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A year after Tran's arrest they were able to charge him with the murder. (Although Christiansen had fired the gun, Tran had set the whole thing up.) He pleaded not guilty at first, only changing this to a guilty plea on the eve of his trial in late 2011. He was sentenced to twenty years, with a non-parole period of fifteen.

•

In the end, just about everyone pleaded guilty to something, except the Perish brothers and Matthew Lawton—and Curtis' associate Jay Sauer. On 18 December 2003 police stopped Sauer's car and searched it, finding 132 grams of methamphetamine and $1,500 in cash. Sauer said he had no knowledge of the drugs. Searches of his home and business premises found more drugs, including eighty-one mauve ecstasy tablets with a Donald Duck logo on them, and a further $27,260 in used notes that Sauer said was working capital for his Harley shop. He was given six years with a non-parole period of four.

In April 2010 Marcelo Urriola was sentenced for helping dispose of Paul Elliott's body at sea and for supplying cocaine. He asked that a further sixteen offences be taken into account, most involving the possession of anabolic steroids. Justice Elizabeth Fullerton noted Urriola had had a ‘pathological dependence on Christiansen for the supply of various drugs
of addiction' and an ‘utterly misplaced regard and respect for this man'. She gave him a discount of forty-five per cent on the first count for his plea of guilty and for assistance provided. For the first offence Urriola received a total sentence of six years, with a non-parole period of four years and six months, and for the second, a fixed term of two years and six months, to commence three years after the first sentence. He appealed against the length of his sentence and the judge was told to make a relatively minor alteration to the overall sentence.

On 15 April 2010 Craig Bottin, after serving seven years for various other offences, was arrested at his parents' home in Mortdale and charged with his role in the Falconer kidnapping and other offences committed with Brad Curtis. In addition he was charged with obtaining a loan of $28,450 from Esanda Finance by securing it against a property he did not actually own. In fact it was his parents' place. He was sentenced in May 2011 to three years, with two non-parole.

In May 2010 Brad Curtis was sentenced for eight offences, including kidnapping Terry Falconer and shooting Gary Mack and Raniera Puketapu. He asked that a further fourteen offences, including the BOC Gases robbery, be taken into account. Judge Deborah Sweeney observed that Curtis was thirty-nine years old and his only criminal history was for drink-driving in the Children's Court back in 1989. Since 2005 he'd been working in occupational health and safety management positions with organisations including Railcorp and the Wesley Mission.

The court heard that since Curtis' arrest in early 2009, his children's behaviour had deteriorated and some were suffering
severe anxiety. His wife had acquired a major depressive disorder.

The judge noted that a psychologist who'd examined Curtis said there was no history of substance abuse, mental illness or significant pathology. Curtis himself expressed only qualified remorse for his crimes; for example, still distinguishing between ‘fighting gangsters' and ‘hurting innocents'. Therefore, said the judge, ‘my assessment of his prospects of rehabilitation must remain guarded given the cold-blooded approach he demonstrated in many of his offences without any psychological condition which may have provided some explanation for his conduct'. For this accumulation of criminality he would have received a sentence of forty years, but the judge noted that the assistance he had provided police—and was to provide in the future, when he gave evidence in court—was ‘of a very high order. It can probably be described as exceptional.' Therefore Curtis received a discount of fifty per cent, meaning his final sentence was twenty years, of which fifteen must be served.

In September 2010 Jake Bennie was sentenced to five years, with a minimum of three, for his role in the abduction of Terry Falconer. The judge had taken into account the BOC Gases robbery and gave Bennie a thirty-five per cent discount for assistance provided. Bennie struck some observers as a strangely cheerful man, even in jail, one of those who seem to go through disasters untouched.

In November 2010 Jeremy Postlewaight was sentenced for assisting with the disposal of Paul Elliott's body and for the robbery of BOC Gases. Justice Elizabeth Fullerton noted that unlike Urriola, Postlewaight, who was thirty-three at the time of Elliott's death, was not psychologically dependent on
Christiansen, and had also provided the boat used to take the body out to sea, so his criminality was worse. He had also been in jail before, for supplying drugs.

