Introduction

Where did this all begin? What came before I was the ‘disgraced former detective’ splashed regularly across the front page of the Herald Sun, made to look like a gangster courtesy of weird photo angles?

There was a time, not so long ago, when I was a cop. I did my job well; I was a team player and I fought on the side of good. Or so I thought. How did a kid from the country who dreamed of joining Victoria Police end up on the wrong side of the bars? There are a lot of reasons, and I hope this story will help clarify some of them, not only for you, the reader, but for me too, because a lot of the time, I am left shaking my head, wondering how things went so wrong.

I haven’t spoken up until now because I knew that at the height of this whole thing, my words would have more than likely been twisted and turned to suit whatever image of me Victoria Police and the media wanted to create. I tried once, and gave an interview to the Herald Sun. The headline screamed ‘I didn’t kill Carl Williams’, which wasn’t what the interview was about at all.

To a lad from the country, this has all been a steep learning curve. My parents urged me to speak out. I think it hurt them most to read stories that called their son a killer. I’d shake my head and explain that no-one wanted to hear my side of the story. Not yet.

But now it’s time.

To fully understand my story, here, in a nutshell, is what I have been accused of:

• Conspiring with fellow cop Dave Miechel and Terry Hodson, a known drug dealer and informer, to rob a drug house that my team from the Major Drug Investigation Division (MDID) had under surveillance and was preparing to raid.

• Organising for Dave and Terry to rob the house and spilt the proceeds evenly with me, while I stayed safely at home with 30 alibis.

• Driving to the St Kilda Road MDID headquarters as soon as I heard Dave and Terry had been arrested and spiriting away a copy of Terry Hodson’s blue informer folder, although my superintendent was on duty at the office at the time, as were a number of other cops, none of whom reported seeing me.

• Spreading the information in the blue folder around the underworld to let them know that Terry Hodson was a police informer – even though the minute Terry was arrested with a MDID cop, everyone knew anyway.

• Arranging for a hitman to kill Terry Hodson, although, being an experienced detective, I had no fear of ever being convicted of conspiring to burgle the drug house on the basis of his uncorroborated allegations against me, and hence no reason to have him killed.

• Getting Carl Williams to organise a second hitman to kill Hodson just to be on the safe side, because I didn’t have faith in the first hitman, and promising a $150,000 fee.

• Lying and misleading the Australian Crime Commission when I said I couldn’t remember what I was doing on particular days three and four years earlier – without being allowed to refer to my confiscated diaries.

• Organising to have Carl Williams murdered in prison so that he couldn’t testify against me at my trial for the murders of Terry and Christine Hodson, although his word, again with no corroboration, would not have been believed.

• Being so dangerous that I had to be shackled and held either in complete isolation or with Muslim terrorists for seven months in Barwon Prison’s notorious Acacia Unit, even though I’d worked and raised my family for five years since my initial suspension from the force without being dangerous at all.

• Being so dangerous that Garry Livermore, a lawyer for the Australian Crime Commission, could say at a hearing: ‘People who assist authorities in endeavouring to prosecute Paul Dale have got a pretty poor life expectancy. Two of them have been murdered.’ The quote is now used regularly in articles that mention my name.

And because all these things are regularly reported in the media, most of the public think I’m guilty when I have never actually been convicted of anything.

What has happened to me wasn’t an investigation; it was a witch-hunt. I never believed that the police could operate like this. If I was so guilty, why didn’t they just present their evidence and convict me?

But the story is bigger than just me. The wider political and social implications of what happened to me need to be recognised in order to prevent this happening to someone else – or at least to serve as a warning that it could.

In 2007, I was summonsed before the Australian Crime Commission, legally compelled to give up my right to remain silent, and promised indemnity and secrecy to answer all their questions. Before I knew it, transcripts of my ‘secret’ testimony were circulating in prison and I was being contacted by killers who weren’t happy. My family and I received death threats; one dangerous thug regularly rang my work and threatened to cut my wife’s throat. When asked to justify how this breach occurred, the ACC wrote to me basically saying they’d changed their mind about the secrecy bit.

This is dangerous stuff.

What is also dangerous is the growing tendency for Victoria Police to pay for testimony from convicted criminals who have zero credibility, and then to try their case in the media if they don’t get the result they want.

The wider implication is that if it happened to me, it can happen to anyone.

Bit by bit, I have pieced together this investigation by obtaining documents – including some that were never meant for my eyes. The following story is not just my recollection but comes from official police statements, and also from documents the police and the government didn’t want anyone to know about. Any reconstructions of events are based on the words of the people themselves from their sworn police statements.

As you read how this story unfolds, you can decide for yourself. I realise that during my trial by media, a lot of people have already judged me guilty; all I can do is humbly ask you to consider both sides of the story before making up your mind.

 

Paul Dale