Chapter 26

Family ties

On 28 March 2008, Sol Solomon wrote in his daybook that he took Andrew Hodson for a polygraph test. The test lasted for an hour. A month later, on 30 April, Sol Solomon met Andrew Hodson to advise him that he’d failed the polygraph.

Andrew Hodson didn’t mention that he’d failed the polygraph test when he spoke to journalist Brendan Roberts from the Herald Sun for an article on 23 May. And unless they used a stock photo, he willingly posed for the camera looking forlorn, clutching a photograph of his parents in one hand and a cigarette in the other.1

As part of my legal fight, I’ve been given access to tonnes of paperwork, among which are Sol Solomon’s notes. While I have no context for his notes, I will leave it up to you to interpret the outcome: ‘Andrew Hodson re results of polygraph tests. Advised him that he failed both tests. Discussed outcomes. Hodson informed us that ex-wife Linette was once approached by members of Carlton Crew to provide them with the layout of his parents’ home. Happened after Terrence Hodson was involved in conspiracy to murder [name indistinguishable]. Andrew stated that Linette approached by person known as Sugar Ray.’2

Linette later denied the claims.

 

Rodney Charles Collins was arrested on 6 June 2008 and charged with the murders of Ray and Dorothy Abbey in their West Heidelberg home back in July 1987. Three men had used stolen police uniforms and a fake warrant to gain access to the Abbeys’ house and had locked their three small children in a bedroom. Rod Collins was one of those men.

Rod Collins and Ray Abbey had planned to do a robbery together, using police uniforms reportedly stolen from a dry cleaner, but Abbey had pulled out and refused to return the police uniform. Abbey apparently also owed Collins money over the sale of a second-hand car.

Collins was known to have a short fuse and a long memory. He believed the Abbeys had cash and drugs hidden in a safe in the house. The truth was that Ray Abbey was broke; he’d even tried to borrow money earlier that day. In a shed out the back, Collins shot Ray three times in the head. Just before he died, Ray yelled out his killer’s name – a last act that marked his wife for the same fate. Collins walked back into the house and shot Dorothy Abbey twice in the head. He cut her throat and left her body on the couch to be found by her young children the following morning.

While there were reasons the mad killer had targeted Ray Abbey, when detectives asked him why he’d killed Dorothy, he told them, ‘Dead men tell no tales.’

Detective Superintendent Jack Blayney of the crime department said, ‘When we talk about execution-style killing, they were both put in a position where they were shot in the head from behind in circum­stances where it was an extremely callous and calculating act.’3

Sound familiar?

By the time Rod Collins was arrested, police knew of his family ties to Tony Mokbel.4 At the time of the events of 2003–04, Collins was living in a de facto relationship with Joan McGuire, the mother of Mokbel’s girlfriend, Danielle McGuire, which made him Tony Mokbel’s de facto father-in-law.

During a search on Rod Collins’s house, Petra Taskforce detectives found a police report that was said to have tracked the movements, habits and associates of a major drug dealer. They also found a loaded .45 calibre handgun, ammunition, cannabis, night-vision equipment, a ballistic vest and surveillance equipment.

On 11 June 2008, Rod Collins’s new girlfriend, Kylie, contacted Sol Solomon and told him that Collins was considering cooperating with the Petra Taskforce. Six days later, Solomon met Kylie at the Eastland Shopping Centre. Kylie made it clear that her boyfriend expected something in return for his cooperation, and she was keen to discuss this with the detectives. Solomon told her that it was too early to discuss incentives – that would depend on his level of cooperation and the value of his information. He also told Kylie about the million-dollar reward for information leading to a conviction in the Hodson murder case.

Sol Solomon went out to Barwon Prison to have a chat with Rod Collins on 17 June.5 It was apparently during this chat that Collins laid the groundwork for his eventual statement. The statement would later be contradicted by Carl Williams, but that didn’t appear to bother the investigating officers.

