Cold case murder trial: Jury to deliberate in Steven Johnson case

A Supreme Court jury is set to begin deliberating in the trial of Steven Frederick Johnson, 74, who is charged with murdering Christopher Jarvis, a Warrnambool father who disappeared over 20 years ago.

Mr Johnson has pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Jarvis, who was 38 when he vanished from his Wangoom home on June 13, 2006. During the 21-day trial in Warrnambool, Crown prosecutors outlined that Mr Johnson, a former police officer and landfill operator, orchestrated a violent attack on Mr Jarvis, his tenant, over an unpaid rent dispute of $2,210.

The prosecution's case alleges that Mr Johnson fired a starter pistol in Mr Jarvis's ear, causing him to bleed from the head, before bundling him into his own car and driving him to Framlingham Forest, where he allegedly killed Mr Jarvis by hitting him over the head with a baseball bat and buried him in a shallow grave.

Prosecutors also told the court that Mr Johnson organised for Mr Jarvis's car to be torched 20 kilometres away at Thunder Point, a coastal lookout near Warrnambool.

During closing arguments, Crown prosecutor Mark Gibson KC told the court that circumstantial evidence supported the Crown's case, including that Mr Jarvis vanished the day before a contested hearing in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) over the rental dispute.

"It was no coincidence that [Mr Jarvis] went missing the day before that court case," Mr Gibson said.

Mr Gibson pointed to evidence that Mr Johnson had been growing increasingly hostile towards Mr Jarvis in the lead-up to the disappearance and that he had inexplicably graded the gravel driveway in front of Mr Jarvis's home in the hours after the alleged ambush.

"If they find out I'm an ex-copper, I'm f***ed. I'm too old to go to jail,"

Defence lawyer Patrick Doyle SC countered that the prosecution's case was based on speculation.

"There's an inherent improbability in the Crown's case, and it involves layering one level of speculation on another," Mr Doyle said.

The jury will commence deliberations after Justice Andrew Tinney's charge to the jury on Monday.