Terence and Christine Hodson.
PAUL Dale tried hard not to look at the cold-blooded killer who was willing to give him up for the right price.
As Rod “The Duke’’ Collins walked from the witness stand back to the dock, Dale glanced, but there was no acknowledgment.
Both men were once charged with murder.
LAWYER’S BUGGED CALLS HIDDEN IN FILES
By
design or sheer bad luck, their lives are inextricably linked by dead
drug boss Carl Williams over the alleged plot to murder police informer
Terrence Hodson.
Collins — who was allegedly paid $150,000 to kill
Hodson — was also charged with killing his wife, Christine, who died
just for being at home that fateful night on May 16, 2004.
But Dale is the one the force spent millions trying to convict.
Dale
remains a suspect in ordering and paying for Terry’s murder. The
motive: Terry had ratted on him over a botched burglary on Grand Final
day, September 27, 2003, and turned Crown witness against him and his
partner, Dave Miechel.
To make matters worse, the Oakleigh drug
house was allegedly linked to crime boss Tony Mokbel and, it is alleged,
up to $750,000 and bags full of ecstasy tablets went missing.
It
is the police case that Dale, who had formed a corrupt relationship with
Williams over the previous year — would call on his underworld contact
in Williams to have Hodson executed.
Years later, Williams would confess to the murder and that he
had contracted Collins, a veteran criminal who was “looking for work’’.
It
took years for police to unravel a web of phone calls, safe phones,
faxes and relationships inside and outside the law, which all started
about four years before the murders.
WHEN PAUL MET TOMMY
PAUL
Dale’s introduction to the underworld began with Tommy Ivanovic — a
Brunswick criminal whom he picked up on drug matters in 2001. Their
relationship would blossom and shortly after little Tommy graduated from
drug dealer to killer.
On January 8, 2002, Ivanovic shot
motorcyclist Ivan Conabere dead outside his West Brunswick house in a
road rage incident. It was even captured by his own CCTV cameras. When
homicide detectives arrested him, Ivanovic asked the officers to call
Paul Dale and his police partner.
Dale attended Moonee Ponds
police station to speak to some homicide investigators, but
surprisingly, had nothing to help them regarding the murder probe.
What
became apparent, however, was Dale initially failed to mention a threat
to Ivanovic’s life — made by a stranger after Dale had been out
drinking with his contact.
The sergeant, however, would visit Ivanovic in jail, where they would talk about a range of topics, including his murder charge.
But
questions over Dale’s credibility would come after he made a statement
about the night in the pub, recalling the threat about Ivanovic being a
“dead man walking’’.
Police at the scene of the Hodsons’ murder.
And although Dale’s version of events were viewed sceptically
by the Office of Public Prosecutions — and he was not called as a
witness — the drug squad detective avoided serious internal scrutiny by
the force.
Dale would visit Ivanovic six times for “professional’’
reasons during the early part of his prison stint — telling superiors
he was cultivating him as an informer but getting little useful
information.
During one visit, Ivanovic gave Dale a name — Carl
Williams — which the promoted drug squad detective entered into the
police LEAP program as “Karl Williams’’ before getting the spelling
correct on his second attempt.
It wasn’t long before Dale arranged
to meet Williams, informing his superiors he wanted covert equipment —
which they could not supply.
Their highly controversial
relationship would end with Williams informing on Dale and others from
prison, and bashed to death for it — right in front of little Tommy — in
2010.
Investigators from the force’s Petra taskforce — set up to
investigate the Hodson murders — found Dale’s relationships with both
Ivanovic and Williams were corrupt but ultimately would fail to land a
conviction.
Whether Dale was corrupt or not, he was certainly
living life on the edge. A series of incidents showed he was a very
colourful individual.
Dale returned $1620 seized from Ivanovic for
no apparent reason. He falsely stated Ivanovic claimed drugs seized in
his house were found in his brother’s room and recommended charges not
be laid. (They weren’t. And the record shows Ivanovic made a “no comment
interview”.)
OAKLEIGH BURGLARY THEORY — A RECAP
VICTORIA Police has made many attempts to get jailed corrupt
police officer David Miechel to lag on his former boss, Paul Dale. He
never did.
