EXCLUSIVE The key item found at a luxury Bali villa that sparked the arrest of three Aussies now facing the death penalty over suspected gangland hit

Daily Mail​

6 days ago

Bali detectives have revealed it was a fluorescent orange sledgehammer that led them to arrest three Australians accused of a gangland hit on two Melbourne men.
Zivan 'Stipe' Radmanovic, 35, and Sanar Ghanim, 34, were shot just after midnight on Saturday at a villa in Munggu, in Badung Regency in Bali's south, in an attack believed to be linked to Melbourne's feuding Middle Eastern crime syndicates.
Midolmore Pasa Tupou, 37, Darcy Jenson, 27, and Mevlut Coskun, 23, were arrested and brought back to Bali on Wednesday after an intense five-day police manhunt.
Jenson was arrested at Jakarta Airport as he tried to get through an e-passport reader to board a flight to Singapore and then on to Cambodia.
Tupou and Coskun managed to make it to Cambodia but were identified by Interpol who arrested them in Phnom Penh and flew them back to Indonesia.
Authorities said the sledgehammer, believed to have been supplied by Coskun, was used to smash down the door of the villa moments before the alleged attack.
Badung Police Chief Arif Batubara said the discarded hammer was discovered by officers at the entrance of the villa and quickly became a key piece of evidence.
'Starting from there, we launched an investigation into the barcode on the hammer's purchase,' he told reporters during a press conference on Saturday.
'We checked the barcode both on-site and at the store where it was bought. From there, we investigated the shop and its address.
'That's where it started, allowing us to trace the origin of the hammer.'
It comes after Bali Police revealed on Wednesday how the gang allegedly fled across Indonesia after the shooting, escaping the scene on motorbikes before switching cars twice on an 18-hour, 1200km getaway to Jakarta.
Detectives revealed the suspects were first traced through Tupou's distinctive tattoos which were first picked up on CCTV as he bought cigarettes near the villa where the attack unfolded.
Tupou has a combination of traditional Tongan artwork inked onto his skin and the 676-international telephone dialling code for Tonga in huge numbers down his shin.
The tattoos were clearly visible in pictures of Tupou as he was being pushed in a wheelchair through Jakarta Airport after he was deported back to Indonesia.
Detectives are now working with forensic experts as they pore over evidence from the crime scene, including blood samples, the sledgehammer, bullet casings and projectiles, and face coverings.
The crime squad is also looking at more CCTV footage, a vehicle and travel history, said a police spokesman.
The three can be held without charge for months while police investigate the killing.
Once they present their dossier of evidence, the three will be handed over to a prosecutor who will then send them to Bali's notorious Kerobokan Prison.
They will then face a court hearing to be formally charged, and kept at Kerobokan throughout their trial until a verdict and possible sentence.
They are being investigated for premeditated murder which under Indonesian law can carry the death sentence.
Radmanovic, who had 175 court appearances to his name, died in front of his wife in the villa toilet, while Ghanim was rushed to Kuta's BIMC Hospital with multiple injuries.
He was discharged from hospital on Sunday in a wheelchair, nursing a bandaged leg, and police say he has so far refused to co-operate with local authorities.
Ghanim is the former partner of Danielle Stephens, the stepdaughter of notorious Australian drug trafficker Carl Williams, who was murdered in Victoria's Barwon jail in 2010.
Radmanovic's wife Jazmyn Gourdeas, 29, was reportedly asleep at the villa when she awoke to the sound of her husband screaming at around 12.15am.
From behind a blanket, the mother-of-six said she witnessed the man in the orange jacket and another man open fire on her husband while he was in the bathroom.
Shortly afterwards, she heard further gunshots and Ghanim screaming from a separate room after he was gunned down in his bedroom.
With her husband already dead, Ms Gourdeas tried to stem Ghanim's bleeding until emergency services arrived.
A fourth person in the villa - believed to be a family member - managed to flee the property while gunshots rang out.
Police found 17 bullet casings and 55 bullet fragments at the scene.
Ghanim and Radmanovic's family are currently being kept on the island 'under close police watch', authorities said.
Radmanovic and Ms Gourdeas are understood to have arrived last Thursday to celebrate her 30th birthday in Bali, where Ghanim and his partner had reportedly been living for years.
Ghanim's long-standing association with Melbourne's criminal underworld goes deeper than just family ties.
In 2014, he was jailed following the shooting of fellow associate Serkan Kala after a dispute at a gym escalated. He and a co-accused pleaded guilty.