Vasko ­Boskovski murder: Bullet fingerprint could be ‘smoking gun’ in gangland shooting

A PARTIAL fingerprint lifted from a bullet casing has emerged as a key piece of evidence in the gangland murder of Sydney father Vasko ­Boskovski.

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A PARTIAL fingerprint lifted from a bullet casing has emerged as a key piece of evidence in the gangland murder of Sydney father Vasko ­Boskovski.

Homicide detectives have also ­revealed they filmed three re-enactments of the shooting using a dozen cars and a neighbourhood CCTV camera to try to identify the getaway vehicle used in the attack.

The details are contained in a bundle of documents tendered last week during a coronial inquest into the murder of the married father-of-two in Earlwood, in Sydney’s inner west, on July 29, 2013.

Police at the scene of the fatal shooting at Earlwood.

Shooting victim Vasko Boskovski. Picture: Facebook

The documents reveal that at the time of his death the 35-year-old had started a debt-collecting business known as Elite Group Solutions and had become closely associated with construction identity George Ales and several well-known Middle Eastern organised crime figures.

Included among them were Khaled Sharrouf, a convicted terrorist who would ultimately join ISIS in Syria, and Bilal Fatrouni, a former member of the Comanchero bikie gang who has survived several shooting attempts.

The documents reveal that one hour after Boskovski was gunned down, a bullet was fired into the air outside Fatrouni’s home at Revesby Heights in what police believe was most likely a linked attack.

While there have been several lines of inquiry into Boskovski’s death, police believe the most likely motive centred around a $3 million sum that his debt-collecting company had been trying to recover from the property development giant Meriton Group.

The deceased had dealings with the Comanchero bikie gang.

Khaled Sharrouf, who fled Australia to fight with Islamic extremist insurgents in Syria.

These efforts unwittingly put Boskovski and his associates in ­unfriendly competition with a rival Middle Eastern organised crime group that had been attempting to recover the same amount of money for a fee.

In the days leading up to Boskovski’s murder, both groups had a meeting and were involved in a violent fracas that resulted in a gun ­falling to the ground.

A source said Boskovski picked up the weapon and pointed it at several people from the opposing crime group, which raised the stakes in the conflict.

“You don’t do that,” the source said.

It was this incident that led to Boskovski being marked for a shooting but, the source added, the intention had been to injure him, not murder him. Six bullets were fired at Boskovski as he responded to his doorbell at 9.24pm, resulting in three gunshot wounds to his right hip, abdomen and head.

A partial fingerprint was lifted from a cartridge casing left behind but, due to the “limited ridges”, there had been “no positive identification” of any persons of interest.

The 35-year-old was shot dead at his home.

Along with the print, detectives have been methodically working to identify the make and model of the getaway vehicle involved in the shooting that night.

A CCTV camera on nearby Wolli Ave captured the outline of some headlights, brake lights, and the body shape of a car, which allowed case officers to draw up a long list of possible vehicle types.

Investigators returned to the scene with a dozen vehicles to ­re-enact the getaway car’s arrival and departure, recording each of these passes using the same Wolli Ave CCTV camera to try to replicate the images captured that night.

A shortlist of possible cars was then cross-referenced against 5469 e-tag activations made on the M5 motorway around the time of the murder.

The results of these efforts were blacked out in the documents due to ongoing inquiries.