Chapter 37

The Queen vs Paul Noel Dale

We did our best to avoid the ridiculous ACC charges going to trial, but it wasn’t to be. At the end of February 2013, I walked up the steps of the Supreme Court to begin what I hoped would be the last episode in this whole thing.

As much as I wanted to clear my name, part of me wanted to avoid going to trial because of the cost. The Police Association had funded all my other cases, but this one was going to hit me in the hip pocket big time. How many people can afford $4500 a day to defend themselves against a relentless attack from a police force that has already flaunted its deep pockets? From a financial point of view, I hoped it would be over in about two weeks, but I grossly underestimated the prosecution’s ability to draw it out.

Including trial preparation, pre-trial legal argument, and the actual trial, which would last into its seventh week, my legal bill would eventually be $310,000. You can add thousands of dollars in seven weeks’ lost income, as well as seven weeks of city accommodation and meals. I knew the strategy well. If the cops can drag a trial out and bleed a defendant dry financially, win or lose, the cops win.

More important is how much the trial costs you, the taxpayer. A trial on twelve charges based solely around whether I was closer to Carl Williams than I’d said I was probably cost the taxpayer at least $400,000 just for the legal team.

But despite the horrendous cost, a part of me wanted to go to trial, wanted to have this ridiculous flimsy case aired in front of a jury of my peers, wanted a resounding not guilty verdict. So I went to court with high thoughts of vindication in mind.

The opposition seemed to be aiming at the exact opposite. They set out to air every scrap of dirty linen they could, whether or not it had any bearing on the case. And the media lapped it up. For example, a court revelation from 2008, repeated by a police witness, that I’d admitted ‘infidelity in my life’ became the headline ‘Paul Dale had multiple mobile phones so he could cheat on wife, court told’.1

By the end of the trial, it would become clear that the danger was not in what the media said, but rather in what it didn’t say.

 

A jury pool is normally 30 people. For me, they got a pool of 60. Potential jurors were asked both if they could be available for a longer trial and if they felt that they could be impartial in a Paul Dale trial. Twenty-five people bowed out – some had preconceived ideas about me, while others would find a long trial onerous.

The remaining names were put into a hat and each potential juror walked across the front of the court. In the end, we got six men and six women of mixed ages and backgrounds. The foreman sounded like an educated bloke and he looked really switched on.

And then it all began.

It’s strange, sitting in the dock looking over at a dozen people into whose hands you’re putting your future. I tried not to catch the eye of any of them. It’s an awkward thing – you don’t want to look at them, and they avoid eye contact. Throughout the trial, I cast surreptitious glances at them to see how they reacted to things, and I guess they did the same back to me. It’s like a huge elephant in the room.

Directly opposite the jury were the media. There were a lot at the opening and would be a lot at the closing, and not so many in between.

From the start, it seemed that the prosecutor, Chris Beale, was going to drag the trial out as long as he could. His monotone would put members of the jury to sleep on more than one occasion. I always knew that the prosecution’s case relied for the most part on a few sentences from the tapes that Nicola Gobbo had recorded – or ‘the Gobbo tapes’, as they were known. When Chris Beale went on and on in his opening address, it became clear I was right.

The Crown made much of a brief conversation I’d had with Carl Williams one night when I was out with Nicola Gobbo at Crown casino. We were drunk and it was late when Nicola received a call from Williams. The two of them spoke for a while, then Nicola handed the telephone to me. I started by saying, ‘Hello, mate. G’day, buddy.’ The prosecution tried to say that this call showed I had a friendly association with Williams, but we were able to show that I use those words to open phone conversations, whether I’m speaking to a friend or foe.

I’d closed the conversation by saying ‘Let’s catch up, mate.’ The Crown tried to make a lot of this too, but my lawyer pointed out that it was just a stock phrase; catching up with Carl Williams certainly wasn’t something I’d followed through.

The Crown had no credible witness who’d seen me meet Carl Williams on any occasion other than those I’d documented in information reports when I was a cop.

When I was a detective, a case this flimsy would never get up. And if by some miracle it did, I’d have been embarrassed as a cop to rely on a few sentences on tape and the word of a couple of shifty crims. Back in my day, the cops wouldn’t charge anyone on that kind of evidence.

So why did they charge me?

From where I sat, it looked as if senior police and senior prosecutors wanted me in the dock at any cost. That meant that the only thing between me and the malice of this prosecution was the jury.

 

Sol Solomon had always been keen to get me, so I guess it was only fair that he was first cab off the rank. The main thing Chris Beale seemed to want from Sol was the back-story of the Hodson murders. I suppose this was to make it seem as if I was connected to something bigger and darker than what I’d been charged with.

The main thing my lawyer, Geoff Steward, wanted from Sol was the details about the incentives Carl Williams was offered in return for his statement.

Beale tried in vain to keep the offers from the jury.

‘You are aware that on 7 March 2007, Mr Dale appeared at an Australian Crime Commission examination?’ asked Beale.

‘Yes, I am,’ said Solomon.

‘Into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Terry and Christine Hodson?’

‘Yes,’ said Solomon.

‘You were actually an observer there?’

‘Yes, I was.’

‘After that examination, and I don’t want you to go into detail, can you simply confirm this: did Carl Williams provide certain information to police?

‘Yes, he did.’