There are theories a great deal of money is waiting for
Miechel when he gets out of jail after serving his sentence over the
burglary of a drug house in Dublin St, Oakleigh, on September 27, 2003.
But there is also the argument he won’t make a statement against Dale because Dale simply wasn’t involved.
A
fact that is not in dispute is that Dale was not with Miechel or Terry
Hodson when they burgled the house full of drugs and money.
But before Hodson was killed, he was set to testify that he and his police handlers were all in it together.
In statements made by Hodson, there are detailed accounts of three attempts to commit the burglary.
According to Hodson, the plan was cooked up at Romeo’s restaurant in Toorak.
It
would prove critical that although alarm bells were sounding about
Dale’s behaviour, his crew was given Operation Galop — and had the drug
house under surveillance.
Miechel, who was in a relationship with
Hodson’s daughter, Mandy, was bitten by a police dog when he was caught
fleeing the burglary.
A key police error was that Dale was not immediately banned
from any interaction with Miechel and restricted from entering the St
Kilda Rd Police Crime Complex after the burglary.
It is the police
theory that Dale, after an unsupervised visit to Miechel at the Epworth
Hospital after being injured by the police dog, stole a “blue folder’’
from the St Kilda Rd Police Complex filled with Hodson’s informer files.
In his book
Disgraced?,
Dale argues it is fanciful for police to believe that he would get his
share of the loot without committing the burglary. Police maintain he
was meant to be there, but pulled out on the night.
The “blue
folder’’, containing 31 information reports about Hodson’s snitching,
was taken that night, September 27, and distributed five months later to
the underworld on February 28, 2004.
THE “DARREN JOHNSON’’ SAFE PHONE
AS
investigators scrutinised him, Dale suspected his regular phone would
be “off’’ and used a “safe phone’’ under the fictitious name of “Darren
Johnson’’ to call key people, including a lawyer.
The pair would meet as police attempted to link Dale to the burglary. At the time, the lawyer was giving legal advice to Hodson.
Hodson,
already under suspicion after being caught near the burglary crime
scene, was told by the lawyer to speak to ESD after meeting him, and his
son Andrew, at the Celtic Club in the city.
The lawyer made several notes of the 2003 meeting.
“Paul Dale is off and involved as is entire d/squad hierarchy,’’ read one.
“Miechel will keep his mouth shut.’’
“Message to Dale’’
“Mandy and Miechel relationship for a long time.’’
The message the lawyer was to deliver to Dale was that Hodson wanted to meet. It didn’t eventuate.
But
the lawyer did begin to see Dale informally in the months after the
burglary and prior to his arrest, later stating that Dale was desperate
to know whether Hodson had implicated him.
On December 5, 2003,
Dale, Miechel and Hodson were charged over the Oakleigh burglary and
Dale, detained in the Melbourne Custody Centre, phoned the lawyer. The
lawyer met him in the cells, beneath the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court.
Nine
days later, following another phone call, the lawyer went to see Dale
again, this time in Port Phillip Prison. The lawyer refused to act for
him.
They chatted about Carl Williams’ daughter’s christening, which was going to be at Crown Casino later that day.
Dale told the lawyer he would have gone to the casino event regardless of what the police thought.
On December 19, Dale successfully argued to be released on bail.
Early in 2004, Dale and the lawyer would continue having dinners and drinks.
He
would even ask whether Azzam Ahmed, the drug trafficker in charge of
the Oakleigh house, had made a statement to police regarding the theft
of drugs and money.
THE BLUE FOLDER
IT had been five
months since the “blue folder’’ and its contents went missing from the
St Kilda Rd Crime Complex, but they had not yet hit the underworld.
In
late February, 2004, that would change when 31 pages confirming Hodson
as a police snitch were spread across the nation. Although Victoria
Police fingered Dale for the missing “blue folder’’ early on, what they
crucially did not know at the time was that the Australian Federal
Police had intercepted a phone call between drug boss Tony Mokbel and
the lawyer.
Other phone taps picked up the lawyer talking with
Williams, telling him he was supposed to catch up with his “other
adviser’’ – a reference believed to be to Dale.
The lawyer
admitted passing messages between Dale and Williams despite suspecting
they had a corrupt relationship. The lawyer later told police of meeting
Dale for a drink that night, and police taps would catch Williams on
the phone.
“How are ya buddy?’’ Dale says to Williams.
