Paul Dale: I’ve said all I will say

FORMER drug squad detective and Wangaratta businessman Paul Dale yesterday dismissed the relevance of an inquiry into a double murder over which he was later charged.

The inquest into the deaths of police informer Terrence Hodson and his wife, Christine, will go ahead in May.

Mr Dale said he expected the inquest to target him, despite his lawyer’s push to have it expanded beyond his potential involvement.

“But unfortunately I don’t expect that to happen and therefore what’s the point of me wanting to have any involvement in it?” he said.

“I have no faith at all.”

Mr Hodson had been due to give evidence against police in 2004 when the execution-style killings took place.

Five years later, Mr Dale and another man were charged with the killings.

These charges were abandoned when underworld killer Carl Williams was himself murdered in jail a year later, in May 2010.

Williams alleged to police that Mr Dale had asked him to hire a hitman to kill Mr Hodson for $150,000.

Mr Dale was initially reluctant to comment yesterday on Victorian State Coroner Ian Gray’s ruling on Monday that an inquest be held into the Hodsons’ deaths.

“If anyone wants to read my book (Disgraced?) they’ll see what I have to say about this,” he said.

“That’ll be exactly my comments to any other inquiry related to this.”

But when pushed on whether he welcomed the inquest, Mr Dale said he could not see “any point or relevance” in the proceedings.

“Realistically I’ve been through well over a dozen inquiries,” he said.

“I just don’t see how many more inquiries I have to be dragged through when I’ve already answered every question that’s ever been put to me.”

Mr Dale said that because it “didn’t seem to matter” what he had to say, he decided to pen his book instead, adding “and that was so my side of the story could be put out there”.

Suspicion was raised about Mr Dale’s connection to the Hodsons’ murders as Mr Hodson had implicated him in the burglary of a drug house in Oakleigh in 2003.

In an interview with The Border Mail in late August as he publicised his book, Mr Dale told of how he moved his family from Melbourne to the North East and went into hiding out of fear for their lives.

Chief Commissioner Ken Lay said two days later that Mr Dale remained a significant person of interest over the murders.

But Mr Dale emphasised he had nothing to gain from Mr Hodson’s death. It is believed Mrs Hodson died only because she was also in the house at the time.

Mr Gray has limited the hearing to examining who killed the couple and the adequacy of police protection before their deaths.