John Ibrahim's girlfriend Sarah Budge has been acquitted of two of three gun possession charges after a loaded semi-automatic pistol and magazine were found during a police raid on her eastern suburbs apartment.
After two days of deliberations the 12-person NSW District Court jury found the model and restaurant operator, 29, not guilty of possessing a gun that had been defaced, as well as the ammunition, after her legal team argued her former club owner boyfriend or someone he knew planted the items there unbeknownst to her.
Sarah Budge, 29, has been found not guilty of two out of three gun possession charges.Credit:Dean Lewins
But the jury will continue deliberating on whether Ms Budge knowingly had the Glock 26 in her Double Bay unit after reaching a stalemate over the charge of possessing a pistol without authorisation.
If found guilty, she faces a jail term of up to 14 years.
Ms Budge, whose romantic relationship with the Kings Cross identity has come under major focus in the criminal proceedings, put her head in her hands as the verdicts were read out.
Ms Budge claimed she did not know the stolen gun and magazine loaded with ammunition were in her unit when they were unexpectedly found inside a black T2 box at the bottom of her bedroom wardrobe by Australian Federal Police during a major criminal investigation on the morning of August 8, 2017.
The court heard Mr Ibrahim - who has not been charged with any offences - knew how the handgun had found its way into her apartment but refused to tell her.
"I kept on asking questions: whose gun was it? why was it in my house?" Ms Budge said in court last week.
"He told me that it was best that I didn't know and I was in enough trouble as it is."
Asked by Mr Buchen why she was still in a relationship with Mr Ibrahim, she broke down, saying, "I don’t think he deliberately put me in a bad position".
Crown prosecutor Christopher Taylor said in his closing address that Mr Ibrahim not disclosing that detail to Ms Budge "undermines everything that a serious relationship is based upon".
"Would you remain in that relationship if you were in that position?" he asked the jury.
But Mr Buchen said that interaction was consistent with what the jury heard about the pair: "Throughout the course of their relationship there's been a line and that line is she doesn’t find out things about his private affairs."
"She is a conflicted person, she holds suspicions, she doesn’t know what has happened, she doesn't know how the gun got there, she still wants to think the best of Mr Ibrahim, who she wants to have a child with," he said.
"The human heart doesn't always obey the laws of logic."
The court heard the DNA of an unidentified male, called "Male One", was found on the trigger of the pistol, as well as on a black beanie it was wrapped in when discovered by federal agents searching Ms Budge's home, who were there to look for Mr Ibrahim's laptop.
There was evidence the same DNA profile was found on a fabric strip containing a pair of waxed eyebrows belonging to a man named Ryan Watsford, who, unlike Mr Ibrahim, police had a DNA record of.
A video had been played to the jury in which Mr Ibrahim could be seen grinning while holding up a pair of eyebrows that had just been waxed from Mr Watsford in a beauty salon, an apparent "punishment" for taking money from Mr Ibrahim's brother, Michael.
"It means that it's highly likely that John Ibrahim is Male One," Mr Buchen said.
"It's highly likely that John Ibrahim's DNA was on the trigger of the pistol and on the beanie."
Ms Budge also said during the course of her evidence that Mr Ibrahim, who she said called himself "sexy John", had a spare key to Ms Budge's unit at his house.
Mr Taylor said a forensic analysis showed seven of Ms Budge's fingerprints were on the brown paper pharmacy bag in which the magazine was found, as well as one fingerprint belonging to former Dreamgirls strip club operator Michael Amante.
Mr Amante, who the court heard was a longtime associate of Mr Ibrahim's, denied taking the gun to Ms Budge's apartment, but admitted he would have taken "something" there in July or August 2017 had Mr Ibrahim asked him to.
Mr Taylor argued it was implausible that Mr Ibrahim or somebody he knew would risk being caught out by trying to stash the gun at Ms Budge's place.
He suggested to Ms Budge there was a heightened sense of security surrounding the release of Mr Ibrahim's tell-all memoir, Last King of the Cross, but Ms Budge said she never "got the vibe" Mr Ibrahim was worried about his safety and she wasn't worried about her own.
"Was the firearm at your place to enable you to protect yourself if the need arose?" Mr Taylor asked, to which she answered, "no".
He also said it was implausible Ms Budge, who claimed she had used the box the gun and magazine were found in to transport a tea pot from her old home, didn't know the items were there.
He told the jury it was an "affront to common sense" that Ms Budge, who said she owned some 20 shoes, put an empty box in the bottom of her wardrobe "in prime shoe territory", and rather the gun and ammunition were there in a readily accessible spot, "should the need arise".
But Mr Buchen said the box sat next to a broken lamp and pillows that had "just been pushed into the cupboard".
"Is that so unusual?" he asked.
Angus Thompson is a court reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald.
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