Roger Rogerson murder appeal centres on mysterious gun

An unregistered gun used by Roger Rogerson and Glen McNamara to murder aspiring drug dealer Jamie Gao may have passed through multiple different owners, a court has heard.

Roger Rogerson in 2016. Picture: Adam Yip

An unregistered gun used by crooked cops Roger Rogerson and Glen McNamara to murder aspiring drug dealer Jamie Gao may have passed through multiple different owners over a period of almost 40 years, a court has heard.

Rogerson, 79, and McNamara, 60, were jailed for life in 2016 for murdering Gao, 20, in May 2014.

Rogerson and McNamara — two of the nation’s most notorious crooked police detectives — are now fighting to overturn their convictions in the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal, claiming they have unearthed “fresh evidence” about the type of gun that was used to kill their victim.

In 2014, Rogerson and McNamara lured Gao to a rental shed in Padstow in Sydney’s south, planning to steal drugs with a street value of up to $19m from the unsuspecting student.

Instead, the pair shot Gao twice in the chest at close range in the storage unit and then stole almost 3kg of methamphetamine that they had promised to buy from him.

They attempted to cover their tracks by dumping Gao’s body at sea, but six days later fisherman discovered the corpse — wrapped in a blue tarpaulin — floating off Cronulla Beach.

The pair were captured on CCTV walking into the rental shed with Gao, but the gun that was used to murder the young student has never been found.

On Monday, the court granted a number of people who had owned the illegal gun immunity from prosecution in relation to firearm offences.

The court heard the gun had been obtained in the early 1980s and had changed hands multiple times before it ended up in Rogerson and McNamara’s possession.

Rogerson’s legal team called a number of witnesses, whose evidence was made the subject of non-publication orders.