August 4, 2026 — 5:12pmCrime matriarch Kath Pettingill had one eye, nine lives and the hide of a rhinoceros. She died at a nursing home this week aged 91.Her criminal record was not impressive, but she created an empire of evil through her six sons (she also had a daughter). Three other children were adopted.Pettingill poses for a photo at a bridge near the Cherry Tree Hotel in Cremorne while promoting her book The Matriarch in 1996.Simon O’DwyerThree of that brood died young – which was hardly unexpected.The eldest was Dennis Bruce Allen, known as Mr Death, who was a suspect in 11 murders, and remained out of jail and on permanent bail by becoming a valued police informer. He also paid detectives for protection and bought heroin valued at $100,000 from notorious NSW detective Roger Rogerson.Dennis used geese rather than guard dogs to protect his Richmond property, saying they were louder and more aggressive.Pettingill – or “Granny Evil” as she was known – also adopted Gregory Vivian Pasche, who was stabbed to death and his body dumped in Olinda, in the Dandenong Ranges east of Melbourne, in 1983. Police believe he was murdered in a drug dispute involving Dennis.Dennis Allen pointing a gun at his mother, Kath. She kept it on the fridge as a momento. Kath was a crime matriarch but also a realist who knew her kids could turn on her if it suited them.“Dennis never trusted me 100 per cent and I never trusted him 100 per cent, and he’s my son,” she once said.Mother’s Day must have been a hoot.Pettingill had one eye shot out by a woman in October 1978. Police named the investigation into Kath’s shooting Operation Cyclops.Animal Kingdom, starring Jacki Weaver, was loosely based on Pettingill and her family.Sony Pictures ClassicsDennis and another of her sons, Jamie Pettingill, who was then just a teenager, committed an armed robbery at the United Kingdom Hotel in Clifton Hill. During the raid, a barman was shot and later died from a blood clot.Police threatened Jamie Pettingill with a murder charge unless he talked. Jamie told them he knew they were bluffing because he had read a story in the paper that the evidence would not sustain a homicide prosecution.In May 1985, Jamie showed he would do anything for family by bombing the Coroner’s Court as a warning to prospective witnesses in an inquest into the murder of a prostitute that was set to implicate Dennis. A few days later, Jamie died of a drug overdose.Two of Pettingill’s other sons, Victor George Peirce and Trevor Pettingill, were charged and acquitted as part of the group put on trial for murdering police officers Steven Tynan and Damian Eyre in Walsh Street, South Yarra, on October 12, 1988. It was a payback after a member of their gang, Graeme Jensen was shot dead by police the day before.Hours after the Walsh Street killings, I contacted Pettingill and asked if her clan was involved.She said: “I hate coppers but those boys [Tynan and Eyre] didn’t do anything. Our family wouldn’t do that. We were not involved.“You don’t kill two innocent coppers. If you want to get back, you kill the copper who killed Graeme.“Why take out two young boys?”The star witness against the four suspects was Jason Ryan – Pettingill’s grandson. She would turn up at court often wearing a T-shirt that read, “Life’s A Bitch. Then You Die.”When they were acquitted, Pettingill called for three cheers for the boys. She received silence.Another witness was Victor Peirce’s wife, Wendy, who flipped and refused to provide evidence against him. She carried a life-long hatred of her mother-in-law.Wendy would later tell me Victor was one of the Walsh Street killers, and it was his idea to ambush police.Pettingill was a regular visitor at a house where Dennis and Victor murdered bikie Anton Kenny, putting his chainsawed body in a 44 gallon drum and dumping it in the nearby Yarra River.In May 2002, Victor Peirce was murdered, shot dead in his Holden sedan in Bay Street Port Melbourne.To police, Kath Pettingill was always "Granny Evil". Her story was loosely told in the movie Animal Kingdom.She had worked as a madam, a drug dealer and, through her sons, associated with the most violent criminals.Pettingill was once found in a compromising position with a prison escapee who had run off from his grandmother’s funeral.She used Salvation Army emergency petrol coupons to fill the car she used to run her drug trafficking business.She was an active shoplifter. Once, she told friends, she stole a toy dinosaur for one of her grandchildren by slipping it under her clothes, next to her armpit.As she tried to pay for other items at the checkout, the stolen toy began to slip and Kath had to squeeze to make sure it didn’t fall. The pressure made the soft toy let out a growl.Kath pretended she had a bad case of wind. It worked.In her later years she retired to the coast at Venus Bay, and towards the end, spent time in a care home.From our partners