Born in Hungary on August 6, 1956, Hegyalji migrated to Australia with his parents in or around 1964.
According to detectives the stand-over man and drug dealer was a "funny, and when he wanted to be, charming man".
Celebrity criminal and close friend, Mark "Chopper" Read, wrote that Hegyalji bit off the nose of an enemy as a teenager and was given his name "Mad" Charlie.
Since the late 1970's when he, Read and Nick "The Greek" Apostolides were standing over criminals and relieving them of their illicit earnings, Hegyalji lived up to his moniker.
He was good with his fists and weapons and wasn't afraid to use either.
It was a lifestyle that won him respect and enemies in equal measure.
Charlie was a big fan of true crime and especially American gangsters.
He travelled to the US just to be in the company of some of them including Carlo Gambino whom he shook hands with as a 17 year-old on one of his overseas sojourns.
He was also a regular at the Kill City crime bookshop in Prahran.
In the 1970's he called himself 'The Don'
He modelled himself on crime figures such as Chicago's Gambino family.
Despite his form, Hegyalji was well liked by some police - as much for the quality of his information as for his gregarious personality.
Like notorious Richmond drug dealer Dennis Allen, Mad Charlie was not only one of Melbourne's better-known crooks but also one of Victoria Police's better-informed "gigs".
Hegyalji was a regular and reportedly volunteered the name of an associate who was later charged with murder.
A known drug supplier and dealer, Hegyalji was also a user but, according to police, he was not an addict.
"He used to go berserk when he mixed heroin with the booze," a police source said.
"He was no addict. But he used to get pretty yappy when he was on the booze. A lot of the good crooks didn't like that."
Hegyalji also liked a drink.
For a great deal of his life he received sickness benefits due to ulcer and alcohol related problems.
Hegyalji was well known to police.
In 1975, at the age of 18 and already with a string of convictions, he was jailed for nine years for raping a woman during a raid on a fellow criminal to extort money.
A man was beaten unconscious and robbed of $210 before Hegyalji caught a three-month pregnant woman trying to escape from the Elwood flat.
Hegyalji was involved in gunfights in the St Kilda and Caulfield areas.
He also had convictions for armed robbery, drugs offences, possession of a handgun and assaults.
In his book, Chopper - From The Inside, Chopper Read wrote that an incident involving his good friend and feared brawler Frankie Waghorn and Hegyalji, almost led to bloodshed.
Waghorn had a fight with Hegyalji in Pentridge Prison's B Division in 1975.
Read wrote that after the fight "I asked Charlie if he wanted revenge, and revenge would have meant big bloodshed".
"Bloodshed against Frank would have started a gang war inside Pentridge that would have moved to the streets after release.
"Frankie Waghorn would punch the teeth out of an elephant, Charlie, when faced with the real life and death blood and guts, preferred to take a low profile and shake hands. I'm glad as Frankie Waghorn is a good friend.
In the 1980's Hegyalji became heavily involved in the amphetamine trade.
He recruited a chemist and they made many 'cooks' of speed in Carlton and Gippsland.
Chemistry graduate Paul Lester was forced, blindfolded, to a property to manufacture speed.
In 1989 Hegyalji was shot in the stomach outside his home in South Caulfield.
He later shot a man in the car park of a St Kilda hotel as payback.
In August 1992 the special response squad received information Hegyalji was planning a $1 million computer theft in Notting Hill.
The plan was to break into a factory in daylight, tie up the staff and steal the computers.
But when Operation DOS swung into action and surveillance was placed on the gang, Mad Charlie suddenly went cold on the plan.
In November 1992 the rest of the crew was eventually picked up doing a $60,000 burglary on a business in Little Bourke Street.
In 1995 police raided a Narre Warren farm house as part of an amphetamines operation.
They discovered a false wall concealing a small arsenal of weapons.
Police netted six cans of mace, 17 pistols, shotguns and machine guns, silencers and false drivers licenses
Also seized was a printout giving information on alarm systems used in Melbourne buildings including police stations.
Hegyalji's fingerprints were found on the list.
In 1997 Hegyalji was involved in a Prahran gun battle out side a panel beaters.
He was charged with attempted murder.
