A few quiet beers with Gavin Preston

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Career criminal Gavin “Capable” Preston waited in a quiet corner of the pub.

It was “brave” for a journo to meet him. That was the first unsettling thing he said.

Gavin Preston, pictured outside the Supreme Court in August 2015, was shot dead on Saturday.Credit: Joe Armao

Inside the Flinders Lane hotel in mid-2011, Preston began talking about gangland rivalries and underworld figures.

Preston joked that he wasn’t a good criminal because he always got caught.

Within a couple of beers, names were raised: Carl Williams (who had been killed inside Barwon Prison a year earlier), Carlton identity Mick Gatto and then Bandidos bikie Toby Mitchell.

Williams was a burning topic.

He had been bashed to death by Preston’s more infamous criminal mate, Matthew “The General” Johnson, who was about to go on trial.

They had been on and off mates since being jailed together at Pentridge Prison in the 1990s and dubbed themselves Youth Gone Wild (taken from a Skid Row tune).

They would ultimately co-found the influential jail gang, Prisoners of War.

Preston alluded to having inside knowledge of the Williams killing and that his demise had come because he had broken an unwritten rule.

Warning: The video below shows highly confronting scenes. The footage has been edited to exclude some moments.

He would not reveal who the “outside man” behind the brutal bashing of Williams had been.

But he boasted that a man jailed with Williams, Tommy Ivanovic, had been given a dire warning.

Ivanovic was told he was living with a “dog” (criminal slang for a police informer). The “dog” was Williams.

Carl Williams was murdered in jail.Credit: Jason South

This prison phone conversation was months before April 19, 2011, when Johnson, the third man in the prison unit with Ivanovic, while gripping the stem of an exercise bike seat, beat Williams to death.

Preston added that there had been secret hearings about the prison calls.

It all seemed routine to the quietly spoken gangland figure.

His physique and demeanour spoke volumes.

Preston had served jail stints in Victoria and NSW and was working for a demolition company.

In the months after Preston and I first met, Mitchell, a Bandidos enforcer, would be ambushed by two masked hitmen outside Dohertys Gym in Brunswick (next to the Bandidos’ bikie clubhouse).

Preston was a key suspect along with the criminal wild man, Nabil Maghnie.

There are two theories about the shooting, in which Mitchell was riddled with bullets.

At the time, Preston was associating with Bandidos and talks were underway about him joining, but he was resisting donning colours.

Christopher Dean “Badness” Binse.Credit: Fairfax

A sticking point was Mitchell’s long-time mate, Chris “Badness” Binse, who was Preston’s long-time enemy.

Badmouthing may have renewed tensions between Binse and Preston, who were both raised in Sunshine, in Melbourne’s west.

After Mitchell’s ambush in November, 2011, Binse had vowed revenge.

A tracking device was attached to Preston’s car and Binse began stalking him like prey, even taking photos of Preston’s then girlfriend, as Mitchell fought for his life in hospital.

His alleged plan was to fit explosives to Preston’s vehicle and blow him up.

After Johnson was convicted of Williams’ murder, a newspaper headline led to another tense meeting with me at a pub.

Johnson was labelled a “coward” for bashing Williams from behind. Preston, angered, was determined to set the record straight.

Gavin Preston, with his nickname “Capable” tattooed on his neck.Credit: Facebook

I picked a very public setting for this meeting- Young & Jackson.

Preston, who arrived minutes after me via the Swanston Street door, was initially calm.

Over the course of half an hour, he raised the tension incrementally.

Preston wanted it known that Johnson had sacrificed himself by committing the killing in the knowledge he would spend the rest of his life in prison.

The hulking Preston pressed upon me how close I was to being bundled into the boot of a car and taken to a remote location.

He was also prepared to assault an editor, graphically describing what he would do to him.

Weeks later, Preston and Maghnie were “randomly” intercepted by police as they drove a Mercedes-Benz along Collins St in the CBD.

A gun was found in the car.

It has strongly been suggested that the pair were headed to a city restaurant to shoot Gatto.

Preston was given bail and police surveilled him.

Carl Williams and Matthew Johnson.Credit: Fairfax Media

But on the night he headed to North Melbourne’s Canning Street, where drug dealer Adam Khoury lived, the police team tailing him had knocked off. Within 30 minutes, Khoury was dead, shot multiple times including in the head.

Preston argued that he had wrestled the gun from Khoury and successfully had the charge reduced to defensive homicide.

It was an implausible, but not impossible scenario.

It also emerged in 2012, soon after Preston’s arrest, that lawyer-turned-informer Nicola Gobbo told police she was on a hit list alongside Khoury, Gatto and Mitchell.

The allegation was that the hit list was Preston’s.

Veteran drug criminal John Higgs was another name on the purported list.

Police documents revealed it was raised with then-top cop Graham Ashton.

Preston, in court, openly mocked Purana taskforce investigators as he was sentenced to 11 years in jail for killing Khoury over an alleged drug debt.

Over time, Preston would fall out with Johnson and the Prisoners of War gang he co-founded.

In 2015, a group of PoW-aligned inmates attacked Preston with shivs and other edged weapons inside the Eucalypt unit of Barwon Prison.

Nabil Maghnie in 2016.Credit:

It was speculated the attack was payback from Johnson remaining dissatisfied over being short-changed for killing Williams’, for which he is serving a 32-year sentence.

Since Preston’s release from jail six months ago, he has been pictured associating with Comanchero bikies. But he was still exposed without Maghnie, who was shot dead in Melbourne’s north in 2020.

Maghnie’s son, Abbas Maghnie Junior, aka AJ, was exposed too. His quick-thinking saw him survive Saturday’s cafe shooting with a bullet to the stomach that required surgery.

Organised crime investigators have a long list of Preston’s enemies to work through.

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