I was asked to be an informer - Terrence Hodson

SPECIAL REPORT: IT'S August 2001, when career criminal Terrence Hodson is offered a deal by the man who has arrested him.

Terrence Hodson

IT'S August 2001, when career criminal Terrence Hodson is offered a deal by the man who has just arrested him.

The career petty criminal has been nabbed with half a gram of cocaine.

His son Andrew and another family member are in serious strife however - caught in possession of a commercial quantity of ecstasy tablets.

All three have criminal records.

Andrew is also charged with trafficking ice - crimes allegedly committed while on parole for armed robbery.

The man making the offer is drug squad detective Dave Miechel and the deal is a simple one - turn informer and we will go easy on your family.

Today, the Sunday Herald Sun reveals exactly what Terrence and Christine Hodson later told police in three statements.

The statements - which run to 20 pages - were made in October 2003 and January 2004, just months before they were executed in their Kew home. The murders remain unsolved.

In the statements, the couple tell all about their dealings with corrupt cops, Dave Miechel and a detective whose name we are not revealing for legal reasons.

According to other police documents seen by the Sunday Herald Sun, elements in the criminal underworld knew Hodson was selling drugs on behalf of corrupt police and his status as an informer was well-known in criminal and legal circles long before he was caught burgling a house in the company of a cop.

That house, we reveal, was producing ecstasy pills for drug baron Tony Mokbel, who later fell out with an associate over $700,000 that vanished in the burglary.

Police have been told the man had prior knowledge of a plan to kill Hodson and warned an associate to make sure she was seen in public the night they died.

IF TERRY Hodson hesitated, it wasn't for very long - two weeks later he was registered as a police informer with Miechel as his handler.

Hodson didn't tell his son Andrew, then on remand, what he had done.

He found out four months after he was bailed in May 2002 when Tony Mokbel showed him a leaked police document.

His lawyer later told him that many people believed his father was an informer.

By the end of 2002 police were so worried about Hodson they changed his informer registration number for "identity protection reasons".

Andrew Hodson was angry with his father and during Christmas lunch at the Park Hyatt Hotel that year he challenged him to come clean.

Terry refused and there was a blazing row. They didn't speak for almost a year.

That the other family member was well aware of Terry's activities is shown by the fact that on Boxing Day that year she was sent out to buy a Christmas present for the cop who had arrested her a year earlier.

She got him a watch.

Later that day Miechel and another detective visited the family at the Hyatt and stayed drinking in their room until 3am.

Miechel wasn't just there to see Terry, however.

"I think he came also because he was interested in me," the other family member later said.

A few weeks later the pair began sleeping together.

Terry knew about the relationship - which Miechel kept quiet from his most of his colleagues.

THE one detective who did know about the relationship, however, was Hodson's other handler - Detective X.

X had became one of Hodson's handlers in June 2002.

While the three of them got on OK together, Miechel was always much closer to Hodson, indeed so close that in July 2002 his superiors warned him about being too friendly with him.

Hodson said he and Miechel were generally unimpressed with X.

Miechel thought he "had his fingers in too many pies" and talked too much on the phone.

He was also concerned X lived beyond his means.

Miechel once called Hodson a "f---ing idiot" for giving his boss money.

He was also annoyed when X borrowed Hodson's gun.

For her part, Christine Hodson - or Chrissy as Terry lovingly referred to her as - was loyal to her husband of 36 years.

In her three-page statement to police on January 12, 2004, she detailed how she would often take telephone messages from his associates.

She was also often at home when Detective X and Miechel would visit.

"I sometimes sat down with Terry and Dave to have a chat and the conversation was about general type things," she said.

Christine told police about the last time she saw X. "Dave and X were dressed in dark clothing and both were wearing guns on their waists."

EVEN without leaked police documents circulating in the underworld, some people already knew Terrence Hodson had a relationship with police.

For a while the source of the ecstasy Hodson sold had intrigued people.

"I knew a lot about the ecstasy trade, I knew when batches were seized and I knew who was selling what and where they got them from," a dealer later told police. "I couldn't find out from anyone where Hodson was sourcing his pills from, no one could tell me anything about who ... was giving him his gear."

That was until he started selling selling pills stamped with an Xbox.

"I immediately thought that was strange because I knew that the whole lot of them had been pinched," the dealer said.

The dealer realised Hodson was getting his gear from the police.

The life expectancy of a "dog" who makes a living selling other crooks' drugs for bent cops cannot have been long - even before he was caught trying to burgle a pill factory that supplied gear to Tony Mokbel.

The "babysitter" - as police would later christen her - was a 22-year-old party girl and former ice addict when she met Azzam "Adam" Ahmed around Christmas time 2002. Ahmed, then 36, was an ecstasy dealer with drug convictions.

The girl began helping Ahmed to make ecstasy pills using a hand press.

 Ahmed's racket was to buy high-grade ecstasy pills from an Israeli importer in Sydney.

They were then distributed by Tony Mokbel, who may also have floated the operation. Later there would be bad blood between Mokbel and Ahmed over money. In August 2003 the babysitter moved to a rented house in Dublin St, Oakleigh East, with a new press that could make a pill every two seconds.

In the month after moving in, the gang made four runs to Sydney - the last two by chartered plane from Moorabbin airport.

