9:30pm – Thursday, October 21 on Channel Nine
Michael Kanaan was an angry young man in a hurry to make a name for himself in Sydney’s underworld. But his volatile temper and penchant for violence soon led him to kill three men before he was finally captured in a wild shootout with Sydney police.
As a teenager he moved into petty theft and assault before his first arrest, for drug possession, in his early twenties. Despite being given a suspended sentence and a two-year good behaviour bond, he was soon in trouble again, this time for common assault, for which he escaped with a fine. He quickly returned to drug dealing and his gang – known as ‘DK’s boys’ – made huge profits distributing cocaine in Sydney’s Kings Cross. His reputation grew and by 1998, at age 23, he had become a lieutenant to organised crime figure Danny Karam.
A few months later, Kanaan led his gang in a drive-by shooting attack on the police station at Lakemba in Sydney in which the building was sprayed with bullets. Soon afterwards he organised the brutal execution of his underworld boss, Danny Karam in December 1998.
He was finally cornered by police and arrested after a shoot-out in inner city Rushcutters Bay in which Constable Chris Patrech was wounded.
Michael Kanaan was sentenced to three life sentences in the Supermax high security facility at Goulburn jail. But even the toughest incarceration did not deter his hoodlum instincts. Within a few years he had organised his own gang in prison, hiring several notorious killers to be his enforcers; paying them by having outside accomplices deposit cash into their prison bank accounts.
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