Of course Beale didn’t want to go into any detail. He skipped over to Nicola Gobbo’s involvement, again keeping it short and sweet, and therefore lacking in detail.

‘Four days after that,’ said Beale, ‘on 30 November 2008, did you receive a telephone call from anybody?’

‘I did,’ said Sol.

‘Who?’

‘I received a telephone call from Ms Nicola Gobbo.’

‘A criminal barrister?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did she have anything to say in relation to Mr Dale?’

‘Yes, she did.’

From the dock, this line of questioning was like pulling teeth.

‘What did she indicate?’ asked Beale.

‘She called to advise me that she had received either a phone call or a text message from Paul Dale, who stated that he was coming to Melbourne that day and wanted to catch up with her.’

‘Yes?’

‘She asked whether I would like her to tape record the conversation and I said to her, “Are you prepared to do that?” She said she was. So I said, “Well, that would be fine if you’re okay with that, tape record the conversation.”’

Beale didn’t ask Sol whether he thought it was weird for a top criminal barrister to ring a detective and offer to tape a client. Nor did he mention that the moment she did it, her career would be over. What client would use a lawyer who, on a whim, might tape them for the police? And how would her underworld clients react to discovering she’d done something like that? Beale also didn’t explore any reasons or inducements she may have had for taping me. He made it sound casual, as if lawyers taped clients for police every day.

On cross-examination, my lawyer, Geoff Steward, was quick to get Sol Solomon to describe the week out of prison that Carl Williams enjoyed with his father and their respective girlfriends. Sol denied that the prisoners would have had any opportunity to fraternise with their girlfriends, even though he admitted he wasn’t with them all the time. Again, Solomon made it sound as if triple murderers were routinely released from prison to have Christmas with their crim dads and girlfriends.

It was then that my lawyer exposed a kink in Sol’s previous evidence. The detective had said at the committal hearing that he’d been present at the secret location at all times during the week Williams and his dad had been released from prison, but now he admitted that he hadn’t.

‘So to be suggesting at the committal, as you did on 9 November, that you were there the whole time that they were there, is wrong, isn’t it?’ asked Steward.

‘Yes,’ Solomon admitted.

‘You made a genuine mistake,’ the lawyer coaxed.

‘Yes.’

Steward pushed a little more. ‘You made a genuine mistake in attempting to recall events from three years earlier, didn’t you?’

‘Correct,’ said Solomon.

I snuck a peek at the jury and hoped that the point wasn’t lost on them.

At the committal, Solomon had done what they were accusing me of doing – failing to recall the particulars of events from years earlier.

Steward quickly switched tack. From Sol Solomon, he got a detailed list of all the people Carl Williams had admitted killing as well as those he’d been involved in killing, creating an image of the long trail of bodies Williams left in his wake.

Steward then asked Solomon to confirm exactly what the police had offered this drug-dealing multi-murderer for his statement.

After a bit of a legal stoush, in the end it was Beale, in re-examination, who clarified the extent of the offer. ‘Can you just clarify for us, please, the basis on which those negotiations were conducted?’ he asked.

‘In return for his truthful and accurate statement and sworn evidence in relation to the Hodson murders and some other matters,’ Solomon said, ‘he wanted the following conditions: he wanted an indemnity from prosecution in all of those matters, he wanted to be entitled to make a claim for the $1 million reward which had been offered by the state government regarding the Hodson murders, he wanted a tax debt in the vicinity of $700,000 which was owed by his father George to the Australian Tax Office to be dealt with, either removed or dealt with or paid by some other organisation, he wanted his father looked after in that regards, and he wanted an undertaking that when the time came for him to appear before the Appeal Court in relation to his sentence for the murders that he’d pleaded guilty to, he wanted an undertaking that the Crown would not oppose his application to request a reduction in sentence. They were the conditions.’

So there you have it, folks. That was the price Victoria Police agreed to pay in order to get Paul Dale.

‘Was he to receive any of those things prior to giving truthful sworn evidence?’ asked Beale.

‘No, he wasn’t.’

What Solomon had listed wasn’t everything. He forgot the bit about putting Williams’s daughter through private school.

I shook my head in disgust: Williams’s daughter was in private school, his father’s tax bill had been paid (although Victoria Police took the money back after the Moti ruling) and all this despite the very clear wording on all Victoria Police rewards: ‘…for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible’. The rules were obviously elastic when it came to pursuing me. Victoria Police had paid for statements from the lowest crims, murderers and drug dealers before they had a successful conviction.

 

My wife, Ditty, and Mum came to court every day of the trial. Dad came a couple of days each week, but he still had the butcher shop in Yackandandah to run. We had rented a friend’s place in the city for the duration, and had friends back in Wangaratta looking after the kids, who had school during the week. We drove home each weekend to be with them.

Before the trial, Ditty and I made sure we went to the kids’ school and spoke to the principal and the teachers to let them know what was happening and to make sure that our kids were supported. Ditty and I are actively involved in the school. I’m the main barbecue-hand at the school fete each year, and I coach the kids’ AusKick team.

Not only did we get amazing support from the school, but we got a lot of support from the community of Wangaratta. It’s really heartening to have people give you a wave, or stop you in the street and shake your hand and wish you luck. If Ditty was in the supermarket, she’d be ushered through the checkout first. Mates offered to mow the lawns at home while we were away.

