Gangland figure’s daughter’s plea to recognise dad’s murder

A grieving daughter has asked a court to recognise that her father was murdered, 36 years after he went missing amid a notorious life in Melbourne’s underworld.

Lauren Prendergast told the Coroners Court of Victoria on Friday that her family wanted to be able to give her dad Laurence Prendergast a proper Catholic funeral, which had been denied for more than three decades.

The last time the underworld figure was seen or heard was about 2pm on August 23, 1985.

But a 1990 coronial inquest found there wasn’t enough evidence to declare the 35-year-old dead, as he had “strong incentive to disappear”.

He was a suspect in the Great Bookie Robbery nine years’ earlier, when a group of masked men stole millions of dollars from bookmakers in Queen Street, with charges never laid.

He was acquitted of the 1978 shooting murder of Les Kane, one-half of the feared Kane brothers who were major criminal figures in the ’70s underworld.

A fictionalised version of these events was portrayed in the second season of popular TV series Underbelly.

The Great Bookie Robbery was also the subject of an Australian TV miniseries.

The court heard on Friday that Mr Prendergast had a “significant” criminal record and had taken to sleeping with a gun under his pillow in the weeks before he vanished.

His car was found abandoned in Heidelberg days after he went missing.

Ms Prendergast said it needed to be recognised that her father was murdered, for his family’s sake.

“I find it very disturbing and hard to fathom any other conclusion could possibly be made,” she said.

“Especially considering every close friend or associate of my father’s has been murdered over the course of the past 40 years.

“Many other children like myself were left behind in a state of perpetual grief.”

Coroner Caitlin English said she was satisfied on the balance of probabilities that he died on or after August 23, 1985, with cause of death unknown but in a suspected homicide.

Ms Prendergast said her dad had died “a million deaths in my mind”.

She said her family was greatly appreciative of having Mr Prendergast’s death formally recognised.

“This recognition will finally allow our family and I to farewell him,” she said.