From Solomon’s statement about the meeting:

Approximately 6–8 weeks prior to the murders of Terrence and Christine Hodson he (Collins) was at a bar nearby a solicitor’s office in Little Collins Street when he was approached by Paul Dale. Dale told him that he needed Terrence Hodson killed and asked him (Collins) if he was prepared to do it.

Dale was in the company of another male person who is unknown to Collins.

There was no money offered by Dale for the hit, only an understanding that if he (Collins) would do this favour for Dale, then Dale would return the favour in the future.

Dale did not tell him (Collins) why he wanted Hodson killed and he (Collins) did not ask. He (Collins) informed me that he never asks why in situations like this; he is not interested in motivations.

He (Collins) declined the offer.

The approach by Dale was a one off.

Carl Williams possibly may have sent Dale to see him (Collins) about the hit.

He (Collins) has a long-standing friendship with Carl Williams.

 

During the interview, Rod Collins told Sol Solomon that he’d met Terry Hodson in prison years ago, but that they weren’t close associates. He’d been to Hodson’s house once to buy marijuana, and had gone into the TV room out the back. Collins told Solomon that he didn’t trust Terry.

When Sol Solomon asked him what kind of person could have done the hit on the Hodsons, Collins said that the murders were very professional, and that the killer must have been a lateral thinker like him.

Collins mused about the type of person that Terry would let into his house. He said Terry would only open the door to someone he knew or trusted and let them in.

Solomon agreed.

‘But who was the person that was behind that known or trusted person that followed him in?’ Collins asked cryptically.6

I wasn’t part of the investigation, so I don’t know if this was the first time anyone suggested that scenario. Terry didn’t trust many people.

At the end of the meeting, Collins made his demands clear: he was prepared to make a statement and testify in court, repeating his story alleging that I’d approached him to do the Hodson murders, on condition that all the charges he currently faced and was in custody for were dropped and any reward for information about the Hodson murders went to his girlfriend, Kylie.

Reading Sol Solomon’s statement, I can only assume that Rod Collins was trying to deal his way out of the Abbey murders and avoid any risk of being charged with the Hodson murders. And I was the prize for Solomon in return for Collins’s get-out-of-jail-free card. Solomon promised to take the offer to his superiors.

 

Kylie rang Sol Solomon on 15 July, and he and another detective met her the following day, again at the shopping centre. Kylie was ready to make a bigger offer on behalf of her man. She said that Collins could give information about ten unsolved murders after he was given bail. Solomon told her that Collins would have to give full and frank disclosures about the Hodson murders before any deals would be considered.

Five days later, Kylie told Solomon that Collins was prepared to meet him at a location other than the prison or a police station to discuss the Hodson murders. I guess that is the same as asking for bail in return for information.

Solomon told her he would talk to Collins in prison.

After all the wrangling back and forth, Sol Solomon arrived at the prison to talk to Rod Collins on 13 August. Having assured Collins that the room wasn’t bugged – a fact that Collins was correct to disbelieve – Sol Solomon used the same sorts of questioning that De Santo had used on Terry Hodson four years earlier: establish rapport, use a bit of flattery, then ever-so-gently ask him to dob on his mates. But Rod Collins was not the soft mark that Terry Hodson had been. His language was also a lot more colourful – the f-word was his only adjective.

The transcript of the interview that I obtained under subpoena began a couple of hours in, so I can only guess what was said in the beginning.7 But the conversation that preceded the transcript clearly contained a request for Rod Collins to be put in a cell with Carl Williams.

‘So why do you need to go in with him for a while?’ asked Sol Solomon.

‘Well, I don’t, but ya know, there’s little things here and there that I’d like to know for myself too,’ Collins told Solomon. ‘I play my cards my way, you play your cards your way, right. We all play our hands different and that. Um, I’m a good thinker, same as you, I suppose.’

‘You’re a natural thinker,’ agreed Solomon.

‘I’m a good thinker.’

‘That’s right,’ the detective said amiably.