In July 1998 Hegyalji was released from jail when the charges were dropped.
The intended victims refused to give evidence in court.
On his release Hegyalji went back to his criminal enterprises.
He was reportedly keeping company with an associate of one of Australia's biggest drug dealers and a career armed robber.
One officer who saw him in October 1998 said he looked in pretty good shape.
The time inside is said to have led Hegyalji to relinquish his 'chair at the business table'.
And police believe, the man who filled is seat was not too keen on giving it back when Charlie walked from prison.
That scenario, and the fact that he was owed something in the vicinity of $100,000 proved enough reason for Mad Charlie to be gunned down in his front yard.
According to police sources, Charlie liked to talk a bit out of school when he was on the drink or powders.
"A lot of good crooks didn't like that."
Hegyalji was good at dodging trouble, but his luck ran out on November 23, 1998, at 1.00am.
'Mad' Charlie was shot and killed by a waiting gunman in the garden of his South Caulfield home.
Several shots were pumped into his head at close range.
Soon before his death Hegyalji had told good friend Chopper Read (pictured left with Hegyalji) that he was having trouble with a mutual friend.
But he assured Read it was "nothing too serious."
Hegyalji had spent the day drinking beers and brandy with a few associates.
One of the men drinking with Charlie was friend and distant relative Ronny Allen.
They started at the London Tavern in Hawthorn Rd, Caulfield, before moving on to the Grosvenor Hotel on the Nepean Highway, St Kilda.
When the Grosvenor closed, the group decided to find another watering hole - this time the Newmarket Hotel in Inkerman St, St Kilda, where they arrived about 10.45pm and pulled up a table.
Hegyalji was not a regular at the Newmarket.
Bar staff say they had not seen him in there before that night and that he was pretty quiet.
During the course of the drinking session, Hegyalji disappeared with an unknown man for a short while.
When he returned, it appeared that he was affected by drugs.
"The way Charlie was acting, I would say it was speed or cocaine," Allen said.
Throughout the evening, Hegyalji tried to contact, via payphone, a volatile western suburban drug identity by the name of Dino Dibra.
"Charlie made a few calls to a guy called Nino or Dino and asked him to come down to the pub, but the guy never turned up," Allen told detectives. "I thought Charlie may have wanted to buy some drugs."
Dibra would be gunned down two years later when shots rang out in a West Sunshine street.
According to the hotel staff the group chatted over a few beers but there was no argument or dispute.
At about 11.30pm after a few more pots, the quartet walked out and Charlie ended up at a friend's Balaclava flat.
That friend was an ex-panel-beater who had been on the drinking spree.
A taxi picked Hegyalji up at the flat at 12.45 a.m and dropped him in Bambra road at 12.51.
Hegyalji was ambushed seconds after the taxi dropped him off.
A gunman stepped out of the shadows at the front of his heavily fortified home and shot him four times in the head.
Charlie had raised his left hand and made a futile attempt to swat away the bullets.
The killer ran off across neighbouring lawns and into the darkness.
Several neighbours heard gunshots and one rang the police.
Local officers attended the home but where unable to see the body behind Hegyalji's security fence.
Hegyalji lay where he fell until almost 8am when police were called to the street.
His partner of 10 years, Ellie, discovered the body via the home's closed-circuit TV security system.
Hegyalji was lying face down in a pool of blood.
His gold watch was still on his wrist, a gold chain with a diamond studded C around his neck and a gold ring with an embedded red stone on his right ring finger.
Unfortunately for investigators, who said the list of suspects was long, the CCTV was not recording.
Det Sen-Sgt Rowland Legg said it was likely the killer was someone who had knowledge ofHegyalji's movements on the day.
A reformed criminal by the name of Nick "The Golden Greek" Apostalidis told the Herald Sun that Hegyalji appeared worried in the weeks before his death.
Apostalidis said Charlie was fearful of the ramifications of a year-long feud he had waged with another criminal.
"He would always be worried...he knew what this man was capable of," Apostalidis said.
In April 200, Coroner Jacinta Heffey delivered an open finding into Hegyalji's murder saying "no suspects have been identified".