“Was hoping to catch up with you tonight. Been trying to get on to you for some time.’’
Williams reply was friendly: “…organise for one day during the week. Door’s open for you any time.’’
Williams would later confirm the voices are his, Dale’s and the lawyer’s and that there was no legitimate reason for the call.
Mokbel
was in possession of the 31 pages of informer management file contained
in the “blue folder’’ the following day, February 28, 2004.
They were faxed from Taiba Stables — linked to Mokbel — to underworld figure Mark Smith in Queensland.
The
Herald Sun has learned that detectives investigating the Hodson murders
— the Petra taskforce — only became aware of the intercepted
conversation between Mokbel and the lawyer after Williams’ death in
2010.
Petra detectives planned to question the lawyer — by then
their only living key witness in their investigation of the Hodson
killings — over the intercepted phone call they did not know about for
six years, but it never happened.
HILLSIDE MEETING
POLICE
would monitor Dale in the months after he got bail in December 2003,
but the Purana taskforce cracking down on the gangland war had physical
and electronic surveillance on Williams.
The attention moved to
Hodson, who after making allegations about his corrupt relationships
with Dale and Miechel, was offered witness protection.
Hodson, who wanted to be near family, refused and even continued to sell drugs from his Kew home.
The heavily fortified house got a security upgrade, which ultimately would fail to save him or identify his killer.
The
“Hillside’’ meeting, for which there is circumstantial evidence, is
where police would allege Dale would offer $150,000 for the hit.
COLLAPSE
IN 2009, Dale was charged with murdering Terrence Hodson. Collins was charged over both murders, as the gunman.
Collins
toyed with co-operating with police, offering some information, but
wanted to strike an unrealistic deal, including a large reward for his
girlfriend, Kylie.
All charges were dropped when Matthew Johnson,
in an astonishing failure of the corrections system, killed Williams in
their jail unit in April, 2010.
Johnson told police: “I acted alone.’’ There is much to suggest he lied.
Dale had one more hurdle to clear and he was acquitted of lying to the Australian Crime Commission in 2013.
The lawyer was not called to testify.
THE SECRET PLOT
The police case involving Paul Dale, Carl Williams and the Melbourne lawyer
■
Australian Federal Police phone surveillance captured Tony Mokbel
talking with a Melbourne lawyer about documents just days before the
Hodson informer files were leaked to the underworld.
■ That
lawyer, who legally represented Terry Hodson before his death, was used
as a go-between by Paul Dale to make contact with Carl Williams to pass
messages and arrange meetings while he was charged and under scrutiny
for the Oakleigh robbery.
■ A ”safe phone’’ under the fictitious
name of Darren Johnson was used to communicate with Carl, the Melbourne
lawyer and other Dale associates.
■ Dale made many desperate
attempts to contact Carl from February to May in 2004, culminating in a
call to Carl’s dad, George, on the lawyer’s phone where a drunken Dale
exclaimed: ”Tell Carl to ring (the lawyer). He’s a f---ing useless
prick.”
■ Within days, Carl and George met the lawyer where Carl alleges the lawyer gave Carl the number to Dale’s “Johnson phone”.
■
The next day on May 6, 2004, Carl rang the “Johnson phone’’ from a
public pay phone at the Watergardens Shopping Centre. The same day, Dale
allegedly ordered the execution of Hodson.
■ The same day, Carl met Dale in Hillside despite there being no policing reason to do so.
■ On May 7, two meetings between Carl and ruthless killer Rodney Collins took place in Maribyrnong and later in the city.
■ Within 10 days, Collins, who knew Hodson, allegedly shot Hodson and his wife.
■
The Petra taskforce investigating the Hodson deaths maintained that
they corroborated ”99 per cent’’ of Carl’s two statements, made in 2007
and 2009. Carl could not have ”fluked’’ his first statement to police in
2007, having no way of knowing that his father’s car, in which he
travelled to Hillside, was covertly being monitored by tracking and
listening devices.
■ Victoria Police has investigated whether
there were outside influences in ordering Carl’s murder because of his
co-operation in murder investigations.
heraldsun.com.au 8 Dec 2014
Corrupt Victorian Police supporting more corrupt cops.
Australia, a country run by criminals, including the [corrupt] judicature.
