for bail in a higher court, after Williams offered to pay for his legal representation.

He said he told Williams he would not be going anywhere, to which he said Williams allegedly replied: ‘‘Maybe in a box then you will’’.

Johnson said he took this as a direct threat.

‘‘If you’re not going to take a threat from his corner seriously there’s something wrong with you,’’ he said.

He said he let no one know one know about his deteriorating relationship with Williams, including his family and friends or prison authorities. Requesting to leave the unit was also not an option, he said, fearing that Williams would see this as another form of betrayal that could have equally dangerous repercussions. Johnson claimed Ivanovic, who was often present when Williams was having a go at him, repeatedly told him to let it go when he expressed his frustration about Williams’s treatment of him.

But Johnson said he strategically placed items in the prison unit in case he needed a weapon to attack Williams, if a fight ever broke out between them. These included placing an exercise bike outside his jail cell and a sandwich maker on a table tennis table at the other end of the day room. ‘‘If me and Carl ever got in a fist fight, I knew in my heart I would have to kill him or my family would be,’’ Johnson said.

He testified that the day before he fatally bashed Williams, Ivanovic had told him just before lockdown that Williams was going to kill him. Video footage was played to the jury in which Ivanovic was seen to be standing at the door of Johnson’s cell as the guards entered to lock the trio up for the night. Johnson said, as best he could remember, that was when Ivanovic told him not to say anything, but that he had walked into Williams’s cell one day to find him stretching a sock. ‘‘He told him he was going to put pool balls in it and get me when I was eating,’’ Johnson said. Asked if there was any doubt in his mind, Johnson said: ‘‘I believed it.’’ It was during that night that Johnson said he decided to get in first. He wrote letters to several prison mates, knowing they would receive them after he had killed Williams, informing them he was all right.

‘‘From the moment I’d made up my mind to kill Carl, I just assumed that I’d been spending the next 30 to 40 years in jail ... I was throwing my life away to keep my family safe,’’ Johnson told the court. He told the jury that he thought the attack would have been witnessed by the guards tasked with monitoring the inmates via security cameras. He added he was surprised when no one responded straight away. But during cross examination by prosecutor March Rochford, SC, Johnson admitted that he had accessed Williams’s computer and downloaded statements Williams was making against Dale and others. In a secret recording played to the court, Johnson claims to an associate that Williams was also providing information about six people Johnson knew. He told his friend he deleted several files on the computer after saving the documents to a floppy disc and saving them on his jail PC. When quizzed by Mr Rochford about the timing of the download, Johnson admitted that Williams was on a visit at at 5.33pm on April 17, 2010, the time of the download. Therefore he could not have downloaded the statements and files to Johnsons’s computer himself.

Johnson is also overheard telling the associate in the recording that Williams had underestimated him. ‘‘He obviously read me wrong,’’ he says. In another secret recording taken from a listening device during a prison visit, Johnson said: ‘‘I couldn’t turn my back on something like that’’, referring to Williams’s co-operation with police. Johnson’s defence barrister, Bill Stuart, told the jury that his client had no choice but to kill Williams. ‘‘The defence case is that this is not simply a situation of Matthew Johnson engaged in some pre-emptive strike but, further than that, that he killed Carl Williams from absolute necessity,’’ Mr Stuart said. ‘‘For Matthew Johnson it was a case of kill or be killed.’’

But Mr Rochford said: ‘‘The Crown case is that this was a deliberate intentional killing done with the intent to kill or do really serious injury, and done without lawful justification or excuse.

‘‘The Crown case is that this attack was premeditated and it was done with some considerable planning.’’ Mr Rochford told the jury in his closing address that Williams was serving time for his crimes and did not deserve to die. ‘‘It doesn’t matter what you think of Carl Williams,’’ he said. ‘‘It doesn’t matter if someone in the community thinks Matt Johnson did the world a favour by killing Carl Williams. It doesn’t matter what Carl Williams was or who he was. That’s no excuse.’’ He described the version of events Johnson gave the jury as an ‘‘absolute insult to your intelligence’’, arguing that he had killed Williams because he ‘‘hates dogs’’ and did not want to be seen to be closely associating with one. ‘‘They are not on the streets of Kalgoorlie at 4 o’clock in the morning outside a pub,’’ Mr Rochford said. ‘‘Carl Williams was sitting there, reading the newspaper. (He) wasn’t lifting a finger at Mr Johnson. (He) hadn’t done anything physically to threaten him when he came up behind him and killed him in a cold, callous, brutal manner.’’

But Mr Stuart, told the jury that his client was in a situation in which he reacted in the ‘‘only way he knew how’’. He described Williams as ‘‘probably the most dangerous man to have walked the streets of Melbourne in our times’’, who had a proven record of murdering and threatening to kill others, which had not stopped when he was jailed in 2007. But after sitting through the 14-day trial, the jury rejected such a defence and found Johnson guilty of Williams’s murder. Loading Johnson will be sentenced by Justice Lex Lasry at a later date.

With Steve Butcher



