POLICE believe this is our most prolific living hitman.

Rodney Charles Collins, 68, is a vicious killer whose face the Herald Sun can show you only after a court ban was lifted today.

Also known as Rodney Earle, Collins is serving life for a double murder.

But he is believed responsible for at least nine slayings including:

Police informer Terry Hodson and wife Christine at their Kew home in 2004.

Feared standover man Brian Kane in 1982.

Criminal Ray Abbey and his wife Dorothy in 1987.

Drug dealer Michael Schievella, 44, and wife Heather McDonald, 36, who were found tied up and with their throats cut in 1990.

Patrick Brendan Coughlan who was shot dead at a party in Reservoir.

Carlton Crew identity Mario Condello, shot dead in Brighton in 2006.

A confidential police assessment states Collins is known to all the major criminals in Australia.

His associates have included gangland boss Tony Mokbel, the late Carl Williams, armed robbers Russell "Mad Dog'' Cox and Dennis "Fatty'' Smith.

Known as the The Duke, Cherokee and The Fox, Collins has kept a low public profile, despite a shocking criminal history spanning five decades.

Described by police as "dead-set natural born killer'', Collins is serving a life term with a minimum of 32 years for the murders of the Abbeys, who were butchered as their children slept nearby.

He has not been convicted of any of the other murders, but not through lack of effort by investigators.

Read our disturbing portrait of a "natural-born killer"



Collins was acquitted of one, and had charges over two more dropped before trial.

The murder charges that were dropped related to the Hodsons.

Just a few months before they died in May 2004, Collins walked free from court on a charge of carrying a pistol.

A court gave Collins, who has a long history of gun use, a community-based order after a loaded Steyr semi-automatic pistol was seized from a car he was driving through Doncaster.

Gangland investigators were stunned a man with his convictions - including shootings, rapes and armed robberies - could have avoided jail.

Years earlier Collins beat charges of murder and attempted murder over the death of Patrick Brendan Coughlan and wounding of party host Ronald Longmuir was shot in the leg.

At least three people identified Collins, including the surviving victim, but a judge ruled out their evidence and Collins was acquitted.

Longmuir died before Collins got to trial in 1985, and Supreme Court Justice George Hampel said his statements were too unreliable to admit.

His 12-year-old boy picked Collins out in court but Justice Hampel ruled the boy's identification inadmissible, along with an identification by Longmuir's wife.

Collins walked free and murdered the Abbeys two years later, in July 1987.

Slain underworld figure Carl Williams told police Collins was the first person he thought of when he was asked by a third party to find someone to kill Terry Hodson in early 2004, for $150,000.

Williams alleged that Collins accepted the job without ever knowing the identity of the person who wanted Hodson dead.

The murders of the Abbeys, Schievella and his wife and the Hodsons were all committed in their own homes.

The Abbey and Schievella children were in their rooms and left to find the bodies of their parents.



- with Mark Buttler

