Roger Rogerson guilty: Former detective and Glen McNamara guilty of Jamie Gao’s murder
THE senior cop responsible for the arrest of Roger Rogerson and Glen McNamara for Jamie Gao’s murder has praised his team, saying the pair of former detectives thought they could simply get away with the crime.
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- ROGERSON: SERIAL KILLER WITH A BADGE
- TIMELINE: HOW JAMIE GAO WAS MURDERED
- COP’S TEARS OF RELIEF AT ROGERSON GUILTY VERDICT
THE senior cop responsible for the arrest of Roger Rogerson and Glen McNamara for Jamie Gao’s murder has praised his team, saying the pair of former detectives thought they could simply get away with the crime.
Rogerson and McNamara were today found guilty of the murder of student drug dealer Jamie Gao.
After six and a half days of deliberation, the jury delivered their verdicts — guilty for both men on charges of murder and taking part in the supply of 2.78kg of ice.
Gao, 20, was shot dead inside the Padstow storage unit on May 20, 2014 during a botched drug deal.
Today, Detective Inspector Russell Oxford praised his team for bringing the pair to justice.
“These two guys were Keystone Cops and they simply thought they could get away with this.
“I’m very proud of all that went into this ... essentially we were looking for Jamie Gao and that drew us over to the Padstow area and then it was a matter of following the evidence,” he said outside court.
“It simply came down to the case of three men walking into a unit and two men coming out,” he said.
Both Rogerson, 75, and McNamara, 57, gave evidence in the trial, which spanned almost four months, and gave markedly different versions of what happened inside unit 803 of Rent A Space, Padstow.
McNamara, who told the jury he was meeting with Gao to use him as a source for a planned book on triad drug syndicates, said that Rogerson shot the university student dead as he “seethed with anger” over the exchange of drugs and cash.
He then told the court Rogerson had threatened his safety and warned “I’ll kill your lovely girls” if he did not help with the disposal of Gao’s body.
Rogerson in turn relied extensively on the CCTV footage from the storage facility, which recorded a period of three minutes and 19 seconds when it was only McNamara and Gao inside the shed.
The former detective said that when he stepped inside he saw Gao already lying dead on the floor, and was told by his “very good friend” McNamara that the pair had engaged in “a real struggle” for the weapon, and it was during that tussle that “it went off twice ... he shot himself”.
Rogerson told the jury he walked in and found McNamara “white as a ghost, shaking uncontrollably and sweating like a pig.”
“Then I looked down and I saw an Asian man lying on the floor with his head to my right ... he was dead,” Rogerson told the court.
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“Glen McNamara said to me ‘he pulled a gun on me, he wanted to kill me, he stuck me up for the car keys.
“(McNamara) said to me ‘I knew he was going to shoot me ... I made a grab for his hands ... I was able to get hold of his hands and I was lucky enough to twist the gun around. It went off twice. He shot himself in the chest.’”
He told the jury that afterwards McNamara had warned him that if they didn’t get out of the area “this place will be swarming with Chinese assassins”.
Rogerson said he replied: “well, thanks very much, Glen, I’m a bit old for all this”.
The gun used to shoot Gao twice in the chest and abdomen has never been found.
In both his opening and closing address to the jury, Crown prosecutor Christopher Maxwell QC said they did not have to conclusively determine which man was the shooter to find them both guilty, as they were on trial for a joint criminal enterprise.
Mr Maxwell said both men knew Gao was to be executed inside the shed, and took steps to make it happen.
CCTV was the cornerstone of the case, with the jury played hours of tapes showing the movements of both men in the lead up to May 20, 2014, and in the aftermath of the shooting.
In some of the footage, the pair can be seen buying a block and tackle from a store in Taren Point, in Sydney’s south, that was used to help lift Gao’s body in the water the day after his murder.
The men were also seen on CCTV from McNamara’s Cronulla apartment complex cradling a six pack of beer, allegedly enjoyed after spending a few hours in the basement carpark moving Gao’s body from a white station wagon into McNamara’s boat.
The drugs were found inside the white station wagon by police, and the court heard they had been packed into brown pillowslips, which McNamara bought at a Kmart in Sylvania a few days after the murder.
Friends and relatives of Jamie Gao, a former student of Caringbah High, told the court that he had boasted to them shortly before his death that he was on the verge of something that would soon “make him very rich”.
His body was found, still wrapped inside the silver surfboard cover that he was placed in at the Padstow shed, six days after his death, floating in sea 2.5km off a Cronulla beach.
Both McNamara and Rogerson were arrested within a week of the shooting.
