Chapter 40

The challenge

At the end of all of this, I want to hold Victoria Police accountable for what they have done, and I want the public to know the story behind the story. Even a cursory glance at the facts surrounding my case should make people think twice.

If the public believes the official police line and my subsequent portrayal in the media, then there’s not much I can do about that. However, even if people are happy to dismiss me as someone who must have done something wrong, then they also need to understand the wider implications. If I don’t speak up, my case will set a precedent for the future – that where there is no evidence, the police can buy it, or stretch the truth so much that it can make anyone look guilty. If that is the precedent, then everyone needs to be concerned.

I never thought this could happen to anyone, but it happened to me. I was just an average, hard-working cop with a young family, and I ended up spending seven months in one of Australia’s most brutal prisons – either in solitary confinement or with Muslim terrorists – without a trial.

What has happened to me is unbelievable to most people, but I’m no longer surprised. There was a point somewhere a couple of years back when the whole thing became ridiculous. If Sol Solomon had arrived on my doorstep to arrest me for JFK’s assassination with sworn – paid-for – statements from fifteen crooks, I’d simply have shrugged and followed him off to court. Again.

If the public are worried about what happened to me, then they also need to conclude that the charter of the Australian Crime Commission is seriously flawed. If they promise anonymity and indemnity in exchange for taking away a citizen’s right to remain silent, then they can’t take the promise back. ‘Sorry, we changed our mind’ should not be a component of our country’s legal system.

Now for my challenge.

Since 2003, Victoria Police has offered incentives and thrown literally millions of dollars at crooks and a lawyer to get statements to convict me. They haven’t succeeded, because I’m innocent. There’s nothing to find, because I did nothing wrong.

After a year at the Lorimer Taskforce hunting the Silk–Miller murderers, Inspector Paul Sheridan announced that he wanted to start the investigation from scratch – go back to day one. Once we looked at the information with fresh eyes and a fresh approach, we arrested the two killers and got a righteous conviction.

The original Homicide investigation identified 150 suspects in the killing of Terry Hodson and his wife. In the months before he died, when everyone knew he was a police informer, crooks had come knocking on his door, looking for him.

My question is: will anyone in Victoria Police have the guts to do what Sheridan did and go back to the beginning, starting with the question: If Paul Dale didn’t do it, who did?

How many taskforces are they going to throw at this before they get a team of investigators who aren’t told to focus on me? Ironically, Carl Williams said it best when he was being pushed by the OPI to implicate me: ‘They keep passing messages on through the prosecution though. Dale, Dale, they keep pushing the issue of Dale, so I don’t know why they’re pushing it or I don’t know what’s happening. Have you blokes been pushing or… do you have any idea why they’re pushing it?’1

I’ve copped it, but now it’s time to throw a punch back. Two chief commissioners have gone. This case has haunted Victoria Police since 2003. They have to ask if they’re going to continue this persecution or look elsewhere.

Will anyone in command ever have the guts to say, ‘If Dale didn’t do it, then let’s find out who did’? Will anyone have the integrity to go back to the original list of 150 suspects and take another look? Go back to the crime scene like real detectives and start from the beginning? Who would Terry and Christine Hodson have let into the house? Who would they have watched TV with, relaxing with alcohol and cocaine? Who would they have felt totally unthreatened by, so that Terry didn’t feel the need to put his handgun by his side as he usually did when he watched TV in the back room? Indeed, who might he have put the gun away for?

Who would have known about both sets of video surveillance tapes in order to remove them from the scene?

And what happened to Christine Hodson’s poodle? It’s not mentioned at the murder scene. Did someone kill the couple and then take the poodle? And if they did, why? And the other two guard dogs – one showing signs of intoxication – were they tested over a period of hours? How long would a dog show signs of intoxication for?

A part of me – the part that desperately wants to trust that the system we all rely on will eventually work – hopes that the chief commissioner will admit the mistakes of the past and have all the evidence re-examined. But the cynical, tired part of me believes that they probably won’t take another look; that they’ll shut down the whole investigation while declaring on front pages around the country that Paul Dale remains the only person of interest, so that I will be forever haunted by this.

Victoria Police have painted themselves into a corner. As much as anyone else, I realise that it would take a big gesture for the organisation to admit it is wrong. But the part of me who worked under its blue-and-white chequered flag, fighting under its banner of truth and fairness, hopes it does.

And if Victoria Police reopen the case properly, then I hope that when they do catch the people who killed Terry and Christine Hodson, they do it without the aid of financial inducements. Because at the end of the day, we need to trust that truth isn’t something to be bought and sold.