Chapter 8

The Oakleigh robbery

Dave Miechel phoned and said he was ringing from the back of an ambulance. By this stage, the footy was over and the barbecue crowd had thinned out, but the stalwarts were still at my house.

‘There’s been an incident out here,’ Dave said.

‘Out where?’ I asked, not understanding what he meant.

‘Near our target address.’

‘What’s happened?’ As far as I knew, the only thing he had to do was change the surveillance tapes around the corner from Dublin Street, and I thought he was doing that much earlier.

That was when he told me he was in an ambulance being taken to hospital.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked.

‘Yeah,’ he said in a voice not far from his normal voice. ‘I’ve been attacked by the police dog and hit by the handler.’

I couldn’t take in what he was saying. ‘How did it happen?’

‘I’d changed the tapes earlier and I was checking things out on my way past. I saw a div van and offenders running. I gave chase and was attacked by the dog.’

Because Dave sounded okay, my next concern was about our operation. Had it been compromised? I told him I’d head straight to the hospital to see him.

I immediately rang the Glen Waverley police. They’d be the ones dealing with whatever had gone down at the Dublin Street house. The senior sergeant I spoke to told me that Dave Miechel was being taken to the Epworth Hospital. I told him about the MDID interest in the Dublin Street house. The senior sergeant couldn’t really clarify what had happened.1

The Brisbane Lions’ 50-point victory over Collingwood quickly forgotten, I phoned the special projects unit, who had been keeping an eye on the intercepts to see if there was any update in the movement of our targets. I then rang my immediate boss, Senior Sergeant Garry Barker, to tell him that something had gone down at the Dublin Street house. I told him that I’d head off to the Epworth Hospital to check on Dave Miechel.

On my way to the hospital, I got a call back from the senior sergeant I’d talked to from Glen Waverley. He told me something that took a moment to sink in: the two males who had been arrested at the Dublin Street house were believed to have been involved in a burglary there.

One was Terry Hodson and the other was Dave Miechel.

Holy shit.

Struggling with Hoddle Street traffic after a grand final could only hold half my attention. The fact that Dave and Terry had been arrested took the rest. What were they doing together near our target address? What the hell was going on?

After that call was over, I barely had time to process it before more calls flooded in from the special projects unit. Their telephone intercepts confirmed that there had been a break-in at the Dublin Street house. I couldn’t believe that our three-month operation had been compromised. But more than that, I couldn’t believe that Dave and Terry were the ones to compromise it.

Could there have been some kind of mistake? Had Dave stuffed up and gone out there with Terry? Or had Dave’s story been true – that he’d seen people being chased away from the house and joined the chase? But if that was true, what the hell was Terry doing there? And what was Dave doing there at that time of night?

I got to the hospital about 9 p.m., but wasn’t allowed to see Dave straight away. It took a couple of phone calls and liaison between my office and Glen Waverley before I finally saw a battered and bloody Dave Miechel. He looked like he’d been severely beaten. One side of his face was bruised and swollen, and one eye was puffy and closed. He was covered in dried blood.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked him, any other questions momentarily pushed from my mind.

‘Been better,’ he said in a voice thick with painkillers. I was surprised he was even conscious.

‘What happened?’ I asked him. ‘Were you changing the tapes?’

‘No, I changed them earlier. I dropped in on the way past to check things out.’

Dave seemed barely conscious and was clearly medicated to the hilt – he didn’t appear to be feeling the pain of the injuries. I couldn’t believe that a member of my own crew could do what the Glen Waverley cops were accusing him of; nonetheless, I knew he was in a world of shit and that he was going to be grilled by people much higher up the pay scale than me. And in his condition, I wasn’t going to add to that. My job as his immediate boss was to ascertain his welfare.

I didn’t want to keep him talking any longer – he obviously needed to sleep – but I couldn’t help myself. ‘I have to go back to the office to see what’s going on. How did you get all those injuries?’

‘Dog Squad,’ he muttered.

‘Take it easy. I’ll see you later.’