Collins told Solomon that he wanted to get bail, and with the usual prison bravado, said that he was confident he’d get it. ‘I don’t give a fuck what you say about the case, right. I will beat it. I’ve no doubt about that. I’m very positive in that absolutely simply because I wasn’t there, all right. Regardless of what the evidence is, that you people have, I wasn’t there and I’m confident.’

Pretty soon, Sol Solomon must have realised that he was dealing with an old-school crook with old-school crook values.

‘I do not trust people, okay. I’m one of those people. I do not talk out of fuckin’ school, do not talk about people, do not tell people anything at all, whatsoever. You talk to me about something, it stays with me. Do not speak to anybody, do not tell anybody about that. I have a million secrets. I do not tell anybody anything at all whatsoever. That is my religion, that is me. That’s why, that’s the die that is cast in me, Solly.’

Collins complained that he was a person of fuckin’ interest in everything that happens in Melbourne. Sol Solomon told him that it was because of his reputation for being a gun for hire.

‘I’m not that at all,’ Collins replied.

‘And a very, very good one,’ said Sol Solomon, laying it on thick.

‘I’m not that at all, see? I’m not that at all. I tell you that from my heart.’

‘That’s the reputation you have,’ said the detective.

‘I understand all that,’ said Collins. ‘That stems from the fact I’ve been growing up and I don’t cop all that shit. You don’t fuckin’ stand over me. I was stood over when I was a kid all my fuckin’ life and I grew up like that and that’s the person I am today. You don’t fuckin’ stand over me. You try to hurt me, yeah, I’ll fuckin’ hurt you first, you know. But I don’t like to travel down that road, Solly.’

Rod Collins then lamented the fact that he was always blamed for everything everyone else fuckin’ does. But because of that blame, he and people like Mick Gatto had copped a lot. ‘And that builds up a reputation, all right.’

‘Well, you have got a reputation,’ the detective agreed smoothly.

‘Oh yeah, I know I have, absolutely.’

‘People are scared of you,’ said Solomon.

‘Because I won’t cop their shit, Solly. I won’t cop their lies. Oh look, I’d rather talk to somebody, have a sensible, decent fuckin’ conversation, right, about life.’

Sol Solomon slowly, slowly brought the interview around to bail negotiations. He told Rod Collins that if he was to put in a good word at the bail hearing, Collins would have to give him something concrete.

‘Do you want bail?’ asked Solomon.

‘Yeah,’ said Collins.

‘What have you got to offer?’

Collins told him he could talk about three or four other murders. ‘Or half a dozen.’

When Sol Solomon pressed him for details, the old crook turned cagey. He looked around the room and told the detective that the room was bugged.

‘I don’t believe it is,’ said Solomon, although it was.

Collins said that he had to be careful because people in prison talked. ‘I’ve done nearly twenty-eight years in jail,’ said Collins. ‘I know how these people work… I’m quite aware of what they do, how they talk and everything else. They’ll tell me a different story; they’ll tell you a different story. Ha, ha, ha. Now cover the wool over my eyes.’

‘You’ve got information about other murders?’

‘I can give you information on Laurie Prendergast. I can give you information on Brian Kane.’

‘What about the Hodsons?’

‘I can give you information there also too,’ said Collins.

‘That we can use?’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘Not just second- or third-hand street talk?’

‘Nah, nah, I don’t talk that fuckin’, that sort of fuckin’ bullshit, ya know. He said, she said – I’m not into that fuckin’ shit and that. I don’t listen to all that crap.’

‘That business you told me before about the cop, Dale?’

‘Yeah,’ said Collins.

‘Is that true?’

‘That’s true.’

‘He came to you?’

‘That’s true. It’s true.’

‘You wouldn’t tell me something that wasn’t true, would ya?’ asked Detective Sergeant Sol Solomon.

‘I’m not going to sit here and talk fuckin’ shit to ya,’ said Collins.

‘Is there more to that then?’

