Ron Medich sentenced to 39 years for murder of Michael McGurk

Ron Medich will likely die behind bars after he was sentenced to 39 years for the murder of former businesspartner, Michael McGurk

Ron Medich is escorted to a NSW Corrective services van at the NSW Supreme court in Sydney today. Picture: AAP

Sydney multi-millionaire Ron Medich is likely to die behind bars after the NSW Supreme Court today sentenced him to 39 years for the execution style murder of his former business partner and stand-over man, Michael McGurk.

Medich, a 70-year-old property tycoon, repeatedly shook his head in disbelief as Justice Geoffrey Bellew sentenced him to 39 years with a non-parole period of 30 years.

Handing down the sentence, Justice Bellew said Medich had been driven to “… a fundamentally abhorrent and heinous crime” by his “deep seated hatred of McGurk’’.

Medich was found guilty in April this year of masterminding the 2009 contract killing after a major falling out between the pair which embroiled them in a series of legal disputes over failed multimillion-dollar property deals.

The court heard Medich had been so enraged with McGurk he had ordered his right-hand man Fortunato “Lucky” Gatellari to get rid of McGurk.

Justice Geoffrey Bellew at the Ron Medich sentencing: Like the murder, the intimidation was premeditated and planned. The fact that Mrs McGurk was warned by police did not serve to numb its obviously distressing effect.

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— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) June 21, 2018

Gatellari, 68, who would later turn star Crown witness, later confessed to police he had been under such pressure from Medich he hired a couple of amateur hitman – Haissam Safetli, 45 and Christopher Estephan, 19.

On the evening of September 3, 2009, the pair were waiting for McGurk as he arrived home with takeaway chicken and chips for the family dinner. As he stepped from his Mercedes he was shot in the head.

Gatellari would later tell the court he recalled asking Medich later: “Are you happy now?”

According to Gatellari, Medich replied: “Its taken f…ing long enough, and look at the s..t it’s caused.”

But Medich wasn’t satisfied with just killing McGurk. The court heard Medich was outraged that McGurk’s wife Kimberely had no intention of ending her husband’s multimillion-dollar law suits against McGurk. “He (McGurk) is causing me more problems dead than alive,’’ Matthew Crockett, another associate of Gatellari, recalled Medich saying.

Michael McGurk.

On August 8, 2010, McGurk’s widow had a solidly built male visitor wearing a wig show up at the door of her north shore home.

“Do the right thing and pay your husband’s debts,” the man said. “You know what you need to do”.

Medich was the prime police suspect as the mastermind right from the outset. But Gatellari was the first to be arrested and charged 13 months after the murder in October 2010.

Within weeks, Gatellari had turned on his former boss after Medich refused to go surety for his million-dollar bail.

Safetli and Estaphan later both pleaded guilty to being an accessory to McGurk’s murder, but police have never proved who fired the fatal shot.

During the trial the jury heard Safetli and Estephan almost crashed their getaway car as they fled from the crime scene and were captured on CCTV going across the Harbour Bridge without paying the toll.

In sentencing Medich, Justice Bellew said Medich’s crimes had had a “catastrophic” effect on Mrs McGurk and her four children’’. Extending his deepest sympathy to them, the judge said they had gone through “the most severe emotional upheavals that could ever possibly be managed”.

“I am satisfied that by the early part of 2009, the decline of the relationship between the offender and Mr McGurk ... had led the offender to form a deep- seated hatred and provided him with a motive to have him killed.

“I am satisfied the offender paid in the vicinity of $500,000 to have Mr McGurk killed.

The lawyer for McGurk’s family, Vivian Evans, told waiting media outside court: “The family are relieved and again wish to thank everyone involved in achieving this result.”