Anthony Dowsley and Patrick Carlyon: Truth is flexible for Lawyer X Nicola Gobbo
At no point has Lawyer X Nicola Gobbo advanced the Hodson murder case. Despite claiming she knows who killed the police informers, the available evidence says it is very unlikely she will provide any answers — unless doing so benefits herself.
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Police informer Nicola Gobbo says she knows who killed police informers Terence and Christine Hodson in 2004. Perhaps she does, given her intimate proximity to the victims and the suspects.
Gobbo presented a masterclass of meddling in the months before the killings. Her choices at the time defied legal ethics, common sense and any measure of decency.
There’s always a “but” with Gobbo, who says she has no “hard evidence’’. Yet the lawyer-in-hiding has told the ABC she would testify about the murders, if asked.
This would be a major breakthrough to the most scandalised murder-mystery in modern Victorian history. But — there’s that word — it assumes Gobbo was telling the truth.
The recommendations of counsel assisting the Lawyer X royal commission, Chris Winneke QC, will be published on Monday.
Last week, Victoria Police went to court to suppress the name of a police officer in the report, in what was perceived to be just another ploy to stymie the public’s need for transparency.
In the recommendations, the officer is named for possible criminal acts. He may be one of many police officers who could face prosecution for conspiring to pervert the course of justice.
The report will also serve as a legal reckoning for Gobbo. She has avoided the exposure of her behaviour for almost two decades, in a pattern conflicting with her purported desire to belatedly help the Hodson children.
Was Gobbo using the ABC to once again cast her extraordinary choices as the muddling of a victim? She has always shied from scrutiny of her blotted place in the lead-up to the executions of the Hodsons in front of the TV at their East Kew home.
In February, Gobbo wilted under royal commission questioning about her unedifying links. She agreed she had once been a “spectacularly good liar”. She was accused of providing spectacularly unimpressive evidence.
Her excuses kept harking back to a mental checklist of justifications. She was young, naive and confused, she said. Gobbo, at 47, is neither young nor naive, anymore. She sounded like she knew more than she said in the witness box.
It was just the latest example of Gobbo being unhelpful. She has passed up many opportunities to furnish the much-needed pursuit of truth. She has evaded, misled or lied to every examination of the Hodson deaths.
She confected clues for homicide detectives in 2004. Three years later, she was questioned by corruption-buster Tony Fitzgerald QC, who was probing parts of the Hodson mystery on behalf of the Office of Police Integrity.
Justice Fitzgerald concluded she was lying in her evidence.
For years Gobbo did not tell police she had been a conduit between a once-suspected corrupt police officer, Paul Dale, and gangland killer Carl Williams.
She kept other secrets, too, such as her use of “burner” phones to communicate with Dale. Gobbo slept with Dale nine days after helping police “roll’’ Hodson to implicate Dale in a drug house burglary.
She maintains she didn’t tell her lover, Dale, about her client, Hodson, and his informing against Dale. Throughout this time, she fielded questions from her client Tony Mokbel who was angered because it was his drug house which had been burgled.
Gobbo became a witness in the Hodson murder case in 2009.
As the trial approached, she demanded $30 million, then $20 million, to give evidence. When police rejected her claims, she told a court she was too sick to testify.
In 2011, a lawyer on her behalf sounded out a reward for Gobbo if she gave evidence about the Hodson killings. The primary motivation? As the legal letter said, “to seek payment of the reward for the giving of the information”.
Victoria Police saved her from the witness box in 2013, when she was withdrawn as a witness against Dale in another trial. Her big chance to help the Hodson children, who deride her as “Sharon Twenty Stone”, was in 2014.
Gobbo was listed as a witness for the coronial inquest into the Hodson deaths. Police shielded her again, arguing her safety precluded her from giving evidence.
After her role as Lawyer X was exposed, Gobbo was forced to give evidence to a closed Supreme Court trial in 2017. Her lawyers produced medical reports arguing against her testifying at the 2019-20 royal commission.
Gobbo was too unwell to give evidence to a constituted forum, apparently, but healthy enough to film a self-serving narrative to the ABC at about the same time.
At no point has Gobbo advanced the Hodson murder case. Is she about to provide the answers to one of Australia’s most notorious crimes? Will she help the Hodson children to sleep at night?
The available evidence says it is very unlikely — unless doing so benefits Nicola Gobbo.
Lawyer X: The Extraordinary Full Story, by Anthony Dowsley and Patrick Carlyon, published by HarperCollins Australia, is out on September 7.