According to detectives the stand-over man and drug dealer was a "funny, and when he wanted to be, charming man".
Celebrity criminal and close friend, Mark "Chopper" Read, wrote that Hegyalji bit off the nose of an enemy as a teenager and was given his name "Mad" Charlie.
Since the late 1970's when he, Read and Nick "The Greek" Apostolides were standing over criminals and relieving them of their illicit earnings, Hegyalji lived up to his moniker.
He was good with his fists and weapons and wasn't afraid to use either.
It was a lifestyle that won him respect and enemies in equal measure.
Charlie was a big fan of true crime and especially American gangsters.
He travelled to the US just to be in the company of some of them including Carlo Gambino whom he shook hands with as a 17 year-old on one of his overseas sojourns.
He was also a regular at the Kill City crime bookshop in Prahran.
In the 1970's he called himself 'The Don'
He modelled himself on crime figures such as Chicago's Gambino family.
Despite his form, Hegyalji was well liked by some police - as much for the quality of his information as for his gregarious personality.
Like notorious Richmond drug dealer Dennis Allen, Mad Charlie was not only one of Melbourne's better-known crooks but also one of Victoria Police's better-informed "gigs".
Hegyalji was a regular and reportedly volunteered the name of an associate who was later charged with murder.
A known drug supplier and dealer, Hegyalji was also a user but, according to police, he was not an addict.
"He used to go berserk when he mixed heroin with the booze," a police source said.
"He was no addict. But he used to get pretty yappy when he was on the booze. A lot of the good crooks didn't like that."
Hegyalji also liked a drink.
For a great deal of his life he received sickness benefits due to ulcer and alcohol related problems.
Hegyalji was well known to police.
In 1975, at the age of 18 and already with a string of convictions, he was jailed for nine years for raping a woman during a raid on a fellow criminal to extort money.
A man was beaten unconscious and robbed of $210 before Hegyalji caught a three-month pregnant woman trying to escape from the Elwood flat.
Hegyalji was involved in gunfights in the St Kilda and Caulfield areas.
He also had convictions for armed robbery, drugs offences, possession of a handgun and assaults.
In his book, Chopper - From The Inside, Chopper Read wrote that an incident involving his good friend and feared brawler Frankie Waghorn and Hegyalji, almost led to bloodshed.
Waghorn had a fight with Hegyalji in Pentridge Prison's B Division in 1975.
Read wrote that after the fight "I asked Charlie if he wanted revenge, and revenge would have meant big bloodshed".
"Bloodshed against Frank would have started a gang war inside Pentridge that would have moved to the streets after release.
"Frankie Waghorn would punch the teeth out of an elephant, Charlie, when faced with the real life and death blood and guts, preferred to take a low profile and shake hands. I'm glad as Frankie Waghorn is a good friend.
In the 1980's Hegyalji became heavily involved in the amphetamine trade.
He recruited a chemist and they made many 'cooks' of speed in Carlton and Gippsland.
Chemistry graduate Paul Lester was forced, blindfolded, to a property to manufacture speed.
In 1989 Hegyalji was shot in the stomach outside his home in South Caulfield.
He later shot a man in the car park of a St Kilda hotel as payback.
In August 1992 the special response squad received information Hegyalji was planning a $1 million computer theft in Notting Hill.
The plan was to break into a factory in daylight, tie up the staff and steal the computers.
But when Operation DOS swung into action and surveillance was placed on the gang, Mad Charlie suddenly went cold on the plan.
In November 1992 the rest of the crew was eventually picked up doing a $60,000 burglary on a business in Little Bourke Street.
In 1995 police raided a Narre Warren farm house as part of an amphetamines operation.
They discovered a false wall concealing a small arsenal of weapons.
Police netted six cans of mace, 17 pistols, shotguns and machine guns, silencers and false drivers licenses
Also seized was a printout giving information on alarm systems used in Melbourne buildings including police stations.
Hegyalji's fingerprints were found on the list.
In 1997 Hegyalji was involved in a Prahran gun battle out side a panel beaters.
He was charged with attempted murder.
In July 1998 Hegyalji was released from jail when the charges were dropped.
The intended victims refused to give evidence in court.
