The gangland war has become like folklore in the tale of crime in Australia. From 1995, dozens of murders occurred in Melbourne in a wrestle over drugs and egos involving notorious underworld figures such as Carl Williams, Tony Mokbel, and the Morans.
At the centre of it all was Stuart Bateson, a detective with the Purana taskforce.
Today, John Silvester - who wrote the definitive account of the gangland war - talks to Bateson about what investigating this violent web of crooks was really like, and hear part of a recording of a real gangland hit.
Bateson talks to Sly ahead of the release of a new three-part documentary from Channel Nine called Naked City: Hitmen, which screens from March 4.