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On 23 November 2018 Tom Gilling in The Australian reported ‘So, Who Killed Winchester?’

If not David Eastman, who did kill the AFP's No 2 cop?

It was described as the most chaotic murder trial in Australian history and at the end of it, on November 3, 1995, David Harold Eastman, a former public servant with a history of psychiatric problems, was found guilty of murdering assistant commissioner Colin Winchester of the Australian Federal Police. Twenty-three years later, after a six-month trial in the ACT Supreme Court, a jury has found Eastman not guilty of the same crime.

The retrial followed a judicial inquiry in 2014 in which Acting Justice Brian Martin concluded that Eastman was the victim of a miscarriage of justice. Justice Martin recommended the conviction be quashed and that Eastman be granted a pardon. A retrial, he argued, would be neither feasible nor fair, but it went ahead anyway at a reputed cost of more than $5 million.

Jury members watched as Eastman bowed and mouthed the words "Thank you" while yesterday's verdict was read out. Gasps were heard from the public gallery. After spending 19 years in jail, Eastman has been vindicated before the law and Winchester's murder outside his family home remains unsolved. There is speculation Eastman could be eligible for up to $20m in compensation if he were to sue the ACT government for wrongful imprisonment, although the government could decide instead to settle out of court with an ex-gratia - payment.

But if Eastman did not murder Winchester, as his supporters have been arguing for more than two decades, then who did? Eastman's legal team worked assiduously to raise the possibility that Winchester was the victim of a mafia hit, but the evidence for this was purely circumstantial.

In my 2016 book Evil Life, co-written with Clive Small, about the history of the Calabrian mafia in Australia, we explored the background to the allegations of mafia involvement. In late 1980 Giuseppe "Joe" Verduci, a Canberra man with no previous police record, approached the AFP with an unusual proposition. Claiming that he wanted to do something about "criminal elements" within the Italian community, Verduci offered to infiltrate the Calabrian mafia and its cannabis operations. His motive for informing, he told the AFP, was the drug-related death of his younger brother.

Verduci was a member of the Italo-Australian Club, a Canberra institution popular with members of the 'Ndrangheta, whose regional stronghold was the NSW town of Griffith. Among the godfathers Verduci told the AFP he had befriended was Vincenzo Morabito Sr, whom he described as the "second in charge" of the Calabrian mafia in Canberra. Verduci also named Luigi Pochi and Antonio "Tony" Barbaro, both of whom had been mentioned in the Woodward royal commission as having links to the cannabis trade and money laundering.

The ageing Morabito was not a high-grade target for the police, but the other names dropped by Verduci were enough to tantalise Winchester, who accepted his proposition and entered into one of the most bizarre arrangements ever sanctioned by a senior Australian cop. Winchester agreed to the cultivation of a cannabis crop that, in the words of a police report, "was to be allowed to proceed, even to the harvesting and sale stage". The crop was to be grown on a property owned by Verduci near Bungendore, northeast of Canberra. It was designated Bungendore 1 and would be followed by a second crop, Bungendore 2.

Winchester later claimed to have disbelieved Verduci's claim not to be a member of the mafia, but this did not stop him from going ahead with the operation, which was given the codename Seville. If all went according to plan, it was hoped that Operation Seville would lead Winchester and his officers straight to the top of the 'Ndrangheta in Australia.

Verduci told Winchester that a friend, 42-year-old Mario Cannistra, had approached him at the Italo-Australian Club and asked him to grow a cannabis crop. He did not ask to be paid for his role in the sting, merely to be reimbursed for "expenses". With Winchester's approval in the bag, he reported back to Cannistra that while growing the crop the two of them would be "fully covered" by the police.

According to Roderick Campbell, Brian Toohey and William Pinwill's book The Winchester Scandal, Verduci gave a statement to the National Crime Authority professing to have told Cannistra: "Mario, I believe the people giving me protection to be very keen in getting some money. They are people like us. They have habits like we do. Money is never enough and they look out to make an extra buck like we do. Ten per cent is not a big amount. We are free to produce as much as we like." Our investigation indicated that Pochi funded the Bungendore crop, with Barbaro acting as manager. Things went wrong from the start. The unusual amount of activity on Verduci's property alerted neighbours, who told the local police, who then had to be told by Winchester's men to stay away. Hail and floods wrecked part of the crop and there was squabbling between Barbaro and the growers he had recruited to keep an eye on the crop. But in February 1982 the cannabis was ready for sale.

Far from overseeing a "controlled" crop, the police had no control and were often the last to know about plants being harvested, distributed and sold. Verduci had pulled off an ingenious trick, growing and selling an illegal crop under the noses of the police and with their protection. He later claimed to have made about $110,000 by selling the cannabis to unnamed buyers, and to have given $23,500 to police for protection, leaving the remainder to be distributed among his growers. (If the police cut was 10 per cent, as Verduci indicated, then the crop was much bigger than he admitted. When questioned, Verduci could not explain the discrepancy.)

Despite his frequent memory lapses over what might have happened to the crop, Verduci did remember a delivery of 145kg of cannabis to Barbaro in Canberra. At the same time Verduci had nearly 300kg stashed at his home. Some of this found its way to a buyer in western Sydney who was not arrested for fear of putting Verduci in jeopardy. A further 90kg was on its way to Melbourne in a car carrying Barbaro, a mafia fixer named Gianfranco Tizzoni and a third man when the car was stopped by Victorian police. All three were arrested and the cannabis was seized.

