PAUL Dale begrudgingly accepts he is stuck with the “disgraced ex-copper” tag for life.
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What clearly rankles though are the “horrors” visited on his family.
“It’s been absolutely disgraceful,” he said of the effect of the almost decade-long story of his fall from grace on his family.
The Wangaratta businessman has a notoriety as the detective alleged to have ordered the killing of police informer Terry Hodson and his wife Christine in 2004.
Mr Dale’s murder charge collapsed when Melbourne underworld boss Carl Williams was himself murdered in jail six years later.
This week he ended his silence to promote his book Disgraced?, penned, he said, to explain why he believed he was targeted.
The former drug squad detective — who in March this year was cleared of 12 charges of giving false evidence at two Australian Crime Commission examinations about his dealings with Williams — was facing burglary charges when the Hodsons were killed.
Suspicious was raised about his role as Terrence Hodson was due to given evidence against him over burglary and drug charges.
Hodson had implicated him in the burglary of a drug house in Oakleigh in 2003.
A police taskforce last year concluded Mr Dale did not know of the plan, authorise or know of the attack on Williams.
The son of Yackandadah’s Jenny and John Dale, Paul Dale returned to the region from Melbourne because of fears for his life and the safety of his wife and children.
Mr Dale said the “full and frank admissions” of the Hodsons’ son, Andrew Hodson, on ABC television’s 7.30 “that he conspired to kill me” starkly showed the risks he continued to face.
Andrew Hodson told of how he wanted to walk up to him and go “pop, pop, pop” with a gun because he believed Mr Dale was a threat to his father’s life.
The Dales left Melbourne as it was “a very, very dangerous time”.
“It was not only Andrew Hodson but a number of other underworld figures that required me to move my family away from Melbourne,” Dale said.
The Dales went into hiding in the North East for about a year.
But eventually he had had enough of living his life looking over his shoulder.
“I obviously couldn’t hide for the rest of my life so that’s when I looked to buy a business,” he said.
“I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get a job.
“No one was going to employ me due to the fact I was on the front page of every newspaper and in the headlines at least once a week.”
He bought Wangaratta’s APCO service station, which he has since sold to run a drilling business.
Mr Dale said the first couple of years “in the fishbowl of a small country town” was difficult, but eventually he felt more people were giving him their support.
Of the murder allegations, Mr Dale repeated his line he had nothing to gain from the killing of Terrence Hodson.