How to catch killers: Police reveal how they found Glenn Walewicz's murderers

The shocking shooting of a man in his doorway left police with almost no clues.

But piece by piece, investigators slowly unravelled the chain of events that led to the murder of Glenn Walewicz and tracked down the woman who had set it all in motion, catching her as she tried to flee Canberra.

As all five offenders have now been sentenced for their roles in the 48-year-old’s death, ACT Policing agreed to explain just how they managed to solve this tragic case.

“It is a complex story. There’s a lot of moving parts to it,” Detective Sergeant Chris Watson said.

On the night of 10 June 2021, Mr Walewicz heard a knock at his home on Mansfield Place in Phillip. He was shot as soon as he opened the front door.

At first, police had almost nothing to work with. There was closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage showing three masked intruders as well as one shell casing from the gun, but this didn’t have any fingerprints on it.

Detective Watson said officers began processing the scene and then worked outwards, including looking at more CCTV, which did reveal a clue.

A camera on Hindmarsh Drive had footage of a car with no headlights on running through a red traffic light after the shooting.

This was useful as it showed what might have been the getaway car and the direction it was heading, but it wasn’t the breakthrough police needed.

While the initial team working the case involved about 20 officers, this shrunk to a core of three to six during the course of the investigation.

Detective Watson said they spent months learning about Mr Walewicz and trying to find out if there was anything in his past that could have led to the shooting, but found nothing.

“Glenn wasn’t involved in anything that would bring this into his life,” he said.

The breakthrough they needed came from narrowing down the suspects.

Forensic experts used CCTV to come up with a couple of models of the gun used in the murder. By canvassing incidents in NSW, investigators discovered the murder weapon matched the description of a gun that had been stolen during a burglary in Orange in 2021, stolen by a relative of their main suspect group.

They also found the owner of the car that went through the red traffic light, who admitted being in the area “pretty quickly”.

“It allowed us to play out a little strategy … and get them to help us,” Detective Watson said.

Police then began using telephone intercepts to listen to their suspects.

Police narrowed down on two people in particular: a boy who was 17 at the time of the shooting and a young man called Gary Taylor.

When they travelled to Baradine in NSW and arrested Taylor at his home, they discovered he had the murder weapon hidden under his bed.

“It was a very big bonus. Something that is often one of the hardest things to recover in a murder is the weapon used,” Detective Watson said.

It didn’t take long for Taylor to start talking to investigators about what happened.

“I think it was carrying on his conscience,” the detective said.

At the 17-year-old’s house, police found fired shell casings in the yard that were forensically linked to the shell casing from the scene and the gun found at Taylor’s house.

Detective Watson also said after they narrowed down the main suspects, it became quickly evident that a woman called Nicole Williams “was somewhat in charge of them”.

She was arrested at the Kingston Train Station in June 2022 after her son, Jayden Douglas Williams, booked her a ticket out of the Territory.

“She wasn’t happy!” Detective Watson said of her reaction when she was arrested.

He said when they seized Nicole’s phone after her arrest and looked through her messages, they were finally able to confirm that Mr Walewicz was wholly innocent.

“I think, for the most part, we knew that it was unlikely that he had done anything to bring this upon himself or be involved in anything where this was a possibility,” he said.

“He was just a normal person. He wasn’t criminally involved. He just went about his life and kept to himself.”

This is what happened.

Nicole and her son, Jayden, wanted to target two drug dealers in a home invasion, so they roped in the 17-year-old boy, 23-year-old Gary Taylor and a 12-year-old boy to carry it out.

On 10 June 2021, Nicole told the trio to steal the dealers’ drugs and money, then gave a gun to the 17-year-old and warned them that one of the dealers may have a gun himself and may try to shoot at them.

The three were driven to the area by their getaway driver, 18-year-old Reatile Ncube, but they went to the wrong house.

They knocked on Mr Walewicz’s door, and the 17-year-old shot him when he opened it. He then reloaded his rifle and said, “What do we do?”

“Run,” Taylor suggested.

They fled, and Ncube drove them back to Nicole’s house.

The court proceedings stretched on for over two-and-a-half years.

Mr Walewicz’s mother, Jenny Walewicz, sat in the courtroom’s gallery for nearly every hearing for each of the five offenders.

Detective Watson also came to court to stand by her and her family.

“It’s hard to see them go through that. A great family that was not deserving of this,” he said.

Taylor was handed over 10 years in jail while the 17-year-old, who cannot be named due to his age, was sentenced to 13 years.

Jayden was sentenced to two years in jail, Ncube was also sentenced to two years while the charge against the 12-year-old was dropped.

Nicole, now aged 40, was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment. With time already spent in custody, her non-parole period will end in August 2026.