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MELBOURNE - Melbourne gangster Carl Williams will spend at least 35 years in jail for the murders of three underworld rivals.
Williams, 36, pleaded guilty to murdering gangland patriarch Lewis Moran, his son Jason Moran and another underworld figure Mark Mallia.
He is already serving 21 years for the 2003 murder of drug dealer Michael Marshall.
Supreme Court Justice Betty King denounced Williams as she handed down the sentence early yesterday.
"You are a killer and a cowardly one who employed others to do the actual killing," Justice King said.
"You were the puppet master who decided and controlled whether people lived or died."
Williams, who initially smiled and then looked down when he heard the sentence, will be 71 years old before he is eligible for parole.
After the sentence was announced, Williams' mother Barbara was ejected from the court for abusing the judge.
She said: "You are a puppet for corruption, you are a puppet of (anti-gangland task force) Purana, you don't deserve your wig and your gown."
Her outburst followed an unsuccessful attempt by Williams himself to make a statement from the dock.
He continued the attempt as he was led from the court.
While Williams had denied being the leader of an underworld gang, Justice King rejected this.
The judge also expressed concern about Williams' celebrity status and that some may see him as a hero.
Williams' guilty pleas back in February represent one of the most significant events in the police probe into Melbourne's vicious gangland war, which raged between 1998 and 2006 and claimed 27 lives.
Jason Moran, 36, was shot dead as he sat in a car watching a children's football clinic in Essendon in June 2003.
His father, Lewis Moran, 58, was shot dead in the inner-city Brunswick Club on March 31, 2004.
Mallia's charred corpse was found in August 2003 in a drain in Sunshine, in Melbourne's west.
Marshall was gunned down outside his South Yarra home in front of his five-year-old son on October 23, 2003.
In sentencing, Justice King said that without Williams' guilty pleas, she would have imposed a life sentence without parole.
- AAP
