Chapter 22

Courting Carl

On 24 April 2007, Detective Senior Constable Cameron Davey took a statement from Carl Williams at Barwon Prison. The timing of this statement was interesting: just a couple of days later, Carl Williams stood before Justice Betty King to plead guilty to three counts of murder and a charge of conspiracy to commit murder. He must have been feeling expansive – and maybe a little bored?

Or maybe he was hedging his bets, feathering his nest, having a bet both ways. And since the very first line of his statement says, ‘I make this statement in the belief that no part of it can be used as evidence against me,’ he made it clear that deals had been done before Davey ever arrived at the prison.

Here’s how I think it worked. Someone who was not Davey did a bit of horse-trading with Williams before Davey came onto the scene. Then Davey arrived at Barwon and took Williams’s statement. Why?

My theory involves an investigative strategy called Chinese walls. Setting up so-called Chinese walls is a way to separate some cops from decisions and strategies. For example, if the powers that be made Cam Davey the informant, the guy in charge of the investigation, but did deals he didn’t know about, that would put a Chinese wall between him and the deal. He could later stand in court, hand on heart, and swear that he had no knowledge of any inducements. And he’d be telling the honest truth. But that didn’t mean inducements weren’t made – they were just made at a distance, behind Chinese walls.

When I subpoenaed documentation from Victoria Police in my own fight for justice, I found the transcript of an interview between John Nolan and Paul Atkins from the Office of Police Integrity and Carl Williams at Barwon Prison on Wednesday 24 January 2007.1

Williams didn’t waste any time. ‘The prosecution want to do some deal with me, I don’t know if you’re aware of it.’

‘Yep,’ said Nolan.

‘They want to give me… a plea and they’re talking about they’re wanting me to give assistance on anything they said, but they keep pushing the issue of Paul Dale.’

‘Yep,’ said Nolan again.

‘Yeah, I… told them that if they want me to give assistance against Paul Dale, probably the police are interested in assistance against Paul Dale… and probably… you blokes are interested in giving assistance against Paul Dale.’

Williams explained that he’d spoken to his lawyer and she’d suggested calling them in for a chat. But the gangland killer wasn’t silly. His first question: ‘What’s in it for me?’

Nolan and Atkins let him talk. Williams lamented the fact ‘they’ had been stuffing around with a possible sentence if he pleaded guilty. Carl admitted to high-level meetings.

‘Peter had a big meeting with… Paul Cochrane, with Peter Faris. Paul Coghlan, Jim O’Brien, all of them. They had a big meeting and they come and said 35 from the day I come in. And Peter come up here and he said to me by the time he left the office and got somewhere, they’d told him that it was 35 plus what I’d done, so I’m up to 37. Then he went, “Oh, don’t worry,” and he talked to Horgan and said, “That’s just too high,” ya know. That’s with no assistance obviously.’

‘Yep,’ said Nolan.

‘And I said, “Tell him… 30 minus what I’ve done and I’ll be able to start talking about anything, ya know… and he came back to me, and they said 33 minus what I’ve done. I said, “Well, now we’re starting to get somewhere.”’

‘Yeah,’ said Nolan.

‘And that’s minus assistance, they said.’

‘Yeah.’

Williams was clearly peeved. ‘Now they’ve come back up to 35 plus what I’ve done, so they’re just talking in riddles with us.’

Nolan asked who was involved in the deal, and Williams said his lawyer was in talks with the prosecution and Jim O’Brien, who was then with the Purana Taskforce. Williams listed all the charges – murders and drugs – that he’d been convicted of and the sentences he’d received for them. It took quite a while. He finished by listing all the murder charges that were coming up.

After Williams had listed his crimes, he played a cat-and-mouse game with Nolan and Atkins, but neither side was prepared to concede power to make a deal.

Finally, Williams hinted that he might have knowledge of drugs and murder, but declared, ‘If I was going down that track, I wouldn’t be doing it for nuthin’, ya know.’

Nolan hedged.

Williams pushed. ‘Well, the prosecution… they’re coming to me asking about Dale. They’re not coming to me asking about any other copper.’

