16 Mar 2018

Auckland man arrested in 18-year-old Australian cold case

12:57 pm on 16 March 2018

An Auckland man has been arrested over the death of Robert Sabeckis in South Australia 18 years ago.

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Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly

A 43-year-old man was arrested in Piha yesterday and he is expected to appear in the Waitākere District Court today.

South Australian police are seeking to extradite him to face a murder charge over the death in January 2000, when Mr Sabeckis was shot dead in a carpark at Maslin Beach south of Adelaide.

It's the first time police from overseas have discovered breakthrough evidence using New Zealand's DNA database.

South Australian police had few leads as to who killed him, but a law change in 2016 gave police from overseas the ability to request information from the database.

Several international requests have been made of the database since then, but this is the first time such a search has returned a match.

After Mr Sabeckis was shot in the car park, the offender drove off in the victim's vehicle, a silver coloured Ford Falcon, the South Australia police said.

A witness who followed the car told the police that after the vehicle crashed into bushes and a fence, with the offender ran away across paddocks.

A later search of the area located a sawn-off shotgun, which is believed to be the murder weapon, along with a jacket thought to have belonging to the offender.

The shotgun - and another firearm - were stolen during a break-in at a house days earlier, with that house then set alight and badly damaged.

A gun bag containing rocks, clothing, ammunition, and the sawn off butt of the shotgun were later found floating in the sea.

South Australia's detective superintendent Des Bray said the arrested man had a DNA sample taken by the New Zealand police in July last year.

The match was made as part of a routine check requested by SA Police in November last year as part of the ongoing investigation into Mr Sabeckis' death, he said.

"This match is not the end of our investigation, but rather a new beginning," Mr Bray said.