Her Honour noted that Postlewaight's lawyer claimed his client had said a prayer ‘out of respect' before dropping the toolbox into the ocean. ‘Even if that is true,' the judge said, ‘I do not consider that it carries any weight at all as evidence of remorse, or that it has any bearing at all on the issue of rehabilitation, whatever else it might reflect about this offender's conscience or his faith.'

After applying a discount of twenty-five per cent for the guilty plea, Justice Fullerton sentenced Postlewaight to nine years, of which six years and six months must be served.

Michael Christiansen was almost like a kid when talking to police after he was caught, claiming that everything bad he'd done had been an accident, certainly not his fault. Apparently he hadn't intended to kill Elliott—even though he'd taken the toolbox coffin to the house. When telling these stories to police he would adopt a subservient and vacuous expression, but they figured he wasn't as dumb as he pretended. His generally successful criminal career suggested otherwise.

In July 2011 Christiansen, who had pleaded guilty, was sentenced for four offences, including the murder of Paul Elliott and for supplying a large quantity of drugs. He asked for an additional twenty-one offences to be taken into account.

Like Curtis, Christiansen had helped police and, as a result, his life and the lives of his family were in danger. He would serve his sentence in protective custody within the prison system, which meant his conditions and access to courses and jobs would be restricted.

Justice Megan Latham had received a letter from Christiansen saying, ‘I take full responsibility for my part in the death of Mr Elliott and expect to be punished accordingly.' It was the judge's view that Christiansen's ‘prospects of rehabilitation appear sound, if only on the basis that, by the time of the offender's release from jail, he will no longer be an associate of those who engage in large-scale drug dealing. The offender's criminality appears to be almost wholly related to his participation in that milieu.' After applying a discount of thirty per cent for the murder as a result of the guilty plea and the help provided police, the judge sentenced Christiansen to twenty-one years, with a minimum of fifteen years and three months.

‘The only upsetting thing about the investigation is the sentences don't reflect the crimes,' said Tuno detective Joe Doueihi when it was all over, ‘because most of them rolled and got discounts. Christiansen got fifteen years on the bottom for a contract killing where the body's never even been recovered. It doesn't get much worse than that.'

The arrests and subsequent confessions were an impressive success. Unfortunately this had been achieved alongside the continuing decline in the personal and professional relationship between Gary Jubelin and Glen Browne. The only thing they had left in common was a commitment to the investigation.

They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind
.

There is no peace, saieth the Lord, unto the wicked
.

Anthony and Andrew Perish and Matthew Lawton had all been charged with conspiracy to murder Terry Falconer. Anthony Perish and Matthew Lawton were also charged with the actual murder. They'd all pleaded not guilty, so there would be a trial. In the case of the murder charge, it would be necessary for the Crown to prove not that Perish and Lawton had actually killed Falconer, only that he'd died as a result of actions carried out by them with reckless disregard for human life.

The first step in the trial process is a committal hearing before a magistrate, where the Crown presents its case—including some of its witnesses—and the defence challenges it. The magistrate decides if the case is strong enough to proceed to a trial before a jury.

This committal occurred before Magistrate Alexander Mijovich in the Downing Centre in Sydney in June 2010,
with trial advocate Roger Kimbell representing the Crown, along with solicitor Victoria Garrity. Often defence lawyers are paid for by the state, through Legal Aid, but in this case the accused paid for their own defence. According to one informed observer, by the end of the trial they would have spent more than a million dollars, all provided by Anthony Perish.

It was fascinating to see how the state set out to prosecute, on the cheap, criminals of the stature of the Perishes. The Director of Public Prosecutions did not even allocate a Crown prosecutor (a barrister) to the committal, instead allowing a solicitor to take on three top barristers. As for the police force, you might think they would have provided a dedicated, crack squad to protect the lives of the three protected witnesses whose evidence would be vital for the case, but in fact the detectives of Tuno had to look after Tod Daley, David Taylor and Tony Martin themselves. They booked cheap hotel rooms that they shared with the witnesses for the course of the committal (and, later, the trials), staying with them twenty-four hours a day.