‘Yeah, there is, but that’s as far as I’m going to go, all right? That’s why I want to go over to see Carl to find out more of that.’

‘So, am I reading this right that you need to talk to Carl because Carl can tell you a bit more about the Hodson job?’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.’8

Now, if I wasn’t the person involved in this, I’d smell a rat. Rod Collins’s initial story is contrary to the later police story, in which I asked Williams and Williams asked Collins to do the hit. But clearly, for all his eloquence, Rod Collins isn’t stupid. He wants to see Williams to clarify his story. And he’s even up-front about it.

Sol Solomon repeatedly asked Rod Collins if Tony Mokbel was involved in the Hodson murders, but Collins dodged the question each time.

‘Did Tony have any involvement in the Hodson murders?’ Sol Solomon asked.

‘I’ll say nothing,’ replied Collins.

‘Yeah?’

‘I’ll say nothing,’ repeated Collins.

‘What about the cop?’ Solomon tried a different tack.

‘I’ll say nothing. I’ll say nothing more, Solly.’

‘Until you get what you want.’9

‘Until, and that’s not asking much.’

Sol Solomon considered this. When they got around to talking about Terry Hodson again, Solomon described him as a ‘fairly high-level drug dealer’ but Collins said that he wasn’t streetwise.

‘He was reckless in the way he used to do business,’ Sol Solomon agreed. ‘He was giving up people left, right and centre. And in the end, he was no secret.’

Solomon asked Rod Collins if he’d ever been in Terry Hodson’s house.

‘I was in the house, yeah. I’ll tell you when I was in the house. I was in the house probably, oh, fuckin’ ten years ago – just after he built that little thingo down the back. It was bugged that fuckin’ joint he had and that. I knew as soon as I walked in there.’

Problem with that was, the TV room wasn’t built ten years earlier, and back then, the joint wasn’t bugged. Perhaps Collins had been there much more recently.

Sol Solomon pressed the shadow chaser for more information and finally, Collins promised him the Hodsons and information on as many as ten murders. ‘But I’ll find out for sure who was responsible, right.’ Then Collins brought up the murder of Christine Hodson.

‘Her. His missus. See I don’t believe in that. Regardless of what people think I am or whatever I may be, all right, I don’t believe in that. It’s not in my code of conduct.’

Considering that Rod Collins was currently in prison facing charges of murdering a husband and his wife – and would later be convicted of it – his words should have rung a little hollow. But later, he did clarify his personal code. ‘I’m not saying I’ve never hurt anybody; I’ve never hurt anybody that has never tried to fuckin’ hurt me. I’ve shot plenty of people.’

After chewing some more criminal fat, the cop and the crook finally started talking about me.

‘Well, this business with Dale, the corrupt copper,’ Sol Solomon began.

‘Yeah,’ Collins replied.

‘When he came to you, did he make any other approaches to you or just that one?’

‘No, he only made that one.’

‘Did anybody else approach you on his behalf after that time?’

‘No, no.’

‘Just that one time? But why did he come to you?’

‘Well, because he knew me.’

‘Did he?’

‘A lot of people know me, Solly.’

‘And who was the other guy with him?’

‘Some other cop.’

‘Another cop?’

‘Yeah, another cop.’

‘Are you sure he was?’

‘Absolutely. I know what pricks look like.’

‘Has he got a name?’

‘He probably does have a name, but I didn’t know his name. But I know what he looks like.’ And Collins was off again with his crim side-stepping. ‘Yeah, the only approach. I understand people’s lingo, ya know. Lots of crooks talk in code. A lot of people talk in code. Also too, I talk everyday talk, but when I talk business, I talk in code. All depends where I am and who it is. People I grew up with, we talk our own language. We don’t have to speak. We can talk with our eyes. We talk with our hands. We don’t have to speak. People speak in different ways, I suppose. It’s the same as my kids. I grew my kids to talk with their eyes.’

