There’s an old joke about a gangster who had a gold toilet because he liked to go in style.
Now there’s a real story about departed-gangster in Australia who was buried in goldplated casket — on the day when associates could finally do him dirt and not have to worry about it — because his family wanted to him to go in style.
After the funeral and the burial the undignified work began. No one was there to see it.
The ceremonies were over, the spotlight turned off.
Carl Williams’s $30,000 bronze and 14-carat-gold coffin, imported from the United States, had been put in the ground. Cream roses had been thrown, his drawn former wife Roberta Williams peeling petals and fluttering them in one by one. The ashes of his mother and his brother were lowered in. Two white doves were released by his godson and daughter Dhakota and white balloons released. Holy water was scattered. Prayers said. ”Our brother, Carl, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, the Lord bless him.”
There were perhaps 30 people at his graveside at 2pm yesterday at Melbourne’s Keilor Cemetery. The funeral had already been held in Essendon; Roberta, her children, Williams’s ailing father George and their security guards travelled between the two places by black stretch Hummer.
”Do not count his deeds against him,” said priest Joe Caddy at the graveside. ”May he rest in peace.” The small crowd then filed away. There was no more to say, no more to see.
The very end of Melbourne’s most notorious modern gangster – and perhaps with him the gangland war – had come. Williams, 39, was bashed to death in prison two weeks ago while serving 35 years for three murders.
This was the theme of the funeral: a family man. A slideshow showed pictures of him cuddling the children. Songs played included Simply the Best by Tina Turner, and Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men’s One Sweet Day. No mention was made of drug empires and killings and weapons, nor were the words ”underworld”, ”gangland” nor ”war” uttered.
He led a life of crime — but in the end the mortician straighted him out.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.