Leonard Borg, a 28-year-old Maltese-Australian who lives in Melbourne was convicted today of having murdered a colleague whom he wrongly believed had tipped off the police about his illegal cannabis-growing.
A jury found Mr Borg guilty of murdering Peter Rule in November 2009 to avoid attracting any further police attention to his drug crop, the Australian media reported.
The trial started six weeks ago. Sentence still has to be delivered.
Borg shot Mr Rule 10 times, burnt his body and then crushed his remains before placing what was left in a tub of hydrochloric acid.
The Age reported that Borg then disposed of Mr Rule's remains along Victoria's Great Ocean Road in what was the prosecution described as "extensive, thorough and meticulously-planned efforts to dispose of the deceased's body".
Borg's accomplice Michael Spiropoulos revealed everythin revg to the police four months after the murder. He also showed investigators where all the evidence had been disposed, in scrubland near Aireys Inlet, while the contents of the tub had been thrown into the ocean near Lorne.
Mr Spiropoulos testified that after receiving a phone call from Borg about 9pm on November 15 instructing him to buy bleach, garbage bags and rags, he met Borg at a mutual friend's Campbellfield factory.
During the call he said Borg told him: "Don't get caught or pulled over (by police) on the way, but get here quickly," he said.
When he arrived at the factory, Borg told him that after collecting Mr Rule from his home about 8.40pm that night, they had gone out for a meal before he drove him to the factory.
Once there, Borg fired six bullets into Mr Rule's head and four into his chest. He sought Mr Spiropoulos's help to clean-up the mess left behind.
But only nine spent bullet shells could be found, which he said Borg had crushed with a hammer and wrapped up in toilet paper before he flushed them down the factory's toilet.
On the same night, the men drove to a service station where they bought 15 litres of petrol and about 10 bags of wood to burn Mr Rule's body.
Mr Spiropoulos said when he returned to the factory the following day he noticed smoke coming out of the premises and smelt something "weird". But Borg ordered him to remain in the office rather than enter the main floor of the premises.
He said at one stage during November 16, he and Borg went to a hardware store and bought an electric chainsaw, candle oil and a hatchet. When Borg allowed him back into the factory the following day, Ms Spiropoulos said he saw a 44-gallon drum on the premises and the remnants of a fire. Asked what was inside the drum, he said it "looked visibly obvious to me that it was a body".
Mr Borg came to Malta for a few weeks shortly after the murder.