For almost 14 years Kath Pettingill had waited for the call she always knew would come. It came at 9.45pm on Wednesday. Victor Peirce was dead - shot less than 30 minutes earlier in Bay Street, Port Melbourne, in what police suspect was a drug-related killing. Peirce, his half-brother, Trevor Pettingill, and two family friends, Peter McEvoy and Anthony Farrell, were charged and acquitted over the 1988 murders of two police in Walsh Street, South Yarra. Constables Steven Tynan and Damian Eyre were ambushed when they went to a routine check on a stolen car on October 12. Investigators maintain the four killed the police as a revenge attack after Peirce's best friend, Graeme Jensen, was shot by armed robbery squad detectives in Narre Warren 13 hours earlier. Kath Pettingill has known ever since how it would all end. "Without a word of a lie since every day since Walsh Street I have expected this to happen to Victor or Trevor," she said yesterday. She is no stranger to crime, violence or grief. Two other sons, Dennis Allen, a man suspected of involvement in 11 deaths, and Jamie Pettingill died young. She had six sons and a daughter. All had criminal records. Mrs Pettingill has drug-related convictions and at one point was the most influential woman in Melbourne's underworld. She released her own book, appropriately titled, The Matriarch. Yesterday she spoke of the loss of her son: "I'm not asking for public sympathy, we'll shed our own tears. I'm going to bury him in peace." She said that although retired from crime, she would be checking with old contacts to see who killed Peirce. "There is an old saying, You can run, but you can't hide." Mrs Pettingill said her son had given up crime and had worked on the docks for four years to support his family. "If this had happened to Dennis (his late elder brother), well fair enough, but not Victor. If I had been there I would have taken a bullet for him. He's got kids and grandkids." Following Walsh Street, Peirce became the man police loved to hate. After his Supreme Court acquittal for the Walsh Street killings, D24 broadcast a message, "All units are warned, keep yourself in control." On many station notice boards was a cartoon. It showed a policeman face down being kicked by a group of so-called enemies, including the government, media and judges. One of the figures was labelled "Victor Peirce." Mrs Pettingill said that after the acquittal she believed Peirce would be killed by police but she accepts that he was murdered by fellow gangsters. Last night The Age contacted police who had dealings with Peirce over the past 20 years. None were upset by his death. One of the key witnesses against the Walsh Street four was Peirce's wife Wendy, who was to give key evidence against her husband. But before the trial she changed sides and refused to implicate Peirce. She was later jailed for perjury. The Peirces were reunited after he was acquitted. The youngest of their four children, Vinnie, was named after the Walsh Street trial judge, Justice Frank Vincent. He was born in prison while his mother was still serving time. The couple had an interesting marriage. Dennis Allen offered to shoot Wendy in the leg to assist Peirce in a bail application on compassionate grounds. "If I wasn't pregnant it would have been all right," she said. "Dennis would have known how to do it without doing too much damage." When Peirce was released from prison in 1998 after serving six years for drug trafficking, Mrs Peirce said she was confident he had reformed. "He is not a monster. When he gets out we just want to be left alone . . . He is a family man with family values. He is one of the best fathers you could see. No one has anything to fear from us. "He has had six years to think about it. He has a job lined up. I know that he is finished with crime. He just wants to live quietly with his family." Her hopes ended in Bay Street. Peirce, 43, was shot dead and left in his 1993 maroon Commodore about 9.15pm. There are several reasons police believe the murder was planned and executed by an experienced shooting team of two hitmen. Although the killing was carried out in a busy street, the pair did it quickly without drawing attention to themselves. The gunman appeared confident and calm. He stepped from the passenger-side door of a light coloured mid-80s Commodore and fired several shots into the body of Peirce. The killer then hopped back into the car and the driver took off towards Beaconsfield Parade, staying within the speed limit and obeying all road rules. Police say the car was probably stolen and almost certainly picked because it was plain: no fat tyres, hot motor or garish stripes - nothing a witness could remember. Peirce had earlier had a coffee with Wendy and their teenage daughter, who walked home just before Peirce was shot. Port Melbourne was once the toughest suburb in Melbourne, the centre of activities for the notorious Painters and Dockers Union. But in recent years it has become a trendy location. Peirce, his wife and children, had moved from a drab house in a plain street in Rowville to a more upmarket home in Port Melbourne. He had a job as a crane operator on the docks and wanted to be closer to work, where he often started on the pre-dawn shift. Peirce always remained close to crime. He became a bodyguard for Italian crime figure and market identity Frank Benvenuto who was shot dead in 2000. Police have been told that Peirce took out a contract to kill a man connected to the Melbourne cocaine industry. The man has alleged that Peirce fire-bombed his car. He was also alleged to have been behind a car bombing at the docks. He had vast gangland contacts, including Mark Militano, Frank Valastro, Jedd Houghton, Graeme Jensen and Gary Abdallah, all of whom were killed by police. Detectives believe Peirce had moved into the pill and powder market - amphetamines, cocaine and ecstasy. The drug squad had seized a pill press used to make amphetamine-based fake ecstasy. They had been told it had been owned by Peirce. One theory police are investigating is that Peirce was in Bay Street to collect money from a cocaine deal and was in an underworld rip-off. Retired standover man Mark "Chopper" Read expressed no surprise at Peirce's death. "I knew him since he was 14," Read said. "I had nothing against him but he thought selling drugs was a legal occupation. "These blokes have never worked out that there is no place for middle-aged gangsters." Former undercover policeman Lachlan McCulloch, who infiltrated the Pettingill-Peirce clan, said they were dangerous and unpredictable. In the operation, codenamed Earthquake, Mr McCulloch bought amphetamines, cannabis and heroin worth more $130,000 from the group. As a result, 15 people, including Trevor and Kath Pettingill, were arrested. "They were not smart people. Victor was a real low-life," he said yesterday. Mr McCulloch was also to arrest Peirce for his smallest crime - shoplifting a jar of instant coffee valued at $1.66. "It was at an Asian grocers in North Melbourne. When we got there, we found 10 Asians sitting on top of him. He wasn't going anywhere. "I found him to be a dill. If he was organised crime, Melbourne's pretty safe." Ironically, Peirce's killers selected a light-coloured Holden Commodore for the job - the same type of vehicle used to lure Constables Tynan and Eyre to Walsh Street. Like Constable Tynan in 1988, Peirce was rushed to the Alfred Hospital. And as in the case of Constable Tynan, surgeons could do nothing to save him.
