Anthony Dowsley recounts his meeting with Lawyer X Nicola Gobbo
Even after the initial Lawyer X story was published, Nicola Gobbo agreed to meet Herald Sun journalist Anthony Dowsley at a South Melbourne restaurant. He recounts what happened when he came face-to-face with the now infamous lawyer-turned-police informer.
True Crime
Don't miss out on the headlines from True Crime. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Nicola Gobbo spent hours in bars talking to journos like me.
We had spoken on the phone, but never in person.
This time the stakes couldn’t have been higher.
The meeting was at a restaurant in Clarendon St, South Melbourne. Her daughter, then a toddler, was climbing all over her.
NICOLA GOBBO: THE GIRL WHO WANTED TO BE SOMEBODY
Considering the broader circumstances, Gobbo was incredibly composed. We had spoken weeks earlier, both before and after the initial Lawyer X story was published on the last day of March 2014.
I had put to her something I already knew to be true — that she was a registered informer.
I had detailed some of my knowledge about her many years of informing.
By the time of our meeting, the Herald Sun had been taken to court several times by Victoria Police.
The newspaper had been forced to stop the presses in its pursuit of revealing the truth: that Gobbo was both a criminal barrister and a police informer.
On meeting, over drinks, her survival strategy kicked in.
Though she was pleasant and complimentary, it was also clear that she wanted to glean information rather than answer questions.
Confident, she was a master of deflection and evasion. She would respond to one line of inquiry by offering details on an unrelated subject.
I showed I knew her informer number and some of her handlers’ names. I told her how many information reports were recorded in her guise of human source 3838.
Gobbo went close to admitting she had worked with police, but intimated she did not know she had been a registered informer.
She knew lots of police, obviously, but denied knowing officers who I was aware had been her handlers. Instead she focused on her contempt for others in the force.
She would not concede her long, inglorious breaching of her duty as a lawyer.
THE FULL ‘LAWYER X’ SAGA:
PART 3: THE MAN IN THE GOLDEN COFFIN
PART 8: HOW WE UNCOVERED THE TRUTH
The discussion turned to her wearing of a police wire while meeting former detective Paul Dale, and being a witness in his murder case — a decision that ruined her career and ended her role as an informer.
She said she had done it for the best of reasons — that the victims had been somebody’s parents, and that it was the righteous thing to do. She was driven by altruism.
She asked: Wouldn’t I want the same if my parents had been murdered?
There was a sense that she believed she was a martyr in pursuit of a cause. That is also how, in other forums, she has described her marathon stretch as a police informer.
Originally published as Anthony Dowsley recounts his meeting with Lawyer X Nicola Gobbo
‘I was groomed’: Cocaine Cassie’s private pain revealed
Convicted drug smuggler Cassie Sainsbury has told how her downward spiral began with one fateful meeting. See the video.
‘Overwhelmed with shame’: Cocaine Cassie’s shock claims
Cassie Sainsbury reveals her shame and secret battle behind moving back to Australia in her new bombshell memoir. Read the exclusive book extract.