Due to the length of the trial, the jury was told they would be excused from sitting again for life.
McNamara’s tearful daughter Jessica arrived just after the verdict was handed down and did not comment as she left court.
Rogerson’s barrister George Thomas said as he left court “I can’t comment as the matter is still pending.”
When asked if his client was disappointed with the verdict Mr Thomas said “the jury made its decision.”
McNamara’s counsel Gabriel Wendler indicated his client will appeal the verdict.
Jamie Gao’s family said after the verdict they were happy that justice had been served, but no result was going to bring their son back.
“Today the legal system worked. Two very dangerous criminals have been found guilty,” the family said in a statement.
“But while this is the verdict our family were hoping would be delivered, true justice can never really be served. Yes, Jamie was a young man who had made some mistakes – but what young person hasn’t?
“No 20-year-old deserves to lose their life over a stupid mistake. No matter what today’s findings are or the sentence that is given, it won’t change the fact that Jamie remains absent from the lives of our family – the people who love him - and we miss him every single day.”
Rogerson and McNamara will be sentenced on August 25.
THE LIFE AND CRIMES OF ROGER ROGERSON
* Born in Sydney in 1941, joined the NSW Police in 1959, aged 18.
* Worked on some of the state’s biggest cases during his 27-year career.
* Rose through the ranks and won 12 commendation awards. In 1980 received the Peter Mitchell Award for arresting escaped armed robber Gary Purdey.
* Career started to unravel after shooting dead Sydney heroin dealer Warren Lanfranchi in 1981.
* He testified it was self defence but Lanfranchi’s girlfriend, prostitute Sallie-Anne Huckstepp pursued the matter in the media and her body was found in Sydney’s Centennial Park in 1986.
* Charged over the 1984 execution-style shooting of undercover drug squad officer Michael Drury. Drury survived and Rogerson was acquitted of trying to bribe and conspiring to murder him.
* Sacked from the police force in 1986 for misconduct, spent nearly four years in jail in the 1990s for perverting the course of justice.
* Depicted in the 1995 television mini-series Blue Murder as the star crooked cop.
* Jailed in 2005 for 12 months for lying to the Police Integrity Commission.
* Aged 73, Rogerson was arrested on May 27, 2014 and charged with the murder of Sydney student Jamie Gao and the supply of drugs.
* Found guilty of Gao’s murder and the supply of drugs on June 15, 2016.
GLEN MCNAMARA, WHISTLEBLOWING COP AND CRIME AUTHOR
* Born in the Sutherland Shire, signed on as a police cadet aged 17, in 1976.
* Investigated drug trafficking with the National Crime Authority.
* Worked in Kings Cross in 1988 as a detective senior constable under corrupt police officers Graham “Chook” Fowler and Larry Churchill.
* Worked with the police Internal Security Unit to expose corruption involving police and pedophiles Robert “Dolly” Dunn and Colin Fisk.
* After handing over evidence of Dunn and Fisk manufacturing and supplying police with amphetamines, his identity was leaked and he was forced to flee the country.
* Gave evidence to the Wood Royal Commission claiming sacked senior NSW policewoman Lola Scott helped protect Dunn and Fisk but later said none of the evidence was acted upon.
* In 2003 he gave evidence to the Federal Parliamentary Crime Committee, in which he re-stated his claims about Scott, and claimed he had been falsely accused of an armed robbery. He subsequently sued NSW Police for defamation.
* Published books Dirty Work and Savage Obsessions, detailing his time at Kings Cross.
* Arrested in May 2014 with Rogerson, charged with the murder of Jamie Gao and supplying drugs * Found guilty of both charges, June 15, 2016.
QUOTES FROM THE JAMIE GAO MURDER TRIAL:
“I’ll do you. Get up and help you weak c**t or you will be on the floor next to him. Do as I tell you or I’ll kill your girls.” — Glen McNamara claimed co-defendant Roger Rogerson said this as he pointed the gun at McNamara’s head after shooting Sydney student Jamie Gao.
“He (Roger Rogerson) said to my dad that he had really lovely, lovely girls. As he was saying that I looked at my dad and he was pale. He looked skittish. He kept moving at the table, twitching a little bit.” — McNamara’s eldest daughter Jessica, testifying in court to back up her father’s claim that Rogerson threatened his family if McNamara didn’t go along with his version of the shooting.
“This arsehole nearly killed me.” — What Rogerson claimed McNamara said as he leaned over Gao’s body after shooting him.
“If you’re going to do a (drug) deal, it is better to do one big deal.” — Jamie Gao’s alleged words to his cousin in 2014, as quoted by prosecutor Christopher Maxwell.
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