Victoria Police royal commission: ‘betrayed friend’ comes to defence of Lawyer X

The barrister known as Lawyer X has received support from an unlikely source — a former client she tried to implicate.

Simon Overland outside his Richmond home. Picture: Jason Edwards

The barrister known as Lawyer X has received support from an unlikely source — a former client she tried to implicate in one of the state’s most notorious murders, the slaying of police informant Terence Hodson.

Former Victoria Police detective Paul Dale said although he remained angry at Lawyer X’s decision to betray his confidence by secretly gathering evidence against him while acting as a police informant, she was not the villain in the scandal.

“I actually feel sorry for Lawyer X,’’ Mr Dale told The Australian.

“As angry as I have been over the years about what was done, Lawyer X is not the villain. It’s the chief commissioners and assistant commissioners who have done this — they are the ones that need to be absolutely held accountable.

“It’s the high-ranking officers who were complicit in what she did who should be hanging their heads in shame.’’

A high-level murder investi­gation into Mr Dale relying on information and evidence provided by Lawyer X was overseen by then Victoria Police deputy commissioner Simon Overland, assistant commissioner Luke Cornelius and current Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton.

It is nearly a decade since Mr Dale discovered his friend and legal adviser secretly taped one of their conversations and tried to implicate him in the 2004 murder of Terence and Christine Hodson in their Kew home.

He said when he raised ­concerns about Lawyer X’s pro­fession­al conflict, no one was interested: “I tried to make a lot of noise about this back when Lawyer X had tape-recorded me and was being used by the police against me. When it was just me, no one seemed to give a f..k.

“Now, 10 years down the track, we see she wasn’t giving evidence against just me, she was giving information against anybody and everybody. It’s a disgrace.’’

Mr Dale volunteered to be the first witness at the royal commission announced this week by the Victorian government after the High Court lifted a two-year veil of secrecy over the Lawyer X saga.

“There are some people who are still high-ranking officers who have got some serious questions to answer. Finally, they are going to be held to account,’’ he said.

The pursuit of Mr Dale on serious criminal charges overlaps neatly with Lawyer X’s double life as a police informant.

When he was arrested on drug charges in December 2003, Lawyer X was the first person to visit him in jail. Although Lawyer X denies she was Mr Dale’s lawyer, the pair met regularly over the next five years to discuss his increasingly complex legal affairs.

The drug charges against Mr Dale were abandoned when Terence Hodson, the key witness against him, was murdered in September 2004. In 2005, Mr Dale was publicly named as the most likely suspect and Lawyer X was registered as police informer 3838.

Mr Dale was charged with murder in February 2009, based on evidence provided by Lawyer X and convicted gangland killer Carl Williams. The case collapsed when Lawyer X refused to testify and Williams was murdered in jail.

Lawyer X ceased acting as a police informer in January 2009. Mr Dale was later acquitted of providing false evidence to the Australian Crime Commission about his knowledge of the Hodson murders.

Mr Dale told The Australian that since this week’s revelations about Lawyer X, he had remembered multiple occasions when the barrister initiated strange telephone conversations with him, including one time she put him on the phone to Williams after the pair had been drinking heavily at Melbourne’s casino.

It has since emerged she wore a wire to one of their meetings.