These simple country gestures meant so much to us. It made a bloke humble.

 

The next witness was Carl Williams’s dad, George. As an ex-cop, I couldn’t believe that the judge, Justice Elizabeth Curtain, had even allowed a witness like him. She’d heard the crux of his evidence and inducements at the pre-trial stage, but let him through anyway. Early on in the trial, I couldn’t help but feel that the judge was favouring the prosecution side. But after George Williams gave evidence, the judge would surprise me.

Led by Chris Beale, George Williams began his story. He said that he and Carl and some others had run into me one day at Albert Park. This was the day I received my commendation at Government House, and I’d been out celebrating with my family. As Beale asked George Williams about the accidental meeting (which I’d documented as per protocol in an information report), a clear picture flashed into my head – a vision of me back then, a cop getting an award for service before all this started. Life was simple and easy. I got quite emotional. I bowed my head a little so that no-one could see my anguish.

George Williams told the court that he’d driven Williams to the Keilor Baths to meet me – another meeting I’d documented as per protocol. He said that when he got to the baths, Williams had asked if he had any money. George said that he had $6000 in cash, which he handed over to his son without question. The implication, of course, was that Williams would give the money to me.

‘Did he indicate what it was for?’ asked Beale.

‘I’m not sure if he indicated who it was for, no,’ said George Williams.

Beale didn’t ask him if it was odd that, if Williams was indeed paying a crooked cop for information, he didn’t actually bring money with him, but relied on whatever his dad might have in his pocket when he got to the location of the meeting.

George said that when Carl returned to the car, he’d told him we got in the water together. I’d been asked about this at the ACC hearing, and I’d said I couldn’t remember doing that. The fact I couldn’t recall it was the basis of one charge.

Beale then played tapes of me, drunk at Crown casino with Nicola Gobbo, phoning George Williams to ask Carl to call Nicola. The calls ran for 110 seconds, with me repeatedly saying things along the lines of ‘Tell Carl to phone Nicola – fuckin’ useless prick.’ I said nothing about speaking to Carl myself, but the Crown tried to portray these calls as a sign that I wanted to speak to him.

Next came the odd evidence of the supposed Hillside meeting. One of the questions I was asked at the ACC was whether I’d ever met Carl Williams at Hillside. I didn’t even know where Hillside was and I certainly had never met Carl Williams there. But the prosecution claimed I had.

Their evidence? A tracking device on George Williams’s car, which put him in Hillside, near where Carl lived, and a listening device that recorded Williams saying something like, ‘Here comes a blue ute.’

In the witness box, George Williams said that he’d driven Carl to Hillside, dropped him off to meet me, and then picked him up later. According to George, I was in a blue four-wheel drive, and he could see my profile at a distance and knew it was me. He said he left us, then returned. There were no phone records of his son asking him to come and collect him, because Carl had left his phone in George’s car. The whole meeting, he estimated, was around an hour and a half.

My lawyer asked if he was sure if it was a four-wheel drive.

George said he was positive.

When my lawyer asked for the actual tape to be played, Williams was clearly heard describing it as a ‘blue ute’. Now, here was George in court saying it was a blue four-wheel drive. Even to people who don’t know much about cars, there’s no mistaking the difference between a ute and a four-wheel drive. The cynic in me wondered if this subversion in George’s testimony was because the detectives had searched the records and found out that I owned a blue four-wheel drive at the time. Not a ute.

This was typical of testimony in my case. Squeeze and squash the square peg till it fits into the round hole.

When Beale’s examination finished, the judge interrupted him.

‘Mr Williams hasn’t been asked about when it was that this meeting at Hillside was said to have occurred.’

Beale told her that the date would be revealed in later testimony.

‘Shouldn’t he be asked in any event – he was there?’ asked the judge.

Beale turned from the judge to George. ‘Do you know the actual date on which you took him to Hillside for this meeting with Paul Dale?’

‘No,’ said George.

The fact that George Williams’s car had a tracking device that put him in the vague vicinity of where I was working at the time was pushed and pummelled to become evidence that we met. The fact that I was working with a construction team was not mentioned. The fact that the meeting allegedly took place during my working hours didn’t enter into things. The fact that anyone working on a construction team can’t just disappear for an hour and a half without being noticed also didn’t seem to bother the prosecution.

When my lawyer took over on cross-examination, he asked George Williams how much the Mercedes had cost.

‘Thirty-five thousand dollars.’

‘Where did you get the money from?’

‘Out of the bank,’ said George.

‘The money that was in the bank,’ persisted my lawyer, ‘did that come about as a result of proceeds of trafficking in drugs?’

‘No.’

‘You know that for sure, do you?’

‘I know that for sure,’ insisted George. ‘I was on WorkCover payments getting $840 a week.’

My lawyer let that one hang in the air, certain that the jury could put two and two together, and it wouldn’t add up to $35,000 cash for a Mercedes.

Next, Steward led George Williams into a discussion about his Christmas out of jail. George conceded that he and Williams both spent time with their respective partners in different rooms. He also said that after the Christmas break away from jail with his son, they were taken to Barwon Prison together. George had been granted a change of jail so that he could be with his son. Another benefit of their cooperation with the police.

Steward questioned George about the tax bill and how it had been paid. George also admitted that his granddaughter’s school fees were paid by Victoria Police.