On the way out, I passed the nurses’ station to get an update on Dave’s physical condition. I couldn’t believe how bad he looked. A nurse told me that his injuries were severe and that he’d need surgery. I wasn’t surprised. Apparently, he’d struggled when the police dog caught him, and the handler had brought him down with a blow to the head from the police-issue Maglite torch.

As soon as I was finished at the hospital, I rang Superintendent Shawyer and updated him on Dave’s condition. He was at the office already, since he was working the afternoon shift. I told him we needed to get my crew together and head straight to Dublin Street. Then I telephoned every member of my crew I could contact and told them to meet me at the office as soon as possible to coordinate things from there. I met Superintendent Shawyer as well. We agreed that we needed to execute the warrants straight away.

The next step was to ring the guy whose house had the surveillance tape equipment. He told me that the tape was running and that a cop called Dave had changed it around 1 p.m. I figured that Dave must have driven there after he called into my place around midday.

Some of us stayed at the office coordinating the search warrants while other officers, led by Sergeant Graeme Sayce, went to the Dublin Street house to execute them. As soon as most of us had arrived at the MDID office, we held a briefing. We knew that the Ethical Standards Department would handle Dave, but that wasn’t something we could think about at length. The first thing we had to do was to coordinate the warrants for a number of different people.

But still – had Dave Miechel committed the ultimate betrayal?

While Dave said that he was simply checking on the drug house, the Dog Squad officer who’d arrested him clearly thought otherwise. According to the officer, he and some other cops were responding to a neighbour’s report of a break-in at the drug house. At the scene, they’d seen a guy dressed in dark clothes and a beanie, and called for him to stop. The arresting officer said Dave had cried out that he was in the job several times, but as soon as he called off the dog, Dave tried to flee the scene.

It wasn’t just Dave I was worried about. I was also worried about Terry. As soon as it got out that he’d been arrested robbing a drug house with the MDID detective who’d arrested all his mates, not to mention his own kids, everyone would make the connection. The phrase ‘dead man walking’ entered my mind. Once the likes of Mokbel and company understood that Terry had given us information that made them lose hundreds of thousands of dollars – if not millions – he was going to be in great danger. I’d done everything I could to protect him and keep his identity a secret. Now his picture would be in the paper doing the perp walk, flanked by his arresting officers.

 

One of the people arrested in the sweep that ensued on the night of the robbery was the drug-house babysitter, Abbey Haynes. On the understanding that her statement could only be used by the Ethical Standards Department to prosecute the people charged with the Oakleigh robbery – and therefore not against her – she described her part in the drug operations.2

Abbey said she’d lived at the Dublin Street house for about six weeks. She’d leased the house from a real-estate agent and moved in a couple of days later. A friend, whom she refused to name, provided furnishings, and she moved in with her meagre possessions and her two dogs, a Rottweiler and a Rottweiler cross.

Though she’d never left the house before, thus thwarting our covert surveillance team, Abbey told the detectives that she did leave the house on the Saturday night of the robbery to visit a friend. The friend, whom she also refused to name, had phoned earlier in the day to invite her over.

Around 6.30 p.m., she left the house locked and the porch light on. The dogs were inside. Abbey gave the police a long list of drugs that were in the house, and she was very precise about the goods she was minding:

Located in my bedroom was a blue, white, red cheap-looking square carry bag, which contained a large quantity of ecstasy tablets. This bag contained many thousands of tablets with various colours including blue, yellow and red. The main stamps on these tablets from memory were hearts, dove and the ying yang symbols. There was one large plastic snap-seal bag, which contained the individually packaged quantities of tablets. These smaller plastic snap-seal bags contained quantities of 100 tablets each. This bag was located under my bed and I had seen it there during the day prior to leaving the house. The bag containing the drugs was missing upon my return to the house.

Located next [to] my bed… was a cardboard box, which contained a large plastic Tupperware container. This container was in a white plastic bag. This container contained a large quantity of MDMA [ecstasy] powder. The container would have been approximately half to three-quarters full of this powder. The powder was loose inside the Tupperware container and there was also a plastic shopping bag sitting on top of the powder inside the container with the lid on top. This container containing the drugs was missing upon my return.

