‘I may not be an angel, your honour, but I pride myself as being a police officer who hates crooks … For me to pass on that type of (murder) information, I’m sorry, I would never, ever do it.’
SENIOR SERGEANT PAUL MULLETT TO THE OFFICE OF POLICE INTEGRITY.
OF all the murders during the gangland war, the shooting of male prostitute Shane Chartres-Abbott was one that failed to generate more than a flicker of public interest.
He was not a colourful underworld figure, nor an innocent victim. He was just an opportunistic weirdo who specialised in sado-masochism and, from all reports, liked his work.
The case would sit dormant for nearly four years as police, the courts and the media concentrated on the high-profile murders involving the Morans, Carl Williams and the so-called Carlton Crew.
But the murder of Shane Chartres-Abbott was a time bomb that finally exploded to create high profile casualties and substantial collateral damage.
The breakthrough, when it came, exposed a litany of alleged corruption, cover-ups, leaks, disloyalty and attempted sabotage that would severely damage the reputation of the Victoria Police.
The case looked destined to remain unsolved until the hit man known as The Journeyman confessed to a senior Purana detective that he was the gunman.
By this time, many killers and bit players in the war had done deals to avoid life sentences, but The Journeyman’s admission still came as a shock.
He had already been sentenced to a minimum of nineteen years for his role in two contract killings and was not even considered a suspect for the male prostitute’s death.
If he had shut up, he would never have been a suspect for gunning down Chartres-Abbott. But was he credible?
In four decades in the underworld, The Journeyman had been motivated by self-interest. He had avoided several murder charges by forcing members of his gang to plead guilty on his behalf. He was a liar, a killer, and a manipulator.
Yet his explosive statement implicating himself in the Chartres-Abbott murder did not appear to be driven (at least on the surface) by self-preservation. Ultimately, he would go much further — implicating one serving and one former detective in an alleged monstrous conspiracy.
He named Detective Sergeant Peter ‘Stash’ Lalor and former Detective Sergeant David ‘Docket’ Waters. Even though The Journeyman was rightly considered a habitual liar, so much of his statement was corroborated that senior police set up a special taskforce, code-named Briars, to investigate any alleged links between a bent victim, supposedly bent cops and a bent hit man.
It is hard to feel much sympathy for the murder victim. At the time he was killed he was standing trial for raping, bashing and biting a female client.
Chartres-Abbott’s defence on the charge was as bizarre as his lifestyle. In 2002, he went to the Saville Hotel in South Yarra to a booking. He was to see a Thai woman — it was not their first meeting but it would be their last.
What was supposed to be a session of commercial sex-on-the-edge descended into dangerous violence.
When staff found the woman around 5am she was covered in bruises and bite-marks, had been raped, and part of her tongue was missing.
Chartres-Abbott was immediately the obvious suspect and was soon arrested.
If the case weren’t weird enough, it got worse when the victim told police the male prostitute had informed her he was a 200-year-old vampire. This would severely limit his chance of accepting any daytime bookings.
The suspect’s defence began as a traditional one. Yes, he had been to the hotel, but when he left the woman had not been attacked and raped. From there the defence case spiraled from the bizarre to the unbelievable. He claimed the victim told him he was being set up. He also claimed she warned him that vice bosses had cast him as the victim in a snuff movie so he fled the hotel before he could be grabbed.
His defence was somewhat weakened when it was revealed that when he was arrested he had the victim’s blood on his pants and her phone in his bag.
A few days into his County Court trial, his legal team successfully sought removal of the accused’s home address from any paperwork on security grounds.
It was too late. The killers already knew where to get him. Within 24 hours he was dead.
As he left his home on 4 June 2003, to head to Court, two men appeared. One attacked Chartres-Abbott’s pregnant girlfriend and her father to distract them while the second shot and killed him.
He was shot in the neck. Vampires hate that.
There were many theories, the most popular being that his bosses in the vice world, concerned he might do a deal and tell all to authorities about their racket, ordered his execution.
But it now appears the motive was much simpler. Someone very close to the victim was not prepared to leave justice to the system and offered a contract to kill the baby-faced, sado-masochistic prostitute.
The Journeyman, acting as a freelance hit man, would tell police he accepted the offer. But what mattered most was that he also told them he was helped from within police ranks.
He told detectives he drank with the serving policeman Lalor and the former policeman Waters in a Carlton hotel and discussed the hit with them. He made a statement that he asked Lalor to help find the address of the target and assist him with an alibi.
He claims the policeman did provide the address and also helped set up, if not an alibi, at least a set of circumstances designed to confuse investigators.
The Journeyman had outstanding warrants for a spate of driving offences. He walked into the Prahran police station to give himself up just eight hours after the shooting. The theory being that a killer would want to make himself scarce after a shooting and not walk into the lion’s den.