Then Steward asked George about his past convictions for lying under oath.

‘You’ve previously gone before a hearing and taken an oath to tell the truth, haven’t you?’ asked Steward.

‘That’s right, yes.’

‘And lied on your oath?’ Steward pressed.

‘What do you mean I lied on my oath?’ George asked belligerently.

‘Picked up a Bible, swore to tell the truth and then proceeded to lie. You’ve done that, haven’t you?’

‘I think everyone’s done it, you know,’ George shrugged.

The judge reminded him that he was being asked about what he’d done.

‘I was found guilty by one person of lying.’

‘Who was the one person?’ Steward pressed.

‘A magistrate,’ George muttered.

Geoff Steward asked if George Williams was currently suing Victoria Police to retrieve the money they paid, then took back, from his tax bill.

‘Yes,’ he said.

George Williams also admitted that after he and Carl were put in Barwon Prison together, they had daily contact for six months before he made his statement to the police after he was released.

‘Did you discuss with him what you were going to put in your statements?’ Steward asked.

‘No,’ George replied.

‘Are you sure about that?’

‘Sure about that, yes,’ George said.

I hoped it sounded as unlikely to the jury as it sounded to me. Carl was in prison drawing up a wish list of goodies to wangle out of Victoria Police, and some of them are for his dad – but they didn’t talk about it on those long, boring days together?

George Williams was soon dismissed from the stand, and the judge addressed the jury before they were sent home for the weekend. ‘You will appreciate that your task is to, as I said to you, to listen and to observe and to comprehend what the witnesses say to you, because ultimately you are required to assess the truthfulness and accuracy and reliability of the evidence that’s placed before you, and come to a decision as to what evidence you accept and what weight you attach to that evidence in order to determine your verdict.

‘So, you’ve heard George Williams give evidence about what he says Carl Williams said to him on an occasion when he drove Carl Williams to the Keilor Baths and when… Carl Williams left the car and then at a later time returned to him.’ The judge then read the jury the answers that George had given earlier to questions about the Keilor Baths.

‘You will appreciate,’ she instructed, ‘that what’s relied upon here is therefore an out-of-court statement of Carl Williams’s that is something George Williams says Carl Williams said to him. Do you follow? It is relied upon, if you accept that those statements were made, as proof of that which it asserts, that is that Carl Williams was going to meet Paul Dale and that there was such a meeting between Paul Dale and Carl Williams where they put on trunks, got in the pool and walked up and down. So the evidence is put before you as truth of that which it asserts, because otherwise it would be hearsay… Now, what Carl Williams said to George Williams is hearsay, what we call an out-of-court statement, and as such, the law regards such evidence as potentially unreliable because the maker of it, here Carl Williams, is not here to be questioned about it.’

The judge went on to say that the jury couldn’t see Carl Williams tell the story and judge his truthfulness. She said that Williams could have had a reason to lie to his father, or that George could have remembered the events inaccurately. She cautioned them that the law said they needed to consider the potential unreliability of the evidence.

Yep, that restored my faith a little.

 

As with Carl Williams in the early days of my ordeal, the next witness had his name suppressed. I always suspected that the police wanted to suppress Williams’s name because if he were mentioned, people would immediately question his integrity. As well they should. It always sounded more effective in the media to say that an unnamed witness had come forward claiming that Paul Dale ordered the Hodson murders. I reckon the same happened with this next witness. If the public knew who he was, they’d be sure to question his motives – if they weren’t too busy shaking their heads in disbelief.

Witness B appeared via a video link from a secret location wearing prison greens. Naturally, one of Beale’s first questions had to be about him being in prison. The jury weren’t silly.

‘You are currently serving a jail sentence?’ asked Beale.

‘Yes,’ said Witness B, who oozed criminality. I couldn’t help myself. I looked over towards the jury to try to gauge their reaction to the obvious low calibre of yet another ‘star’ witness against me. I might be wrong, but they looked gobsmacked.

Witness B said he’d known Carl Williams since the late 1990s. He and Williams met regularly to discuss drug dealing. They spoke every day about the amphetamine business they set up together. He said that Williams had referred to a ‘bloke by the name of Paul in the police force, if we… were under surveillance or something, that he could let Carl know. He was Carl’s contact inside the police force.’ Oddly enough, Witness B then told the court that he and Williams knew they were under constant surveillance. I just hoped that the jury could see that they didn’t need to pay any cop to tell them what they already knew.

Witness B added detail to the meeting at Albert Park that had already been covered by George Williams, but Witness B’s story was different. George said that Williams and I had disappeared for half an hour to chat, but Witness B said we chatted for five or ten minutes. George’s story had the rogues’ gallery standing further up the road waiting for Williams; Witness B had them all doing coffee at Laurent’s. And then Witness B dropped a bombshell. He said that George Williams wasn’t even at the meeting in Albert Park.

‘I can’t remember George Williams being there,’ he insisted.

Witness B said that Carl Williams told him after that meeting that I gave him information.

On cross-examination, Geoff Steward laid right into Witness B, who quickly admitted that Carl Williams had lied to him before. Williams had told him he wasn’t sleeping with Roberta when he actually was. (She was married to someone else at the time.) Witness B said that Williams would never lie to him because he would end their friendship and close ‘other doors’ – whatever that meant. But Witness B had already admitted that Williams had lied to him and he hadn’t ended the friendship.

