Supreme Court jury finds Mark Rodney Jones guilty of New Year’s Day 2017 murder of Bradley Wade Breward in Launceston

The jury in the murder trial against Mark Rodney Jones was told how he systematically tracked down his victim.

A police forensics specialist investigating the disappearance of Bradley Breward at a Newnham unit in 2017.

A SUPREME Court jury was told how Mark Rodney Jones systematically tracked down his victim Bradley Breward before torturing and killing him.

The jury took just over two hours to unanimously decide a former bodybuilder was guilty of murdering a man he thought had stolen his car.

But what the jury couldn’t be told was that, in 1998, Mark Rodney Jones, then 22, pleaded guilty to raping a 17-year-old girl he had met at a party in Launceston.

After she refused to have sex with him, he throttled her hard enough to cause her nose and eyes to bleed.

Mark Rodney Jones pictured competing in a body-building contest. Jones has been convicted for the murder of Bradley Breward. Picture: Rx Muscle

Jones was sentenced to four years jail, later increased to five years after the Crown argued it was manifestly inadequate in the Court of Criminal Appeal.

During his eight-day murder trial over the past two weeks, Jones, now 43, of West Launceston, had maintained he never wanted his 22-year-old victim, Bradley Breward, to die from the torture he inflicted in a cramped Newnham unit on New Year’s Day 2017.

MARK RODNEY JONES FOUND GUILTY OF MURDER

During the trial, the Supreme Court in Launceston heard Jones had dedicated weeks to searching for Mr Breward in December 2016, after he was told Mr Breward had stolen his Nissan Patrol ute from a roadside in Prospect.

Jones later told detectives he needed $22,000 for the uninsured ute to help pay for an operation his wife needed and that its theft was a “blow” to the family before Christmas.

Mark Rodney Jones outside the Supreme Court in Launceston in 1998, when has was 22 and facing rape charges..

Jones launched a social media campaign to find information on the missing ute and offered a $5000 reward for information leading to its whereabouts and $1000 for anyone who could lead him to Mr Breward.

That pursuit eventually led, the jury decided, to Mr Breward’s murder.

The jury heard Jones found Mr Breward at a Newnham unit, after receiving a tip-off that morning from a woman named Tina Robertson, whom Mr Breward owed about $3000.

Jones entered the unit with another man, Ricky John Izard, and began punching Mr Breward and demanding he tell him where his ute was, before the two men tied him up.

Jones then waterboarded Mr Breward and twice suffocated him with a plastic bag.

After an unsuccessful attempt to revive Mr Breward, the court heard his body was placed in a bean bag cover, wrapped in a tarpaulin that Jones retrieved from his ute and taken away, ultimately to Lake Eugenana, near Devonport, where it was weighed down and dumped.

Bradley Wade Breward, 22. Picture: SUPPLIED

The jury was also not told that Izard pleaded guilty to manslaughter, aggravated burglary and perverting justice just days before Jones’s trial began.

Jones now awaits sentencing for Mr Breward’s murder. Justice Robert Pearce remanded him to reappear next Thursday.