Nicola Gobbo, other lawyer helped police probing murder of vampire gigolo Shane Chartres-Abbott
Lawyer X Nicola Gobbo and another prominent legal figure helped Victoria Police detectives investigating the 2003 murder of gigolo and self-proclaimed vampire Shane Chartres-Abbott, it has been revealed.
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Confidential police reports reveal Nicola Gobbo wasn’t the only lawyer doing the bidding of detectives investigating the murder of gigolo Shane Chartres-Abbott.
Gobbo’s controversial role in the Chartres-Abbott probe is now being examined by the Lawyer X royal commission.
But the Herald Sun has discovered detectives also got another prominent legal figure to help them try to track down a murder suspect in the Chartres-Abbott case.
That lawyer is not one of the seven informers, in addition to Gobbo, referred to the Lawyer X royal commission by Victoria Police as people who might have breached their professional duties by passing information to detectives.
Chartres-Abbott, a self-proclaimed vampire, was shot dead in 2003 on the day he was due in court over a rape in which he bit off the female victim’s tongue, cut both of her nipples and sucked blood out of her right hip.
Two detectives from Operation Briers — the taskforce set up to try to crack the Chartres-Abbott murder — visited the prominent legal figure in his chambers in December 2007 to discuss the case.
He told them one of his former clients — whose identity has been suppressed by the courts — wanted to talk to police as he claimed he knew who paid for the murder of Chartres-Abbott, 28, and had been in recent contact with that person.
The man the lawyer had represented was a close associate of Gobbo client and drug gang boss Tony Mokbel — detectives later also used Gobbo to try to get information on allegedly corrupt police they suspected of playing a part in arranging the Chartres-Abbott murder.
A police information report seen by the Herald Sun reveals the lawyer initially contacted a senior figure at the Office of Public Prosecutions about the Chartres-Abbott information his former client had provided to him.
It also shows the lawyer was then advised by the OPP to speak to his former client again to try to get more information about the murder.
The lawyer did as the OPP asked and was able to obtain a promise from his former client that he could lead police to the suspect.
After speaking to the lawyer in his Melbourne chambers, Operation Briars detectives prepared a list of 24 questions and asked the lawyer to put them to his former client.
The lawyer then did as he was asked and later reported back to the detectives with the results.
Those results included that the suspect’s name was Mark Perry, that Perry had fled overseas and was in hiding and that his former client knew who Perry had approached to organise the murder of Chartres-Abbott.
The lawyer told police he was happy to keep talking to his former client to get more information to pass on and that “I have also mentioned this to my former instructing solicitor”.
He also told the detectives his former client had repeated his claim that he was willing to help police catch Perry.
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A notorious underworld figure also identified Perry to police as the person who paid for the hit on Chartres-Abbott and he did so prior to the lawyer providing Perry’s name.
Perry, a convicted drug trafficker and the former boyfriend of the woman Chartres-Abbott mutilated and raped, slipped away from police surveillance during a trip to the Gold Coast in September 2007.
Which is why detectives were so keen on the information being provided by the lawyer through his former client as the lawyer started talking to them just a few weeks after Perry disappeared.
The lawyer’s former client failed to fulfil his promise to lead police to Perry in 2007.
It wasn’t until 2013 that Perry was arrested and charged with the 2003 murder of Chartres-Abbott.
Perry and his two co-accused, Warren Shea and Evangelos Goussis, were acquitted of the Chartres-Abbott murder in July 2014.
keith.moor@news.com.au