‘You found out that he lied to you?’

‘That’s right… Carl and Roberta Williams know I opposed the wedding from the start. Even on the day, I said to Carl, “You can change your mind, mate. Let’s get out of here.”’

Steward jumped from groomsmen to guns.

‘Did you forget a rather important part of your business partnership?’

‘Supplying guns and murder,’ said Witness B matter-of-factly.

Again, the jury looked gobsmacked while they listened to him talk about his role in the shooting of Jason Moran in a van full of kids. They looked gobsmacked when he described his drug dealing. They looked gobsmacked when he spoke about how he was good mates with ‘gentleman’ Mark Moran but that didn’t stop him supplying the gun that was used in Mark’s killing.

‘You live by the sword, you die by the sword.’ He shrugged. ‘It ain’t Mary Poppins school.’

I suppose it ain’t – unless Mary Poppins suddenly started traf­ficking huge quantities of drugs and popping her enemies like flies.

‘So you told the police of your involvement in at least three murders and an attempted murder, but you were charged with only one count of murder, is that right?’ asked Steward.

‘That’s right,’ Witness B admitted.

‘That was the deal you did with the police, right?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And the deal was that even though you were involved with a number of other crimes, you’d only be put up on one murder, correct?’

‘That’s right.’

During the break, it turned out that Witness B didn’t have indemnity for everything he was telling the court. The judge quickly fixed that after an adjournment. She offered him a certificate of indemnity.

‘Your Honour, I’ve already incriminated meself just before there,’ said Witness B. ‘Will that indemnity cover that as well, or it covers from now on?’

The judge assured him she’d make it retrospective to cover the morning’s evidence as well.

‘Okay, I’ll take that,’ said Witness B, as if he was shopping.

When the questioning resumed, Geoff Steward pushed for more details on how Witness B had supplied the killer with Jason Moran’s location – a kids’ footy game.

‘You told Carl Williams and whoever it was that he hired to kill Jason Moran that you had information that Jason was definitely going to be at a particular AusKick on a certain weekend?’

‘That’s right.’

‘You knew that that AusKick would be attended by children?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And what happened was that Jason Moran was murdered in front of how many children in his car?’

‘I think it was six or eight,’ Witness B conceded.

After that, it sounded a little lame when he said that even though he’d supplied the location of a children’s football game, the hit wasn’t supposed to happen there.

One interesting thing that Witness B said was that Carl Williams had confessed to him that he’d been responsible for the murder of gangland figure Graham ‘the Munster’ Kinniburgh.

Geoff Steward read out a statement Witness B had made to police in 2006: ‘It would have been within a month or two of me arriving in the unit [at Barwon Prison]. I asked him, “Why did you take the Munster out?” He told me that he believed that Lewis Moran was not about to find anyone willing to kill him, but he’d heard that the Munster was getting involved. Carl told me that he believed the Munster was capable of organising to have him killed so Carl took him out to remove the danger.’

Listening to this cemented something in my mind. I’d always suspected that Carl Williams had both Lewis Moran and Terry Hodson killed because they had a contract out to kill him. Williams had been taped talking about the contract to a journalist just weeks before the two men he spoke of were gunned down. Williams was later convicted of killing Lewis Moran, and then he admitted organising a hitman to kill Terry Hodson. The two were killed within weeks of each other. Now here was a self-confessed close friend of Williams’s saying that he’d had the Munster killed for the same reason.

If my theory is correct, then Williams really did take Victoria Police for a ride. All he had to do was invent a story that I orchestrated a murder that he’d done on his own for his own reasons – for reasons he’d used before. And for that, he’d get full indemnity and close to two million bucks.

Witness B then admitted under Steward’s questioning that he’d made tens of millions of dollars dealing drugs.

‘They were admissions you made to the police… correct?’

‘That’s right,’ said the crook. ‘I’m not hiding from the fact.’

‘You knew, didn’t you, that the sort of trafficking to which you had admitted to the police in various sworn statements was trafficking of an ilk that would attract or had as a maximum penalty life imprisonment, didn’t you?

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘Despite the fact that you made those admissions to the police as part of the deal for you to give evidence against other people or make statements against other people, I should say, including Paul Dale, you were not charged with one offence in relation to drug trafficking, were you?’

‘That’s right.’

‘This is an arrangement you came to with the police, is that right?’

‘And the prosecutors,’ said Witness B helpfully.

‘And the Victorian Office of Public Prosecutions, is that right?’

‘That’s right.’

After that, Steward got Witness B to admit that he’d lied on oath before. Witness B called it being ‘vague’ when giving his answers.

‘At the time… there was no deals on the table and I wasn’t prepared to tell them the truth,’ he said.

‘So I take it you lied?’

‘Yes.’

‘On your oath?’

‘Yes.’

Witness B got a little hot under the collar when Steward started to call him a liar and a dishonourable man. He denied that was so.

‘Did you have to lie to Nik Radev when you drove him to the secret location where he would then meet his death?’

Witness B shrugged. ‘Because like I said, we were planning to murder him and that’s how we did it.’

‘Did you lie to Nik Radev when you drove him to the place at which he would then meet his death?’ Steward repeated.

‘Yes, we lured him to the place, yes,’ Witness B conceded.