As most of what occurred at the committal was a rehearsal for the trial, it will not be described here, except for an incident on the morning of 9 June, after Tod Daley had been escorted into the courtroom by detectives. It was his second day in the witness box, and on the previous one the Perishes had alternated menacing stares with mocking laughter. Now, as the courtroom waited for the magistrate to appear, they took things to another level. First Andrew stared at Daley and made his right hand into a gun shape before placing it against his temple, then both Perishes got to scribbling on the pads with which they'd been provided, and wrote words that they held
up for Daley to read. Anthony's said ‘DOG', while Andrew's was ‘FINK'.

It wasn't a physical attack, but it was the best the Perishes could do in the circumstances, and for a man in Daley's situation it was unsettling. The police charged the brothers with witness intimidation and hoped they would would be tried before the murder trial, so convictions would be on their records at that point. (As there was CCTV in the committal courtroom, and the makeshift signs had been seized by police, there was little doubt they'd be found guilty.) But for some reason the matter did not go to court until after the murder trial.

The committal went for two weeks and at the end, Magistrate Mijovich decided there were cases to be answered. A trial date was set for 2011: the wheels of justice tend to move slowly, especially when there is a need to coordinate three busy defence lawyers. Experienced barrister Mervyn Grogan was assigned to be the Crown prosecutor, and he consulted with Roger Kimbell and Virginia Garrity (who would be at the trial too). He read the extensive brief—which occupied dozens of thick ringbinders—and began to work out how he would run the trial. This included determining in detail what evidence was admissible, and deciding which witnesses to call and the order in which to present them.

The trial was due to begin on 31 January before Justice Derek Price, a tall and lean man with a voice resembling that of television presenter Kerry O'Brien. The defence team was headed by a group of high-powered barristers: Carolyn Davenport SC (for Anthony Perish); Winston Terrracini SC (Andrew Perish's long-time brief) and Stephen Hanley SC (for Matthew Lawton). Just as the trial was about to start, Mervyn
Grogan fell seriously ill and was replaced by Paul Leask, who asked for a month to master the brief. Justice Price, apparently impatient to get things moving, gave him a week.

Gary Jubelin had checked Leask out and figured if any barrister could do it in the time, he could. Leask, a trim man who looks younger than his years and gives an impression of great energy, was born in South Australia in 1966 and attended state schools before completing an economics–law degree at the University of Adelaide. He worked for Legal Aid and as a Crown prosecutor in South Australia from 1989 to 1995, as a Public Defender in Queensland, and became a Crown prosecutor in Sydney in 2002. In 2008 he prosecuted two people charged with the murder of a couple, Gregory Hosa and Kathryn McKay, whose hog-tied bodies had been found smouldering in 44-gallon drums in the Tomerong State Forest near Nowra on the state's south coast. One of the accused was acquitted, but the main perpetrator pleaded guilty during the trial. That trial had been very much personality-based, involving a witness who'd been an accomplice and gave evidence. The Falconer trial was similar: everything would depend on how Tod Daley, Tony Martin and Brad Curtis were received by the jury. Of these, Tod Daley was by far the most important, because he was first and if the jury believed his story of the attempt to hire his boat, all the subsequent evidence would fit naturally into the framework set up by his account.

The two cases also resembled each other in that the Crown could not say for sure just what action of the accused had led to the death of each victim, yet this did not matter. All it was necessary to establish for a conviction was that the victim
had died as a result of
some
action of the accused. So the case Leask would take to the jury was that Terry Falconer had died as a result of his abduction, which had occurred at the instigation or with the assistance of the accused, and with the intention of killing him. In other words, he made no attempt to pin down the exact moment of death. This was probably wise, as confusion was likely to arise in the trial over whether Falconer had been killed by Brad Curtis or had died on the way to Girvan. Curtis, as we've seen, had given three different accounts of Falconer's death, and no one knew which one he'd settle on during the trial, but given Leask's trial strategy, in law this didn't matter.