Ms Gobbo told police she rifled through Ms Cure's office and found a list of phone records from a Barwon Prison inmate who had become a key gangland snitch.

The phone records detailed his daily contact with Ms Gobbo and detectives from gangland taskforce Purana.

Ms Gobbo had acted for the snitch and was frightened of the underworld finding out she had helped him to “roll” and assist police.

After finding the records, she called her handlers, angry that Ms Cure could get access to prison phone records that could potentially compromise her.

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She then asked the officers to pay for her tickets to see a Lionel Richie concert.

One of her key handlers who has returned to give evidence to the inquiry for a ninth day agreed under questioning what Ms Gobbo did constituted burglary.

“Now, it would be an extraordinary thing for a barrister to go through another member of counsel’s office on a weekend looking for material which might be of interest to her and of interest to police,” commission lawyer Chris Winneke, QC, said.

At the time, the handlers were looking for an “exit strategy” to deregister an increasingly erratic Ms Gobbo.

She had told her handlers she had somehow obtained a copy of Williams’ statement and was angry she hadn’t been told by police he was talking to them, believing she had the right to know what was going in statements.

She lashed out, saying Williams had “made up s---’ about her and Mr Dale, and she threatened to sue for defamation. She said police owed her more than $5 million.

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Ms Gobbo wasn't deregistered as an informer until 2009, with her information about the key gangland figures she both represented and socialised with seen by some police as too good to ignore.

But the Hodson investigation marked the beginning of the end of Ms Gobbo’s informing and set off a chain of events which would result in her secret role becoming public and a royal commission.

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Williams told police Dale had contracted him to hire a hitman to kill Hodson in 2004. Ms Gobbo was suspected of leaking information that Hodson was an informer to drug boss Tony Mokbel in the lead-up and she was also accused of facilitating contact between Dale and Williams.

Gobbo was morphed from an informer to a witness in the court case against Dale, which collapsed after the murder of Williams in prison in 2010.

It resulted in Gobbo suing police for failing to keep her safe, which prompted a series of investigations into her use as an informer.

The royal commission is investigating her role in passing information to police about her clients, which has resulted in one conviction being quashed and many more in doubt.