No drugs were kept in the second bedroom [where the dogs slept].

Located in the third bedroom was a zip-up travel bag with a floral design on the outside of the bag. This bag was in the cupboard on the top shelf. This bag contained one kilo of ice amphetamine and a large amount of ecstasy tablets. The ice was packaged in a large snap-seal plastic bag. The tablets were white in colour and a small amount may have been green splits. By ‘splits’ I mean they had no motif on them, just an indentation down the middle. The majority of the white tablets had a dolphin symbol on them and there may have been some with the Bacardi drink symbol, which is a bat design. There may have also been some blue splits inside the bag as well. These tablets were packaged in various quantities ranging between 100- to 1000-bag lots. That’s all I can remember which was contained in this bag. This bag was pretty much full and I can’t give an estimation of the actual quantity of tablets that were contained in it other than there was a lot of them. This bag containing the drugs was missing upon my return to the house.3

 

With Dave Miechel in hospital with a pummelled face and dog-bitten legs, Terry Hodson was taken to a holding cell at the Oakleigh police station. A little after midnight, Detective Senior Sergeant Murray Gregor from the Victoria Police Ethical Standards Department met Terry and told him to remove his clothing, which was then collected as evidence.4 Terry was given other clothing to dress himself in – the standard disposable overalls.

Around 2 a.m., Terry had another visitor to his cell: Detective Acting Superintendent Dick Daly. Daly informed Terry that they’d talk to him after they’d conducted more enquiries. They asked Terry if he wanted to contact anyone; he said he wanted to talk to his wife but couldn’t remember his phone number.

Leaving Terry in the cell, detectives Gregor and Daly spent the next three hours combing the streets around the Dublin Street drug house, getting the lie of the land before they spoke to their suspect.

Gregor had signed Terry’s keys out of the property lock-up, and roamed the streets with the remote, trying to locate Terry’s car. When they finally heard the blip and saw the accompanying flash of tail-lights, they knew they’d located the right car: Terry Hodson’s black BMW, parked a few streets away near a primary school. The vehicle was photographed and examined. Inside the boot were gloves, a black balaclava, a loaded .45 calibre pistol, a holster and a piece of cardboard that looked like a fake registration plate.5

Just before 5 a.m., Terry Hodson was taken into the interview room at the Oakleigh police station to speak to Senior Sergeant Gregor and Superintendent Daly.6 Their interview technique was simple. Gregor and Daly would give Terry the chance to explain himself, then knock his story down piece by piece using the information they’d found out from the arresting officers at the crime scene, and from the search of Terry’s car.

After reading him his rights, Gregor began the interview casually by asking Terry if he’d had a chance to sleep while he was waiting. Terry said that he had. Superintendent Daly said they’d tried to ring Christine, but there was no answer.

Gregor asked Terry to state his movements the previous evening.

Terry Hodson began his story, peppering it with police references. He clearly wanted the cops sitting opposite to see him as one of the boys. ‘I left at seven o’clock… I am a registered police informer,’ he said, ‘paid registered police informer. And I’ve been working on a guy from St Kilda who called in… say roughly, six thirty.’

‘Called in? What do you mean by called in?’ asked Gregor.

‘He called at my home there… Yeah, I’ve been chasing some coke for the Drug Squad and he came and picked me up. He said he was going out towards Chadstone there.’

‘What’s the name of this person?’ Gregor asked.

‘His name is – I call him Lucky… and Paul Dale and Dave Miechel know all about him. Also does Jim O’Brien.’

‘Are these persons you’re referring to now, are they members—’

‘Of the Drug Squad,’ Terry finished.

‘Okay, and the person you referred to, Lucky, do you know his correct name?’

‘No,’ said Terry. ‘They do. They would be able to tell you.’

‘And how long have you been working on Lucky?’

‘Approximately three months.’