There was more back and forth before Williams finally started talking about the Hodson murders. ‘I wouldn’t have a clue who carried it out. I only know who ordered it. Well, I was told…’

‘Paul Dale?’ asked Nolan.

‘Yeah.’

When Nolan tried to press Williams for details, the killer was blunt. ‘You gotta tell me what’s in it for me before I’m gunna give you anything that I know.’

Nolan tried to explain his difficulty. He couldn’t offer Williams a deal if Williams didn’t tell him what he had. Williams’s situation was the reverse: if he told the cops what he had, it would cease to be currency.

Williams then showed a bit more of his hand. ‘Twenty-three for the murders, if you’re gunna talk about a sentence, if you’re gunna talk about Dale… my solicitor says that’s more valuable than anyone, ya know. And any other statement is pretty valuable information about Dale, ya know.’

Nolan finally conceded. ‘I suppose the ace card the police would want is a name for the Hodson murders. I’d expect that would be a high bid.’

At the end of the meeting, Williams was adamant. ‘You know these trials or whatever, but I’m not gunna do something fuckin’ ridiculous, 35 years, ya know. It’s gotta be something reasonable. Ya know, 23 years or something like that, ya know. That give me some sort of light at the…’

Deals struck.

Exit Nolan.

 

Enter Cameron Davey.

In the interview room at Barwon Prison, Williams sat opposite Davey and gave his implausible account.

The first time I met Carl Williams was under the strict instructions of my superiors, and it included a full briefing and debriefing. Not so, according to Williams in his statement. He said that we met alone at the Brunswick Club. His story was swallowed by the cops, who wanted it to be true. While I know Williams’s story is crap, it should sound unlikely to the average punter too:

I am not sure of the time of day that the first meeting happened but I went there alone. I only talked to Dale alone. This first meeting was not long after I was released. We just sort of touched base. He was telling me that he could keep an eye out for me. In return, Dale expected to be paid for any information that he gave to me. I took this to mean that he’d keep an eye out for what was going on with the police with investigations and things like that. Dale didn’t give me any information during that first meeting and I gave him no money. I think we were both suspicious of each other at that time and remained so.

As if a cop would approach Carl Williams as a stranger and put his hand out for cash.

Another unlikely anecdote Williams told Cameron Davey was that after the first meeting, I met him again and showed him evidence that someone was trying to set him up. Williams sanctimoniously finished that story with: ‘As a result of reading that report, I dropped off Jimmy and did no more business with him. Dale didn’t give me the report, he just showed it to me.’

Again, as if! Whenever Williams got a whiff that anyone was double-crossing him, he killed them.

Next Williams described paying me for a statement that I’d made for Tommy Ivanovic. He said that if he paid me I’d be more likely to give evidence for Tommy at court. The only problem with that was that I never gave evidence for Tommy. Was never asked to. Was never likely to. I never even offered to give a statement for Tommy Ivanovic – I was asked to by the Homicide Squad.

But then again, Carl Williams never let the truth get in the way of a statement that would give him indemnity for a double murder… not to mention nearly $2,000,000 in cash and prizes.

Williams wove his first meeting with Dave Miechel and me into his fantasy narrative but added a detail that should have screamed make-believe: he agreed that we’d spoken about his problems with Jason Moran. He had indeed told us that Jason was the one who shot him, but this time he added a detail that was extraordinary. ‘Dale said they could kill Jason for $400,000. It was to be $200,000 for each of them. I told them they were dreaming. Miechel was part of this conversation.’

So Dave and I are supposed to have suggested to Australia’s most notorious hitman that we could not only do a hit for him, but charge him almost half a million dollars to do it.

You have to wonder whether Cameron Davey, sitting across from a guy charged with cold-bloodedly killing at least four of his enemies, saw any irony in the killer’s comments. Carl Williams had proved that he was more than capable of arranging the murder of Jason Moran and the three other victims without any help from me.

