Police suspect one of Mr Ivanovic's close associates, Rocco Arico, of being involved in the 2000 murder. Mr Ivanovic was not charged over the murder. Instead, he was charged on Thursday over an allegedly dodgy $15,000 car insurance claim and remanded in custody. Paul Dale outside the royal commission in May. Credit:Jason South Mr Ivanovic was registered as an informer on January 7, 2002 by then drug squad detectives Mark Porter and Paul Dale. Mr Dale revealed in his 2013 book that he registered Ivanovic without his knowledge or consent and without Mr Ivanovic showing any willingness to provide assistance to police. Mr Dale wrote that one of his motivations for registering Mr Ivanovic was career advancement.

“I didn’t know if he’d ever provide any information but it was worth listing his name anyway,’’ he said. “When you went for promotion, the board would always ask about the informers you had registered. The fact that I could tell a future promotions board that I’d listed Tommy Ivanovic would be good for my career.” Mr Dale also acknowledged that Mr Ivanovic’s status as an informer would be a “death sentence” if it became known to other prisoners. “Being an informer from prison was as good as painting a big red target on your forehead,’’ he wrote. “Murder might have carried a stiff penalty but being an informer carried a death sentence.” Terence and Christine Hodson (right) and the man suspected of killing them, Rodney Collins (inset). Despite these risks, Victoria Police effectively outed Mr Ivanovic as an informer – or dog, in criminal parlance – when details of his registration were included in a 2009 brief of evidence prepared against Mr Dale and underworld hitman Rodney Collins for the 2004 murder of Terence and Christine Hodson. Mr Ivanovic for his own protection was forced to spend the next eight years housed in a secure unit cut-off from the general prison population. Bizarrely, he was housed alongside Matthew Johnson, a violent criminal notorious for his hatred of police informers. Mr Ivanovic was present when Johnson bludgeoned to death Carl Williams, the star witness in the Hodson murder case.

Mr Ivanovic accuses police of deliberately exploiting his vulnerability as a registered informer. He claims that during a 2002 jailhouse detectives Porter and Dale visit threatened to disclose his informer status to other criminals unless he provided information to them. This is disputed by Mr Dale, who wrote that he never told Mr Ivanovic that he’d registered him as a source. Tommy Ivanovic was housed in the same unit as Matthew Johnson. Credit:Suppled Mr Ivanovic alleges a similar threat was later made by Petra taskforce detectives investigating the Hodson murders. “They threatened me and said words to the effect: ‘you know that if it gets out that you are Dale’s informer your life here will be at an end and good luck surviving’,” Mr Ivanovic says in material seen by The Age. Mr Ivanovic claims police made good on their threats when they identified him as an informer in the Hodson brief of evidence.

The brief contained a sworn statement from a police detective noting that Mr Ivanovic was a registered informer cultivated by Mr Dale. It added that Mr Ivanovic was not aware of this and had not provided information to police. The statement cited the informer management file belonging to Mr Ivanovic. Ivanovic says the statement was circulated within Barwon Prison and that he was first shown a copy by one of the prison’s most dangerous inmates, Rodney Collins. Collins, now dead, was a merciless killer suspected by police of being involved in the murder of at least nine people, including the Hodsons. Mr Ivanovic was stabbed in the exercise yard of Barwon Prison in 2017 and assaulted a second time at the lower security Loddon Prison near the end of his sentence. He blames both attacks on him being wrongly identified within the prison system a police informer. Victoria Police declined to respond to questions from The Age. The inclusion of the name of a registered informer in a brief of evidence is a stark departure from the steps usually taken by police to preserve the anonymity and protect the safety of human sources. Normally, any references to informers contained in police statements are redacted on public interest immunity grounds.