On his release Hegyalji went back to his criminal enterprises.
He was reportedly keeping company with an associate of one of Australia's biggest drug dealers and a career armed robber.
One officer who saw him in October 1998 said he looked in pretty good shape.
The time inside is said to have led Hegyalji to relinquish his 'chair at the business table'.
And police believe, the man who filled is seat was not too keen on giving it back when Charlie walked from prison.
That scenario, and the fact that he was owed something in the vicinity of $100,000 proved enough reason for Mad Charlie to be gunned down in his front yard.
According to police sources, Charlie liked to talk a bit out of school when he was on the drink or powders.
"A lot of good crooks didn't like that."
Hegyalji was good at dodging trouble, but his luck ran out on November 23, 1998, at 1.00am.
'Mad' Charlie was shot and killed by a waiting gunman in the garden of his South Caulfield home.
Several shots were pumped into his head at close range.
Soon before his death Hegyalji had told good friend Chopper Read (pictured left with Hegyalji) that he was having trouble with a mutual friend.
But he assured Read it was "nothing too serious."
Hegyalji had spent the day drinking beers and brandy with a few associates.
One of the men drinking with Charlie was friend and distant relative Ronny Allen.
They started at the London Tavern in Hawthorn Rd, Caulfield, before moving on to the Grosvenor Hotel on the Nepean Highway, St Kilda.
When the Grosvenor closed, the group decided to find another watering hole - this time the Newmarket Hotel in Inkerman St, St Kilda, where they arrived about 10.45pm and pulled up a table.
Hegyalji was not a regular at the Newmarket.
Bar staff say they had not seen him in there before that night and that he was pretty quiet.
During the course of the drinking session, Hegyalji disappeared with an unknown man for a short while.
When he returned, it appeared that he was affected by drugs.
"The way Charlie was acting, I would say it was speed or cocaine," Allen said.
Throughout the evening, Hegyalji tried to contact, via payphone, a volatile western suburban drug identity by the name of Dino Dibra.
"Charlie made a few calls to a guy called Nino or Dino and asked him to come down to the pub, but the guy never turned up," Allen told detectives. "I thought Charlie may have wanted to buy some drugs."
Dibra would be gunned down two years later when shots rang out in a West Sunshine street.
According to the hotel staff the group chatted over a few beers but there was no argument or dispute.
At about 11.30pm after a few more pots, the quartet walked out and Charlie ended up at a friend's Balaclava flat.
That friend was an ex-panel-beater who had been on the drinking spree.
A taxi picked Hegyalji up at the flat at 12.45 a.m and dropped him in Bambra road at 12.51.
Hegyalji was ambushed seconds after the taxi dropped him off.
A gunman stepped out of the shadows at the front of his heavily fortified home and shot him four times in the head.
Charlie had raised his left hand and made a futile attempt to swat away the bullets.
The killer ran off across neighbouring lawns and into the darkness.
Several neighbours heard gunshots and one rang the police.
Local officers attended the home but where unable to see the body behind Hegyalji's security fence.
Hegyalji lay where he fell until almost 8am when police were called to the street.
His partner of 10 years, Ellie, discovered the body via the home's closed-circuit TV security system.
Hegyalji was lying face down in a pool of blood.
His gold watch was still on his wrist, a gold chain with a diamond studded C around his neck and a gold ring with an embedded red stone on his right ring finger.
Unfortunately for investigators, who said the list of suspects was long, the CCTV was not recording.
Det Sen-Sgt Rowland Legg said it was likely the killer was someone who had knowledge ofHegyalji's movements on the day.
A reformed criminal by the name of Nick "The Golden Greek" Apostalidis told the Herald Sun that Hegyalji appeared worried in the weeks before his death.
Apostalidis said Charlie was fearful of the ramifications of a year-long feud he had waged with another criminal.
"He would always be worried...he knew what this man was capable of," Apostalidis said.
In April 200, Coroner Jacinta Heffey delivered an open finding into Hegyalji's murder saying "no suspects have been identified".
Born in Hungary on August 6, 1956, Hegyalji migrated to Australia with his parents in or around 1964.
According to detectives the stand-over man and drug dealer was a "funny, and when he wanted to be, charming man".
