The dog-eat-dog world of a police informer

They are called rats, dogs, fizzes, gigs, snouts and snitches if they tell tales about you. They are called informers, protected sources or brave whistleblowers if they tell tales about someone else.

Some tell stories to save the system. Others tell stories to save themselves.

Happy families: Drug dealer and multiple murderer Dennis Allen points a gun at his mother Kath Pettingill's head.

Drug dealer Dennis Allen was a master at it: every time his criminal enterprise sprung a leak he threw someone else overboard.

Despite being a huge drug dealer, a psychopath and the suspect in 11 murders, he kept himself out of jail by informing. At one point he was on bail for 60 different offences.

When he died in 1987, a death notice appeared under the names of two colourful detectives. “Dennis the Menace with a heart so big. Sorry, you’re gone, you were such a good gig.”

The art of informing is a simple trade. The information you provide has to be juicy enough to absolve or at the very least minimise your sins. The small fish gives up the big fish.

Former Melbourne lord mayor Irvin Rockman.Credit: The Age

Take Peter James Cross, former schoolteacher and son of a judge. Having read a book called Snowblind, written by a cocaine importer, he decided it was time for a career change and persuaded a social contact, millionaire playboy and former Melbourne lord mayor Irvin Rockman, to pay $7000 to part fund a trip to Bolivia, where he visited his former student Cassandra Ogden.

Flushed with the success, Cross connected with heavy gangsters (including hitman Christopher Dale Flannery) for two further trips until he was arrested. In 1987 Cross became an informer for the National Crime Authority, which came at a terrible cost. Back in Australia Ogden was summoned to give evidence at a secret NCA hearing and fearing she was being dragged into an underworld investigation took her own life.

Investigators were keen to charge Rockman but the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions rightly refused because while Rockman had a higher profile, Cross’ criminality was far greater than that of the former lord mayor.

It would be, the DPP said, the equivalent of using “a mackerel to catch a sprat”. (What he didn’t say is both are oily and cold-blooded – much like the average informer.)

This is a big mackerel.

I was at the inquest into the death of Cassandra Ogden and became increasingly irritated that Rockman was being less than truthful in the witness box by suggesting he was not involved in any way. I had Cross’ NCA testimony (including that he and Rockman used Snowblind as a blueprint) but it would have been a criminal offence to publish anything from the secret hearings.

So to let Irvin know I knew he was lying, I opened Snowblind and casually (or so I thought) began reading. When the lawyer cross-examining Rockman made reference to the reporter in the court reading the book, then asked if he had ever read it, the witness decided to refuse to answer questions because of self-incrimination.

Outside the court, the lawyer told me I was the worst method actor in the world as I was virtually stuffing the book in Rockman’s face. Was it contempt of court? Probably. Did it work? Absolutely.

Which brings us to the most public of secret informers, Nicola Gobbo (who did a podcast, for goodness’ sake, and has been on the front page more than Kylie Minogue). The former criminal barrister and police source has turned the criminal justice system upside down, put countless convictions in jeopardy and caused a royal commission into the use of informers.

Former criminal barrister Nicola Gobbo.

Now, not for the first time, she is seeking a deal and according to this publication is prepared to turn on all and sundry in exchange for indemnity. (For those who may have just thawed out from the Ice Age, Gobbo was a high-profile lawyer who represented a who’s who of gangsters while sneakily telling police their darkest secrets.)

Now, and this comes as no surprise, she says she is prepared to dump on all the coppers she curried favour from if she receives an indemnity from prosecution.

She has made a series of what are known as “Can Say” statements. Which means if you promise not to charge me, I can give up all these turkeys. A little like buying trousers online – you can buy or send it back.

She told the Office of the Special Examiner that while her actions were “immoral”, “illegal” and a “perversion of justice” it really wasn’t her fault. She says she was a victim controlled by detectives who were “alpha males calling the shots” and was “emotionally manipulated and groomed by police and at the time was young and naive and desperately sought the approval of older male figures”.

Gobbo was also a razor-smart barrister working on complex and high-profile criminal cases. She sought headlines, partied with the crooks and enthusiastically jumped sides to save herself when she became a person of interest in the 2004 murders of police informer Terence Hodson and his wife, Christine.

She ain’t no Goldilocks.

Nicola Gobbo was deeply flawed but of sound mind. She was two months short of her 33rd birthday when she became a gangland informer.

This was the third time she had registered as a police informer. She first turned informer as a law student in 1995 after her house had been raided for drugs. She got away with a good behaviour bond; a conviction on serious drug charges would have ruined her chances of becoming a lawyer.

In 1999, she offered to be an informer for the Australian Federal Police and the National Crime Authority. When they wouldn’t deal with her she went back to Victoria Police to tell tales about colleagues laundering money.

(An aside. When Gobbo made claims against cops at the royal commission into police informants, the names were made public. When they were made against lawyers, the names were suppressed.)

In 2005, she sought out a Purana detective. She was brought in from the cold and registered as Informer 3838 and was on the books for five years. It was a nightmare.

Perhaps one of the keys to the complex world Gobbo inhabited is her family background. Her grandparents immigrated from Italy and after initially failing during the Depression returned to build a restaurant business at the Victoria Market.

The younger son, James, was the one designated to be the star. Private school, Melbourne then Oxford University, a world-class rower, barrister, judge, knighted and a governor of Victoria. Sir James was Nicola’s uncle.

Older son Allan worked long hours serving and cleaning in the restaurant before progressing to become a well-respected Victorian public servant at the Road Traffic Authority. Allan was Nicola’s father.

(In his entertaining autobiography, Something to Declare, Sir James misspelt his brother’s name.)

Nicola had the famous name without the trappings of fame. She was close to her father, who died when she was still at school.

From those teenage years Nicola she strove to be a higher achiever: the lead in the plays, the loudest at the party, the most active in student politics and the editor (not reporter) of the university newspaper.

As a lawyer, being a solicitor working in an office was never an option. In 1998, she became a barrister (the youngest female admitted to the Bar), quickly taking on the most colourful (and headline producing) clients. She became the darling of the gossip columnists.

She was hopelessly compromised and rather than just representing her clients she became part of their dark circle. Judges, magistrates and fellow barristers knew she was a ticking time bomb who would eventually detonate, and while some took her aside to advise her, none lodged a formal complaint.

As a secret witness she made ridiculous demands and went off script. When police tried to end her time as a source she wouldn’t go, lingering on centre stage for yet another encore even as the audience was leaving the theatre.

Should police have used Gobbo the informer? Yes, if the information came from her running with the crooks. Should they have used information from her privileged client-lawyer conversations? No, and that is why many of the gangland convictions are being reviewed.

Another big sticking point. The Nettle inquiry will have to establish that Gobbo and the police committed a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and that the detectives involved knew or reasonably believed they were breaking the law.

Nicola Gobbo is no victim. She was an active participant who has been relocated more than once and received a sackful of cash in an out-of-court settlement over a lawsuit against police.

With her request for indemnity, the authorities will have to decide, was she mackerel or sprat?

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