Barbaro immediately smelled a rat: Verduci. But suspicion also fell on another man, Giuseppe Monteleone, who had suddenly backed out after agreeing to buy the remainder of the Bungendore crop. Ten weeks after Barbaro and Tizzoni were arrested, Monteleone was murdered with a shotgun on his property at Narrabri. Tizzoni, meanwhile, rolled to police, revealing the conspiracy by "Aussie Bob" Trimbole and the mafia godfathers in Griffith to murder anti-drugs campaigner Donald Mackay. Mackay's body has never been found.

The second cannabis crop, Bungendore 2, was much larger than the first. The crop was bigger and so was the bungling. Several million dollars' worth of plants were "lost". In February 1983, however, Cannistra, two of his brothers, their brother-in-law Giovanni "John" Commisso and three others were arrested after police raided a house in western Sydney and found 260kg of cannabis. In the end 11 people were arrested and faced charges over the Bungendore crops. According to Eastman's defence, at least some of them believed that Winchester, instead of protecting them, had betrayed them. According to this theory, Winchester's murder outside his home in Deakin on the evening of January 10, 1989, was a mafia hit. It certainly had the hallmarks of a professional execution. The murderer fired two shots from close range; one hit Winchester in the back of the head, the other in the temple.

But after an inquest that ran for more than three years the police charged Eastman, a former Treasury Department economist who had made threats against Winchester, with the killing. According to the prosecution, Eastman held a grudge against Winchester after the assistant commissioner refused to intervene in a dispute with a neighbour that had led to his being charged with assault.

Believing that a conviction would prevent him from rejoining the public service, Eastman had approached Winchester to try to have the charge dropped. When Winchester refused to help, Eastman was alleged to have said he wanted to kill the "bastard police" and to have told his doctor they should be taught a lesson. Eastman's former solicitor, Dennis Barbara, said that Eastman had threatened to "kill Winchester and get the Ombudsman too".

At his first trial in the ACT Supreme Court Eastman repeatedly sacked his lawyers and abused the judge before the jury found him guilty of murder. The judge sentenced him to life imprisonment.

His conviction was sensationally overturned 19 years later when the ACT Supreme Court determined that Eastman "did not receive a fair trial according to law. He was denied a fair chance of acquittal. As a consequence, a substantial miscarriage of justice has occurred." Finding that Eastman's guilt had been determined on the basis of "deeply flawed forensic evidence", Justice Martin said that for numerous reasons "a retrial is not feasible … In my view, the passing of so many years, coupled with the death of numerous witnesses and publicity prejudicial to the applicant, mean that a further trial would be unfair both to the prosecution and to the applicant." A retrial, Justice Martin said, would "not be in the best interests of the community". Rejecting the prosecution's argument that the case against Eastman was "overwhelming", Justice Martin found there was material pointing to an "alternative hypothesis" consistent with Eastman's innocence, the strength of which, he said, was "unknown". While convinced that Eastman had suffered a "substantial miscarriage of justice" that should "not be allowed to stand uncorrected", the judge nevertheless remarked: "I am fairly certain that the applicant is guilty of the murder of the deceased, but a nagging doubt remains." Given the problems with the original investigation — and in particular with discredited forensic evidence linking gunshot residue found at the murder scene with residue found in Eastman's car — it is unlikely that police would have been looking forward to the prospect of a retrial. Some might have been sceptical about the usefulness of a guilty verdict that returned Eastman to jail after he had already served 19 years. In the event, they were right to be apprehensive about a retrial, because Eastman has now been found not guilty.

If it was the mafia that killed Winchester, it entrusted the job to an amateur. The murder weapon has never been found but police were able to identify it as a Ruger .22 calibre semiautomatic rifle sold by a Queanbeyan man on January 1, 1989. A witness testified to seeing Eastman at the home of the gun seller.

The jury deliberated for nearly 32 hours across seven days before reaching a verdict. They listened to 127 Crown witnesses during a trial that lasted nearly six months and are now relieved of the obligation ever to serve on a jury again.

After the verdict the Winchester family released a statement through Victim Support ACT saying: "We believe the verdict is wrong and we are extremely disappointed given the significant volume of compelling evidence." Winchester was just two years away from retirement when he was shot and he remains the most senior Australian policeman to have been murdered.

A jury has now decided who did not kill him, but we are no closer to knowing who did.

30-YEAR ORDEAL JANUARY 10, 1989 Australian Federal Police assistant commissioner Colin Winchester shot dead outside his Canberra home.

DECEMBER 24, 1992 Former public servant David Eastman committed to stand trial for Winchester's murder.

MAY 2, 1995 Trial begins in the ACT Supreme Court, with the jury empanelled two weeks later. NOVEMBER 3, 1995 The guilty verdict is followed by a sentence of life imprisonment. JUNE 25, 1997 Eastman makes the first of many appeals.

SEPTEMBER 3, 2012 Federal Court orders an inquiry into Eastman's conviction.

MAY 30, 2014 Eastman's murder conviction quashed.

AUGUST 22, 2014 Eastman released from prison. JUNE 18, 2018 Retrial of Eastman for Winchester's murder begins in ACT Supreme Court. NOVEMBER 22, 2018Eastman found not guilty of the 1989 crime.