How time validated gangland lawyer Zarah Garde-Wilson’s hunch
A panicked late night call is the lot of defence lawyers. So when Zarah Garde-Wilson received one from an 18-year-old picked up in a Mokbel drug sting she duly turned up at St Kilda Rd police station. The ritual took an odd turn when Lawyer X showed with “bad advice”.
Crime in Focus
Don't miss out on the headlines from Crime in Focus. Followed categories will be added to My News.
It’s the lot of doctors and defence lawyers.
The panicked call in the middle of the night. Come now. It’s an emergency.
The caller was an 18-year-old man, though he sounded younger. He had been picked up in a Mokbel drug sting.
LAWYER X PT 3: THE MAN IN THE GOLDEN COFFIN
LAWYER X PT 2: THE BETRAYAL OF THE HODSONS
OVERLAND CRUSHED LAWYER X CRITICS — POLICE INSIDERS
He hadn’t done much, not by the measures of Melbourne’s gangland swamp, when meth labs were popping up anew whenever a police raid shut one down.
The best legal advice that could be given: say nothing.
Solicitor Zarah Garde-Wilson duly turned up at the St Kilda Rd Police Station.
And waited.
It might be an hour, perhaps three, before detectives would allow her to see her client.
This time, the ritual would take an odd turn. Lawyer X, a barrister, would materialise, all huff and assertiveness, to be ushered through by a familiar detective.
A text message beeped on Garde-Wilson’s phone. It was Lawyer X. She was dismissing Garde-Wilson: “All sorted. You can go home.”
Garde-Wilson did not go home. She had known Lawyer X for some time. She didn’t trust her.
Garde-Wilson attracted more media attention than Lawyer X, in part for her choices of wardrobe and her office pet, Chivas, a snake.
Their professional roles largely overlapped, as did their clients, such as Carl Williams and Tony Mokbel.
Garde-Wilson had perceived a strange symbiosis between Lawyer X and the detective, who has since been promoted to inspector, who had shown her in.
Her suspicions mounted after the young suspect, visibly shaking, finally emerged from police custody. He had never been in trouble before. He was friends with one of the trafficker’s daughters.
The man told her that Lawyer X had advised him to say that he was there to cut up drugs. He should tell police everything he knew to raise his chances of bail.
It was poor legal advice, Garde-Wilson says, that made no sense. He would be implicated in crimes for which there was otherwise little evidence. Such a confession exposed him to reprisals from drug gang members.
INSIDERS: LAWYER X WAS ‘MANIPULATIVE MASTERMIND’
He was entitled to bail whether he spoke to police or not, given “they had nothing on him”.
Garde-Wilson thinks she figured the bigger picture out.
If the young man had talked (he didn’t), it would have helped the police.
They had the co-operation of Tony Mokbel’s cook, who had made a police-orchestrated delivery, to Tony’s brother, Milad.
The young man’s story would have bolstered the evidence against the bigger catch, Milad Mokbel.
If the theory bears out, the young man was being tendered as collateral damage to the strategy that drove the Lawyer X scandal.
Lawyer X unofficially began informing in mid-2003, she says in court documents.
She passed critical tips in late 2005 and 2006 about the locations of drug labs that led to the arrests and convictions of Mokbel’s drug associates.
Some of those associates are among the so-called “Secret Seven”, listed in Supreme Court documents, whose cases may be tainted because of Victoria Police’s use of Lawyer X as an informer.
Lawyer X’s duplicity also played out in front of Garde-Wilson, she says, in a courtroom in the Supreme Court before Justice Betty King in the mid 2000s.
Lawyer X had requested a joint legal conference between co-accused clients. Justice King took issue with the planned conference. Lawyer X let Garde-Wilson take the blame.
“It all came to a head when Justice King prohibited me from communicating and giving legal advice to (Garde-Wilson’s client) Carl Williams,’’ she said.
Extraordinary measures marked the gangland trials.
Defence lawyers were being barred from courtroom hearings for days on end. About the same time, Williams sniffed out that Lawyer X was an informer and wrote a letter describing her as a “dog”.
Garde-Wilson is more civilised.
The Herald Sun confirmed her long-held suspicions when the newspaper revealed the Lawyer X revelations in 2014: “It’s the definition of conflict of interest. The use of Lawyer X is the worst systematic abuse of the justice system in Australia’s history.”
The familiar detective’s name turns up, in similar circumstances, in a higher profile case.
Rob Karam, a drug importer sentenced to 37 years, is appealing against his convictions on the grounds that Lawyer X, his friend and long-time counsel, was also a police informer.
His affidavit recalls a June 2009 arrest and interview over an alleged conspiracy to murder two acquaintances.
He was met at the police station by the detective, who advised him that Lawyer X would be his best option (of three names nominated by Karam) for representation.
“He (the detective) said, ‘We get along well with (Lawyer X)’,” Karam says. “I now believe that (the detective) suggested I call Lawyer X because he was her handler and he knew that she would provide me with advice which he wanted her to provide to me to achieve the result he wanted.”
That advice, Karam claims?
“Tell them everything.”
PT 1: HOW LAWYER X SHAPED MELBOURNE’S GANGLAND WAR
MAFIA BOSS’S LAST BID TO OVERTURN ECSTACY CONVICTION
ROBERTA: LAWYER X TOLD CARL TO FLEE OVERSEAS
ROBERTA’S LAST-MINUTE BID TO SAVE CARL’S HOUSE
FAT TONY’S BIG BASH: LAST DRINKS BEFORE ARRESTS
TONY MOKBEL: I WAS URGED TO FLEE
SECRET FILES ‘KEPT FROM IBAC SCRUTINY’
‘Living nightmare’: Family pain of Aussies killed in the Philippines
The family of an Australian couple found dead in a hotel room broke down as they revealed the cruelty behind the senseless murder the Philippines.
Scary way criminals are using GPS trackers
Almost half of all GPS trackers are going to buyers with nefarious backgrounds and many are allegedly used in high-profile cases including the alleged murder of bikie boss Alen Moradian.