Man freed for involvement in trying to cover up Dean McGrath’s murder
A MAN who helped to cover up the murder of an ex-policeman in scenes reminiscent of Quentin Tarantino’s movie Pulp Fiction has been freed after serving just 349 days behind bars.
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A MAN who helped to cover up the murder of an ex-policeman in scenes reminiscent of Quentin Tarantino’s movie Pulp Fiction has been freed after serving just 349 days behind bars.
The man, who the Herald Sun has chosen not to name, was released from custody on Thursday after being sentenced to the time he had already served for his involvement in the death of former special operations officer Dean McGrath in May last year.
He was placed on a two-year Community Correction Order where he will be supervised and have to undergo drug treatment and rehabilitation.
The man pleaded guilty to committing acts to impede the killer’s prosecution, including using a grinder to cut up the gun used into small pieces and disposing of it.
He also prepared a sheet of plastic for the body to be wrapped in, and then altered an airconditioning duct so the body could be hidden inside before being disposed.
The man was working at the Braeside factory where Mr McGrath was killed.
He had stayed back, and was smoking ice, when Mr McGrath arrived armed with a sawn-off shotgun, and looking for the alleged killer, about 7.10pm on May 17.
“Where is he?” Mr McGrath asked the man, at one point pointing the gun into his chest.
The alleged killer had left, but soon after returned, and was confronted by Mr McGrath, who repeatedly demanded where the drugs and money were.
The man did not witness how Mr McGrath was killed, but told police he heard “a really horrible crack”.
It is alleged the killer repeatedly struck Mr McGrath over the head with the gun barrel.
The man yelled out for him to stop, and urged him to call the police.
Defence barrister Philip Dunn QC, in an earlier hearing, said the man was “not the originator of any plan”.
“(He) is the unintentional victim of the robber,” he said.
Mr Dunn told how another associate, much like Harvey Keitel’s character Winston Wolfe in Pulp Fiction, later arrived at the scene to help.
“It’s a series of events vaguely reminiscent in some ways of that Quentin Tarantino film Pulp Fiction when one of the characters brings in Mr Wolfe, the fix-it man,” Mr Dunn said.
It was this man, who was associated with outlaw bikie gangs, and the alleged killer who barked orders to the man to help conceal the crime in the hours after.
Justice Coghlan said if not for his assistance in the investigation and guilty plea, he would have jailed him to 4½ years.
— with AAP