The man who arrested the Journeyman at the station over the warrants was ‘Stash’ Lalor, though in itself this was not necessarily proof Lalor was a party to a murder plot.
The Journeyman is violent, disingenuous and disloyal so why would Waters and Lalor choose to drink with him, if indeed either of them had? Or perhaps only one had.
Intriguingly, ‘Docket’ Waters had been charged and acquitted of drug offences in a case where a key witness had refused to testify.
Investigators believe a jailhouse deal resulted in the key witness in the case refusing to testify in exchange for a guarantee that a major witness in his upcoming murder trial also remained silent.
In both cases the witnesses refused to co-operate.
The prisoner who was said to have set up the deal on behalf of police charged with drug offences was The Journeyman.
Still waters can run deep.
WHEN The Journeyman made his confession, senior police set up Operation Briars in May 2007. It was to be the most secret taskforce in Victoria.
Until it wasn’t.
Age investigative journalist Nick McKenzie learned of the Briars investigation and approached Deputy Commissioner Simon Overland for comment.
Overland spoke to McKenzie and told him if he ran a story it would tip off the targets and destroy the infant investigation.
McKenzie agreed to sit on the story until there was a breakthrough or until Lalor and Waters became aware they were under investigation.
But the fact that the information had leaked to the media disturbed Briars investigators, senior police and the Office of Police Integrity.
At some point (the date remains unclear) the OPI Director, George Brouwer, became so concerned that confidential police information continued to leak that he ordered another secret investigation.
And what that probe was to find would expose a hidden world of backstabbing, Machiavellian empire building and questionable personal relationships that led to the very heart of police command.
In November 2007 the OPI activated its rarely used powers to hold public hearings where witnesses are compelled to give evidence and may be called to account for previous sworn testimony delivered in secret sessions.
In just six days those public hearings exposed, humiliated and discarded two trusted senior police officials and left the head of the powerful police union fighting for his career.
The fallout was long and bloody, with prolonged faction fighting, industrial unrest, protracted legal action and damaged morale.
But the main allegation on the table, and the supposed real reason for open hearings, remained unproven.
The central claim made in the opening address by Counsel assisting the inquiry, Doctor Greg Lyon, SC, was that a sinister chain that began with senior police and ended with a maverick police union boss had effectively nobbled Briars.
The hearings provided plenty of smoke and mirrors — without finding the smoking gun. The OPI believes the murder investigation was deliberately sabotaged — an act of cold-blooded betrayal that if proven would result in an unprecedented corruption scandal and certain jail time for the offenders.
The chain, as alleged within the hearings, was that police media director Stephen Linnell improperly passed information on the investigation to assistant commissioner Noel Ashby, who told Police Association secretary Paul Mullett, who passed it to association president Brian Rix. The chain had allegedly ended with the target, Detective Sergeant Peter Lalor.
Linnell and Ashby were the first casualties — both resigning after their damning telephone conversations showed how they lied to private OPI hearings, improperly discussed the hearings, played poisonous internal politics and leaked information.
The head of the police media unit, Inspector Glen Weir (previously Ashby’s staff officer), was suspended after it was alleged he discussed the private OPI hearings. Weir was a bit-player who maintains he did nothing wrong but was swept away in a tidal wave of allegations and intrigue.
Meanwhile the major target — Senior Sergeant Mullett — was suspended from the police force while maintaining his innocence and holding onto his position as association secretary.
All may face criminal charges — not for derailing Briars, but for talking about the hearings, an offence that carries a maximum penalty of a year in jail. Another possible breach included the Telecommunications Interception Act, which prohibits discussing possible phone taps, an offence that carries a maximum of two years jail.
Plus Linnell and Ashby may face the additional — and much more serious — perjury charges.
To understand how the claims of a conspiracy to sabotage a murder investigation became public it is necessary to understand the agendas of three complex organisations — the Police Association, the police force and the OPI itself. Then it is necessary to examine how three separate investigations ended up concentrating on the same group of characters.
PAUL Mullett may be the most powerful union boss in Australia — although his workforce does not strike. He has the ear of senior politicians and while he can be a loyal friend, he is an unrelenting enemy.
Both sides of Parliament have duchessed him. He was sounded out to be a Liberal candidate — then former Premier, Steve Bracks, signed a secret deal with him to try to neutralise the association as a political lobby group during the 2006 state election. When he rings politicians, senior police or top-level bureaucrats, they rarely put him on hold.
Mullett believes that Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon has improperly used her power behind the scenes to try to unseat him — an allegation she rejects. His response, as it always is when threatened, is to attack — first in public and later in the back room.
‘Fish’ Mullett is an old-style detective with two police valour awards who has never shied from a fight. Those who know him claim he thinks the Marquess of Queensberry rules are for the fainthearted, the weak-kneed and the sexually confused. He fights to win at all costs.
