Lawyer X had secret meeting with Carl Williams’ killer Matthew Johnson
Nicola Gobbo had “free rein’’ to come and go from Victoria’s maximum-security jails. But no visit strikes as more odd than her mid-2009 attendance to see the man who, just months later, would kill gangland kingpin Carl Williams. There is no official record of the meeting.
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Nicola Gobbo — police informer Lawyer X — had a secret meeting with jailhouse enforcer Matthew Johnson in the months before he bashed Carl Williams to death.
The Barwon Prison liaison between criminal barrister Gobbo and Johnson, who bludgeoned Williams to death with the stem of an exercise bike, happened in mid-2009, according to her police handlers.
There is no known link between the meeting and Johnson’s fatal attack on the gangland boss in April 2010.
But questions have been raised about how Gobbo could get access to a maximum-security prisoner with the potential to harm Williams while he was co-operating with police over the executions of Terence and Christine Hodson.
At the time, Gobbo was also under police protection while reluctantly helping police ahead of the trial of former detective Paul Dale over the Hodson murders.
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Williams confessed to organising the hit on Hodson on behalf of Dale.
The night before Williams’ bashing, inmates howled like dogs, indicating they knew he was co-operating with police.
The case against Dale, who has maintained his innocence, collapsed in the wake of Williams’ death. Dale was also in the jail around the time of Gobbo’s visit, on remand.
Police sources told the Herald Sun how she detailed her Johnson visit to them.
The liaison was probably about drug trafficker and former client Rob Karam, sources said. But no-one except Gobbo and Johnson really know what happened in the prison.
The bombshell meeting is now to be probed by the Lawyer X royal commission.
Delicate talks for Gobbo to testify remain ongoing.
Her activities with prisoners during regular visits are likely to come under close scrutiny, particularly her role in gaining police intelligence and passing information between criminals in her network inside and outside prison walls.
The Herald Sun has been told at least one whistleblower has considered making a statement to the commission about the prison’s practices — including Gobbo’s access — during the gangland period and beyond.
Corrections Victoria has no record of Gobbo meeting with Johnson at the maximum security prison.
Logs show she was at the prison in mid-2009 — a time when she was also being flown interstate and overseas for her protection.
Corrections Victoria has also acknowledged lawyers commonly visit prisoners they are not signed in to see.
Questions also remain as to why police did not report Gobbo’s visit to any of a number of probes into Williams’ death — including a 2012 Victorian Ombudsman’s investigation — if they had been aware of it.
The Hodsons were executed in their Kew unit in May 2004. Their murders remain unsolved.
In 2003, Hodson began implicating Dale and police underling David Miechel over a burglary gone wrong.
At the time, Gobbo was not only Williams’ barrister and friend, she shared a similarly intimate relationship with Dale. She had also been Terence Hodson’s lawyer before his murder.
Such was Gobbo and Williams’ relationship, in December 2003 she hosted a $150,000 function at Crown Casino to celebrate Williams’ daughter’s christening.
Williams made statements to police about the Hodson’s murders in 2007 and 2009, detailing what he said had transpired in the lead up and after.
He alleged Gobbo had passed messages to him on behalf of Dale.
Gobbo also provided information to police on the case, but was understood to be increasingly concerned amid fears for her safety and the fact her police informer role might be revealed.
Johnson, a founding member of the brutal jail gang Prisoners of War, is among the most dangerous inmates in the jail system.
He was inexplicably “housed” with Williams after the gangland boss asked prison management to put him in his unit — first Melaleuca then Acacia.
PRISON VISIT RAISES MORE QUESTIONS
Lawyer X used prisons to stay ahead of the game.
As a criminal barrister on the make, she hawked for clients on the inside and gave them the personal attention on the outside that her peers in the legal fraternity frowned on.
As a lawyer turning to being a registered police informer in the mid-2000s, Nicola Gobbo had “free rein’’ to come and go from Victoria’s maximum security jails.
She would appear at odd times, gaining intelligence and, in her own words, cracking the “dam wall’’ by turning underworld hitmen as key informers on their criminal masters.
But no visit strikes as more odd than her attendances at Barwon Prison in the cold months of 2009.
Housed there was the former police officer said to be a risk to her life — Paul Dale.
Throughout 2009 until he got bail in September that year, Gobbo was flown across the nation for her protection — even heading to Bali with her police entourage. More than $300,000 was spent on her “safety’’ that year.
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By the end of it, Gobbo was demanding $20 million for her assistance against Dale.
She was reluctant, to put it mildly.
And it was almost certainly because it would unravel her double-life as Human Source 3838 — a long-term informer on the underworld criminals she had not only fought for in court, but with whom she socialised, blurring the lines of her professional relationships with them.
In the end a gruesome event saved her.
Williams’ jailhouse murder at the hands of his neighbouring cell mate, Matthew Johnson, poses a new set of questions to a killing that has never been satisfactorily investigated.
The “Premier’’, as Williams liked to call himself, was struck seven times by Johnson who stealthily approached from behind with the stem of the exercise bike he had draped a towel over in the preceding days to hide it from guards.
The first strike would have killed Williams, the repeated blows made sure of it.
Gobbo was one of two people assisting police in the Dale case. The other was Williams.
His death on April 19, 2010, cruelled the case against Dale.
A week later, Gobbo launched legal action against police for ruining her career.
About the same time, nine listening devices were located in unit one of the Acacia Unit where Williams, Johnson and Thomas Ivanovic were housed.
The listening devices were said not to have been used to monitor Williams or the other two inmates in his unit. Several were inoperable, a report said.
The devices, however, were found to have been installed without warrants or consent by Corrections Victoria between 1990 and 2004, the body conceding they were unlawful.
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The fact that Gobbo went to high-security jails to see her imprisoned clientele, most of whom she regarded as friends, is not surprising.
But revelations she visited Matthew Johnson, the unit mate of Carl Williams, who was assisting police in their case against Dale over the Hodsons double-murder, raises more questions than it answers.
It is believed Gobbo wanted to see Johnson about an unrelated criminal matter, but there is no official record of the meeting.
Johnson, as the investigation into Williams’ murder would find, had access to Williams’ police statements.
Gobbo too, was sharing what she knew about Williams’ informer status.
It was nothing new for her. She had done the same years earlier, to Terry Hodson.
Readers can win tickets to attend an exclusive Q&A session with Lawyer X reporters Anthony Dowsley and Patrick Carlyon at Old Melbourne Gaol on July 18, and preview the upcoming Sky News two-part documentary and HarperCollins book.
Enter at heraldsun.com.au/competitions
Lawyer X: The Untold Story will air on Sky News on July 22-23 and on Foxtel Encore on July 29. The two-part documentary series, presented by Peter Stefanovic, lifts the lid on one of the most explosive chapters in Australian criminal history.
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