The Gangland War

by John Silvester

  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.

  ASH
BY: 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.