‘I’m suggesting to you that you are a thoroughly dishonourable human being.’

Witness B shrugged. ‘Like I said, he wasn’t a friend of mine.’

Steward then asked Witness B about a time in prison when Carl Williams had asked him to make a false statement about the murder of Mark Moran.

‘At the time I wasn’t… cutting any deals with the police,’ the witness explained.

It made my blood boil, sitting in court listening to a guy admit that after dealing enough drugs to warrant a life sentence and killing three people, he’d only be prosecuted for one murder and none of the drugs charges – in exchange for his lame statement against me.

Particularly galling was the fact that he admitted falsifying statements to back up Carl Williams and then lying to the police and to the court. But he said those were lies he was happy to tell when there was no deal on the table.

It was laughable that Beale was trying to make Witness B look credible. I just hoped the jury could see what I could see.

 

And now to the noodles. I said as soon as I was charged that any charge with the word ‘noodle’ in it was bound to be ridiculous: ‘The accused on the 26th of November, 2008… did give false evidence namely, stating that he did not ever meet Carl Williams at Noodle Box or Noodle Bar in Centreway in Keilor.’

Turned out I was right. Also turned out that there had never been a Noodle Box or Noodle Bar in Centreway in Keilor – a fact the prosecution only saw fit to check once the trial had started.

I’d been charged with saying I didn’t believe I’d met Carl Williams at a place that didn’t exist.

You’d think Prosecutor Beale, with a faint blush, would have had the grace to bow out of that one, but no. He recalled a witness from the local council and got her to admit that she’d found a planning permit for a restaurant called Yunos. She said the proprietor, Mr Yip, probably sold noodles as part of their menu, but she couldn’t be sure.

Steward asked, ‘The fact, however, remains, doesn’t it, that until 2010 the name under which this premises was operating… was Yunos?’

‘Correct.’

‘And I take it you’re not in a position to say what was on Mr Yip’s menu in 2004, are you?’

‘No, I’m not in a position to say that,’ the council worker admitted.

At that point, Beale could have said he’d ditch that charge. But he didn’t.

 

I told Geoff Steward that Cameron Davey would be totally convinced that I was guilty and would pull out all stops. But in the first day of his evidence, Davey was uncharacteristically mild mannered and helpful.

‘Mate, might have to take back what I said about Cameron Davey,’ I told Geoff.

But boy, on the second day, the Cameron Davey that I’d come to know reared his argumentative head. He got stuck on some point or other and refused to back down. Even the judge took him to task, but Davey refused to budge. I watched it all from the dock.

Witness after witness followed. My old boss on the building site said his records showed that on the day of the alleged Hillside meeting I either worked from 7.30 a.m to 4 p.m. or at the earliest, 3.30 p.m., which put me at work during the so-called hour-and-a-half meeting. He also said that every work ute on the site had been white. That was the standard. There were no blue utes at all. So, if I didn’t have one, and there were none on site, I wondered where Beale thought I might have got one.

The prosecution even got Joanne Smith, who had questioned me at the ACC hearings, to say she expected that, without the aid of diaries, I’d recall every detail of every meeting because they were with Carl Williams and that was memorable.

Was she kidding? In those days, Williams wasn’t memorable. In their attempts to make my interest in him look suspicious, Crown witnesses had already admitted that at the time there were no current MDID investigations into him. In any case, even the cops who had so far appeared at my trial had got things wrong, although they’d had recent access to their diaries.

 

In his long, long summing up, Chris Beale went on about a few words from my taped conversation with Nicola Gobbo. I’d said that Carl Williams had obviously made a statement against me, and I’d described it as ‘Very accurate to the point of every single time we met he seems to have documented it. There was some things that came out that clearly only him and me knew.’2

Beale said this was clear proof of my guilt. But if you look at that comment in context, I’d only been saying that Williams seemed to have documented when and where we met, not what we discussed. And the things ‘that only him and me knew’ were trivial details about where we might have met – although I had no memory of some of the meetings he’d claimed.

He tried to make the jury believe that the ACC were really good guys and what they did to me was okay. He opened by saying that I could have told the ACC that I was a member of Al-Qaeda if I’d wanted to, and he made the distinction that while you couldn’t be prosecuted for what you said to the ACC, it was clear that they could use your answers in the ‘investigative stage’.

Beale went on, ‘The answers before the ACC may, however, be used in the investigative process as verification for investigators that they are on the right track and, depending on how much detail a person provides, the answers may provide leads to the investigators so that they can go away and they can find other evidence which is then admissible evidence in the trial process.’

Ah, so even the prosecutor admitted that the ACC gets people in, questions them under what they believe is immunity, but then uses their answers against them – in my case, in aggressive, costly and prolonged prosecution.

Just in case the jury started to think this a tad unfair, Beale quickly told them: ‘You may think it’s a bit tough because the investigators can still make use of [a witness’s answers] in the ways I’ve described. Whatever you think about the powers that the ACC have and the limited nature of the protections that a person has in relation to the answers that they give… it’s not the issue. It’s not the task that is entrusted to you. If you get caught up in an argument about that issue, you need to think about the focus that you have to bring to your deliberations.’

Beale called it a bit harsh; I call it deception at the highest level. It was galling to hear Beale talk about the ACC to the jury as if what they did was fair and reasonable.