While he was at it, Williams threw numbers around like tennis balls. He said that he’d paid me $30,000 to $40,000 over the years to provide him with information, and that I’d offered to pay him $150,000 to kill the Hodsons. And he could happily confess to his part in the conspiracy to commit a double murder because he’d negotiated an indemnity – which meant he could say whatever he wanted and the only repercussion was the amount of cash Victoria Police would throw in his direction. In other words, if his story were true – which I knew it wasn’t – but if it were true, they’d let him off conspiracy to commit Terry’s and Christine’s murders.

Maybe the police thought he’d cop a long sentence for the four murders he admitted to and they were happy to give him a couple for free.

At the end of his statement, Carl Williams said that while he told me that he was happy to help out if I needed him to, he actually had no idea who was responsible for the murder of the Hodsons. Williams’s final word on the subject: ‘I have never met any of the Hodsons. I know that there was a son who spent some time in jail, but I never met him. I have never had any dealings with any of the Hodsons. I do not know who is responsible for the murder of the Hodsons. All I am able to say regarding their murders is what I have provided in this statement.’

Then he signed that his statement was true and correct.

Of course, he signed all of his statements that way, regardless of whether the next statement contradicted the last and proved it not to be true and correct at all. Williams played fast and loose with the truth, but it never seemed to bother the police, who’d wheel and deal, wine and dine him for his latest ‘true and correct’ self-serving version.

 

On 27 April 2007, Carl Williams pleaded guilty to the murder of Jason Moran on 21 June 2003, the murder of Mark Mallia on 18 August 2003, and the murder of Lewis Moran on 31 March 2004, and a conspiracy to murder Mario Condello between 29 May and 9 June 2004.2

On 7 May 2007, Justice Betty King sentenced him to a minimum of 35 years in prison. In her sentencing remarks, she told the court that the unnamed driver in the Lewis Moran murder had made a statement that implicated both Williams and Tony Mokbel as being joint procurers of Lewis Moran’s murder. According to the driver, in the weeks leading up to Lewis Moran’s being gunned down at the Brunswick Club, he’d met with one of the hitmen, the man I’ve called Mr Y, and both Mokbel and Williams at a club owned by Mokbel in Brunswick. While the driver said he didn’t accept the contract straight away, he was told to call Mokbel or Williams if he changed his mind. He said that when he agreed to do it, Williams had offered to pay half the money and Mokbel the other half after the job was done. A week after the murder, the driver said that he and Mr Y met Mokbel in a hotel car park, where he handed over an envelope with $140,000 – ten grand short of the agreed amount.

Justice King was damning of Carl Williams’s evidence. Among the cases she pointed to was the one that had brought me into contact with Williams, after he’d been shot by Jason Moran. In his evidence, Justice King reminded him, he’d claimed that he’d refused to identify the shooter to police because ‘the Morans had told you that they had a police officer in their pocket, and you did not believe it would be investigated properly’. Justice King rejected this claim. She told Williams, ‘Your reasons related to the supposed code of silence of the criminal milieu in which you lived’.

She went on to say, ‘I find that the evidence that you gave, in the main was unbelievable, even incredible at times. It was, in my view, designed to ensure that it would provide no evidence against any person other than those who are already dead, convicted or have pleaded guilty to various offences. You denied any involvement or knowledge of involvement of Mokbel in the murder of Lewis Moran…

‘In relation to your evidence in respect of this matter, and the other matters to which I have referred… not only do I consider you a most unsatisfactory witness, virtually incapable of telling the truth, except for some minor and largely irrelevant portions of your evidence, I find that the manner in which you gave evidence was arrogant, almost supercilious and you left me with a strong impression that your view of all of these murders was that they were all really justifiable and you were the real victim, having been “forced” to admit at least some of your involvement, by the statements of other members of your group who had cooperated with police.

‘Accordingly, I do not accept that the arrangement for the murder of Lewis Moran occurred in the manner that you have described.’3

So even the judge mentioned Mokbel and Williams organising a hit six weeks before the Hodson murders, working together. And despite the strong suggestion that Carl Williams and Tony Mokbel teamed up to organise the murder of Lewis Moran six weeks before the murder of Terry Hodson, the cops of the Petra Taskforce pursued me with vigour.

Not only that, but they courted Williams to do it.

Sometimes the logic of this case twists and turns like a mad snake, then twists all the way around and bites itself on the bum.