Celebrity criminal and close friend, Mark "Chopper" Read, wrote that Hegyalji bit off the nose of an enemy as a teenager and was given his name "Mad" Charlie.
Since the late 1970's when he, Read and Nick "The Greek" Apostolides were standing over criminals and relieving them of their illicit earnings, Hegyalji lived up to his moniker.
He was good with his fists and weapons and wasn't afraid to use either.
It was a lifestyle that won him respect and enemies in equal measure.
Charlie was a big fan of true crime and especially American gangsters.
He travelled to the US just to be in the company of some of them including Carlo Gambino whom he shook hands with as a 17 year-old on one of his overseas sojourns.
He was also a regular at the Kill City crime bookshop in Prahran.
In the 1970's he called himself 'The Don'
He modelled himself on crime figures such as Chicago's Gambino family.
Despite his form, Hegyalji was well liked by some police - as much for the quality of his information as for his gregarious personality.
Like notorious Richmond drug dealer Dennis Allen, Mad Charlie was not only one of Melbourne's better-known crooks but also one of Victoria Police's better-informed "gigs".
Hegyalji was a regular and reportedly volunteered the name of an associate who was later charged with murder.
A known drug supplier and dealer, Hegyalji was also a user but, according to police, he was not an addict.
"He used to go berserk when he mixed heroin with the booze," a police source said.
"He was no addict. But he used to get pretty yappy when he was on the booze. A lot of the good crooks didn't like that."
Hegyalji also liked a drink.
For a great deal of his life he received sickness benefits due to ulcer and alcohol related problems.
Hegyalji was well known to police.
In 1975, at the age of 18 and already with a string of convictions, he was jailed for nine years for raping a woman during a raid on a fellow criminal to extort money.
A man was beaten unconscious and robbed of $210 before Hegyalji caught a three-month pregnant woman trying to escape from the Elwood flat.
Hegyalji was involved in gunfights in the St Kilda and Caulfield areas.
He also had convictions for armed robbery, drugs offences, possession of a handgun and assaults.
In his book, Chopper - From The Inside, Chopper Read wrote that an incident involving his good friend and feared brawler Frankie Waghorn and Hegyalji, almost led to bloodshed.
Waghorn had a fight with Hegyalji in Pentridge Prison's B Division in 1975.
Read wrote that after the fight "I asked Charlie if he wanted revenge, and revenge would have meant big bloodshed".
"Bloodshed against Frank would have started a gang war inside Pentridge that would have moved to the streets after release.
"Frankie Waghorn would punch the teeth out of an elephant, Charlie, when faced with the real life and death blood and guts, preferred to take a low profile and shake hands. I'm glad as Frankie Waghorn is a good friend.
In the 1980's Hegyalji became heavily involved in the amphetamine trade.
He recruited a chemist and they made many 'cooks' of speed in Carlton and Gippsland.
Chemistry graduate Paul Lester was forced, blindfolded, to a property to manufacture speed.
In 1989 Hegyalji was shot in the stomach outside his home in South Caulfield.
He later shot a man in the car park of a St Kilda hotel as payback.
In August 1992 the special response squad received information Hegyalji was planning a $1 million computer theft in Notting Hill.
The plan was to break into a factory in daylight, tie up the staff and steal the computers.
But when Operation DOS swung into action and surveillance was placed on the gang, Mad Charlie suddenly went cold on the plan.
In November 1992 the rest of the crew was eventually picked up doing a $60,000 burglary on a business in Little Bourke Street.
In 1995 police raided a Narre Warren farm house as part of an amphetamines operation.
They discovered a false wall concealing a small arsenal of weapons.
Police netted six cans of mace, 17 pistols, shotguns and machine guns, silencers and false drivers licenses
Also seized was a printout giving information on alarm systems used in Melbourne buildings including police stations.
Hegyalji's fingerprints were found on the list.
In 1997 Hegyalji was involved in a Prahran gun battle out side a panel beaters.
He was charged with attempted murder.
In July 1998 Hegyalji was released from jail when the charges were dropped.
The intended victims refused to give evidence in court.
On his release Hegyalji went back to his criminal enterprises.
