The grieving family of Lake Illawarra man Matthew Davis has been left heartbroken after a jury found one of the men responsible for bashing him to death of a lesser charge of manslaughter.
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"We can't change it, so we just have to somehow live with it," Mr Davis' mother Leanne Brightmore said of the verdict as she wiped away tears.
"It's been really hard, it has just consumed us."
"We're not happy at all really, it should have been murder," Mr Davis' stepfather Dan Prestige said.
Warilla sports trainer Stephen Staff, 67, was facing a murder charge over the bashing death of Mr Davis inside his 7 Thomas Street home on August 21, 2021.
It took the Supreme Court jury in Wollongong four days to deliver a guilty verdict to an alternative charge of manslaughter on Thursday afternoon.
Ms Brightmore, who lives in Queensland, had daily contact over the phone with her only son, who she described as "gentle" and her "whole world".
When he hadn't called Ms Brightmore one Sunday, she tried to call him, but it went straight to voicemail.
Ms Brightmore knew something was unusual when the same thing happened the next day, so she asked Mr Davis' friend Ben Greig to check on her son.
She will never forget the phone call that followed.
"When Ben told me I said, 'Are you serious?'," Ms Brightmore said.
"I couldn't believe it. I still don't believe it now. It's still not real and it's so hard without him.
"I still go to ring him or I wait for him to ring me, and it just doesn't happen."
Mr Greig found his friend dead in his home with horrific injuries and blood covering his face.
A post-mortem revealed Mr Davis had suffered significant blunt force trauma to his face, a ligature mark on his neck, and a fractured vertebrae. He also sustained a brain injury.
CCTV footage was played to the jury which showed Staff's white Holden Rodeo driving passed Mr Davis' home five times on August 21 before he was killed.
That evening, that same vehicle parked in a nearby street with a sedan parking behind it, before Staff and two men got out and walked towards Mr Davis' home.
The Crown argued Staff was "actively involved" in an attack on Mr Davis, with his DNA found underneath three of the deceased man's fingernails.
Prosecutor Nerissa Keay said the assault involved repeated blows to Mr Davis' with such force that he suffered major facial fractures.
After police released CCTV footage on social media, Staff was arrested in May 2022.
Staff was later heard in recorded phone calls from jail to his then girlfriend saying he showed two men where Mr Davis lived to give him a "touch up ... over money".
Defence barrister Tony Evers argued Staff had only entered the home after the other two men had left and that his client had tried to help Mr Davis.
The jury heard Mr Davis managed a myriad of health conditions including diabetes, asthma, osteoporosis.
Ms Brightmore and Mr Prestige cannot fathom why anyone would hurt their son and said it is an injustice that the two others allegedly involved have not been charged.
"There's three of them that went into his house. It's not as if he was on the street and it was some accident," Mr Prestige said.
"At the end of the day, they didn't even know Matt and he's ended up dead for no reason.
"And you've got these two blokes out there that could go and do that to someone else ... it's ridiculous."
The couple want anyone with information to come forward.
Staff, who sat quietly in the dock for the duration of the trial, is scheduled to be sentenced on August 30. The maximum penalty for manslaughter is 25 years in prison.
Grace Crivellaro
Court reporter for the Illawarra Mercury.
Court reporter for the Illawarra Mercury.