‘Yeah, I think you were talking to me with your eyes before,’ said Sol Solomon.

‘Absolutely. I can talk to everybody. I talk to a lot of people with my eyes. And I bring my children up to talk with their eyes simply because that one day you could be in danger. So talk with your eyes is silent and easier.’

I can only imagine Sol Solomon getting a little frustrated with Rod Collins and his talking eyes.

‘All right,’ said the detective, ‘talk with your eyes; answer me with your eyes. Was Tony Mokbel involved in the Hodson murders?’ Solomon then told Collins he couldn’t read his eyes.

The chat was interrupted by a prison guard who asked them to finish up.

After the two exchanged farewells, Sol Solomon dangled his final carrot. ‘Another thing as well – there’s soon going to be announced a million-dollar reward for the Hodsons. Any time now.’ Solomon told Collins that even if he wasn’t interested, his girlfriend could use the money. ‘If the information came from her,’ said the detective, ‘she’d qualify for it.’

‘With all the information that I’m going to give, all right, there’s not a one reward, there’s probably half a dozen rewards, okay. And I will give evidence to that.’

So the talk was done, the offer was dangled, the crook was on the hook. As Sol Solomon went to leave, Rod Collins told him his only concern was for his girlfriend. ‘I don’t want anything fuckin’ happening to her, understand?’

‘Nothing’s going to happen to you anyway,’ Solomon said soothingly.

‘My spirit will come back and fuckin’ wreck you,’ Collins warned.

‘I know it fuckin’ will,’ said the cop.

It was interesting that a full month before the public announce­ment of a reward, it was being privately discussed and offered to a convicted murderer to get me. Blind Freddy could see that if you offer a million bucks to crooks with nothing to lose and everything to gain, they’d sell you their own flesh and blood, let alone a cop.

The next day, Solomon met Kylie and explained that he had a dilemma. Collins wouldn’t provide anything concrete until he got bail, but he’d never be considered for bail unless he provided something concrete. Kylie said she’d talk to her boyfriend about the situation.

On 29 August, Solomon rang Kylie and told her that he wanted to visit Collins and take a statement from him about the Hodson murders. Kylie warned that her boyfriend’s current state of mind might make that difficult. When Solomon got to Barwon on 2 September, Collins was immediately hostile. He said he’d say nothing more until he got bail. And that was that. The meeting lasted only five minutes. By then, Rod Collins had been in jail for three months, and he was clearly sick of talking.

On 10 September 2008, the million-dollar reward was announced publicly. The reward was not just to find out who killed Terry and Christine Hodson; it was designed as a big incentive to any crook who put his hand up for it, and it was designed to stir the pot.

The media immediately camped out at my work and at my house. To catch everything on tape, the police had all my phones tapped. Later I’d get transcripts of taped telephone conversations that I’d had with my wife and friends.

The day after the reward was announced, detectives made a beeline for Carl Williams’s jail cell, where he sang like a canary.

It would take until 17 October, and a bit of negotiation between Kylie and Collins’s lawyer, for Solomon’s next meeting with Collins to occur. But by now, Solomon had Carl Williams’s statement to consider. The carrot he’d tempted Collins with had been quickly snapped up by Williams, who also had nothing to lose. He was in prison for 35 years. He’d be 71 years old before being eligible for parole. He’d lost everything. If someone in authority came and offered him a fortune, who was he to say no?

Sol Solomon wrote a summary of the information Collins provided at their October 2008 meeting:

Approximately two weeks after Lewis Moran was murdered, he (Collins) went to a location along Sydney Road, Brunswick near the Brunswick Club to meet an associate to do some wheeling and dealing (would not name his associate).

He (Collins) by chance met Noel Faure and had a short conversation with him.

Faure asked him (Collins) if he (Collins) knew Terry Hodson.

Collins stated that he knew Hodson from Barwon Prison.

Faure said to him (Collins) something similar to ‘There’s money to be made there’.