Believing Nixon was favouring an anti-Mullett Police Association faction, Mullett contributed to a covert campaign against the union’s then president, Sergeant Janet Mitchell.
Mullett called on an old mate from his St Kilda days and associate delegate, Detective Sergeant Peter ‘Stash’ Lalor, to be his hatchet man.
Lalor became ‘Kit Walker’ (The comic book super hero The Phantom’s ‘real’ name), a notorious emailer who wrote false and defamatory reports on Mitchell that were distributed on the police computer system.
So why ‘Kit Walker’? Both Stash and Fish had worked in the armed robbery squad in the 1980s and one of the squad’s highest profile scalps was notorious gunman and escapee Russell ‘Mad Dog’ Cox, arrested at Doncaster Shopping Town with the equally dangerous Raymond John Denning in 1988.
Cox had spent eleven years on the run after escaping from the infamous Katingal maximum-security division of Sydney’s Long Bay Jail in 1977.
Perhaps coincidentally, while Cox was on the run he also adopted The Phantom’s name of ‘Mr Walker’.
The Lalor campaign so enraged the then Police Association executive member, the head of Purana, Detective Inspector Gavan Ryan, that he said: ‘I’ve worked homicide for a long time and I’ve dealt with a lot of crooks, bad crooks. Most of them have more morals than the cowards that send out these malicious, defamatory emails against her.’
At the time Lalor was suspected of being just a character assassinator. Later Briars would link him to a paid assassin.
During the faction fighting, Mullett was on the verge of losing his power base. He started to look for another job, thinking his time was up. And then in May 2006 his enemy unwittingly handed him a lifeline. Nixon announced she had ordered a bullying inquiry into Mullett, saying she was obligated at law to examine the allegation.
But rather than spearing the ‘Fish’, it shored up his position because he astutely suggested the inquiry was an attack on the independence of the police union rather than a lawful investigation.
While his relationship with Nixon descended into hatred and vitriol he cultivated assistant commissioner Ashby — the man overlooked for the top job in 2001 and who still harboured ambitions to be chief.
Ashby was assigned to deal with Mullett over pay-rise negotiations and the two spoke nearly every day. They talked work and gossiped. Ashby passed on information that he thought could damage his main rival, Simon Overland.
But the OPI claims that Ashby did more, that he improperly discussed OPI hearings, warned Mullett his phone could be tapped and leaked information on Operation Briars, including the names of the two targets.
What is known is that after Ashby told Mullett that his phones were tapped the union boss told Brian Rix to warn Lalor. Mullett says he asked Rix, a former head of the homicide squad, to tell Lalor to ‘be careful who he talked to’.
But he said his warning related to the bullying allegations and the Walker investigations, not Operation Briars.
But within five minutes of Lalor being warned, he rang Waters to say they needed to meet. The question that remains unanswered is why he needed to meet Waters urgently when the former policeman did not appear to be involved in the Kit Walker matter.
Before the tip-off, Lalor and Waters were taped chirping on their phones regularly. But, according to the OPI, their demeanour on the phone changed — as if they knew someone could be listening.
But what was also discovered was that both men had wide-ranging contacts within policing although both had questionable reputations. Waters had twice been charged (and acquitted) of serious criminal charges.
The most generous description of ‘Docket’ in his policing days was that he was a colourful rogue. But once he left policing he began to associate with gangland figures who were the subject of organised crime investigations.
In his annual report, OPI Director, George Brouwer, wrote: ‘Sometimes, the most influential member of a (corrupt) group is a former police officer who continues to connect with, and exert influence over, current serving members who are willing to engage in corrupt conduct. Many of these former police resigned from Victoria Police while they were under investigation.’ The OPI sought and was granted warrants to tap the phones of Mullett, Ashby and Linnell. The timing and the evidence provided to justify the taps remains secret.
It was a bold and crucial move. As union secretary, Mullett was deep in complex pay negotiations with senior police at the time his phone was monitored. If it had become public that his phone was bugged or if information on union strategy was improperly used, the negotiations would have collapsed.
Mullett says the OPI targeted him because of the Kit Walker claims. The truth is that an experienced policeman like him would have known that such a minor offence could not legally justify tapping telephones.
The OPI says its probe was into high-level leaks and that is how Mullett became involved. But if so, why was the OPI investigation given the code Diana — the name of The Phantom’s long time girlfriend?
It was through the recorded conversations of Ashby and Linnell rather than Mullett that it became clear there was a serious problem. It was quickly established the media director had inappropriately given the assistant commissioner information on Briars. But there is no suggestion that either wanted to damage the investigation.
Linnell was then set up from within and fed information to see if he would leak. He did — within eleven seconds. It was the perfect trap: Doctor Lyon told the hearings it was ‘flushing dye through the pipes, so to speak’.
