Two disgraced former detectives lured a university student into a Sydney storage shed on a May afternoon with a simple promise.
They worked hard to make Jamie Gao believe that what was to happen in unit 803 would make him very rich.
But instead of giving him the money they promised, they gave him two bullets in the chest.
On Wednesday, a NSW Supreme Court jury found Roger Rogerson, 75, and Glen McNamara, 57, guilty of the murder of Mr Gao.
The jury of five women and seven men also found the men guilty of stealing the 2.78 kilograms of the drug ice that Mr Gao had brought to the fatal meeting on May 20, 2014.
The jury took 6½ days to consider their verdict.
McNamara did not react as the jury forewoman read out the verdict.
Rogerson, wearing a navy blue suit and a striped tie, showed no emotion and put his left hand on a piece of paper he appeared to be reading.
However, as Justice Geoffrey Bellew formally read the convictions, McNamara stood blinking.
Rogerson bowed his head and kept two clenched fists on the bench in front of him.
Blamed each other
Although Rogerson and McNamara killed together, by no means did they stick to the same story.
They blamed each other for Mr Gao's death.
But the jury members did not need to determine who pulled the trigger as long as they were satisfied the pair acted as part of a joint criminal enterprise.
Shortly after Mr Gao was murdered at Rent-A-Space in the south-western Sydney suburb of Padstow, his body was stuffed into a silver Ocean & Earthsurfboard bag and loaded into the boot of a car.
McNamara's Quintrex boat was then used to dump Mr Gao's body at sea.
Six days later, a fisherman spotted the body floating 2.5 kilometres from the shore off Shelly Beach in Cronulla.
After they were arrested, the pair were forced to tailor their stories around the CCTV footage on which they had been caught.
What they could not deny was that, at 1.46pm on May 20, security footage captured Mr Gao getting out of a white Ford station wagon and slipping into the storage shed with McNamara.
A little more than three minutes later, Rogerson was seen hobbling towards the unit.
Rogerson's fictitious account was that he opened the door to a "nightmare".
"Well [McNamara] was as white as a ghost, he was shaking uncontrollably and sweating like a pig," he told the jury, gripping the witness stand with both hands.
"Then I looked down and I saw an Asian man lying on the floor with his head to my right … and he was dead."
On Rogerson's version, McNamara told him there had been a struggle, and that Mr Gao had shot himself twice in the chest.
"I said to him, 'Glen the only thing we'll be doing here is calling the cops,' " Rogerson's version went.
He said McNamara explained that the two of them would be killed by Chinese Triad members with whom Mr Gao associated, unless they left the area quickly.
McNamara painted a very different story.
He said he was in the shed for three minutes with Mr Gao by himself but could not explain why, or what they spoke about.
The next thing he remembered was Rogerson opening the shed door and demanding Mr Gao hand over the "gear".
Mr Gao pulled out a combat-style knife and simultaneously Rogerson produced a gun from the right pocket of his pants.
"[The bullet] knocked him back in the chair and he dropped the knife," McNamara claimed.
"[Rogerson] held aim and shot him again. Gao stopped moving, there was no noise … he just killed him."
He said Rogerson then aimed the gun at McNamara's head and threatened to kill him and his daughters if he did not help to dispose of the body.
Private investigator
McNamara met Mr Gao through his work as a private investigator in early January 2014.
The pair met at least 27 times and exchanged hundreds of texts in the lead-up to Mr Gao's death.
McNamara maintained throughout the trial that he formed a relationship with Mr Gao only to research his next true crime book on Asian triads and drug supply in Sydney.
Rogerson repeatedly told the trial he had never met Mr Gao and only learnt of his name after his death.
But the Crown argued that Mr Gao's death was part of a well thought-out plan.
McNamara had taken his boat out the day before the murder and Rogerson visited the shed to remove some office chairs.
In further preparation, the pair bought the station wagon with the number plates BV67PX on April 27, which was later used to transport Mr Gao's body.
Both denied having anything to do with the car's acquisition but police found a receipt for the car in McNamara's Cronulla apartment with Rogerson's fingerprint on it.
The Crown argued all of their plans were for two things only - to kill Mr Gao and to steal the 2.78 kilograms of drugs he had brought.
Police would later find two brown pillowslips filled with ice, secreted under the seat of the station wagon, parked in the basement of McNamara's apartment block.
The trial ran for 18 weeks before the jury retired to consider their verdict.
Rogerson and McNamara will face a sentencing hearing on August 25.
This story originally appeared on www.smh.com.au
