Jail system's flaws fatal for murdered gangster

 THE death in a high security prison cell of serial killer, gangster and police informer Carl Williams was a staggering failure of the system. An ombudsman's report released on Wednesday details the depth of the incompetence and ignorance that allowed it to occur. Fellow inmate and one-time friend Matthew Johnson bashed Williams to death in the high-security unit they shared in Victoria's Barwon Prison in April 2010. Advertisement: Story continues below The prison's Acacia section is home to the worst of the state's criminals, and Williams and Johnson were over-qualified residents. They were content to be together but the dynamics changed when Williams started helping police in their investigation of the murders of Terry and Christine Hodson who were also assisting police. Williams claimed to have paid $150,000 to a hit man to kill the Hodsons, the money allegedly having come from a former police officer. It was suggested in the murder trial that influential inmates suggested to Johnson that he was doing his reputation as an enforcer no good by sharing a cell with someone like Williams and not doing anything about it. Johnson, however, claimed his motive was fear of Williams and that he had acted first in a kill-or-be-killed situation that had been escalated by the third member of their prison unit, Tommy Ivanovic. The Victorian Supreme Court heard Ivanovic told Johnson that Williams intended killing him by bashing him with a sock full of billiard balls. Johnson made his move the next morning, taking a seat post he had previously removed from an exercise bike and using it to bash Williams to death. Johnson had been involved in an attack on a fellow prisoner in which exactly the same weapon was used. The entire murder, from the removal of the seat post to the dragging of Williams's body to his cell, was recorded on CCTV cameras. The cameras and the security system to which they were connected functioned properly, but those whose job it was to watch them did not. The first thing prison authorities knew about the incident was 27 minutes later when Johnson told one of them: ''Carl has hit his head.'' Johnson was duly sentenced to life in jail, an incredulous trial judge Lex Lasry expressing amazement that he and Williams could have been housed together. ''It is just breathtaking … what the authorities did … it just amazes me,'' Justice Lasry said.