Mark Kenneth Jenkin has been found not guilty of murder but guilty of the manslaughter of a pensioner whose body he stuffed inside a surfboard bag and dropped from his second-storey Mangerton unit.
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He has also been found guilty of conspiring to murder a woman who he rightly feared would turn Crown witness against him.
Jenkin, 46, scarcely reacted as Supreme Court Justice Peter Hamill delivered the verdict at Wollongong Courthouse, moments ago.
He stood accused of repeatedly assaulting 56-year-old Mark Dower, who suffered a range of traumatic injuries before a tip-off led police to find his decomposing remains in the laundry of a Crana Place, Mangerton public housing complex on April 16, 2015.
In delivering his verdict on Wednesday, Justice Hamill said the method Jenkin used to dispose of Mr Dower’s body - dropping it out his unit window - "is suggestive of some wrongdoing".
“Some time between March 22 to 28, 2015, Mark Jenkin unlawfully assaulted Mark Dower, while Mark Dower was staying in (Jenkin’s) unit,” he said.
“The failure to call an ambulance, or to seek medical assistance, or even to ask a neighbour for help, in Mr Dower’s final days or hours suggests that Mr Jenkin played some part in the deterioration of Mr Dower’s health.”
Justice Hamill said Jenkin’s evidence was “beyond reasonable doubt, largely false” including his claims of Crown witnesses lying en masse.
"It is not believable that so many witnesses were corrupted into giving false evidence."
But the judge found the Crown had ultimately failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Jenkin intended to cause Mr Dower grievous bodily harm on the occasion, or occasions, he assaulted him.
“It’s impossible to say, beyond reasonable doubt, the point at which Mr Jenkin would have realised that Mr Dower would probably die, assuming he ever realised that,” the judge said.
The court earlier heard Mr Dower, a father-of-one, was an educated man whose battle with depression and alcohol abuse had caused him to fall on hard times in later life.
Born and raised in Wollongong, he lived in Finland and worked as an English language teacher before returning to Australia, and was the recipient of pensions from both countries.
Wednesday's verdict came after almost eight weeks of evidence from more than 70 witnesses, many of them contributors to the Crown depiction of Jenkin as a heartless standover man who repeatedly assaulted and detained the ailing Mr Dower in order to take his pension money.
Jenkin, giving evidence, couched himself as Mr Dower’s benevolent friend – a scenario rejected by the judge on Wednesday.
"I'm satisfied that the relationship between the men was such that Mr Dower felt unable to leave,” he said.
Mr Dower's long-time friend, Tony Hardy, and two other friends were in court to heard the judge's decision.
No one attended in support of Jenkin.
The court fell silent as he was led away, flanked by some of six correctives officers on hand.
The matter returns to court on September 28 for the start of sentencing proceedings.
More to come