He (Collins) believed that Faure was telling him that there was a contract out on Hodson’s life and that Faure was going to do it and was sounding him (Collins) out to be involved.

He (Collins) did not discuss this any further with Faure because he didn’t trust Faure.

He (Collins) believes that Noel Faure and Mr S are responsible for the Hodson murders because of Noel Faure’s comments and the fact that both these men are known to be contract killers.10

 

If this conversation was true, then it took place about a month before the Hodson murders, three weeks before Lewis Caine was gunned down, and two weeks after Lewis Moran was murdered.

And then, according to Sol Solomon’s statement, Rod Collins changed his original story. He said that around the end of February 2004, I’d approached him and asked if he knew Noel Faure and could approach him for me. But then Collins said that I also asked him if he could give him a ‘chop out with Hodson’.

‘Collins told Dale to go away. He didn’t know Dale and didn’t want to talk to him,’ Solomon wrote in his statement.

 

At the next meeting, Rod Collins again listed his demands, which included total immunity from prosecution in relation to the charges he was facing, a guarantee that he wouldn’t be charged with any further offences and, last but certainly not least, the million-dollar reward for his girlfriend, Kylie.

On 6 November, Sol Solomon contacted Kylie to arrange to talk to Collins again, but Kylie said he wasn’t prepared to talk. On 14 November, Solomon again met Kylie at the shopping centre. He told her that the police had rejected Collins’s demands and said there was evidence that linked Collins himself to the Hodson murders.

By now, Williams was giving them a different version, and they’d decided to believe him.

 

On 19 November, I received another summons for a second Australian Crime Commission hearing on 26 November 2008. Again, they came to the service station to serve the subpoena. There was a lot of media hype at that stage about the Petra Taskforce, and I recognised one of the detectives as a member of Petra. There were three of them in the room when I spoke to the ACC a week later.

As far as I was concerned, Victoria Police could piss off. I wasn’t interested in talking to them. I’d had enough – five years of continued harassment.

The ACC’s questions were largely the same, but this time there were new allegations and new connections. They now had the statements from Carl Williams to say that I’d approached him and that he’d organised Rod Collins to kill the Hodsons.

The allegations were different from those Carl Williams eventually signed up to. Some of the police questions were about Rod Collins under his real name, Rodney Earle. They showed me a picture of him, and I still didn’t know him. I did tell them that I’d read Untold Violence by Tom Noble a long time ago, and I thought he might have been a player in the story in the book. Other than that, I’d never heard of him.

By this time, they’d clearly settled on their final paid-for version of events from Carl Williams. His story was: I asked him to kill the Hodsons, and he organised Collins.

But some of the questions I was asked suggested a different story: that I’d met Collins in a cafe and asked him to do the killings. I now know why they asked: it was Rod Collins’s version of events.

I was also asked about who might be a potential source of information and – in the belief that my evidence was secret – I named criminals I thought could be involved or could provide information.

What I didn’t know – but later found out – was that all the ACC’s fine promises could be overturned with the stroke of a pen. When I was arrested again in 2009, ‘secure’ ACC documents would be included in affidavits by Victoria Police to oppose my bail application. ACC documents can be used against you if your answers are incorrect, but these documents weren’t being used against me for what I said at the hearing – they were being used to charge me with murder.

My ‘secure’ testimony was also included in documents supplied to hitman Rod Collins, who was charged with the same crime as me, and from there they circulated through the prison system to people who threatened to kill me and cut my wife’s throat.

Had I known my ‘secret’ interviews would later be given to the criminals I mentioned, I never would have named names. If the federal judge had given any indication my statements wouldn’t remain confidential, I wouldn’t have participated.

People need to know that this can happen and they need to be horrified.

If you take away someone’s right to silence, then you need to respect their confidentiality, not change your mind after the fact.

I thought that if I went to the ACC and told the truth, the judge would get to the bottom of the farce of the allegations against me, and maybe investigators would even start looking at some more likely suspects for the Hodsons’ murders.

