Melbourne gangland figure Carl Williams may have been a killer and drug trafficker, but to his ex-wife Roberta he was a loving, caring family man.
Ms Williams has told an inquest her ex-husband would not have been lying when he implicated former drug squad detective Paul Dale in the murders of police informer Terence Hodson and his wife Christine.
Before being murdered in prison, Carl Williams claimed Mr Dale had paid him $150,000 to have Mr Hodson killed.
Ms Williams denied quotes attributed to her in The Australian newspaper suggesting her husband made up the story in an effort to reduce his prison sentence.
"I don't believe that Carl would sit there and tell lies," she told an inquest into the Hodsons' deaths in Melbourne on Wednesday.
During a heated cross-examination, Mr Dale's barrister Geoff Steward suggested that Carl Williams was a "contemptible person", as well as being a killer and a drug dealer.
"Carl was a loving, caring, family man that adored my three children," Ms Williams replied.
"You're a disgraceful person to even mention that about a man who is dead."
Ms Williams also said that she hated Mr Dale.
"If I ever see him I would spit in his face," she said.
The Hodsons were found shot dead at their Kew home in May 2004, shortly before Mr Hodson was due to give evidence in a criminal trial against Mr Dale.
Mr Dale and contract killer Rodney Charles Collins were charged with the Hodsons' murders in 2009, but the charges were dropped after Williams was killed.
A witness, who cannot be named, told the inquest that Williams told him that he had organised for Mr Hodson to be killed.
"He (Williams) said 'I ordered the hit for Paul Dale'," the witness told the Victorian Coroners Court.
Both Mr Dale and Collins deny any involvement in the Hodsons' deaths.
The witness told the inquest that Williams had paid Mr Dale, who was then a drug squad detective, for information on police investigations.
He said Williams was too "shy" to find a second police source.
"Carl wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed. He only had one source," the witness said.
The inquest was told Williams once tried to source a rocket launcher so he could kill Jason Moran and blow up his house.
Moran was gunned down in front of children at a football clinic in 2003 during Melbourne's gangland war.
The inquest, before State Coroner Judge Ian Gray, continues.
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