Roger Rogerson, Glen McNamara lose appeals over Jamie Gao murder

Roger Rogerson and Glen McNamara were convicted by a jury in 2016 and jailed for life for the murder of drug dealer Jamie Gao.

Disgraced former detectives Roger Rogerson and Glen McNamara, who were jailed for life for the murder of drug dealer Jamie Gao, have lost their bid to overturn their convictions in the Court of Criminal Appeal.

Rogerson, 80, and McNamara, 62 — two of the nation’s most notorious crooked police detectives — were convicted by a jury in 2016 and jailed for life after they were convicted of murdering Gao in May 2014.

Rogerson and McNamara lured Gao to a rental shed in Padstow in Sydney’s south, planning to steal methamphetamine with a street value of up to $19m from the unsuspecting student.

Instead, the pair shot Gao twice in the chest at close range and then stole the drugs they had promised to buy from him. They attempted to cover their tracks by dumping the 20-year-old’s body at sea, but six days later a fisherman discovered the corpse — wrapped in a blue tarpaulin — floating off Cronulla Beach.

The pair challenged their convictions, while McNamara also challenged his sentence, with Rogerson claiming he had unearthed “fresh evidence” about the type of gun that was used to kill Gao. The killers have always blamed the other for pulling the trigger, and the murder weapon has never been found.

Roger Rogerson. Picture: Adam Yip

Glen McNamara. Picture: AAP

In a decision published on Friday, three Court of Appeal judges upheld the trial verdicts and sentences imposed, saying “we are of the unanimous view that both appeals should be dismissed.”

President of the Court of Appeal Justice Andrew Bell and Justices Robert Hulme and Robert Thomas Beech-Jones found it was “open to the sentencing judge to impose a life sentence for what was a cold-blooded execution.”

Rogerson and McNamara had maintained their innocence and launched an appeal on five grounds, including that verdicts of guilty were unreasonable and not supported by the evidence.

McNamara’s lawyers also said their client should have been able to tell the jury what Rogerson had allegedly told him about having participated in “several killings in the past.”

“While the evidence made it more likely that McNamara only helped Rogerson to dispose of the body out of fear, it would have been unfair to Rogerson if the jury heard the evidence,” Justice Bell said.

“Second, the court found there was no need to discharge the jury after a friend of Rogerson gave evidence that he knew McNamara from the past as a detective in Kings Cross and described him as a drug dealer. The evidence would not have had much of effect on the jury because it was clearly wrong.”

After a 10-day trial in 2016, Justice Geoffrey Bellew sentenced both men to life in prison.

Justice Bellew was satisfied the disgraced police officers had plotted to kill Gao and steal the almost 3kg of methamphetamine they had agreed to buy from him.