The Briars investigation was so secret that the taskforce, made up of trusted homicide and ethical standards detectives, was sent to a separate building, away from prying eyes.
In September, Lalor was suspended but not charged. This presumably means that the taskforce was unable to find sufficient evidence to support the hit man’s version of events. So while Lalor is entitled to the presumption of innocence, his career might still be over. Even if he is never charged over the murder, the Kit Walker allegations and his questionable relationship with the hit man via ‘Docket’ Waters are sackable offences. And those who had time for ‘Stash’ may look at him in a different light when they consider his alleged links with a career criminal who once shot and crippled a policeman.
On 14 September 2007, he spoke on the phone (knowing it was bugged) saying, ‘Yeah, they’ve suspended me with pay for the time being. Overland wanted me charged . . . and I’m told — well, you don’t know whether it’s true or not, but it says Ron Iddles is lead — is the lead investigator in this. He and Ron had an argument over the fact that I should have been charged, and the story goes that Ron didn’t think there was sufficient evidence at this stage to do that.’
The rumour that swept policing (falsely, as it would turn out) was that there had been a dispute between Simon Overland and Detective Senior Sergeant Ron Iddles over the handling of the case.
The truth was there had been discussions about charging Lalor but it was decided there was not enough evidence.
Mullett claims the investigation into him was personally and politically driven. Intriguingly, Lalor was suspended on 12 September — the same day Mullett finally signed off on the Enterprise Bargaining Agreement. Senior police say it is a coincidence.
The OPI investigations have shown that at the very least, both Mullett and Nixon had flawed judgment when it came to confidantes. Nixon appointed Linnell, subsequently exposed as secretly supporting Ashby’s unofficial dirty tricks campaign as the senior policeman pushed to become the next chief commissioner. And Mullett relied on Lalor, whose deep flaws have also been exposed.
The OPI inquiry also exposed that Ashby was jealous of Overland and resented Nixon. The phone taps showed he was prepared to leak damaging material to further his own ambitions.
The fact that Nixon could not rely on all her senior officers was no surprise to her. When appointed for her second term in February 2006 she told The Age she was determined to outlast her enemies in the force who expected her to leave after one term. She said many had already left but ‘there are a few more who won’t outlast me as time goes on’.
IN the end he had no choice.
His reputation in tatters after two days of humiliating cross-examination in Office of Police Integrity hearings, Assistant Commissioner Noel Ashby, 51, saw his future hopes collapse as his past overtook him.
On 9 November 2007, he offered his resignation to his boss Christine Nixon. It was accepted without hesitation.
Having joined the force at sixteen as a cadet, Ashby had risen through the ranks and was eligible to retire with superannuation worth well over $1 million.
But had he been charged and convicted of a criminal offence, courts would have the power to review his payout.
As the assistant commissioner in charge of traffic, Ashby was one of the best-known faces in the force. A hard worker and notorious gossip, he was driven by the desire to one day be chief commissioner.
He worked his way up through the ranks in tough areas such as homicide and moved from investigator to manager as he built an impressive CV, always with an eye to the next rung on the ladder. He gained academic qualifications at Monash University, was promoted to assistant commissioner in 1998 and later awarded the prestigious Australian Police Medal.
Having been beaten for the chief commissioner’s job by Ms Nixon in 2001 he was to successfully run a region as an assistant commissioner before working his way back to the inner sanctum.
A smooth networker, he courted colleagues, journalists and politicians, always with an eye to the top police job.
But he saw his colleague Simon Overland as his main rival. Overland, four years younger, a former federal policeman with a Bachelor of Arts in administration, a Bachelor of Laws with first-class honours and a Graduate Diploma in Legal Studies, was given the high-profile job of Assistant Commissioner (Crime) and oversaw the successful Purana Taskforce that investigated the gangland killings.
Selected by Nixon and then promoted to Deputy Commissioner, Overland was clearly the frontrunner to be the next chief. And Ashby was angry. He believed he had been shafted and began to run his own campaign for the top. ‘Don’t always put your money on frontrunners,’ he once said. He schmoozed Mullett (a man with powerful political allies) and persuaded police media director Steve Linnell to act as his unofficial campaign manager.
Ashby continued to believe he could one day be chief. His taped phone calls were peppered with references to political networking. He never missed a chance to remind listeners that (unlike Overland and Nixon) he was a local and that he could deal with Mullett and the police association, whereas Overland and Mullett had fallen out. He believed the government would want a chief commissioner who knew which strings to pull to provide industrial peace.
And the phone taps showed how the canny Mullett played on Ashby’s blatant personal agenda.
In one call, Mullett stokes Ashby’s ambition with just a few sly words: ‘Yeah mate, er, I heard though that your stocks are rising, er, in the, er, in front of the premier.’
Ashby: ‘Oh, are they?’
Mullett: ‘Yeah, yeah, significantly, apparently.’