The babysitter later remembered helping Ahmed to count a million dollars to pay his Sydney connection.

Unfortunately for them, police had them under surveillance in Dublin St.

On August 18 they were made the subject of a major operation, code-named Gallop under the command of Detective X.

NSW cops would arrest them there while VicPol swooped on Dublin St.

About 6pm on Saturday September 27, 2003 - Grand Final day - the babysitter left the house to visit friends in Prahran.

When she returned at 8.30pm there was a police car parked outside.

Police said there had been a burglary and two men were in custody. But they did not act as though anything was amiss and, after keeping her waiting 20 minutes, they let her inside.

She had a quick look around, told them nothing seemed to have been stolen, and signed a burglary report.

The moment they were gone the babysitter was straight on the phone to Ahmed - the place was a mess and thousands of pills were missing.

"Look for a zip-lock bag," he said. Inside was meant to be $700,000 for the Sydney run.

"The bag and 130,000 pills were missing. The babysitter stuffed everything she could find into two cases to be collected by a cab.

"She was waiting for it when police arrested her at 10.30 that night. Inside the house police found 4174 ecstasy tablets, nearly 500g of ice, a small amount of cannabis, $6000 and two pill presses.

The babysitter would later tell detectives that, while waiting to be taken from the house, she had noticed a man she thought was a locksmith fiddling with a set of keys at the front door.

She said it stood out in her memory because the man looked nervous and she couldn't understand why.

He later introduced himself at the police station. It was Detective X.

X had good reason to look nervous. Earlier that night he had received a very disturbing call from Dave Miechel.

Miechel said he was in the back of an ambulance:

"There's been a bit of an incident out here," he said.

"Out where?" X asked.

"Near our target address."

"What happened?"

"I've been attacked by a police dog and hit by the handler."

Miechel said he had been checking things out on his way past when he had seen a divvy van chasing two offenders. "I gave chase and was attacked by a dog."

X immediately rushed to the Epworth Hospital, where Miechel said the ambulance was heading, on the way learning two men had been arrested attempting to burgle the house.

One was Miechel. The other was Terry Hodson.

At the Epworth, Miechel was lying on a bed with what appeared to be severe head injuries and his face covered in blood.

X rushed to his office in St Kilda Rd. They decided to raid Dublin St that night.

Within an hour they were inside and the babysitter was in custody.

Around the time X and his crew - minus Miechel - were arresting the babysitter, ESD detective Murray Gregor was arriving at Oakleigh police station where Hodson was in custody.

HE took Hodson's car keys and headed to Dublin St, pressing the button as he walked the streets nearby.

Next to a primary school in nearby Oakleigh St the central-locking of a black BMW snapped open.

Hodson's wallet was in the glove box. In the boot was a tool box, in front of a wooden partition - behind which were sheepskin gloves, a black balaclava, fake number plates and a .45 calibre pistol loaded with hollow-point bullets.

About 5am Gregor returned to the station.

Hodson told him that since 2001 he had been a registered informant.

"I ... I've passed on a lot of information, a lot of information over the past two years," he said. "I pass on the information to Dave Miechel and ... and X."

Hodson said he had gone to Oakleigh to buy cocaine with a man called Lucky.

He said he had no idea why Dave Miechel had been arrested nearby. Nor did he have any idea why his BMW was parked nearby.

A month later, however, Hodson agreed to give ESD a statement admitting his role.

He claimed the job had been Miechel and X's idea.

Hodson said X was nervous about the robbery.

"He said the s ... would hit the fan after the job went down and that they would be under the pump because it was their job," Hodson said.

Miechel seemed uneasy about X's role in the job.

"From my perspective there did not appear to be any trust between the two."

Saturday was their chance at the burglary but when they met up X was absent.

"Dave said he had drop-ped around to see him but he couldn't come tonight because he was having friends around." He then described exactly how the job was done.


THOUGH 2Hodson had admitted to planning to steal "a couple of hundred thousand in cash", he had said nothing about drugs.

In January 2004, however, his story changed. He said he hadn't told the truth before because he wanted to protect Miechel.

"This was because of David's relationship with [the other family member]," he said.

"Because I have now been charged with drug trafficking and because David Miechel has betrayed (my family) in that he had another relationship with other woman (sic) ... I now want to disclose everything concerning this burglary."

The plan, he said, had always been to rip off the drugs for him to sell.

Miechel told him to get a metre-long sports bag because of the amount of "bickies" they would get.

Police later found 30,000 pills thrown over the fence - not enough to need a bag that big - while Ahmed has always said there were at least 135,000 pills at the time of the burglary. Then there was the matter of the missing $700,000, which might have been Tony Mokbel's.

"After the burglary and arrests over Operation Gallop, there was bad blood between Adam and Tony," the babysitter later said. "They both accused each other of owing the other money."

She later had a conversation about the burglary with Ahmed while both were on bail. "Adam told me that something was going to happen to Terrence Hodson," she told police.

 "I formed the opinion that Adam had been told of specific information about a plan to kill Terrence Hodson." But that wasn't all.

"A day or two before the murders I was talking on the phone to Adam ... he told me to be out on Saturday night. He told me to make sure that I was seen by people."

Ahmed - who is serving 13 years for drug trafficking - has denied the conversation took place.

For years police worked to prove Detective X had the Hodsons killed. He wasn't the only one with a motive.