Australian mobster gets 35 years for gangland murders

MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Australian gangster Carl Williams was sentenced on Monday to 35 years in jail for murdering three underworld rivals in a gangland war which lasted almost 10 years and killed 28 people.

"You are a killer and a cowardly one who employed others to do the actual killing," Victoria state Supreme Court Judge Betty King said in sentencing the baby-faced Williams.

"You were the puppet master who decided and controlled whether people lived or died," said King, adding that without a guilty plea she would have sentenced him to life without parole.

Melbourne's gang war began in 1998 when self-styled "Godfather" Alphonse Gangitano, 40, was shot dead in his laundry, sparking a slew of tit-for-tat killings.

With Gangitano's turf up for grabs in the Melbourne suburb of Carlton, the home of the southern city's Italian community, petty criminal Williams rose to prominence after forming an alliance with fugitive drug lord Antonio "Fat Tony" Mokbel.

In October 1999, drug-runners Jason and Mark Moran shot Williams in the stomach during celebrations of his 29th birthday.

Williams lived and sought brutal revenge.

In February, Williams, 36, pleaded guilty in his trial in the Victorian Supreme Court to murdering gang patriarch Lewis Moran, his son Jason and underworld figure Mark Mallia.

Jason Moran, 36, was shot dead as he sat in a car watching a children's football clinic in June 2003, his father Lewis, 58, was shot dead in an inner-city club in March 2004 and Mark Mallia's charred corpse was found in August 2003 in a drain.