The OPI hearings were to examine whether the Briars investigation had been undermined but ended by showing that Nixon had been betrayed by two of her insiders.
The tapes exposed an ugly side of the police hierarchy but it was the sort of office politics that exists in nearly all large corporations. The difference, in this case, was only that it was caught on tape and aired in public.
Both men persisted in talking on telephones even when they suspected they were bugged. Even gangland killer Carl Williams knew better than to talk on suspect mobiles — and he ended up getting 35 years jail.
What is clear is that when both men realised they were under investigation, they panicked and tried to patch together a protective quilt of half-truths and optimistic alibis. It was never going to work, and the very attempt may have left them open to criminal charges.
It is possible they are innocent of the original allegation of leaking but, like Richard Nixon facing the Watergate scandal, they could be sunk by the attempted cover-up.
Despite the fruitless search for an escape, Ashby would have known that when call after recorded call was played back to him in the hearings that he was finished.
On 15 August Linnell warned Ashby to ‘be careful’, implying Mullett’s phone was tapped. On 25 September, Linnell warned Ashby he could be called to give evidence at a closed session of the OPI — a direct breach of secrecy provisions. Then the two talked tactics. It was a recipe for disaster — or more accurately, the formula for a poisoned pill.
STEVE Linnell was always more interested in political intrigue than cops and robbers. He was a cloak-and-dagger rather than a blood-and-guts man.
As a successful football writer with The Age, he slowly lost interest in the game itself as he became fascinated by powerbrokers behind the scenes.
He cultivated highly-placed sources within the AFL and those relationships were mutually beneficial. Linnell had plenty of scoops and his sources’ points of view were always well represented.
After reaching the top in the sports section, he was eventually appointed general news editor. He was popular, hard-working, irreverent and always up to date with the latest office politics.
His decision to abandon daily journalism in 2003 for the highly-paid police media director’s job came as a surprise. During the selection process, one senior officer was warned that Linnell was a ‘wild card’ who lacked the experience for the job and was liable to be manipulated.
Before he left The Age he was warned to be wary of cut-throat police politics because it could be career-ending and to try to temper his locker-room language because it could be used against him. He ignored the advice. Former media director Bruce Tobin offered to provide a background briefing on the job and the key players in the force. Linnell declined, preferring to wander into the minefield without a map.
He soon forged a strong relationship with Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon and became responsible for a staff of 101. He became Media and Corporate Communications Director and controlled not only dealings with the media but publications such as Police Life and the police website. Behind the scenes, Linnell wanted to be a kingmaker. He became increasingly distant from the working media and appeared to embrace a role as a political numbers man.
He also started to champion his ‘best friend and mentor’, Noel Ashby, as a future chief commissioner. Linnell and Ashby gossiped regularly, plotted privately, talked footy and bagged colleagues, sometimes light-heartedly and at other times viciously. But it was perhaps a one-sided relationship.
Ashby, consumed with ambition, saw his colleague Simon Overland as his main rival and believed Nixon was giving the former federal policeman the inside running for the top job. He used his friendship with Linnell to further his own ends.
When Nixon appointed Overland and Kieran Walshe to become the two deputy commissioners, Ashby felt snubbed and rejected. This further fed his burning jealousy and he rarely resisted a chance to privately criticise Overland as naive and inflexible.
Overland had become the public face of the Purana gangland taskforce and, while he didn’t court publicity, it followed him: with each murder and, later, with each arrest, his media profile grew.
Overland worked out of the St Kilda Road crime complex, while the media director’s office was in the Victoria Police Centre in Flinders Street, well away from the real action. Linnell felt snubbed and complained that he was being kept out of the loop.
Ironically, when he was brought into the loop he managed to wrap it around his own neck. When he was given explosive confidential information, it would destroy his career.
A committee to oversee the Briars taskforce was set up. It consisted of Nixon, Overland, Ethical Standards Department Assistant Commissioner Luke Cornelius and Linnell. Senior investigators were concerned that Linnell would be privy to the inner workings of the taskforce, but because of the explosive nature of the claims Nixon wanted a media strategy for the firestorm that would erupt when the allegations broke.
The targets of Briars — Lalor and former detective sergeant Waters — continued on their daily routines, apparently unaware they were the subjects of the highest priority investigation in Victoria.
And then the phones went cold. The two targets appeared to have been tipped off. On 15 August, Linnell showed Ashby the confidential terms of reference from Operation Briars. The same day, Linnell warned Ashby that Police Association Secretary Paul Mullett’s phone might be bugged.
LINNELL: Did you talk to Mullett on the phone yesterday?
ASHBY: Yes.
LINNELL: Right.
ASHBY: I speak to him probably quite regularly, why?
LINNELL: Just got to be careful, that’s all.
ASHBY: Why, is he being recorded?
LINNELL: Just be careful.
ASHBY: Is he being recorded?