 

Victoria Police and the state government were now in damage con-trol, and were clearly prepared to try anything to get me. Anything.

But think about how I was feeling by this stage. I’d been hounded since the end of 2003. I’d tried to cooperate; I’d almost lost count of the number of hearings I’d been subjected to. Every time my family and I thought this was finally over, another thing would come up.

By 2008, it had been five years.

Five years of having your phone bugged.

Five years of having your friends targeted and even charged with criminal offences just because they supported you and refused to dump a mate.

Five years of having people look at you sideways, whispering, ‘That’s him!’

Five years of regular front-page newspaper stories about how you were a disgraced ex-detective who ‘remains a person of interest in the Hodson murders’.

As you can imagine, I had a rather short fuse when it came to this case.

So when a guy who wasn’t connected to the case at all, a guy I’d hired to do some painting and decorating, phoned me and said that the police had been sniffing around him wanting a statement, you can imagine my response.

‘Mate, I’d be very disappointed if I ever see a statement with your name on it,’ I told him.

He was nervous. He was a regular guy who’d never had any dealings with the police. ‘But what do I say to them?’ he wanted to know.

By then I’d had a gutful. ‘Tell ’em to go get fucked.’

And of course, all of this was caught on the wiretap. It was later suggested – and reported in the media – that I was interfering with a police investigation. All because I told a mate that he had no obligation to add to the Paul Dale circus.

There are laws in relation to getting a warrant to tap someone’s phone. The police can’t get an ongoing phone-tap warrant. They can get one for a short time, and then it must be removed unless a new warrant is obtained. To get a warrant, you have to go before a judge and show evidence of continued illegal activity.

I suppose the OPI highlighted conversations like the ones that I had with the painter and twisted then into accusations of obstruction, as opposed to evidence of long-running, slow-burning frustration, so that they could somehow justify the continued tapping of my phones. That’s the only way they could ever legally tap my phones for the five years of their investigation.

And they needed to justify the huge expense, because intercepting someone’s phones doesn’t end with the wiretap. Victoria Police members need to be allocated to listen to and transcribe every word said. Think about how much that costs in resources allocation! In the pursuit of me, money has never been an object. And I hope grass-roots coppers think about this every time their boss tells them that the budget doesn’t allow for some vital piece of equipment, or that there’s no money to pay overtime for the extra gruelling hours they do.

 

On 22 November 2008, Carl’s mother, Barbara Williams, was found dead in her home in Essendon. She’d overdosed on sleeping pills.11 With her older son Shane dead from an overdose a decade earlier, Carl in prison and her estranged husband George failing in an appeal to have his sentence reduced, the Primrose Street house must have seemed very lonely. Apparently, the police found an empty medicine bottle near her body. It was reported that she’d been unhappy that Carl had pleaded guilty to murder, and she feared he wouldn’t be released until she was long dead.

Carl and his father were told in prison of Barbara’s death. George was given permission to attend her funeral. Her son wasn’t.

In a death notice, Carl Williams wrote: ‘Mum, you used to stir me by calling me a mummy’s boy, however it was a tag I wore with pride cos you were also my best friend. You were always there to support me, no questions asked. You were the best mum I could have wished for.’

Nine days later, a huge daisy floral tribute covered the front of the altar at St Thérèse’s Church in Essendon.12 A picture of Williams and his mother was placed on top of the coffin. From prison, Williams sent a message to his mother. In part, it read:

There’s nothing I wouldn’t have done for you mum. Those conversations I had with you each morning on the phone were something I looked forward to. I used to visit you with the kids and all our problems would go away, we didn’t want those visits to end… There’s nothing in the world I would not have done for you. Losing you is the hardest thing I have ever had to deal with.

Roberta Williams was a little more blunt in her tribute at the church: ‘You provided so much love and loyalty against our enemies the Supreme Court judges and the police,’ she said. ‘You cared about other people more than yourself, which was the problem.’