Australian police informer and wife slain at home

By GREG ANSLEY Australia correspondent



CANBERRA - The violence of the Melbourne underworld has taken a chilling new twist with the murder of a key informer in a two-year investigation into police corruption.

The bodies of Terrence Hodson and his wife, Christine, were found in their Kew apartment on Sunday evening.

The discovery has sparked concern for other informers and brought calls for new powers for the state's police ombudsman to probe possible connections between corruption and the gangland war that has claimed 25 victims since 1998.

Police said yesterday that Hodson knew he was at risk but had refused a number of offers of protection.

Although no evidence has yet emerged of a direct link between warring crime families and the Hodson murders, they were connected with some of the major underworld figures.

Hodson's son Andrew and daughter Mandy had been charged with drug trafficking as part of the alleged A$2 billion narcotics empire of Antonius Mokbel, a close friend and business associate of Lewis Moran who, with his two sons, died in gangland shootings.

Mokbel allegedly boasted of paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to corrupt police officers and to having a police forensic scientist on his payroll.

He is also rumoured to have hired a hitman to kill one informer, later shot by the now-dead Jason Moran after the contract failed.

Hodson, 56, was himself a successful crime figure who amassed a considerable fortune but avoided the headlines that tracked other underworld careers by keeping a low profile, despite serving a number of prison sentences.

Melbourne's Age newspaper reported that police sources said Hodson turned informer in 2001 after being arrested and charged over cocaine offences, apparently in part in an attempt to protect members of his family facing similar charges.

Although not named by the newspaper, Andrew and Mandy Hodson were arrested in September 2001 on Ecstasy charges in city-wide raids against Mokbel's drug operations.

Mandy Hodson later reportedly began an affair with one of the arresting officers, Detective Senior Constable David Miechel, now facing serious drug charges with his former boss, Detective Sergeant Paul Dale.

The Age's sources said Terrence Hodson had acted as the inside man for police on at least six drug squad operations against Ecstasy and cocaine networks before turning informer for the Ceja taskforce set up two years ago to attack corruption within the Victorian police.

Until his death Hodson was the key witness against Miechel and Dale, both members of the new major drug investigation division set up after the old drug squad was disbanded because of corruption.

The two, with Hodson, were arrested in December after a four-month operation that led to an A$8.5 million haul of Ecstasy, LSD and the amphetamine ice.


In March, Hodson indicated through his lawyers that he would be prepared to plead guilty, with suggestions that a deal could be struck with police over information for the Ceja taskforce.


But Hodson's murder has placed new attention on possible links between police corruption and Melbourne's bloody underworld war.

The alleged involvement with organised drug figures of Miechel and Dale has also cast shadows over the major drug investigation division, and adds to concerns that corruption may have also tainted the Purana taskforce investigating the gangland war.