‘Have you actually conducted any buys from Lucky? Any buys of drugs?’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Terry confidently. ‘They’ve got records of those at the Drug Squad.’

‘So what you’re saying is you’ve been working as a paid police informer?’ Gregor clarified.

‘Yes,’ said Terry.

‘Working on Lucky?’

‘Yes.’

‘At the direction of members from the Drug Squad?’

‘Yes.’

‘Okay. Can you tell me who your handler is?’

‘David Miechel.’

‘Right. And how do you spell his name? Do you know?’

‘I wouldn’t have a clue,’ said Terry.

‘And how long have you been dealing with Dave – David Miechel?’

‘Two years since I’ve worked for the Drug Squad.’

‘And are you a registered informer for any other person or any other member of the police force apart from David Miechel?’

‘And Paul Dale,’ said Terry. ‘He’s the sergeant there.’

‘Is it correct to say that Paul Dale and David Miechel are—’

‘Partners,’ finished Terry helpfully.

‘And all work together?’ asked Gregor.

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said Terry.

‘And have you actually received reports or payments of money?’

‘Yes.’

‘From these police members?’

‘Well, not actually them. But from the bosses up above.’

Terry Hodson told Gregor and Daly about the $10,000 payment a couple of months earlier. He said that he’d also been an informer for the Tactical Response Group: ‘I’ve passed on a lot of information over the last two years.’

After Terry Hodson established his informer status, the interview moved to the events of the previous evening. Terry said that Lucky had picked him up from his home in Kew and dropped him near the school around the corner from the Dublin Street house. When Gregor asked what sort of car Lucky drove, Terry Hodson said it was like a tradesman’s van. Terry pointed to the small plastic bag that was among his possessions laid out on the interview-room desk. ‘He went and got me that sample of coke there.’

‘So can you tell me what actually occurred?’ Gregor asked.

‘Lucky’s dropped me off at the school—’

‘And what was the purpose of being dropped off there?’

‘Apparently, he’s got a dealer around the area who had got some coke. He went and got the sample, came back with it. I tested it.’

‘How did you test it?’

‘Snorted it,’ said Terry casually, ‘asked him to go back and get me an ounce… an ounce of cocaine… so I could see it wasn’t just powder. It had to be the proper thing. And he said, “Not a problem.” It took him approximately – well, I don’t know – fifteen to twenty minutes to get the sample…’

‘And where were you when you met this person?’

‘I was in the school playground… where I was arrested.’

‘Where was Lucky when you were in the playground?’

Terry said that Lucky had left him in the playground while he went to get the sample.

‘In his van?’ asked Superintendent Daly.

‘In his van,’ Terry agreed. ‘Then he came back in the van. I tested it and then he left again, in the van, to go and get the ounce so that I could have a look at it, which is the normal thing to do. And the next thing I know, I’m arrested.’

When Gregor asked Terry what he was going to do with the ounce, Terry replied somewhat piously that he’d test it and then report back to the officers so that they could tell him the next step to take.

Gregor asked if Dave and I knew about the buy, and Terry said that he hadn’t mentioned it because he didn’t know that it was going to happen before Lucky called for him at 6.30 p.m. He assured the officers that he was covered because he had a special form to make drug purchases.

Gregor asked Terry when he’d last spoken to anyone at the Drug Squad.

‘I think it was Thursday,’ Terry said. Dave had rung him on the department-bought mobile. ‘I spoke to Dave and we arranged to meet at the boathouse. We have different locations where we meet, and I met with him and Paul.’

‘And what was the meeting about?’

‘About Lucky and the ecstasy tablets that he’s – he’s in with a crew that they’re dealing in import tablets and I’ve been getting samples and letting ’em know what’s what – because apparently they’re working on a job… they never tell me exactly. And I’m just told to go, “Can you buy this? Can you buy that?” And find out about this, that and the other.’

Murray Gregor began to close in on Terry. ‘So when was the last time you saw Dave Miechel?’

‘Thursday.’

‘Are you sure about that?’

‘Yes.’

