The sisters visit on birthdays too, and Mother's Day, to lay flowers. Their parents, Terence and Christine Hodson, are buried together at Springvale with no gaudy headstones, just a simple plaque bearing their names.
Their father was inextricably tied to Melbourne's secret nexus between bad crooks and bad cops; he was a drug dealer turned police informer who was about to go one step further by blowing the lid off police corruption in the drug underworld.
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The Hodsons were the 27th and 28th victims of Melbourne's notorious gangland war although, in many ways, the most significant because the aftershocks continue to rock the state government, underworld and Victoria Police.
The saga of incomplete efforts to solve the killings plays a part in the current crisis within the force's senior command and also in the bitter split between police Chief Commissioner Simon Overland and former deputy Sir Ken Jones. Last Friday Welsh-born Jones was forced on early leave, after already giving notice of his resignation. Overland has refused to explain why he pushed him out the door.
The rift follows a series of scandals that have enveloped Victoria Police during Overland's leadership including the release of incomplete crime statistics before the last state election and database failings allowing alleged murderers to be undetected during their time breaching parole.
But also fuelling divisions among senior police is the death of Carl Williams in prison. Police had attempted to persuade him to turn informer on corrupt police. Although there is no allegation that this was a factor in Williams's death, senior government, departmental and policing officials, including Jones, are believed to have asked why more care was not taken to protect Williams in jail.
This week, Overland backed the role of departmental secretary Penny Armytage in sanctioning Williams's transfer from isolation at Barwon Prison.
But confirmation of all this is hard to establish: neither Jones nor Overland will speak to the media about it. What is certain is that despite multiple inquiries - including several under Overland's watch - those responsible for murdering the Hodsons in their Kew home have not been brought to justice. Efforts by police to get witnesses connected to the killings to testify have also come spectacularly unstuck.
''Just when someone comes up with something,'' says Nikki Hodson, ''it falls apart again.''
Her sister Mandy Hodson found her parents' bodies seven years ago with their hands tied behind their backs, two gunshots in the back of each head. She says her father's lucky number was seven. He got that from his own father, a bookmaker. But she says there's been no luck for the family and also none for justice in Victoria in the seven years that have passed.
''This crime is the key that unlocks the door to corruption. It will open up a Pandora's box that no one wants unlocked. They want that box to stay locked and they want to throw away the key.''
ON GRAND final day in 2003 Terry Hodson was involved in a crime he and his partners must have thought was a sure-fire windfall, a goldmine.
There was a house in Oakleigh being used by criminals to store drugs - $1 million in ecstasy pills. The house was about to be raided by police. The plan was to get in first and steal then sell the drugs. Hodson and corrupt (and now jailed) police detective David Miechel - who at one point was Mandy Hodson's lover and who knew all about the house and the impending raid - turned up armed, with empty bags, a screwdriver, dog-repellent and torches.
But old-fashioned justice intervened. A neighbour heard noises and called the local police. Miechel and Hodson were easily caught. Miechel was mauled by Silky the police dog. Hodson was found hiding behind a tree in a nearby primary school.
What happened next changed the game. Hodson was already a police informer but became a police corruption informer, telling police not about crooks but about bent cops such as Miechel. He alleged Miechel's partner in the drug squad, Paul Dale, was the third member of the burglary team, masterminding it from afar.
All three were charged in December of 2003. By then, police documents on Hodson had disappeared from St Kilda Road police headquarters. Hodson and his wife were killed - silenced - in May 2004, and Dale's charges dropped. The intervening period has been marked by several key events, including the death of Williams in prison last year. And since 2003 there have been eight inquiries or taskforces into the murders or their prequels or sequels, including Williams's death. Some are focused on who killed who. Others are looking at system failures.
Eight inquiries in eight years. Yet the Hodson killings are still unsolved.
In his jobs as assistant commissioner for crime, deputy commissioner and now chief commissioner, Simon Overland has been intimately involved with several of these inquiries, including during the lengthy period he was overseeing the Purana Taskforce. Purana's success fighting the gangland wars is one of Overland's key achievements. Observers say he has also been important in modernising the state's police force.
Ironically it was the notorious gangland war which elevated Overland through the ranks. Now
it threatens to be his undoing.
Two people were charged with the Hodson murders - a career hitman aligned to the Carl Williams cabal, and Dale, who now runs a petrol station in country Victoria. Both sets of charges were later dropped. It was second time lucky in that respect for Dale, who continues to maintain his innocence.
So why the multiple inquiries? Could investigations have been done better?
The most recent police inquiry into the Hodson deaths is Taskforce Driver, established in 2010. Until recently, it was headed by Jones. It has used the classic cold-case methodology - going over an unsolved crime's evidence, re-examining files. Jones told the ABC when Driver was set up last year that its key virtue was ''independence''. He said he did not ''come into this with any baggage''.
Driver took over the work of Taskforce Petra, which was specifically investigating the Hodson deaths and whether Dale had anything to do with it.
There is a debate inside Victoria Police about how well Petra - which was staffed by experienced investigators - was managed. Petra made big breakthroughs and solved significant underworld crimes, including murders dating back decades but despite that, some police believe elements of the taskforce were mismanaged.
A court heard this year that a copy of a sensitive police document created by Petra was given to Carl Williams while he was in prison. Senior police sources have said that Williams should only have been shown the document, not given a copy.
Petra was also managing Nicola Gobbo, the former gangland defence lawyer who was set to become a witness against Paul Dale. Gobbo wore a recording device during a conversation she had with Dale in 2008. But the tapes have never been played in open court.
In a Supreme Court writ lodged last year, she said being a key witness in the case caused her to fear for her life and worsened health problems. She alleged Petra breached their agreement and had not provided appropriate support, but has since settled. Managing a witness can be difficult. But some senior police still wonder whether Gobbo could have been better handled.
Victoria Police deny Petra was mismanaged. A spokeswoman told The Saturday Age: ''We absolutely dispute allegations of a failure of the investigation or governance [of Petra]. We believe Petra had the appropriate governance structures in place.''
Yet it is a fact that, at least in some areas, the new Taskforce Driver is doing what the old Taskforce Petra had already done.
This pattern - investigating what has already been investigated - can be traced right back to the very first Ethical Standards Department inquiry after Hodson was arrested at the drug house in Oakleigh. Despite it clearly being a case that could yield so much about the underworld, the drug trade and police corruption, only two ESD detectives were assigned to it. Calls for a taskforce were denied by senior police.
The next inquiry - focusing on the Hodson murders but picking over what ESD had already found - was most vexed. It was led by veteran homicide detective Charlie Bezzina, who has now left the force, edged out, he claims, by Simon Overland. He writes in his book The Job that the Hodson case ''started a chain of events that made me question the judgment and values of a number of people in authority''.
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