Three young men who chased a teenager through Tuggeranong bushland with a baseball bat after preparing a car boot for his dead body have been found guilty of conspiracy to murder by an ACT Supreme Court jury.
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Alexander Raymond Iacuone, 23, Alexander Duffy, 24, and another man, who cannot be named because he was a juvenile at the time, stood trial for two weeks in the court.
A jury took less than seven hours of deliberating to convict the men of conspiring to kill a 17-year-old, who had earlier fallen out with Iacuone.
The trio discussed plans to kill the teenager using a baseball bat, and obtained a shovel and mattock to help bury his body.
They then lined a car boot with a shower curtain to prevent his blood from spreading.
The victim was lured outside of his home by the unnamed defendant, who lied that he needed to talk about relationship problems.
Once outside, Iacuone ran at him with the baseball bat. The victim fled, running through bushland near Lake Tuggeranong.
He was chased down by Duffy, who then left after the victim begged to be left alone.
But he was eventually confronted by the trio.
Iacuone gave evidence that he wrestled with the victim, while the unnamed defendant hit both of them in the legs with a baseball bat.
The pair rolled down the spillway of a nearby dam on Lake Tuggeranong, and the victim was able to escape.
He was helped by a nearby resident, and the police were called.
Officers intercepted the trio's car near the victim's house, finding the bat, shovel, mattock, and shower curtain.
Iacuone and the juvenile argued they never intended to kill the victim.
The pair said they were only intending to bash him, and that there was never a plan to commit murder.
Iacuone said he had been ''a bit creative'' when he told the others he wanted to kill the victim, whom he said he feared after being the target of numerous threats.
''I wanted to strike out at him before he could strike out at me. I wanted to scare him pretty good,'' Iacuone told the court from the witness stand.
Iacuone said he was too frightened to even fight the victim on his own.
''That's why I kept roping more and more people into it and it just got way out of hand,'' he said.
Duffy, who did not know the other two well and came into the plan at a later stage, said he was only a bystander, and had never intended to harm the victim. He looked shocked as the jury delivered its verdict on Tuesday morning.
There were audible gasps from the public gallery as the guilty verdicts were announced.
The men were granted bail by Justice John Burns.
The trio will reappear for sentencing in November.
