Tough Nuts: Australia's Hardest Criminals

Multiple murderer, drug dealer, kidnapper extortionist and street hoon, Dino Dibra grew up in Sunshine – a tough working class suburb where he became lifelong friends with a group of boys at school who would all go on to make their marks in Melbourne’s underworld. Dibra and his gang members, attired in the accoutrements of their violent lifestyle, would set upon their rivals, administering beatings during torture sessions in the garages of their parents’ modest suburban homes. The gang lived by a set of rules that would always be broken. And it was Dibra who broke them first. He fell out with Veniamin and Veniamin had the young gangster wannabe knee-capped with his trusty 9mm “toy”. Dibra recovered but the gang had torn themselves apart. He went on his own way, befriending the emerging king of the party drugs, Carl Williams. Dibra became a high-ranking distributor for Williams. With the position came wealth and influence and Dibra, the gangster with a reported IQ of 89, deluded himself into believing he would one day control the Melbourne underworld. He may not have been bright but Dibra was fearless to the point of recklessness. He refused to bow to Melbourne crime figure, “Mad Charlie” Hegyalji, waiting patiently in his front yard to shoot him dead one night as he returned home. Dibra, the gangster wannabe had become the real thing, and rapidly became renowned for spontaneous, almost pointless outbursts of violence. In one typical incident, Dibra and his mate Rocco Arico kidnapped Melbourne standover man Richard Mladenich and attempted to ransom him, only to be horribly disappointed that no one was interested in paying a ransom for him. Dibra, the star who shone brightly, was always set to burn out quickly. Dibra was finally murdered by his old schoolmate, Benji Veniamin, outside his shack in Sunshine West. The kid, who had always wanted to live like a gangster had finally achieved the death he would have wanted, gunned down in the street by a former friend. He was just 25.