A witness tells of a chance encounter with the hit men involved in an unsolved Gold Coast case

FRESH light has been shone on one of the Gold Coast’s unsolved execution-style killings with a witness telling how he had a chance encounter with the hitmen the night before the murder.

Michael Davies, 54, was found shot dead at his shared Paradise Point two-storey duplex.

GOLD Coast detectives are keen to talk to a boatie who says he came face-to-face with two men he believes killed a Paradise Point businessman 14 years ago.

The breakthrough in the cold case followed a Bulletin report on Saturday into the execution-style killing of ­Michael Davies.

The Gold Coast boatie said he accidentally saw a meeting between the killers and another “two men in the shadows” and said he believed the hit was to be at night but the gunmen left after seeing him.

The Sovereign Island bridge where the boatie had planned to meet his “lady friend”.

Mr Davies was found dead inside his Paradise Point villa on The Esplanade on April 17, 2002, just days before his 55th birthday. He had debts of more than $700,000.

The boatie, who asked not to be named, said: “The night before Mr Davies was shot my boat was moored at Paradise Point. It was dark when I took my dinghy from alongside the beach near the bridge (at Sovereign Islands).

“I had arranged to meet a lady friend that night but she had gone to the opposite side of Paradise Point by mistake.

The Sovereign Islands and Paradise Point. If you drive north of the bridge, you end up in the backstreets. The hitmen did their homework and knew that. Picture: Mike Batterham

“I told her to go to the park area on my side and I would signal her with a torch.”

“I was standing opposite the arch (to Mr Davies’ villa) and put my torch beam on a car approaching that might have been her.

“It was then as my beam swept past the arch that I could see two men concealed in the shadow it formed.”

The larger of the two men, about 115kg, stepped across the footpath towards the boatie only to be called back by his smaller mate. Both were in their early 50s.

“They moved back to the arch shadow to wait,” the man said.

Michael Davies, 54, was found shot dead at his shared Paradise Point two-storey duplex.

“Another car, a late model Falcon sedan, approached and pulled up in front of the arch and the two men moved from the shadows to the passenger side window.”

A former doorman who had worked the clubs in Sydney, the boatie said he sensed trouble as the four men briefly spoke.

“My torch was a very bright spotlight and I flashed it on the front driver-side window and saw there were two clean-shaven men of good appearance, about 30 to 40 years of age.

“They had white shirts on.

“The same time as the beam hit them they snapped a U-turn back to the south.

“I watched them leave rubber until they pulled in about 400m away.

“The two at the arch went back into the shadows.”

The boatie said he had not contacted police until several days after the murder because he was married and concerned about revealing his relationship with the woman.

Police later alerted the media about two men in a red Datsun Bluebird outside Mr Davies’ home on the morning of the murder.

Mr Davies was working on papers at his kitchen bench, sitting on a stool with his back to the door, when his killer entered the room at the front of the villa. He was shot with a 9mm pistol.

Mr Davies’ Ballina company owed money to 108 unsecured creditors and among them was a top-level crime organisation with Middle Eastern links and heavily involved in importing amphetamines.

The boatie said he believed the description he gave of the men in the Falcon sedan fit two criminals known to police. One has since died.

Detective Superintendent Kerry Johnson, the regional crime co-ordinator, confirmed that detectives would like to interview the boatie and welcomed the new ­information.