Triangle Of Hate...

Guido Calletti (1904-1939)

 

Calletti was the son of immigrant Italian greengrocers but left the life of fruit stalls for the glitz and glamour of Razorhurst. Wild as a youth in the Darlinghurst push, he had been sent to a Boy’s Reformatory Work Farm in Gosford, north of Sydney. According to ‘Chow’ Hayes, this was simply a school for hardened criminals and, in the case of Calletti, it proved true.

Guido was a sucker for a pretty face and he fell hard for Nellie Cameron. This set him firmly against many others who claimed her affections including Norman Bruhn and, especially, Frank ‘The Little Gunman’ Green: their feud was long and bitter.

Calletti was tough as nails, a good shot and fast with a razor: traits which set him apart from many other hoodlums who talked the talk but never followed through. As his reputation grew, Calletti began to dress the part, wearing expensive suits and flashing cash on all sides. It was a case however, of making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear: Guido was foul-mouthed, coarse and barely literate, often asking others to read to him of his exploits as reported in the daily newspapers.

His run-ins with the law saw him in and out of gaol for a string of offenses; when he turned to murder though, things became more difficult. Once, he avoided a manhunt only to be captured when the police followed Nellie Cameron to his hideout. He tried laying low in Queensland and Melbourne but was inevitably chased back to Sydney.

While on the run in Queensland, Guido married Nellie, who stayed there to avoid criminal prosecution in her home town. Calletti returned to Sydney where he resumed his sordid ways, taking up with Dulcie Markham as her lover. Executing a poorly thought-out plan to extort cash out of a betting syndicate known as the Brougham Street Gang, he brazenly entered their headquarters with Markham on his arm: the lights went out, guns went off, and when the lights came back on, Calletti was lying on the floor riddled with bullets. When asked who had shot him, he said “I don’t know” and passed out. He died later in hospital without regaining consciousness.

Guido Calletti’s funeral was a lavish affair attended by some five thousand onlookers. Nellie Cameron, prevented from attending due to legal constraints, sent a massive wreath, while Dulcie Markham, dressed in black, threw herself dramatically across his coffin. When it was over, Sydney’s vilest and flashiest thug was consigned to the pit of memory and none but the daily tabloids were the poorer for it.

‘Pretty’ Nellie Cameron (1910-1953)

 

Some women are attracted to danger. Many of them tiptoe in and then retreat sharply when the realities of that danger become apparent; Nellie Cameron jumped in wide-eyed and drained the poison chalice to its last drop.

Nellie came from a respectable upper middle class family on the north shore. She had been educated at an exclusive girl’s school and was destined for life as a debutante and society matron. To general surprise and horror, she quit the northern suburbs and headed to Razorhurst to become a prostitute and gangster’s moll. It was generally said that Nellie was not unusually attractive (unlike Dulcie Markham’s ‘blonde bombshell’ allure), but she had spirit, wit and a genteel poise that made her seem a prized rose amongst the thorns of the underworld.

‘Pretty Nellie’ loved associating with danger: she joined Tilly Devine’s stable of prostitutes and soon became her most sought-after girl. In this way she soon met the heavy hitters of the Razorhurst scene: Norman Bruhn, Frank Green and Guido Calletti. She dumped Bruhn fairly early on as a bad prospect and then spent years vacillating between Green and Calletti, spurring them on into ever more violent paroxysms of jealous rage. She was with them when they were attacked and arrested and was dealt her fair share of harm: by the end of her career, she had been stabbed, slashed and shot and, from all reports, had given as good as she’d got.

After she was shot in a drive-by shooting, Guido Calletti whisked her off to Gosford to avoid being arrested in a Sydney hospital, and from there took her to Queensland where they were married. After recuperating, the newly-weds returned to Razorhurst and tried to go straight, but the temptation was too much for Guido: both of them were soon once more on the lam and Nellie fled to Queensland to avoid arrest. She remained there for the rest of her life, not even daring to return for Calletti’s funeral.

Frank ‘the Little Gunman’ Green (1905-1956)

 

Frank Green was an enforcer for Tilly Devine who, apart from being a ruthless ‘kill-you-as-soon-as-look-at-you’ kind of fellow, had the very, very bad luck to fall in love with Nellie Cameron. Frank’s short stature and gimlet-eyed stare earned him the sobriquet ‘The Little Gunman’ and he was renowned as a villain with whom to be reckoned. He started out as a standover man, leaning on SP Bookies and sly-grog operators for a portion of their take; after Norman Bruhn’s push for power, he aligned himself with Phil Jeff’s forces and added a solid body-count to his burgeoning reputation.

And then along came Nellie Cameron. Her dalliance with Green was the start of a vicious feud between Green and Guido Calletti: Cameron wafted between them like a gorgeous, un-catchable butterfly, while her paramours punched, shot and slashed each in a haze of blood. After Calletti and Cameron eloped to Queensland, Green settled down to less high-pitched criminal intensity. He famously claimed that no bullet would ever get him and, in the end he was right: in 1956 while drunk and arguing with a prostitute he had taken up with, he was stabbed through the heart by a 30-centimetre long cooking knife and died. When Kate Leigh was asked if she’d any regrets about her violent dealings with Green she responded, “Hell no; but if I do find out where they bury him, I’ll go and dance on the bludger’s grave.”