LINNELL: Um, I can’t say.
ASHBY: He might be?
LINNELL: I can’t — I’m not — I can’t say. Talk to you later.
ASHBY: Fuck. Can you come and see me? I did talk to him yesterday, right?
LINNELL: Um, come and … ASHBY: I’ll ring you on a hard line.
On the same day the two talked about Overland.
LINNELL: You know, it’s not as — it’s certainly not as though you’ve had a fucking easy ride, like that c… (Deputy Commissioner Simon) Overland. That’s what shits me.
ASHBY: Yeah, I …
LINNELL: You know, all — all the shit you’ve had to deal with over the years …
ASHBY: Yeah, and …
LINNELL: and there would be fucking shit that I wouldn’t even be able to dream of, and the hard f…ing yards, and that c… swans in at age fucking 45 or whatever he is …
ASHBY: And straight to a deputy’s job.
In September, Linnell was subpoenaed to appear at the OPI for secret hearings. A series of recorded phone calls show how he veered from outright panic to false bravado and was hopelessly out of his depth.
Linnell’s lack of understanding of the law, the separation of powers and the secrecy provisions of the OPI can be illustrated by his ham-fisted approach to Premier John Brumby’s senior adviser, Sharon McCrohan, at the Geelong-Collingwood preliminary final on 21 September.
In a recorded conversation with Ashby, Linnell said he spoke to her about his appointment with the OPI. ‘And I said, “I’m going to a place soon that I can’t talk to you about”’.’
He claimed McCrohan asked what it was about and he replied, ‘I can’t tell ya’.
He said she asked: ‘You have been called up (to the OPI)?’ Linnell said he replied: ‘Yeah, and I’m not happy.’
On 25 September, he spoke to Ashby about the evidence he had given at a secret OPI hearing that day — a clear breach of the secrecy provisions.
If he felt his private conversation with his mentor would remain that way, he was mistaken. Just two days later, Mullett rang Ashby. It was no fishing expedition, as the police union boss clearly already knew of the OPI probe. Mullett asked: ‘Did your mate attend at that location?’, and Ashby did not hesitate: ‘Oh, yeah, absolutely.’
On Sunday, 30 September, Ashby met Mullett in a shopping centre and handed him an application to rejoin the Police Association five years after he had quit — a clear sign he wanted the powerful union’s deep pockets to assist with his looming legal liabilities.
It would appear that Ashby had begun to lower the lifeboat, but there would be room for only one on board.
Having stabbed some of his senior colleagues in the back out of misguided loyalty to his mentor and then being betrayed himself, Linnell finally fell on his sword. He resigned and admitted he had misled the OPI.
He had no choice but to admit that he had told Ashby details of Operation Briars. But there has been no suggestion that he did so to sabotage the operation or warn the targets.
According to a former colleague, Linnell ‘lived the job. He took everything personally and tended to panic under pressure. It could be seven in the morning when he would start swearing about the latest drama and I would say, “Hey, are we going to be paid this week? Just calm down.”’
He said the 39-year-old Linnell had aged markedly in the previous two years. ‘Despite what was on those tapes, he is a good bloke. He just got sucked into the politics. What has happened to him is a real tragedy.’
For the OPI the sensational public hearings did not produce hard evidence that the chain of Linnell to Ashby to Mullett to Rix led to the Briars tip-off.
In fact they haven’t proved that Lalor was tipped off at all. The alternative theory pushed by Mullett in the hearings was that Lalor went quiet because he thought he was under investigation for the Kit Walker material.
In evidence Mullett was adamant. ‘I may not be an angel, your honour, but I pride myself as being a police officer who hates crooks … For me to pass on that type of (murder) information, I’m sorry, I would never, ever do it.’
But while the OPI failed to prove its original claim, it did expose a culture where mateship and misplaced loyalty displaced sworn duty. And its use of public hearings has helped deflect the criticism that the body was a toothless tiger.
The next time a police officer is called to a secret hearing to give evidence before the OPI he or she will know that any attempt to lie is potentially career-ending and could be publicly humiliating.
Just ask Noel Ashby.
THE double execution of Terence Hodson and his wife Christine in their own home was shocking, but it was also sinister because it was more than an example of criminal brutality spiraling out of control. It had a deeper significance — it linked allegedly corrupt cops with the underworld war.
The murders caused many, including the Liberal Opposition in Victoria, to call for a royal commission into the police. The Labor Government responded with a raft of reforms, including a revamped Ombudsman’s office, coercive powers for the Chief Commissioner and new asset seizure laws.
But as the crisis deepened and it was revealed that possible police involvement in the murders was being investigated, former Queensland Royal Commissioner Tony Fitzgerald was called in to inquire why confidential police documents about Hodson’s role as a drug informer had been leaked to violent gangsters.
