For more than 20 minutes elderly NSW farmer Ian Turnbull held environmental compliance officer Glen Turner and a colleague at his mercy, armed with the rifle he normally used for shooting pigs and kangaroos.
The first two bullets struck but didn't kill the 51-year-old.
It was the final shot - as Mr Turner made a desperate but futile dash for safety - that ended the public official's life.
On Friday a NSW Supreme Court jury found Turnbull guilty of murder over the extraordinary July 2014 attack, made during a routine visit by the two officials to the farmer's Croppa Creek property in the state's north.
Members of Mr Turner's family hugged in the courtroom when the verdict was handed down after six-and-a-half hours of deliberations.
"We're never going to be able to fill the void that's been left in our lives but we got the right result," his partner, Alison McKenzie, told reporters outside.
Turnbull's defence team had sought a manslaughter verdict on the basis of substantial impairment, saying the farmer was suffering severe depression at the time.
But the jury rejected the argument.
The five-week trial heard the farmer had become obsessed with a long-running legal dispute involving the Office of Environment and Heritage over alleged illegal land clearing, with his son testifying the family had faced financial ruin.
When Turnbull learned Mr Turner was in the area late in the afternoon on July 29, 2014, he drove there in his ute, parked, got out and shot Mr Turner in the neck - wounding him - without a word.
Mr Turner's colleague Robert Strange testified that his pleas for mercy fell on deaf ears with the elderly farmer telling him, "the only way he's going is in a body bag".
Mr Turner's sister Fran Pearce paid tribute to Mr Strange on Friday, saying it was his testimony that secured the conviction.
She also criticised Turnbull's defence team for attacking her brother's character and said the killer's family had used it as a "platform" to continue to express their grievances over native vegetation laws.
"The murderer was portrayed as the victim - a poor, depressed, respectable farmer driven to despair by the Office of Environment and Heritage," she told reporters.
"In reality, he is a wealthy property developer who simply refused to accept that the law applied to him."
A sentence hearing has been set for June 15.
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