Deadly secrets: Legal eagle linked to fatal leak
A HIGH-profile lawyer is suspected of being involved in the leaking of documents that exposed Terry Hodson as a police informer months before his murder.
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A HIGH-profile lawyer is suspected of being involved in the leaking to the underworld of stolen documents that exposed Terry Hodson as a police informer only months before he and his wife were murdered.
A covertly recorded phone conversation between drug baron Tony Mokbel and the lawyer remained in the files of the Australian Federal Police for six years despite being crucial to Victoria Police’s investigation into police involvement in the murders of Terry and Christine Hodson in 2004.
SPECIAL REPORT: GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER
The failure to share intelligence between police agencies may have cost the Hodsons their lives.
The Herald Sun can reveal the crucial recording was picked up on Mokbel’s tapped phone in February 2004, with the lawyer taped telling the gangland figure their “mutual friend Pauline’’ had documents for him to see.
Victoria Police are convinced “Pauline’’ is a reference to suspected corrupt police officer Paul Dale — who is the prime suspect for ordering Hodson’s murder and stealing the confidential police files that were disseminated to the underworld, exposing Hodson as an informer.
The revelation is a fresh blow to the force, which is being investigated for its handling of police informers.
Within days of the recorded call between Mokbel and the Melbourne lawyer, that lawyer met with Paul Dale.
According to police, the informer files hit the street and were in the hands of the underworld within days of that meeting.
It is not known however if the lawyer was intentionally involved in distributing the files that exposed Hodson as an informer.
Dale was accused of ordering Hodson’s murder to prevent the career criminal testifying against him and turning Crown witness over the bungled burglary of a Mokbel-linked drug house in Oakleigh in 2003.
Authorities alleged Dale masterminded the burglary with now-jailed, detective David Miechel and Hodson.
The 31 information reports in a blue folder were stolen hours after Miechel and police informer Hodson were captured at the burglary scene.
All three burglary suspects were charged, but Dale avoided prosecution after Hodson was killed.
The police case alleges Dale, months after disseminating the informer file, used his corrupt relationship with Carl Williams to hire veteran hitman Rod Collins to kill Hodson. But in a stunning failure of the justice system, the recordings only came to the light when Williams was bashed to death in Barwon Prison in 2010 after he had made statements against Dale over the execution.
Victoria Police Petra taskforce investigators probing the Hodson murders had planned to interview the lawyer on the recording after the tapes came into their possession.
But in a surprising turn of events, the taskforce was shut down shortly afterwards and replaced by the Driver taskforce, which primarily investigated the death of Williams.
It is understood detectives from the Driver taskforce never interviewed the lawyer over the telephone call with Mokbel.
Poor surveillance on the Hodson’s house, which was reviewed by Victoria Police as part of protective measures for Hodson, failed to capture the killer’s identity, who muted alarms and took the surveillance footage with him after the shootings.
Williams’s death in jail resulted in murder charges being withdrawn against Dale and Collins.
The intercepted phone call was also not made available to the 2005 Office of Police Integrity probe into the stolen “blue folder’’ informer files.
THE SECRET PLOT
The police case involving Paul Dale, Carl Williams and the Melbourne lawyer
■ Australian Federal Police phone surveillance captured Tony Mokbel talking with a Melbourne lawyer about documents just days before the Hodson informer files were leaked to the underworld.
■ That lawyer, who legally represented Terry Hodson before his death, was used as a go-between by Paul Dale to make contact with Carl Williams to pass messages and arrange meetings while he was charged and under scrutiny for the Oakleigh robbery.
■ A ”safe phone’’ under the fictitious name of Darren Johnson was used to communicate with Carl, the Melbourne lawyer and other Dale associates.
■ Dale made many desperate attempts to contact Carl from February to May in 2004, culminating in a call to Carl’s dad, George, on the lawyer’s phone where a drunken Dale exclaimed: ”Tell Carl to ring (the lawyer). He’s a f---ing useless prick.”
■ Within days, Carl and George met the lawyer where Carl alleges the lawyer gave Carl the number to Dale’s “Johnson phone”.
■ The next day on May 6, 2004, Carl rang the “Johnson phone’’ from a public pay phone at the Watergardens Shopping Centre. The same day, Dale allegedly ordered the execution of Hodson.
■ The same day, Carl met Dale in Hillside despite there being no policing reason to do so.
■ On May 7, two meetings between Carl and ruthless killer Rodney Collins took place in Maribyrnong and later in the city.
■ Within 10 days, Collins, who knew Hodson, allegedly shot Hodson and his wife.
■ The Petra taskforce investigating the Hodson deaths maintained that they corroborated ”99 per cent’’ of Carl’s two statements, made in 2007 and 2009. Carl could not have ”fluked’’ his first statement to police in 2007, having no way of knowing that his father’s car, in which he travelled to Hillside, was covertly being monitored by tracking and listening devices.
■ Victoria Police has investigated whether there were outside influences in ordering Carl’s murder because of his co-operation in murder investigations.