He was reportedly keeping company with an associate of one of Australia's biggest drug dealers and a career armed robber.
One officer who saw him in October 1998 said he looked in pretty good shape.
The time inside is said to have led Hegyalji to relinquish his 'chair at the business table'.
And police believe, the man who filled is seat was not too keen on giving it back when Charlie walked from prison.
That scenario, and the fact that he was owed something in the vicinity of $100,000 proved enough reason for Mad Charlie to be gunned down in his front yard.
According to police sources, Charlie liked to talk a bit out of school when he was on the drink or powders.
"A lot of good crooks didn't like that."
Hegyalji was good at dodging trouble, but his luck ran out on November 23, 1998, at 1.00am.
'Mad' Charlie was shot and killed by a waiting gunman in the garden of his South Caulfield home.
Several shots were pumped into his head at close range.
Soon before his death Hegyalji had told good friend Chopper Read (pictured left with Hegyalji) that he was having trouble with a mutual friend.
But he assured Read it was "nothing too serious."
Hegyalji had spent the day drinking beers and brandy with a few associates.
One of the men drinking with Charlie was friend and distant relative Ronny Allen.
They started at the London Tavern in Hawthorn Rd, Caulfield, before moving on to the Grosvenor Hotel on the Nepean Highway, St Kilda.
When the Grosvenor closed, the group decided to find another watering hole - this time the Newmarket Hotel in Inkerman St, St Kilda, where they arrived about 10.45pm and pulled up a table.
Hegyalji was not a regular at the Newmarket.
Bar staff say they had not seen him in there before that night and that he was pretty quiet.
During the course of the drinking session, Hegyalji disappeared with an unknown man for a short while.
When he returned, it appeared that he was affected by drugs.
"The way Charlie was acting, I would say it was speed or cocaine," Allen said.
Throughout the evening, Hegyalji tried to contact, via payphone, a volatile western suburban drug identity by the name of Dino Dibra.
"Charlie made a few calls to a guy called Nino or Dino and asked him to come down to the pub, but the guy never turned up," Allen told detectives. "I thought Charlie may have wanted to buy some drugs."
Dibra would be gunned down two years later when shots rang out in a West Sunshine street.
According to the hotel staff the group chatted over a few beers but there was no argument or dispute.
At about 11.30pm after a few more pots, the quartet walked out and Charlie ended up at a friend's Balaclava flat.
That friend was an ex-panel-beater who had been on the drinking spree.
A taxi picked Hegyalji up at the flat at 12.45 a.m and dropped him in Bambra road at 12.51.
Hegyalji was ambushed seconds after the taxi dropped him off.
A gunman stepped out of the shadows at the front of his heavily fortified home and shot him four times in the head.
Charlie had raised his left hand and made a futile attempt to swat away the bullets.
The killer ran off across neighbouring lawns and into the darkness.
Several neighbours heard gunshots and one rang the police.
Local officers attended the home but where unable to see the body behind Hegyalji's security fence.
Hegyalji lay where he fell until almost 8am when police were called to the street.
His partner of 10 years, Ellie, discovered the body via the home's closed-circuit TV security system.
Hegyalji was lying face down in a pool of blood.
His gold watch was still on his wrist, a gold chain with a diamond studded C around his neck and a gold ring with an embedded red stone on his right ring finger.
Unfortunately for investigators, who said the list of suspects was long, the CCTV was not recording.
Det Sen-Sgt Rowland Legg said it was likely the killer was someone who had knowledge ofHegyalji's movements on the day.
A reformed criminal by the name of Nick "The Golden Greek" Apostalidis told the Herald Sun that Hegyalji appeared worried in the weeks before his death.
Apostalidis said Charlie was fearful of the ramifications of a year-long feud he had waged with another criminal.
"He would always be worried...he knew what this man was capable of," Apostalidis said.
In April 200, Coroner Jacinta Heffey delivered an open finding into Hegyalji's murder saying "no suspects have been identified".
According to detectives the stand-over man and drug dealer was a "funny, and when he wanted to be, charming man".
Celebrity criminal and close friend, Mark "Chopper" Read, wrote that Hegyalji bit off the nose of an enemy as a teenager and was given his name "Mad" Charlie.
