A MAN who acted as courier for a Lake Macquarie dark web drug supply operation says he feels "shame and guilt" because he believes his mother's unsolved murder was linked to her partner's connections to the drug trade.
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They had been bludgeoned to death and despite a lengthy police investigation and a coronial inquest, no one has been arrested or charged over the double murder.
In April, 2022, McMaugh and two other people were arrested by Cybercrime Squad detectives investigating the supply of drugs via the dark web.
The operation was allegedly using an e-cigarette shop at Belmont as a front to purchase psychoactive substances that mimic the effects of cannabis and selling them for cryptocurrency.
McMaugh pleaded guilty to supplying a large commercial quantity of prohibited drugs and supplying a commercial quantity of prohibited drugs and on Friday told Newcastle District Court that his involvement was limited to labeling packages and dropping them off at a post office.
He said he became involved when he suffered a wrist injury and lost his job, prompting someone in the area to ask him if he wanted to make some more money.
Those higher up in the supply network paid his rent every other week and McMaugh used his own car and phone and stored some of the drugs at his house, prompting his barrister, Rory Pettit, to label his role in the operation as "unsophisticated in the extreme".
McMaugh agreed his involvement in supplying drugs was a "particular source of shame" because he believed "the drug trade had something to do with his mother's death".
McMaugh's sister, Katie, also gave evidence on Friday, saying she believed her brother had "never dealt with what happened and their deaths haunt him to this day".
She said the fact that no one had been charged over their mother's death had been devastating and had "massively effected" McMaugh.
"It terrifies me that they are still walking around out there," Katie said. "They could come after us, who knows."
The court heard McMaugh had been diagnosed with PTSD after discovering the bodies as a teenager and his sister claimed he was initially treated poorly by police.
"They kept him at the police station until midnight [on the day of the murders] in his blood soaked clothes," Katie said. "They made him give them his fingerprints and DNA because he was a suspect. He was 15."
Mr Pettit submitted that McMaugh could receive an intensive corrections order and avoid full-time imprisonment due to his role, which he said was at the bottom of the hierarchy, his childhood trauma and promising prospects of rehabilitation.
Judge Robert Sutherland reserved his judgment until June.
