As Roberta Williams breaks out the bubbly to toast her arch enemy’s troubles, she tells Megan Norris the real story behind Australia’s most vicious family feud.
When bottle blonde Melbourne matriarch Judy Moran hobbled from a court to spend her first night behind bars after being denied bail, her long-time arch enemy Roberta Williams was at home cracking open her finest bottle of bubbly for a toast.
“We did the ching-ching-ching,” Roberta laughs.
The Williams clan were not only cheering the fact that Judy, 64, was refused bail after being charged with being an accessory after the fact in the shooting murder of her brother-in-law Des “Tuppence” Moran. The celebration was also to honour Roberta’s mother-in-law Barbara Williams, whose overdose death last year was the result of her grief over the bitter gangland wars that landed her son Carl in jail for life.
“We opened the bottle of champagne and we said ‘Here’s to Barbara’,” says Roberta.
“If only you were still here to see that cow get charged. But you’re not, so we’re just gonna have to do this for you.”
The following morning, having breakfast in a cafe with her daughters, Danielle, 17, Breanane, 15, and Dhakota, 8, the smile on Roberta’s face was even bigger as she scanned the morning headlines. “Look, Mum, Nanna Judy’s made the papers … again,” quipped Danielle, as she read about arson squad detectives investigating a suspicious fire at Judy’s Melbourne home.
Asked if she has a message for Judy, Roberta was typically blunt – “Go to hell”.
“She will go to hell, and when she passes away we’re going to clink those glasses again.”
Roberta, 40, is clearly relishing how the tables may turn on the matriarch of the notorious Moran crime dynasty, for whom dangerous men, flashy cars and a procession of funerals were commonplace.
“She was wearing sunnies in the police car as she headed to court to face charges. Well she won’t be needing them where she is at the moment – it’s not sunny in Deer Park Prison.”
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