Since the late 1970's when he, Read and Nick "The Greek" Apostolides were standing over criminals and relieving them of their illicit earnings, Hegyalji lived up to his moniker.
He was good with his fists and weapons and wasn't afraid to use either.
It was a lifestyle that won him respect and enemies in equal measure.
Charlie was a big fan of true crime and especially American gangsters.
He travelled to the US just to be in the company of some of them including Carlo Gambino whom he shook hands with as a 17 year-old on one of his overseas sojourns.
He was also a regular at the Kill City crime bookshop in Prahran.
In the 1970's he called himself 'The Don'
He modelled himself on crime figures such as Chicago's Gambino family.
Despite his form, Hegyalji was well liked by some police - as much for the quality of his information as for his gregarious personality.
Like notorious Richmond drug dealer Dennis Allen, Mad Charlie was not only one of Melbourne's better-known crooks but also one of Victoria Police's better-informed "gigs".
Hegyalji was a regular and reportedly volunteered the name of an associate who was later charged with murder.
A known drug supplier and dealer, Hegyalji was also a user but, according to police, he was not an addict.
"He used to go berserk when he mixed heroin with the booze," a police source said.
"He was no addict. But he used to get pretty yappy when he was on the booze. A lot of the good crooks didn't like that."
Hegyalji also liked a drink.
For a great deal of his life he received sickness benefits due to ulcer and alcohol related problems.
Hegyalji was well known to police.
In 1975, at the age of 18 and already with a string of convictions, he was jailed for nine years for raping a woman during a raid on a fellow criminal to extort money.
A man was beaten unconscious and robbed of $210 before Hegyalji caught a three-month pregnant woman trying to escape from the Elwood flat.
Hegyalji was involved in gunfights in the St Kilda and Caulfield areas.
He also had convictions for armed robbery, drugs offences, possession of a handgun and assaults.
In his book, Chopper - From The Inside, Chopper Read wrote that an incident involving his good friend and feared brawler Frankie Waghorn and Hegyalji, almost led to bloodshed.
Waghorn had a fight with Hegyalji in Pentridge Prison's B Division in 1975.
Read wrote that after the fight "I asked Charlie if he wanted revenge, and revenge would have meant big bloodshed".
"Bloodshed against Frank would have started a gang war inside Pentridge that would have moved to the streets after release.
"Frankie Waghorn would punch the teeth out of an elephant, Charlie, when faced with the real life and death blood and guts, preferred to take a low profile and shake hands. I'm glad as Frankie Waghorn is a good friend.
In the 1980's Hegyalji became heavily involved in the amphetamine trade.
He recruited a chemist and they made many 'cooks' of speed in Carlton and Gippsland.
Chemistry graduate Paul Lester was forced, blindfolded, to a property to manufacture speed.
In 1989 Hegyalji was shot in the stomach outside his home in South Caulfield.
He later shot a man in the car park of a St Kilda hotel as payback.
In August 1992 the special response squad received information Hegyalji was planning a $1 million computer theft in Notting Hill.
The plan was to break into a factory in daylight, tie up the staff and steal the computers.
But when Operation DOS swung into action and surveillance was placed on the gang, Mad Charlie suddenly went cold on the plan.
In November 1992 the rest of the crew was eventually picked up doing a $60,000 burglary on a business in Little Bourke Street.
In 1995 police raided a Narre Warren farm house as part of an amphetamines operation.
They discovered a false wall concealing a small arsenal of weapons.
Police netted six cans of mace, 17 pistols, shotguns and machine guns, silencers and false drivers licenses
Also seized was a printout giving information on alarm systems used in Melbourne buildings including police stations.
Hegyalji's fingerprints were found on the list.
In 1997 Hegyalji was involved in a Prahran gun battle out side a panel beaters.
He was charged with attempted murder.
In July 1998 Hegyalji was released from jail when the charges were dropped.
The intended victims refused to give evidence in court.
On his release Hegyalji went back to his criminal enterprises.
He was reportedly keeping company with an associate of one of Australia's biggest drug dealers and a career armed robber.
