A Supreme Court jury has found an elderly former police officer guilty of murdering Warrnambool father Christopher Jarvis more than 20 years ago.
Mr Jarvis, who was 38, has not been seen since he disappeared from his Wangoom home near Warrnambool on June 13, 2006.
During the 21-day trial in Warrnambool, the court heard that Steven Frederick Johnson, 74, orchestrated a violent attack on Mr Jarvis, his tenant, over $2,210 in unpaid rent.
Johnson murdered Mr Jarvis with a baseball bat before dumping his body in bushland.
Mr Jarvis’s car was later found burnt out at a tourist lookout on the coast near Warrnambool.
His body has never been found.
Members of Mr Jarvis’s family cheered and celebrated in court when the verdict was delivered, while Johnson’s family members sat in shock.
Christopher Jarvis has not been seen since 2006. (Supplied: Australian Missing Persons Register)
Johnson, 74, had pleaded not guilty to one charge of murder over the disappearance.
The jury deliberated for four days before returning a guilty verdict.
No bail application was made, and Johnson will return to court for a plea hearing on December 14.
Speaking outside court, Mr Jarvis’s family spoke of their relief at the guilty verdict.
“It’s been the longest 20 years to finally get what we’ve wanted — a little bit of closure, so we can hopefully move on,” his daughter, Bree, said.
Mr Jarvis’s son, Cale, said he hoped Johnson “rots in his dirty little cell for the rest of his life, and thinks about his actions”.
A long time coming
The murder was initially treated as a missing person case, before police began reinvestigating and arrested Johnson in 2022.
The Supreme Court, sitting in Warrnambool, heard Johnson fired a starter pistol in Mr Jarvis’s ear on the day of the attack before bundling him into his own car.
He then drove the man to the nearby Framlingham Forest, where Johnson killed Mr Jarvis by hitting him over the head with a baseball bat and buried him in a shallow grave.
Prosecutors believe Christopher Jarvis’s body is somewhere in Framlingham Forest, near Warrnambool. (ABC News: Jean Bell)
The murder was carried out the day before the men were due to appear at a contested hearing in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) over the rental dispute.