Gregor asked Terry who else he dealt with at the Drug Squad. Terry named a number of other officers. Then Gregor switched back to the previous evening, once again establishing Terry’s story about Lucky picking him up in the van and driving him to East Oakleigh. He got Terry to go over his story and gave him a map of the area so that he could show where Lucky had dropped him and where he’d waited.

Terry traced the route that he said Lucky had taken, coming off the Princes Highway. He said he’d been waiting near some sheds at the school when an officer with a dog had come his way. ‘He said, “Don’t move! Get on the ground!” So I did what I was told.’

‘And what happened after he did that?’ Gregor asked.

‘He says, “Why did you go into the house?” And I said, “What house? I don’t know.” And he put the handcuffs on me. Took me out the front here.’ Terry pointed to the map. ‘And then this other officer came in the divvy van and searched me and found the sample in my top pocket. He says, “What’s this?” I said, “Cocaine.” He says, “You’re under arrest.”’

Murray Gregor again went over the route that Lucky had taken to drive into the area, and for the third time, made Terry repeat his Lucky-dropped-me-off-at-the-school story.

‘Now I notice that you weren’t carrying a wallet,’ said Gregor.

‘I never do,’ said Terry.

‘Or any money,’ said Gregor, letting it sink in that a story of a drug buy with a guy who had no cash might not be kosher.

‘No.’

‘Any particular reason?’

Terry addressed the lack of wallet and ignored the lack of cash part of the question. ‘Inside my wallet is Paul’s and Dave’s phone numbers. I just never like to carry anything with me…’

‘Do you know Paul or Dave’s phone number off the top of your head?’

‘No, I wouldn’t. It’s programmed into the phone – the work phone.’

After going back and forth over details of Terry’s story, Gregor then asked him if at any time during the evening, he was running or attempting to evade capture.

‘No.’

‘Or walking fast?’

‘No.’

‘Did you move from the location you were arrested at?’

Terry Hodson said that aside from relieving himself around the back of the shed, he hadn’t moved more than ten metres in any direction while he waited at the school.

Gregor asked again if Terry had been in Dublin Street, and Superintendent Daly pointed to it on the map.

‘No… I told you where I was. I was down near the school.’

Gregor then listed several people associated with Operation Galop who were connected to the Dublin Street house. Terry denied knowing any of them.

Gregor cut to the chase. ‘I put it to you that you attended at 23 Dublin Street, Oakleigh in company with Senior Constable David Miechel and, at that – at those premises, you forced the front door in. What have you got to say about that?’

If Terry Hodson thought the two ESD cops were buying his story, he must have been surprised. He stammered his reply. ‘Sorry? I’m – I’m not being facetious but I – I – I don’t know anything. I haven’t seen David Miechel.’

‘I put it to you, you were, in fact, in company with David Miechel.’

‘Well, I’m…’

‘Last night.’

‘I’m afraid I disagree with you, okay.’

Gregor persisted. ‘As I said, I put it to you that you attended at 23 Dublin Street, Oakleigh, in company with Senior Constable David Miechel last night, where the front door was kicked in. What have you got to say about that?’

‘No.’

‘I further put it to you that yourself, or Senior Constable Miechel, broke the porch light at 23 Dublin Street, Oakleigh, prior to forcing the front door. What have you got to say about that?’

Terry switched into crim mode. ‘No,’ he said without elaboration.

‘Did you at any time last night, force entry to any of these premises?’

‘No, I did not.’

Gregor repeated Terry’s assertion that he was dropped off at the school by Lucky. ‘I put it to you that you, in fact, got to that location by driving your BMW motor vehicle. What have you got to say about that?’

‘No comment,’ grunted Terry.

‘I put it to you that the black BMW is in fact parked, currently, in Oakleigh Street, Oakleigh, opposite the school where you were arrested last night. What have you got to say about that?’

‘No comment.’

‘And in fact, I put it to you that the keys contained in this property receipt, which you earlier identified as keys belonging to you, in fact, opens that vehicle which is located in Oakleigh Street. What have you got to—’

‘No comment,’ Terry cut in.