One officer who saw him in October 1998 said he looked in pretty good shape.
The time inside is said to have led Hegyalji to relinquish his 'chair at the business table'.
And police believe, the man who filled is seat was not too keen on giving it back when Charlie walked from prison.
That scenario, and the fact that he was owed something in the vicinity of $100,000 proved enough reason for Mad Charlie to be gunned down in his front yard.
According to police sources, Charlie liked to talk a bit out of school when he was on the drink or powders.
"A lot of good crooks didn't like that."
Hegyalji was good at dodging trouble, but his luck ran out on November 23, 1998, at 1.00am.
'Mad' Charlie was shot and killed by a waiting gunman in the garden of his South Caulfield home.
Several shots were pumped into his head at close range.
Soon before his death Hegyalji had told good friend Chopper Read (pictured left with Hegyalji) that he was having trouble with a mutual friend.
But he assured Read it was "nothing too serious."
Hegyalji had spent the day drinking beers and brandy with a few associates.
One of the men drinking with Charlie was friend and distant relative Ronny Allen.
They started at the London Tavern in Hawthorn Rd, Caulfield, before moving on to the Grosvenor Hotel on the Nepean Highway, St Kilda.
When the Grosvenor closed, the group decided to find another watering hole - this time the Newmarket Hotel in Inkerman St, St Kilda, where they arrived about 10.45pm and pulled up a table.
Hegyalji was not a regular at the Newmarket.
Bar staff say they had not seen him in there before that night and that he was pretty quiet.
During the course of the drinking session, Hegyalji disappeared with an unknown man for a short while.
When he returned, it appeared that he was affected by drugs.
"The way Charlie was acting, I would say it was speed or cocaine," Allen said.
Throughout the evening, Hegyalji tried to contact, via payphone, a volatile western suburban drug identity by the name of Dino Dibra.
"Charlie made a few calls to a guy called Nino or Dino and asked him to come down to the pub, but the guy never turned up," Allen told detectives. "I thought Charlie may have wanted to buy some drugs."
Dibra would be gunned down two years later when shots rang out in a West Sunshine street.
According to the hotel staff the group chatted over a few beers but there was no argument or dispute.
At about 11.30pm after a few more pots, the quartet walked out and Charlie ended up at a friend's Balaclava flat.
That friend was an ex-panel-beater who had been on the drinking spree.
A taxi picked Hegyalji up at the flat at 12.45 a.m and dropped him in Bambra road at 12.51.
Hegyalji was ambushed seconds after the taxi dropped him off.
A gunman stepped out of the shadows at the front of his heavily fortified home and shot him four times in the head.
Charlie had raised his left hand and made a futile attempt to swat away the bullets.
The killer ran off across neighbouring lawns and into the darkness.
Several neighbours heard gunshots and one rang the police.
Local officers attended the home but where unable to see the body behind Hegyalji's security fence.
Hegyalji lay where he fell until almost 8am when police were called to the street.
His partner of 10 years, Ellie, discovered the body via the home's closed-circuit TV security system.
Hegyalji was lying face down in a pool of blood.
His gold watch was still on his wrist, a gold chain with a diamond studded C around his neck and a gold ring with an embedded red stone on his right ring finger.
Unfortunately for investigators, who said the list of suspects was long, the CCTV was not recording.
Det Sen-Sgt Rowland Legg said it was likely the killer was someone who had knowledge ofHegyalji's movements on the day.
A reformed criminal by the name of Nick "The Golden Greek" Apostalidis told the Herald Sun that Hegyalji appeared worried in the weeks before his death.
Apostalidis said Charlie was fearful of the ramifications of a year-long feud he had waged with another criminal.
"He would always be worried...he knew what this man was capable of," Apostalidis said.
In April 200, Coroner Jacinta Heffey delivered an open finding into Hegyalji's murder saying "no suspects have been identified".
Inscription
HEGYALJIE
CHARLIE
6.8.1956 - 23.11.1998
LOVED HUSBAND OF
ELLIE
PROUD FATHER OF
KAROLY AND ELIZABETH, LOVED SON OF
CHARLES & MARIA AND GRANDSON OF ERZSEBET
Sponsored by Ancestry
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