 

In his closing address, my lawyer pulled no punches. Geoff Steward tore strips off the prosecution’s case, piece by piece.

‘Here, in this case, you’ve witnessed a person being forced to answer questions and then being charged as a result of having done so. You’ve heard of grubby deals being done. You’ve heard of reliance being placed on scoundrels, murderers, drug traffickers, perjurers, and reliance being placed upon a woman, Nicola Gobbo, who you might regard as a disgrace to what ought be an honourable profession. You’ve been told about incentives and immunities being given to despicable people. You’ve witnessed the way in which an opportunistic State Office of Public Prosecutions deals with such people.’

He reminded them I’d never owned a blue ute and said I had a poor memory – I can’t even remember the address of the house I grew up in. Steward pointed out that there were 250 occasions during the ACC testimony when I couldn’t recall things without the aid of my diaries. He also challenged the prosecution’s interpretation of the Gobbo tapes. Apart from a few words that might have sounded suspicious, the rest of the tape was me declaring my innocence. I’d been covertly recorded saying, ‘The good thing about it, Nicola, is it’s a complete, utter load of crap.’ I’d also been taped making a prediction that was being acted out right now. I’d said, ‘Maybe they’re going to put me up on some trumped-up bullshit perjury charge.’3 Because that was exactly what had happened.

After Steward wrapped it up, the judge gave a fair and balanced summing-up of her own.

 

All things considered, when the jury finally left the courtroom, I felt confident that any normal reasonable person would see the case for what it was. I estimated that it would take the jury a couple of hours to sort through it all and come back with a verdict.

But waiting for the jury was like a journey into the depths of hell. Confidence turned to nervousness pretty quickly, and then my mind started swirling with possibilities. If I was found guilty, they’d throw the book at me. The maximum sentence for lying to the ACC was five years in prison – on each charge. I was facing twelve charges. A conviction would automatically warrant a jail sentence, because the prosecution had applied to have my charges heard in the Supreme Court. When George Williams was convicted of lying to the ACC, his case was heard in the Magistrate’s Court, and he was fined only $3000.

Mum, Ditty and I waited it out, sitting on a couch outside my lawyer’s office. Sometimes, a defendant can be held in custody while a jury is out, but the judge decided that I could be held in the custody of my lawyer.

I’m a pacer. In the courtyard-sized corridor, I did a lot of pacing the first day.

If the jury had a question, or when there was a verdict, Geoff Steward would get a phone call. Even though the door to his office was closed, every time Steward’s phone rang, the three of us almost stopped breathing. We’d then eavesdrop for his faint, ‘Yeah, g’day, mate,’ and know it wasn’t the court and then we’d all breathe again. Time became measured by the ringing of the phone.

The other pressure was that deliberations began on the Wednesday, and it looked as if they might go into the Thursday. Friday was Good Friday, which meant that if there was no verdict soon, deliberations would go into the following week because of the Easter break.

Near 6 p.m. on Wednesday night, we were called back and told that the jury hadn’t made a decision yet. We were sent home.

By Thursday, negative thoughts had crept into my head. It was impossible to keep them out. I had my computer with me, and in between pacing, I caught up on some stuff for my business. (In 2011, we’d sold the service station, and I’d started a drilling business with a friend.) Mum had brought a couple of books with her. Ditty got hooked on a card game on her iPhone. In between games, she’d Google my name and tell me what the latest media reports were saying.

The couch outside Geoff’s office, the pacing, the Googling, it all closed in and festered, then bam – I started to imagine that they’d find me guilty and that I’d be going to prison again and everything would be over.

I began to pray for no decision. At least that way, the court would be adjourned over Easter and I could go home and be with my kids – do normal stuff like Easter egg hunts and a long lunch with the family. Thoughts swirled that my Easter might instead mean being hauled into a van and taken to prison again.

Then the phone rang – a jury question at 5.30 p.m.

Walking over to the Supreme Court, I noticed the media swarming. Cameras flashed. Was this just a jury question? Did the journalists know something we didn’t?

The media seats in the court were suddenly full. Detectives arrived.

I looked at my wife. I could tell she felt the same way as me. Trying to look strong on the outside. Heart pounding inside. There was more to this.

The judge called the jury in. As they walked in, not one of them looked at me.

The judge asked if they had a verdict and if not, were they close?

My future hung on this.

‘We want one more hour,’ said the foreman. ‘We’re very close.’

The judge gave them until 7 p.m.

‘Did they look at you?’ Ditty asked.

‘No,’ I said miserably.

We worked ourselves into a frenzy. I was sure I was going to jail. We started to plan how Mum and Ditty would get home, assuming that I’d be taken away.

It was the toughest hour of my life. Of our lives.

I’ve never admired my wife more, seeing her stand by me, watching her in this hour that would decide our future. She’d lost friends over her support for me. Girlfriends had started conversations with ‘If my husband had affairs, I’d…’ But Ditty and I had dealt with the affairs ten years ago when it all happened. To see my wife looked down upon because she’d stood by me was really hard. What was also ironic was that friends who could cope with the fact that I’ve had shadows of murder and drug theft hanging over me drew the line at affairs.

‘I can deal with going to prison,’ I told Ditty, ‘as long as I know that you’re going to be strong and look after our kids. It’s not like I’m dying. It will only be for a while. Then I’ll be back. We will need to be strong.’