Gregor showed him the wallet containing credit cards in the name of Terrence Hodson.

‘Yeah, that’s mine,’ muttered Terry.

Inside the wallet was a piece of paper with the name ‘Dave’ and a mobile phone number. Terry said that the phone number belonged to Dave Miechel.

‘I put it to you… do you agree that I located this wallet and items in your motor vehicle, which is located in Oakleigh Street, Oakleigh?’

‘No comment.’

‘When I checked the boot of the motor vehicle, there was a… wooden partition, which was partly dislodged. I removed the wooden partition and I located a pair of brown leather-type gloves and a black beanie, which has got what appears to be eyes cut out of it. What can you tell me about these items?’

‘No comment.’

Gregor listed all the other items that he’d found in Terry’s boot, behind the wooden partition: the cardboard registration plate, the army-type web belt, and the holster and pistol.

Terry ‘no commented’ his way through the list. He also answered ‘no comment’ through all the questions about the pistol having its serial number filed off.

It was around 6 a.m. when Murray Gregor told Terry Hodson that Dave Miechel had been arrested at the scene of the robbery. Terry continued to play dumb.

‘Does it surprise you?’ asked Gregor.

‘Yeah,’ Terry said.

‘Why would Senior Constable Miechel be in the same area as you last night?’

‘I wouldn’t have a clue,’ Terry declared.

Gregor asked Terry if he had anything to add. He said he didn’t. Gregor told the suspect that he’d be charged with a number of offences including burglary, possession of a drug of dependence, possession of an unlicensed pistol, and possessing articles of disguise.

Terry Hodson agreed for his fingerprints to be taken, and Gregor concluded the interview.

An hour later, Superintendent Daly drove Terry back to his BMW – probably the highest-ranking chauffeur Terry had ever had.7 After dropping Terry at his car, free to go home, Superintendent Daly joined Murray Gregor in a sweep of the surrounding streets, looking for Dave Miechel’s motorbike. They found it one street away from the Dublin Street drug house. An examination of the gear sack revealed, among other things, Dave Miechel’s wallet with all his identification cards in it. Unlike Terry’s car – which Terry was allowed to drive off in – Dave’s bike was lifted on a tow truck and taken to the Oakleigh police station.

 

While Terry Hodson was being interviewed, Operation Galop went into full swing. There would be no rest for anyone at the MDID that night. I stayed at the office making sure the warrants were ready to go and coordinating with the bosses on duty and my crew about how we were going to manage what had happened. It was about 3.30 a.m. by the time I left the office with two other detectives. We went to the Moorabbin police station, and a couple of us ran a briefing for a team of cops to issue instructions about how we were going to execute the multiple warrants we had.

When we finally left to get the operation underway, I headed to the principal address of Azzam Ahmed in Besant Street, Moorabbin. I arrested his father, Nadim Ahmed, and found a set of keys, which we took around to the Dublin Street house. We wanted to find as much evidence as we could to link Azzam Ahmed to the drug house. The other arresting officer and I bundled Nadim into the back of a police car and drove around to Dublin Street. I stood at the front door, checking all of the keys to see if one fitted, but none did.8

By 9.30 a.m., I was back at the offices of the MDID, processing the arrests of our targets.

 

Despite the flurry of police activity after the arrests of Dave and Terry, it seemed that whatever had been taken from the Dublin Street house had vanished. Terry didn’t have anything on him but the small amount of cocaine that the arresting officers had found. Dave was in hospital with just the clothes he was caught in.

The mystery was solved when I got a phone call around 11 a.m. on Sunday. The guy who lived over the back fence of the Dublin Street house – the guy whose house we changed the tapes in – had found two bags full of drugs in his back yard. He had my number because I was the one who had originally asked him if we could use his house.

‘Hey, Paul, I’ve found some bags in my back yard. Looks like they’ve been thrown over the back fence. What should I do?’

