Former detective Paul Dale says he was set up by Lawyer X
Most suspects in serious drug crimes don’t drink and sleep with their lawyers – or get their lawyer to call underworld heavies like Carl Williams. So how did former detective Paul Dale find himself in the middle of the Lawyer X scandal?
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Paul Dale is a good talker. The former cop once charged with burglary and then, years later, murder, is clear about the “corruption’’ that “ruined my life’’.
He describes the “hell’’ he has been through since he was labelled a dirty cop by Victoria Police in 2003.
Nicola Gobbo, aka Lawyer X, “set me up’’. “She turned my life into hell,’’ he says.
Dale has grown used to gawks from the public and the media’s sceptical portrayal of him.
But he thanks the Herald Sun for unravelling the Gobbo conundrum, even though in his book, Cops, Drugs, Lawyer X And Me, he credits himself for opening “Pandora’s box’’.
It is his second book with co-author Vikki Petraitis, following his 2013 book Disgraced? The Cop At The Centre of Melbourne’s Gangland Wars.
Now a Wangaratta truck driver, he rails at the injustice of Victoria Police using Gobbo — from whom he sought free legal advice — as an agent against him.
And Dale is set to sue them for hiding Gobbo’s activities as a police informer while they prosecuted him — a big no-no in courtrooms.
“The first book was just Paul Dale trying to justify his position,’’ he says.
“I was fighting a losing battle. Now I can point out corruption at the very highest level. I can now show the people making allegations against me were corrupt themselves.”
Dale argues the top brass, particularly Simon Overland, Chief Commissioner from 2009-2011, had a vendetta against him.
But Dale is reluctant to talk about the incidents that led police down the path of pursuing him for a decade.
Asked about his “burner phone’’ chats with Gobbo, he says he used a covert phone to conduct extramarital affairs with policewomen.
But he does not explain — either in the book or to the Sunday Herald Sun — why Carl Williams called him on his burner phone.
“I didn’t think it was illegal to have phone contact with someone,’’ he said.
Dale is cautious in speaking about his corrupt colleague David Miechel, who started this “tragedy”.
Dale’s life turned to muck on September 27, 2003 — the night a Tony Mokbel-linked drug safe house Dale and Miechel had under police surveillance was burgled by Miechel and a criminal informer they co-handled — Terence Hodson.
Dale had an alibi. He was hosting a post-Grand Final party.
Hodson would later name Dale as orchestrating the burglary.
“He started it, without a doubt,’’ Dale said of Miechel.
“Yes, you get corrupt coppers at all ranks. But this was not a co-ordinated decision to corrupt our system.’’
When pushed again, he offers: “In regard to Dave Miechel there were issues with him from the get-go … I ended up with Dave on my crew and he had Hodson as an informer. I inherited Dave and Hodson. I realised it (theirs) was too close a relationship.”
Last year Dale and Miechel almost bumped into each other at the Lawyer X royal commission.
To avoid the awkwardness, Dale waited for Miechel to leave the building before he got into the witness box.
He says they haven’t spoken since 2003, when they were arrested and placed in jail together before they were granted bail.
Victoria Police’s pursuit of him, he says, cost him his job and his reputation.
It also cost him a lot of money and mental anguish after eight months of largely solitary confinement alongside terrorists and murderers in Barwon Prison.
In 2003, as Dale became a suspect in the Oakleigh burglary, Gobbo gave the then drug squad detective some free legal advice.
But their relationship got far more tangled — most suspects don’t drink and sleep with their lawyers.
And there’s something else most suspected corrupt cops charged with serious crimes don’t normally do.
They don’t get their lawyer to call underworld heavies such as Carl Williams on a burner phone while boozing at Crown casino in February 2004.
Dale: “How are ya buddy? Was hoping to catch up with you tonight. Been hoping to get on to you for some time.’’
Williams: “Organise for one day during the week. Door’s always open for you any time.’’
Months earlier, within weeks of the Oakleigh burglary, Dale and Gobbo met for drinks at a South Melbourne pub. She brought legal notes about conspiracy law.
She says they got “blackout’’ drunk and spent the night together.
Dale knew Gobbo was representing the drug manufacturers he had charged from the Oakleigh drug house.
Gobbo knew, as Hodson’s lawyer, that Hodson had pointed the finger at Dale for being involved in the burglary.
So why would he choose Gobbo as his lawyer?
Dale says he went to Gobbo because she was the best. Investigators suspected he wanted to use her deep connections.
As for Gobbo, why would a lawyer meet up with a cop to give him free legal advice after the same cop charged her other clients with drug offences? And why would Dale swap legal documents via Gobbo with those he charged?
Dale says it was to identify flaws in the police case.
Within six months of the Oakleigh burglary charges being laid, Hodson was executed in his Kew home alongside his wife Christine.
Dale and Miechel, both on bail, were arrested and questioned within hours of the murders. The burglary case against Dale collapsed with Hodson’s death.
Three years later, in 2007, Carl Williams began making induced statements that he was hired by Dale to arrange the hit on Terry Hodson.
A murder case against Dale collapsed when Williams was killed in April, 2010.
Dale is clear about Gobbo’s future. He thinks powerful criminals will seek to harm her. “She won’t be able to hide from these people for too long,” he says.
“Right now she is worth more to them alive. Victoria Police signed her death warrant.”
Ms Petraitis said she did not consider Dale’s guilt or innocence when writing the book.
But she described the investigation of Dale, and the payments offered to criminals to make statements against him, as “crazy town”.
“For me it was never ever about believing Paul, that didn’t really come into it,” she said.
“It was always about, this process is awful.”
Cops, Drugs, Lawyer X and Me by Paul Dale and Vikki Petraitis, published by Hachette, is out now.
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