An Israeli firearms expert told the David Eastman murder trial on Thursday that the spent cartridges found at the crime scene were fired from the same gun prosecutors say was the murder weapon.
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Police found the two spent cartridges nestled in the grass near the Deakin driveway where police chief Colin Winchester was shot dead on January 10, 1989.
Prosecutors allege Mr Eastman was the killer, and contend the murder weapon was a Ruger 10/22 rifle sold to the former public servant by a man named Louis Klarenbeek in Queanbeyean.
Mr Eastman has pleaded not guilty.
During the investigation, police had Mr Klarenbeek source spent cartridges he had fired from the Ruger 10/22 while testing the firearm out at Captain’s Flat.
The crime scene and Klarenbeek cartridges were sent to Israeli firearms examiner Bernard Schecter and he examined them in a laboratory at the national headquarters of Israeli police.
Mr Schecter gave evidence on Thursday from Israel, speaking through a poor audio-visual connection that often cut from the ACT Supreme Court.
In response to questions from prosecutor Keegan Lee, Mr Schecter said he had prepared thousands of reports during his career.
He used a comparison microscope to analyse the cartridge cases and concluded the cartridges found at the scene matched the ones fired from the Klarenbeek rifle.
He described marks, such as a "dog leg" or "arrow" on the cartridges which he was able to compare, among other marks, building to his conclusion that the two sets of cartridges matched.
Under cross-examination by defence counsel Michael Stanton, Mr Schecter agreed that without the murder weapon - which was never found - he could not say with any certainty that the weapon was a Ruger 10/22.
But the witness disagreed with the barrister on a second point and told the court that he did not need the gun to conclude that the cartridges were fired from the same weapon.
He accepted the possibility of subjective differences between experts when making conclusions, but said it would be limited to small degrees, where one might say there was just not quite enough information.
Mr Schecter said he was not aware of ACT police officer Ian Prior's report which did not match some of the Klarenbeek cartridges to the crime scene cartridges, nor of another report whose authors found the cartridges had insufficient characteristics to draw a conclusion.
The court heard he had not been able to find his original notes and photographs because they may have been lost in an archives fire.
The trial continues.
