Australia’s most notorious and deadly gangster was beaten to death today in the prison where he was serving a 35-year sentence for a string of underworld murders.

Carl Williams, a 39-year-old drug lord and ruthless killer went into cardiac arrest after suffering massive head injuries in the attack at Barwon Prison near Melbourne where he was being held in solitary confinement for the murder of three gangland rivals.



The attack came on the day Australian media revealed that Victoria Police had paid $8,000 to allow Mr Williams’ nine-year-old daughter to attend an elite private school. The Sydney Telegraph newspaper revealed that a letter from the Victorian state government Solicitor’s Office referred to the payment by Victorian police command and also showed that police had offered to pay a $750,000 tax bill owed by Mr Williams’ father George, who was released from prison last June after serving a sentence for drug trafficking.



His lawyer Rob Stary said Mr Williams had been “disturbed” about the media reports and concerned that they exposed his daughter to risk. “He was not concerned about his own wellbeing, he was concerned about (his daughter),” said Mr Stary.



Victoria Police confirmed Mr Williams died from head injuries. They said he was with two other inmates at the time and that a prison officer was 33 feet (10 metres) away at the time of the assault.



The murder is the latest twist in an underworld saga that has lasted over a decade, as rival clans battled for control of Melbourne’s lucrative drugs trade.



There are now fears that it will re-ignite a vicious gangland war in Melbourne that has been fought out in the city’s outwardly genteel suburbs and led to 35 deaths between 1998 – 2009.



Mr Williams, a working class boy from Melbourne’s western suburbs and his ex-wife Roberta, a convicted drugs trafficker, were at the centre of the blood feud with their deadly enemies the Moran family.



The feud, which began when Mr Williams was shot in the stomach over a drug debt on his 29th birthday by members of the Morans, led to a series of grisly murders which included a man executed in a van full of children at a children’s football clinic and a burned body dumped in a melted wheelie bin, apparently after having been tortured with a soldering iron.



At his trial in 2007 the killer, with a weakness for Celine Dion, pleaded guilty to three murders, apparently in the hope of a lighter sentence. He had been connected by Victoria police to up to 11 murders.



But he showed no regret for the murders of father and son Lewis and Jason Moran, killed in front of his two children, or for other victims of the underworld war. Instead, he made clear that he saw them as little more than business transactions.



Sentencing him, Judge Betty King told him “you acted as though it was your right to have these people killed.”



In letters he wrote from his jail cell to his mother Barbara – who died of a drugs overdose last year – Mr Williams defended his actions, writing: “Every day soldiers have to kill the enemy, otherwise the enemy will kill them, and no-one calls soldiers murderers.”



Lamenting the fact that he would never be free to see his daughter grow up, he wrote: “I won’t be there to see her start high school. I certainly won’t be there for her 21st birthday. I also doubt if I’ll be there to walk her down the aisle if she gets married.”



Today underworld figure Mick Gatto, who in 2004 was found not guilty of killing gangland hitman Andrew Veniamin, an associate of Mr Williams, said he would prefer not to comment on Mr Williams’ death.



“I would rather let dead dogs lie,” he told AAP.



The underworld wars have gripped Australia, leading to a number of best-selilng books and a hit television series, ‘Underbelly’, the third series of which is currently showing on Australian television.



In a further twist to the seemingly endless gangland soap opera, Mr Williams’ murder comes as the matriarch of the Moran clan, Judy Moran, stands trial as an accessory to the murder of her brother-in-law Des “Tuppence” Moran, 61. Mr Moran, who was the last male member of the Moran clan to survive the blood feud, was shot a number of times, at close range, by two masked men as he sipped his daily coffee in a Melbourne café.



Two men who shared Mr Williams’ high security unit are being questioned over the gangland king’s death.