Chapter 34

Media moves

On 30 September 2011, journalist Nick McKenzie wrote an article in the Age asking whether underworld figures might have ordered Williams’s death from outside the prison.1

Meanwhile, over at the Australian, Pia Akerman was talking about the dangers of the police courting people like Williams and paying for their testimony.2 The article was music to my ears – finally someone was stating the bleeding obvious in a case where the obvious was so deeply buried: you pay someone like Carl Williams, and he’ll say anything about anyone. Not only that, but the cops will take him out of jail for a week, show him the evidence they have, and then help him write a statement.

The rare article like that made me think some journalists were prepared to look beyond the repeated misinformation and seek a greater truth about what was happening to me. And at last, someone was questioning the police tactics of paying for testimony.

Journalist Adam Shand, who has since written a book on Carl Williams, echoed the thoughts of the Australian when he wrote an article highlighting career criminals who dealt their way into wealth and indemnity. In an article entitled ‘Worst criminals are now “untouchable”’, he quoted an unnamed source at commissioner level who agreed with him.3

 

In early November 2011, I pleaded not guilty to the whittled-down eleven charges of giving false evidence or misleading the Australian Crime Commission and one charge of disclosing to a person that I’d been summonsed to appear before the ACC.4

On 22 November, in a superb show of impartiality, a lawyer for the ACC, Garry Livermore, told the committal hearing, ‘People who assist authorities in endeavouring to prosecute Paul Dale have got a pretty poor life expectancy. Two of them have been murdered.’5

At the end of the month, Supreme Court Justice Terry Forrest lifted the suppression order on Nicola Gobbo’s name. Explaining his decision to lift the suppression order, the judge said that it had been widely reported that Nicola Gobbo had worn a wire, and that she was probably already at risk, so the disclosure of her name wouldn’t make things any worse.

 

In early December 2011, 38-year-old Matthew Johnson was sen-tenced to life in prison for killing Carl Williams. The judge, Justice Lex Lasry, was unequivocal in his condemnation of the assassin.

‘This was an appalling murder. It was a killing which appears to demonstrate your belief that you have some special entitlement to kill when you think it is appropriate, or your ego demands it according to some meaningless underworld prison code.’ Justice Lasry said that he was left with no choice but to punish Johnson with an ‘appropriately heavy sentence’, and ordered him to serve a minimum sentence of 32 years.

Johnson had pleaded not guilty, but he’d admitted killing Williams with the metal stem of the seat of an exercise bike. He said he’d acted in self-defence because he thought Williams was going to kill him; he’d been told so by Tommy Ivanovic, the other cellmate in Unit 1.

The video surveillance footage, however, showed Carl Williams sitting at a table reading when Matthew Johnson approached him from behind.

 

On 28 May 2011, I read an article in the Age by John Silvester elabo-rately entitled: ‘Hey, fellas, did it moniker to you that a nickname can be a bit crook?’ Silvester waxed lyrical about the names and euphemisms of gangland figures.6

Silvester suggested I was the detective who had twice let an armed robber called ‘The Runner’ escape. Eight years earlier, he’d written another article on The Runner, which said he’d escaped from Northfield Jail in March 1990.7 He was arrested in April in Melbourne and questioned over four more robberies. While being taken to the city watchhouse, he’d escaped from an unmarked police car.

While I know more than anyone the propensity of the media to lump as many disgraces on the chosen ones as they can, if Silvester had access to a calculator, he’d have realised that in 1990, I was 20 years old – a junior constable wearing down shoe leather on the streets of Brunswick, not a detective at the Armed Robbery Squad. Indeed, I was never in the Armed Robbery Squad. Not only that, but Silvester claimed I’d been ‘known for a time as “Killer”’, although the only reference to that nickname was in the statement and imagination of Dave Miechel’s girlfriend, a woman who had never laid eyes on me. At no time had I ever been called ‘Killer’ for any reason. The article was patently wrong, and I could prove it.

On my next visit to my solicitor, I took in the article and asked for his advice. I said I could prove that Silvester was wrong, and I’d even found out the name of the detective who had been in the car when The Runner escaped. My solicitor arranged for me to meet a barrister who dealt with civil cases.

I was full of righteous indignation until the barrister told me I’d have to prove that my reputation had been damaged.

‘And let’s face it,’ the barrister said, ‘your reputation is damaged anyway.’

In what sort of world can the media say whatever they like to turn you into a villain, then be allowed to lie about you and get away with it because the public think you’re a villain?

Sometimes this stuff makes my head spin so much, I reckon one day it’ll twist right off my shoulders.

 

It’s an open secret that Victoria Police leaks like a sieve when it comes to dealing with the media. This is how it works officially: there’s a media director who is directly responsible to the chief commissioner and leads a bunch of people whose job it is to deal with media releases and inquiries. Some will compile accident statistics, or organise access to divisions or squads, and basically wrangle the huge machine that is the media. It has been like that for years as a way of controlling the flow of information.

Sounds good in theory, but the model doesn’t take into account the personalities involved – both the ones wearing the blue uniform and the ones madly rushing for a deadline.

In the same way cops courted informers, the bigwig journos courted the cops. It has to be said that if a cop got a call from John Silvester or Andrew Rule or Geoff Wilkinson or Keith Moor, there was a lot of kudos in it. And so, instead of using the official channels of applying to Police Media to get information, the journos would go have a coffee at the Homicide Squad, or hang out with the Armed Robbery Squad detectives. Lines have always been blurred between the cops and the media with this fraternisation, just as they were when the cops dealt with the likes of Terry Hodson.

In the olden days, if leaks were too big and too significant, the police Ethical Standards Department would make a real effort to identify the source. These days, I’m not sure what happens. When Christine Nixon became the chief commissioner, she was very good at using the media. The media department went from half a dozen people to, I think, over a hundred.

 

Now, I’m not pointing the finger, but why is that most members of the public think I’m guilty of something?

Because of the media: the half-stories, the photo angles, the leaks that counter my story.