Terry Hodson was a drug dealer turned drug squad informer who provided information on friends and competitors to a detective at the drug squad.
Hodson was charged in December 2003, with two detectives from the major drug investigation division, over an alleged conspiracy to steal drugs worth $1.3 million from a house in East Oakleigh in September.
On the surface, the attempt by Hodson and Senior Detective Dave Miechel, 33, to complete the massive drug rip-off was spectacularly inept.
The house had been under surveillance for months when the two arrived to burgle the property. Both knew there was about to be a police raid and the drugs inside would soon become a court exhibit before being destroyed. They reasoned that if they moved now — just before the raid — the crooks would never squeal and the raiding party would never know.
But greed had smothered common sense. The video camera caught them smashing the overhead light on the porch so they could break into the house in darkness.
A neighbour heard the noise and called police. It was astonishingly bad luck for the crooked detective and his informer that two police dog units were in the area.
Miechel tried to bluff, telling one dog operator he was ‘in the job’. He then threw a punch — another bad move.
The dog didn’t like his handler being manhandled and attacked, taking a massive chunk out of Miechel’s thigh. For good measure the dog handler hit him an equally massive blow with his metal torch. Miechel, as the saying goes, lost interest.
Earlier he had sprayed himself with dog repellent because he had been told there were guard dogs on the property. It is not known if he received a refund.
Hodson was found nearby hiding in the dark. Both men were empty handed but a search found $1.3 million in cash and drugs that had been thrown over the back fence.
They were both charged, along with Miechel’s immediate boss, Detective Sergeant Paul Dale.
Police later raided the house as part of the biggest ecstasy bust in Victoria’s history.
In 2006 Justice Betty King sentenced Senior Detective Miechel to fifteen years with a non-parole term of twelve, saying ‘You have sworn an oath to uphold the law and the community has acted upon that oath you swore and placed its trust in you. You have abused that trust.’ Hodson had been a drug squad informer since August 2001, but after his arrest in 2003 he agreed to inform for the police anti-corruption taskforce, codenamed Ceja.
Christine Hodson had no convictions and had not been charged with any offences. She was an innocent victim of Melbourne’s underworld war.
Her tragedy was that many in the criminal world knew her husband was an informer. Their suspicions were confirmed when the leaked police documents began to circulate in the Melbourne underworld in early May 2004.
A month earlier, lawyers for Hodson indicated in the Supreme Court that he would plead guilty. It became obvious he was prepared to give evidence against the two police charged with him. Police sources say he had originally agreed to be an informer to try to protect family members also facing drug charges.
He acted as the inside man for police on at least six drug squad operations — specialising in helping police expose cocaine and ecstasy networks.
Charismatic and likeable, Hodson knew most major crime figures in Melbourne. A carpenter by trade, he had built secret cupboards and storage areas for some of Melbourne’s biggest drug dealers, according to police.
According to an old friend, the Hodsons arrived in Perth in 1974 from Britain. They had married in July 1967, in the city of Wolverhampton. Hodson used his carpentry skills to land a job as a maintenance officer looking after rental properties. He was said to have had a deal with an insurance assessor to rip off the company by submitting over-inflated bills for damaged kitchens.
He began his own building business and was successful enough to buy a luxury home.
The friend said the couple became obsessed with possessions. ‘She (Christine) would vacuum three times a day.’
Hodson was a bookmaker’s son but he had struggled at school and was barely literate. When he made money in Perth, he hired a private tutor to help him with reading and writing. He didn’t need any help with arithmetic, especially counting money.
He built a small business empire in Perth and became involved in a partnership dealing with prestige cars. The story goes that he believed his partner was ripping him off so he hired some oxy-acetylene blowtorch gear and found a safebreaker to get into his partner’s safe. But a neighbour came by to feed the cat and the safebreaker left suddenly, leaving the gear behind.
Police were able to trace the fact that Hodson had hired the gear and he was convicted, only to later escape amidst unproven claims he paid someone to turn a blind eye.
He later moved to Melbourne. The old friend recalls: ‘I lost track of him until I got a call from his wife asking for $50,000 for bail. I said no.’
Hodson loved the idea of being a gangster, he says. ‘He wanted to be a flamboyant type; I guess he didn’t make it. Every time there was a murder of a crook in Melbourne I thought it would be Terry. In the end it was.’
The Hodsons’ bodies were found by their son in the lounge room of their home in East Kew on Sunday 16 May 2004.
Hodson almost certainly knew the gunman. Like most drug dealers he was security conscious and no-one entered his home without an invitation.
He also had two large and loud german shepherd dogs to deter intruders.
One theory is that Hodson knew the killer, let him in to the heavily fortified house, and was ambushed in the lounge room; his wife was then killed because she could identify the gunman, probably a business associate or ‘friend’ of her husband.
