Lawyer X aliases revealed in Royal Commission
Hidden “burner” phones under fake names were used to communicate between drug squad detective Paul Dale and lawyer Nicola Gobbo. These are the aliases of Lawyer X.
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Lawyer X Nicola Gobbo used multiple phones listed under aliases to talk to drug squad detective Paul Dale while he was under police investigation.
Documents released by the Lawyer X royal commission reveal Gobbo, a criminal barrister, used three phones to communicate with Mr Dale — after he had been implicated by her client Terry Hodson over alleged corrupt activity.
Apart from using a mobile phone listed under her own name, Gobbo used two “burner’’ phones under the names Alex Koskarev and Koyla Valersky.
Mr Dale had a spare phone under the name “Darren Johnson’’, which he used to call Gobbo and others.
A total of more than 150 calls between Gobbo and Mr Dale were made on the phones between February 28 and May 13, 2004, records show.
Police have long investigated Mr Dale over the murders of police informers Terence and Christine Hodson, who were executed on May 16, 2004.
The commission also released a secret statement Gobbo made in 2009 about the murder of “vampire gigolo’’ Shane Chartres-Abbott.
The heavily-redacted statement features a confession by Mark Perry which was not shown to the jury in his murder trial.
Gobbo said Perry had told her he had arranged to have Chartres-Abbott killed in retribution for the rape of his former girlfriend, as revealed by the Herald Sun.
Perry, Warren Shea and Evangelos Goussis were acquitted in 2014 of Chartres-Abbott’s murder after a seven-year, $30 million taskforce investigation which included allegations that former officer David “Docket” Waters and then serving officer Peter Lalor were in on the plot.
Neither Mr Waters or Mr Lalor were charged over the vampire gigolo murder.
In the 15-page document, Gobbo detailed several conversations she had with Waters where she gave him “mail” about the investigation.
In another development, convicted gangland hitman Faruk Orman will take his bid for freedom to the Court of Appeal on Wednesday, after being granted a petition of mercy by the Victorian Government in the wake of the Lawyer X scandal.
■ The Herald Sun yesterday published an article about an alleged meeting between Gobbo and maximum-security prisoner Matthew Johnson.
It was suggested Johnson was to give evidence in the Hodsons’ murder trial. Johnson has not been a witness in any cases. To clarify, the relevant sentence referred to another prisoner who became a witness in the murder probe.