Terence and Christine Hodson’s children demand criminal charges against Nicola Gobbo
The children of police informer Terence Hodson, along with his wife Christine, discovered their parent’s bodies after they were shot dead execution-style. And now, they’re demanding that Nicola Gobbo be charged for endangering the lives of their parents.
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Children of the slain couple Terence and Christine Hodson say Nicola Gobbo must be charged with endangering the lives of their parents.
The Hodsons were each shot twice in the head after being forced to kneel on the floor of their Kew East unit on May 15, 2004. The murders followed Terry Hodson’s becoming a witness against police officers for whom he had been an informer.
The Hodsons’ children Andrew, Mandy and Nikki say Gobbo placed their father in grave danger by starting a relationship with one of the officers — suspected corrupt detective Paul Dale — and being a go-between for him to communicate with Carl Williams, who confessed to organising the execution on his behalf.
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Gobbo is also suspected of passing a 31-page police file, detailing Terry Hodson’s activities as an informer, from Dale to drug lord Tony Mokbel.
“I hope she rots in hell for the crimes she has committed,’’ daughter Nikki Komiazyk told the Herald Sun.
“She should be charged because she knew what she was doing. Nicola passed on information, both to the underworld and police. She is a cunning piece of work, that woman.
“I believe her passing on information from Paul Dale to Carl Williams, and whoever else she has given information to, has ultimately cost my mum and dad their lives.”
Andrew, himself a former client of Gobbo’s, says: “My father was knocked (murdered), and she was sleeping with Paul Dale.
“She was involved in the whole lot. She was sleeping with Tony Mokbel. Dale, Mokbel, Williams,” Andrew Hodson said.
“She was doing everybody. She was doing anyone she could do.
The classified “blue file’’ on Hodson’s activities was given to Mokbel in the days after a conversation between the drug lord and Gobbo.
Police submissions at a 2014 inquest on the Hodson deaths revealed there had been a tapped phone call between Gobbo and Mokbel in mid-February 2004. The call, from Gobbo, was intercepted by the Australian Federal Police. But Victoria Police says it did not know about the tape until after the death of Williams in Barwon Prison in 2010.
The recording was not publicly aired, but Gobbo told Mokbel that “she had been in touch with their mutual friend ‘Pauline’ (thought to mean Paul Dale), who had some documents for Mokbel to see.’’
An investigation began, and Gobbo was to be questioned as a suspect by taskforce Petra, which was investigating the Hodson murders. The taskforce was later shut down.
Speaking to the Herald Sun in 2014, Gobbo queried why the police had not interviewed her as a suspect, saying: “Well then, why didn’t they? And if they did, I might retaliate.’’
Victoria Police is expected to face questions at the royal commission about the six-year delay in its being notified of the Mokbel/Gobbo call.
The importance of the “blue file’’ cannot be overstated. It was stolen from police headquarters in the hours after a drug-house burglary.
The burglary, in Oakleigh on September 27, 2003, was thwarted by a neighbour who heard a light being smashed and called police.
When police arrived they found drug squad officer David Miechel hiding up a tree and Hodson, his registered informer, nearby. Both were arrested near the house, a Mokbel drug factory which had been under surveillance by Dale’s crew, which included Miechel.
Just days after the burglary, on October 1, Gobbo met Terry Hodson and his son Andrew at a CBD pub. Andrew now recalls that Gobbo was “fishing for information”.
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She knew Terry Hodson was speaking with ethical standards police as she began a relationship with Dale, but claimed in a statement she never told Dale about it.
Regarding the tape of Gobbo and Mokbel talking on the phone about “Pauline’’, Andrew says: “I’ve heard that once.
“I know it’s pretty damning.”
Incredibly, the lawyer from whom Nikki and Mandy took advice as they prepared for the 2014 inquest on their parents was Gobbo herself.
They now say they were being manipulated.
“She said she was on our side,’’ Mandy says. “Had we known what we know now, we would never have listened to her.’’
Andrew and Mandy Hodson are suing Victoria Police for negligence, claiming it breached its duty of care to their parents.