Ron Medich found guilty nine years after Michael McGurk shooting

The millionaire property developer Ronald Medich has been found guilty of the September 2009 murder of businessman Michael McGurk, who was killed by a single gunshot outside his Cremorne home on Sydney's lower north shore.

The SMH crime reporter Kate McClymont wrote this morning Medich, who recently turned 70, was likely to die in jail.

The Crown alleged Medich, who was embroiled in legal disputes with Mr McGurk, conscripted then friend and associate ex-boxer Lucky Gattellari to carry out a hit.

Medich complained that his former business partner was "costly" and "ruining his life" before he ordered his execution, the second trial in the Sydney court was told.

At the time Medich owned a Point Piper harbourfront house sold for $37 million in 2014. His wife Odetta left for Europe.

The David Katon-designed house replaced the house bought from the restaurateur Wolfie Pizem in 2003 for $15.1 million.

Judgement was handed down at 11.07am this morning.

Medich had pleaded not guilty to murdering McGurk, who was shot in the head at close range outside his Cremorne home in 2009.

In the hours before Michael McGurk was murdered, property developer Ron Medich had an emotional phone conversation with a police officer in which he expressed his distress that firebombing charges against his former business partner had been dropped.

By late October 2010 five men had been arrested and several charges laid. By April 2013 four of them had been jailed in connection with the murder of McGurk.

One was the Bosnian immigrant Senad Kaminic who acted as a debt collector and driver for Gattellari. Kaminic was jailed after pleading guilty to accessory after the fact to murder.

"Money was always in question," Kaminic said of the tension between Medich and McGurk.

Kaminic testified to hearing Gattellari, after a private conversation with Medich, refer to Medich's intention to "go all the way".

"What was your understanding of what Mr Gattellari had said to you about him wanting to 'go all the way'?" prosecutor Sharon Harris asked.

"To kill McGurk," Kaminic replied.

"That he's costly for him and that he's ruining his life."

The SMH had noted that one of McGurk's first jobs for Medich was being dispatched to Hawaii by Medich to threaten Paul Mathieson, the founder of Amazing Loans, with whom Medich had had a falling out over his investment in the pay-day lending company.

He was also given the job of recovering Medich’s loan to Adam and Sally-Anne Tilley, who had borrowed money from Medich to buy Medich’s earlier redundant Point Piper home.

McClymont poignantly wrote today the cycle of Medich’s business failures meant that whoever became his new “best friend” was asked to recoup Medich’s investments from the previous soured deal, "usually by way of menace."