Williams' partner praises her 'other half'

George Williams' partner has paid tribute to the drug-trafficking father of gangland murderer Carl Williams ahead of his funeral later this week.

Kathleen Bourke wrote in a newspaper notice on Monday: "Dear George, my other half, will miss and love you forever. Rest in peace my love."

The funeral service for George Williams, who died last week aged 69, will be held on Thursday at a small Tobin Brothers' chapel in Moonee Ponds.

Williams' niece, Jodie, in another tribute published on Monday, said George was now "reunited with his boys" - Shane who died of a heroin overdose in 1997 and Carl who was bludgeoned to death in Barwon Prison in 2010.

George's death was the end of the Williams crime family.

The patriarch might have looked like a quiet, bespectacled father, but those who knew him say he was an equal player in Melbourne's deadly gangland wars along with his murderous son.

Despite Carl's crimes - which included ordering the execution of gangster Jason Moran in front of his kids at a footy clinic - George always stood up for him.

"You might say he was mixed up in the gangland wars and them kids had fathers," George told a Melbourne radio station in 2012.

"But most of the gangland wars was for protection of his life and his family. I'm not saying all of it."

George Williams himself was sentenced in 2007 to four-and-a-half years in jail for trafficking amphetamines.

He and Carl engaged in the drug trafficking together, turning over a minimum $500,000 between late 2002 and mid-2004.