Mark Caleo tells trial slain brother-in-law 'involved with Triads'

A successful restauranteur accused of organising two murders almost 30 years ago, is now claiming one of his victims was involved with the Triads gang.

Under cross examination Mark Caleo said his brother in law Dr Michael Chye was treating criminals in his surgery for cash before he was shot dead outside his Woollahara home in 1989.

He told the jury “I didn’t want to go down this path” before alleging his wife had told him Dr Chye “was involved with Triads.”

“A boy who went to Chatswood High School in the '70s and studied medicine here?” Crown Prosecutor Margaret Cunneen SC queried.

“Yes” Caleo replied.

“Quite often he would come to us and let us know his life was in danger” he added.

He also admitted to describing Dr Chye as a “pathetic gambler who had many debts and many enemies.”

But he denied ever telling his second wife that he had hired a hitman to take his life after a dispute over a $3 million property at Blakehurst.

Ms Cunneen suggested he had boasted of it in an “heroic fashion”.

Caleo replied “that’s total fiction.”

Caleo is also charged with soliciting the murder of his wife who was Dr Chye’s sister.

Rita Caleo was stabbed to death in their Double Bay townhouse less than a year after Dr Chye’s murder.

Caleo has denied he was having an affair at the time and claimed today they had never spoken of divorce.