Ditty assured me everything would be okay. She’d stick by me no matter what.

At 6.45 p.m., we all left the couch and headed over to the court. I was shaking like a leaf.

The jury came in. This time, I didn’t watch to see if they looked at me. I stared straight ahead, hands behind my back, hardly daring to breathe.

The judge asked, ‘Have you reached a verdict?’

‘Yes,’ said the foreman.

The judge’s assistant read out the first charge.

‘How do you find?’

‘Not guilty.’

I relaxed a tiny bit.

I relaxed more and more with each not guilty verdict. And then I realised that they’d got to the end of reading out the charges and each time, the foreman had responded with two of the sweetest words I was ever likely to hear: ‘Not guilty.’

I turned to the jury and said thank you. I hope they heard me, since my voice cracked in the middle of saying it. Cracked with the force of emotion and relief.

I stepped down from the dock and scrambled to where Mum and Ditty were sitting and gave them a hug. I vaguely heard the judge thanking the jury and dismissing them, but Ditty, Mum and I were locked in a very emotional embrace. Then I hugged Geoff Steward.

All the hugging lasted till the court cleared.

As I stood on the steps of the court, a free man at last, Ditty told me not to say a word to the media.

‘Once you start, Paul, you won’t be able to shut up,’ she warned.

‘Aren’t you at least going to tell them what a great lawyer I am?’ Geoff joked.

In the end, I said nothing.

We’d started to walk down the street when one of the TV cameramen, walking backwards to film me, tripped over. Other cameramen stepped over him, but I stopped.

‘Are you okay, buddy?’ I asked. I reached down and pulled him to his feet. ‘I’m not meant to be talking to anyone, but are you okay, mate?’

The guy dusted himself off and kept filming.

Back at Geoff’s office, he insisted that we all go out for a drink.

At the pub, I rang Tony Hargreaves, who had flown out for an Easter holiday in New Zealand, and told him the good news. Tony was characteristically dispassionate. ‘Well done,’ he said.

In all the drinking and celebrating and pats on the back, it began to sink in that after ten years of police pursuit, it was all over. For the first time in a decade, I didn’t have charges hanging over my head. It felt euphoric.

 

An odd event occurred on the night of my verdict. A little after midnight, after my family and I finished our celebratory drinks, we had to drop into a hotel in Little Collins Street to get Mum’s bag, which she’d stored in the concierge locker. We were all staying the night at a friend’s place further up Little Collins Street.

As we were retrieving the bag, we saw two people from the court case who shall remain nameless arrive. One of them was in the process of booking a room and was being handed one of those little cartons of milk you get from reception. Meanwhile, out the front, the other person stood, looking sheepish.

The one outside said, ‘You caught us! We’re sprung!’ then incong­ruously hugged me. The other came and shook my hand.

Both these pillars of the community had taken the gloves off when it came to slamming me with infidelity accusations, and here they were, booking a room together at midnight in the shadows of Little Collins Street. I’m fairly certain they’re not married. At least, not to each other.

At the end of this, I have to be the better man. If I stoop to do what they did to me, then I am no different from them. And I want to be different from them.

 

As news of my verdict broke in the media, the ABC program 7.30 began its story on my acquittal with the words: ‘For much of this time, the media has been unable to tell the full story. Tonight, Senior Sergeant [sic] Paul Dale has been acquitted of the final charges against him, so his story can now be told…’

What a load of codswallop.

In my opinion, the media has always been able to tell the full story, but has been absolutely unwilling to do so. A glance at the headlines during my trial will give you a glimpse at exactly what the media chose to report on.

7.30 repeated the same old scenario: Dave and Terry are caught at the Oakleigh drug robbery; Terry says I did it; Terry is murdered before he can testify against me; Carl Williams comes forward and says I asked him to kill Terry, then he is murdered before he can testify against me. One story even called me the Teflon cop – nothing sticks.

What none of them chose to report on was that Terry only offered my name after he was threatened with a life sentence unless he could give them another cop, in which case, a reduced sentence was dangled in front of him – or possibly no sentence at all.

‘Dale did it,’ he said.

And they didn’t report that Carl Williams only named me after he was offered a reduced sentence, indemnity from further prosecution on what he said, the ability to claim the million-dollar reward, his father’s $750,000 tax bill paid, not to mention his daughter’s private education courtesy of Victoria Police – and God knows what else. And naturally, after inducements totalling the best part of two million bucks, Carl says, ‘Yeah, that’s right! Dale did it!’

Nope, the media chose to keep to the script. The Victoria Police script: ‘Dale did it’. End of story.

The media could have reported on the Witness B/George Williams court debacle. But they didn’t. Witness B – a triple murderer and major drug dealer – being offered a twelve-year minimum, all to get me on a lying charge. Fair trade-off? Do you really want that guy out on the streets in twelve years? You’d think there’d be a media storm, but there wasn’t a whisper.

When the real story was aired in the courtroom, the media – the ones who should be serving the public with the truth – were suspiciously silent. Except they splashed my decade-old affairs across the front pages of papers around the country. For the prosecution, it was important to try to humiliate me. For the media, it was exactly the same thing.

On bad days, I think, what bloody hope do I have?

But on good days, I know that my future lies in looking forward, not back.