Half an hour after Kimberley McGurk asked her husband to pick up some takeaway food on his way home a screaming relative ran into their Sydney home to say he had been hurt.
“There was a pop and there is blood,” the relative said before McGurk rushed outside to find her husband slumped in the driver’s seat of his car with a hole in the back of his head.
The widow was giving evidence on Tuesday at the New South Wales supreme court trial of the millionaire property developer Ron Medich.
The 68-year-old has pleaded not guilty to murdering Michael McGurk, his 45-year-old business partner, who was gunned down outside his Sydney home on 3 September 2009.
Medich also has denied intimidating Kimberley McGurk in August 2010.
The crown alleges that Medich directed his former close friend Fortunato “Lucky” Gattellari to organise the murder and intimidation after his business dealings with Michael McGurk soured.
Kimberley McGurk, who married her husband in 1992, said she had known nothing about his business affairs before his death but then became the executor of his will.
Less than a year after the murder, on the evening of 8 August 2010, she said she had heard a noise at the far end of the kitchen and had seen someone in the shadows outside.
“He was very heavy set, short, stocky and I have a visual memory of his legs – very big legs,” McGurk said on Tuesday. The man was of Middle Eastern appearance with olive skin, had a mop of hair and was wearing a hoodie.
“I felt sick, shaky and very frightened,” she said. The man had told her she “should do the right thing and not be a thief like my husband and pay my debts”. When she asked what debts, the man replied: “You know what you need to do,” then left.
The prosecutor, Gina O’Rourke SC, earlier on Tuesday told the jury the key crown witness, Gattellari, had been charged with trying to extort large sums of money from Medich. He faces two counts of conspiracy to defraud in relation to alleged attempts to extort money from Medich in 2013 and 2014.
Gattellari has received a discount on his sentence after admitting his role in the shooting. Medich’s defence barrister, Winston Terracini SC, told the jury Gattellari had a propensity for violence whereas Medich has no prior convictions.
“The accused’s case will centre around criticism of the reliability and the honesty and, in some cases, the deliberate attempt to mislead you by the witnesses Gattellari and [Senad] Kaminic,” he said. “Our case is there were no payments of any kind to anyone to commit any crime.”
Gattellari began his evidence late on Tuesday and will return to the witness box on Wednesday.
