Former bikie enforcer Lionel Patea brutally bashed Gold Coast drug runner Greg Dufty over a $32,000 marijuana debt.
The next day he phoned a co-accused to ask about the father of two and whether he had come clean on the drugs.
The former Bandidos kingpin was unaware the 37-year-old haddied from the beating with a shift spanner and tyre iron, or that his body had been disposed of and burned.
Patea yesterday pleaded guilty in the Queensland Supreme Court in Brisbane to the July 2015 murder in the Gold Coast Hinterland.
Just two months after Dufty's death, Patea viciously beat his Kiwi girlfriend Tara Brown to death with a fire hydrant cover after running her car off the road. He is serving a life sentence for her death.
New Zealander Tara Brown was murdered by Lionel Patea.
Patea's brother Nelson Andrea Patea and Aaron John Crawford pleaded guilty yesterday to one count each of manslaughter for Dufty's death. Crawford also pleaded guilty to interfering with a corpse.
In February, Liam Bliss and Clinton Stockman, pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Bliss was given five years jail, suspended immediately. Stockman, who also admitted to interfering with a corpse, was sentenced to six years prison with immediate parole eligibility.
Moments before pleading guilty in the court, the Patea brothers laughed and joked with each other in the dock.
Lionel Patea, once on $250,000 a year as a Bandido bikie enforcer, smiled as he stood to enter his guilty plea.
"Guilty," he said in a bored tone.
When asked if there any reason a sentence should not be passed on him, he replied: "Nah."
Dufty's family, including his mother Margaret, watched as the three men entered their pleas. Dufty's former partner, Sharni Mill, cried during the proceedings.
Across the courtroom, the Patea brothers' family sat silently in support of the pair.
Crawford was separated from the brothers by a glass security screen, and a large number of corrective services officers surrounded the dock.
Not too long ago, however, the trio were inseparable.
The Gold Coast Bulletin revealed Crawford and Dufty grew cannabis together on the Gold Coast and Dufty would run the drugs up to Darwin.
When about half of that crop, about $32,000 worth, went missing, Crawford called on the Pateas and Stockman to question Dufty about its whereabouts.
Dufty disappeared in mid-2015 after spending the day dancing and "being silly" with his two young daughters.
He was last seen on security camera footage parking at Ashmore Steak and Seafood restaurant before being picked up by a Mack truck on Ashmore Rd.
He was driven to a remote location in the Gold Coast hinterland when the men set upon him to question him about where the missing cannabis had gone.
Crawford and Stockman disposed of Dufty's body the next day, burning it while high on ice.
Defence lawyer Campbell MacCallumsaid Lionel Patea was coming to terms with having to plead guilty to murder when he was not involved in the planning of the attack.
His hair is now almost completely shaved with a small patch on the back of his head which he has grown past his shoulders and plaited into a rat's tail.
The elder of the two Patea brothers has been serving his time for Brown's murder in Lotus Glen in far north Queensland, the other side of the state to Nelson Patea who has been in Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre.
Both brothers have converted to Islam while behind bars.
The Pateas and Crawford will be sentenced in the Brisbane Supreme Court today.
