RELATED CONTENT: Murder victim was on day release
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November 2002: Terry Falconer's widow speaks out
March 2003: Fresh clues roll in
January 2009: $200,000 reward offered; Police nab two over body in bags murder
THE remains of Terry Falconer were found in six bags in the Hastings River in 2001. Now the man jailed for his involvement in Falconer's murder has died.
THE man dubbed the ‘‘Merewether Hitman’’ has died in jail after a long illness.
Sean Laurence Waygood, a former occupational health and safety officer at Goninans Broadmeadow, was serving 20 years for his role in a murder and two shootings that featured in the fourth series of Underbelly.
He received a 50 per cent discount on his sentence for assisting authorities.
Friends and family were deceived by the former army recruit who enjoyed cycling with his mates and a soy latte with a dash of honey.
He lived among the millionaires in Hickson Street, Merewether, where he housed his arsenal of three rifles, four pistols, 3000 rounds of ammunition and a wardrobe full of disguises and devices.
He wore a suit and carried a police ID when he and two associates posed as federal officers to lure convicted drug dealer and police informant Terry Falconer out of a Sydney smash repair business where Falconer was on day release in 2001.
They drove Falconer to a property at Turramurra, drugged him, put him in a tool box and drove him to a property at Girvan, south-west of Bulahdelah. Falconer died during the journey.
A criminal syndicate had wanted to question Falconer about his suspected involvement in the murder of an elderly Sydney couple.
Falconer was strung up and dismembered before his body parts were disposed of. Some of his limbs were found floating in the Hastings River near Wauchope several months after his disappearance.
Waygood was also hired to shoot a bikie boss in Haymarket in 2002.
In a case of mistaken identity, he shot a complete stranger through a glass window. The shooting baffled police for years.
The victim, an innocent tourist, survived what was a botched hit.
Of the eight shots Waygood fired, only three struck the victim.
In 2001, Waygood shot a man in the buttocks outside a western Sydney hotel as a favour to the crime boss who he claimed he was indebted to. That crime boss, who also featured in Underbelly, attended Waygood’s wedding in Newcastle in 2008.
A small gathering enjoyed a meal and drinks at Honeysuckle just months before Waygood’s dramatic arrest at a Sydney waterside cafe.
While he was jailed for his involvement in Falconer’s murder and the two shootings, those incidents were only the tip of his criminal conduct.
After obtaining some skills in the army, Waygood was a bouncer at Kings Cross before starting his own security business that later went bust.
He started carrying out daring armed robberies, sometimes on businesses that he’d previously been hired to protect, and break-ins on industrial premises in search of chemicals for clients.
Waygood later bought a property near Mudgee where a cement slab was laid in preparation for a building to be constructed.
Police watched as a basement was gouged out of the earth in what they suspected would become a sophisticated drug lab.
The police strike force that pursued Waygood and his associates for the better part of a decade secured more than 100 convictions against 14 offenders, including several murders and attempted murders.
As one judge noted, Waygood lived his life by a ‘‘kill or be killed ethos’’ that ‘‘has no place in society’’.
A corrective services spokeswoman confirmed that Waygood died in a secured section of Randwick Hospital on Tuesday. He was 43.
Source: Newcastle Herald