Jamie Gao murder trial: Prosecutors present case against Roger Rogerson and Glen McNamara

COUNSEL for the accused killers of drug dealer Jamie Gao, 20, will both give evidence that the other man carried out the execution, the jury was told.

• Day 2 of trial of Roger Rogerson and Glen McNamara

• Juror discharged in Jamie Gao murder trial
• Rogerson, McNamara murder trial begins

ACCUSED killers Roger Rogerson and Glen McNamara will both blame each other for the murder of Jamie Gao in evidence they give at their murder trial, a jury has been told.

Counsel for both men have told the jury in their openings that the execution of the 20-year-old drug dealer, killed by two bullets to the chest, was at the hands of the other, without their knowledge.

“Jamie Gao was dead on the floor with a handgun lying near him when Roger Rogerson entered the shed,” Rogerson’s barrister George Thomas told the court.

Roger Rogerson leaving King Street Supreme Court yesterday. Picture: Adam Taylor

Glen McNamara leaves King Street Supreme Court yesterday. Picture: Adam Taylor

He cited a window of three minutes and 20 seconds when CCTV records Gao and McNamara being inside unit 803 of Rent A Space alone.

Mr Thomas said his client was “in a very different universe” to McNamara, who has given an opposite version of events through his barrister Kara Shead SC.

“Roger Rogerson shot and killed Jamie Gao and then threatened Glen McNamara’s life and the life of his two daughters,” Ms Shead told thejury. “Mr McNamara thereafter acted under duress.”

Ms Shead told the jury her client had dealings with Gao because he was his triad source for a planned third true crime book, on Asian gangs and drug dealing.

Rogerson and McNamara have pleaded not guilty to murder and supplying a large commercial quantity of a prohibited drug, related to the 2.78kg of ice that the court heard Gao took to the Padstow storage unit just before he was shot to death on May 20, 2014.

JAMIE GAO’S AMBITION TO GET RICH ‘ENDED WHEN HE CROSSED PATHS WITH ROGER ROGERSON’

Ms Shead said that Gao approached McNamara, who was also working as a private investigator, for help because he feared senior triad figures would discover he was “an informant” and had been “skimming” money from big drug deals.

“Gao said he had been told Rogerson could help,” she said.

“He needed Rogerson to sort something out and to do so fast.”

She said McNamara had been frightened to go to police because “he saw Roger Rogerson shoot Jamie Gao in front of his eyes He feared his daughter’s lives would be in jeopardy.”

Earlier, prosecutors alleged that when Rogerson and McNamara were seen on CCTV footage carrying fishing rods removed from a station wagon “it had nothing to do with fishing.”

The Supreme Court has heard the pair removed the equipment in order to dispose of the body of Gao.

The body of 20-year-old Jamie Gao was found floating in the sea off Cronulla.

Crown Prosecutor Christopher Maxwell QC took the jury through a series of images, showing the movements of McNamara and Rogerson in the days following the murder.

Shortly before 7:30am the day after Gao was murdered, the pair were seeing moving a white Ford station wagon from the Cronulla apartments where McNamara lived, and a short time later taking the fishing rods from that same car.

“It had nothing to do with fishing and everything to do with disposing of the body of the deceased,” Mr Maxwell said.

Gao’s body was found six days after his murder, inside a silver surfboard cover and wrapped in blue tarpaulin, dumped at sea 2.5km off a Cronulla beach.

The jury heard that McNamara was seen on CCTV footage at the Padstow storage facility, opening and closing the shed roller door four times in eight minutes just prior to Gao’s arrival.

The trial continues before Justice Geoffrey Bellew.