Hinrich KORNACKI  

Murdered man ‘easy-going’ model prisoner

SYDNEY: A 41-year-old day-release prisoner found murdered in Sydney’s west at the weekend often spent three hours a day quoting passages from the Bible, police said yesterday.

Detectives investigating the apparent execution-style slaying of Bruno Morabito, who was serving an eight year sentence for drug offences, painted the victim as a model prisoner who was quiet and had recently “turned to religion”.

“He was an easy-going bloke who would spend up to three hours a day quoting passages from the Bible,” Detective Sergeant Heinrich Kornacki of Flemington police said yesterday.

Morabito, a day-release prisoner from Sydney’s Silverwater Jail, was found lying face down in a pool of blood by a night watchman in Derby Street, Silverwater, shortly before 8pm on Saturday. He had extensive head injuries, bullet wounds in the chest and back and had been stabbed.

Robbery has been ruled out as the motive for the killing as Morabito had $600 on his body.

Police were concentrating investigations on the dead man’s criminal background.

They have established Morabito was killed elsewhere and his body dumped in Derby Street.

Sergeant Kornacki said there was a sizeable list of people who may have wanted to see Morabito dead.

“It looks like someone wanted to get even with him,” he said.

Sergeant Kornacki said investigations had also spread to Queensland because Morabito was due to stand trial on charges relating to a multi million-dollar marijuana plantation uncovered near Townsville more than three years ago.

Morabito was one of five men arrested in July, 1986, in raids on homes in Sydney, Griffith in south-western NSW, and northern Queensland in a joint operation by detectives investigating a $4 million marijuana crop.

Police learned of the plantation in northern Queensland while investigating the disappearance and suspected murder of a former Griffith builder named in the 1979 Woodward Royal Commission into drug trafficking.

They believe Nunzio Greco was murdered after disappearing from his

Windsor home in Sydney’s north western outskirts on January 7, 1986.

The Royal Commission report said the builder-bricklayer was used to launder drug money by building houses for drug bosses.

On June 26, 1987, the Sydney District Court was told there was documentation from the Bureau of Criminal Intelligence that “Morabito was seen in the company of Nunzio Greco in December, 1985, and January, 1986”.

In July, 1987, Morabito was jailed for eight years for conspiring to cultivate a plantation of cannabis at Byrock, 80km east of Bourke in far western NSW, in July, 1983.

Sergeant Kornacki said police had not ruled out the possibility Morabito’s murder was connected with his future appearance in a Queensland court.

Morabito was last seen leaving Duffy Brothers Fruit market in Station Road, Wentworthville, in Sydney’s west, at 6pm on Saturday.

The day-release prisoner worked a 12-hour day at the market from 6am to 6pm.

Police say Morabito’s routine method of returning to the jail each night was to catch the train from Wentworthville to Auburn Station and then walk to the prison.

But Sergeant Kornacki said police have also learned that on several past occasions Morabito had been picked up by “friends”, although detectives have not yet established their identity.