It is believed Hodson was smoking a roll-your-own cigarette when his guest produced a handgun and ordered the couple to kneel on the floor, where their hands were bound behind their backs before they were shot in the back of the head.
The couple was killed some time after Saturday evening. Their guard dogs were locked in the garage, either by the killer or by the couple when they welcomed their guest.
One neighbour said: ‘I didn’t hear the german shepherds, so I wondered what had happened. I heard what sounded like a shot about 6.15pm, but didn’t pay any attention.’
Hodson had been offered protection but had declined it. Being in protection would have meant he couldn’t keep seeing his grandchildren. Although he knew his life was in danger, he had decided to carry on as normal.
Ethical standards police had installed a state of the art security system and the Hodsons used it diligently. They had seven tapes each labelled with a day of the week and each day the correct tape was inserted. When investigators checked, only one tape was missing. The one labelled Saturday — the day of the murder.
If a covert camera had also been installed perhaps the killer could have been identified but such a security precaution was considered too expensive.
Investigators wanted to know why the police information report, written in May 2002, had mysteriously begun to circulate two years later.
It contained many allegations. Amongst them was the claim Hodson had been offered $50,000 by Lewis Moran to kill Carl Williams.
By the time the information became public Moran was already dead, but it could be interpreted as placing Hodson on one side of the fence in the underworld war.
On 14 May 2004, a story in the Herald Sun repeated some of the information from the leaked report, including the contract offer.
The following day Hodson and his wife were murdered. Some might draw conclusions about cause and effect.
Was it death by newspaper? The leaking of the confidential police document was a massive breach of security — but homicide squad detectives had to investigate not only whether the leak caused the murders but if that was the intention behind the leak.
Certain members of the underworld had seen the police report before the newspaper story was published. George Williams confirmed he had seen the document in the previous few weeks.
In fact, many members of the underworld didn’t need to see Hodson’s name as a police informer on an official document. They had suspected it for years.
Lewis Moran believed Hodson was an informer but found him entertaining company. He just made sure Terry was not close by when business was discussed.
Both Miechel and Dale were interviewed by homicide squad detectives and provided alibis.
But with Hodson dead, charges against Dale were dropped because of lack of evidence. Dale has always denied any connection with either the drug rip-off or the double murder. He resigned and took over a country service station, moving from pumping people for information to pumping petrol. And from giving suspects the hamburger with the lot to providing the same service for hungry truck-drivers.
For investigators, the Hodson double murder became even more important because of the suggestion of bent police involvement.
So much so that it was the one case with the potential to get multiple killer Carl Williams a decent discount on his sentence providing he talked about what he knew — and then was prepared to give evidence.
In the months before Williams agreed to plead guilty he suggested he had such information. In fact, he told police he had a man inside the drug squad who provided him with secret information. Perhaps that is why, when Williams was arrested for drug trafficking, the investigators were suburban detectives and not from the specialist drug squad.
Williams also suggested a policeman had told him Hodson had to go and that Carl should think about possible options. Williams, it is alleged, later came back to say he would deal with it but the policeman said the matter was in hand. A short time later the Hodsons were murdered.
But the value of Williams’ statement was destroyed when he chose to give self-serving evidence at his plea hearing. He deliberately destroyed his credibility as a potential witness in any future trials, earning a further two years for his efforts.
But while the court dismissed Williams, somebody must have been listening. Certainly, shortly after Carl made his statement, police launched a fresh taskforce, code named Petra, to investigate the Hodson double murder.
Deputy Commissioner Simon Overland said ‘This is a priority investigation. And we are making progress.’
So who pulled the trigger that night in Kew?
Many of Melboune’s hit men developed huge profiles during the underworld war. But there is one with links to the Mokbel-Williams camp who refused to move from the shadows.
Ruthless and deadly, the man known as The Duke has been mentioned as the possible hit man for the murder of Brian Kane, who was gunned down in the Quarry Hotel in Brunswick in November 1982. He has previously been charged with murder but acquitted.
He was also investigated over his alleged connection to the killing of Mike ‘Lucky’ Schievella, 44, and his partner, Heather McDonald, 36, at their St Andrews home in 1990. The couple, connected to the drug world, were forced to kneel, then bound and gagged before they were slaughtered in their own home. Just like the Hodsons.
It is not the first time a selective leak might have contributed to murder after finding its way into print.
Observers with long memories recall that Isabel and Douglas Wilson were drug couriers for the notorious Mr Asia heroin syndicate in the 1970s. When the pair decided to talk to police about drug running that fact soon appeared in the Brisbane Sun newspaper.
The Wilsons’ bodies were later found in Rye, Victoria, on 18 May 1979. They had been shot on the orders of the syndicate boss, Terry Clark, because they had been talking.
The Wilsons, too, were dog lovers: their pet was found wandering in the suburbs because the hit man wouldn’t kill it. But, as with the Hodsons, it didn’t save them.