I was snowed under at work dealing with the arrests. ‘Look, mate, there are cops at Dublin Street at the moment searching the house. Can you go round there and ask for Murray Gregor or Dick Daly? Don’t touch the bags. They’ll deal with them.’

With so many cops around, two suspects in custody, and a whole bunch of drugs missing, it’s a wonder that no-one thought to look over the back fence in the first place. And because no-one thought to look over the back fence, nearly 30,000 ecstasy tablets lay out all night in someone’s back yard.

An hour and a half later, the drugs had been seized and logged as exhibits.

Police also retrieved the surveillance tape. The tape showed two grainy, unrecognisable figures breaking the front porch light. Due to the quality of the tape, the identity of the figures couldn’t be determined.9

The morning after the Dublin Street break-in, Superintendent Anthony Biggin was contacted by Superintendent Dick Daly from Ethical Standards – the senior officer who had conducted the interview with Terry Hodson at the Oakleigh police station the night before. Daly asked Biggin to clear out Dave Miechel’s desk.

It is worth noting the exact wording of Superintendent Biggin’s statement, because it will become important later on: ‘At about 12.20 p.m., with the assistance of Detective Sergeant Martin Duggan, I then removed all items from the desk and placed them in a cardboard box. I also seized a two-drawer filing cabinet on issue to Miechel. I then secured these in my office, and retained the key in my possession.’10

The following day, Biggin also seized another filing cabinet that was on issue to Dave Miechel. ‘I removed the four-drawer filing cabinet on issue to Detective Senior Constable Miechel. I removed this cabinet from the general floor area and secured it in my office, which I locked and retained the key.’

Around midday on Monday, Dick Daly arrived at the MDID office, and Biggin gave him Terry Hodson’s informer management files.11

Later, they’d accuse me of stealing Terry Hodson’s informer management files. Yet, in Biggin’s statement, he says he handed it over to ESD. There were only ever two copies of the informer management files for Terry. One was the blue folder and one was kept by Jim O’Brien – and we added the information reports to O’Brien’s copy in the weeks after the break-in.

 

A week after the robbery, we were all called into the Ethical Standards Department to give statements. By that time, we’d been working around the clock trying to clear up the mess and salvage as much as possible in regard to the investigation. We had the coveted pill presses, we had the 30,000 ecstasy tablets, and we had arrested and locked up all the main players. Even so, one of our own had gone down, and that left a pall over the office. Despite limping to the end of the race, Operation Galop was still the biggest ecstasy drug bust in the history of Victoria Police.

Dave’s empty desk, cleared out by the bosses after his arrest, was a constant reminder of the shock that one of our own had done something so unfathomable. ESD were badgering us for information, which added to the pressure. Command spoke to everyone in our squad and told us to give honest statements to ESD. That attitude made us bristle. Here we were, giving our all to clear up the mess, and we were being thrown into the same boat.

Nonetheless, we agreed to go the following Friday to give statements. Widely known as ‘the Filth’, the ESD was thought of as the cops out to get other cops. We were driven there, then we were separated and taken into different rooms. Despite being there to help, we felt we were suspects.

Afterwards, we met at the pub. Sam Jennings was the last one there, and when she finally arrived, she told us that an officer had walked into the interview room and told the detectives to leave. When she was alone with him, he told her what to say in her statement. But he picked the wrong person to target as ‘the weakest link’. In her pub re-enactment, she told us how she’d held up her hands and informed him that she didn’t know anything about what he was telling her to say about the Hodsons. She’d then said she wasn’t comfortable being alone in the room with him and requested permission to ring her boss. Sam was incensed. We were all ropeable and congratulated her for standing her ground.

After that, I knew I needed time away from it all. We had been working long and hard and I’d had little time off. I couldn’t understand what Dave had done, and the straw that broke the camel’s back was to have ESD starting to do damage control by pointing the finger at our squad and trying to make members of my crew say things that weren’t true. You don’t hang your colleagues out to dry. I needed a break. I had a baby at home and it was time to spend time with the people who really mattered – my wife and son.