Three Head Hunters-affiliated men have been found guilty of the premeditated murder of a teenager who vanished in 2023, resulting in a months-long, high-profile search before his body was eventually discovered in a deep, professionally dug grave.

It took jurors in the High Court at Auckland 17 hours over three days to reach their verdicts for patched gang member Zak Kameta, 28, Matthew Snaylam, 22, who was a gang prospect at the time, and 28-year-old construction company boss Hassan Al Fadhli.

Their verdicts for Kameta and Snaylam were unanimous. Al Fadhli, who was known to wear a “Head Hunters supporter” shirt but was not a member, was found guilty by a majority verdict.

During a closing address late last week, Kameta’s lawyer acknowledged for the first time that his client was the person who concealed 19-year-old Jayden Mamfredos’ body outside Al Fadhli’s Dairy Flat home after the teen was shot at the rural North Auckland property.

But defence lawyer Ron Mansfield, KC, insisted that his client wasn’t the killer – instead acting in panic after a large-scale drug deal that went badly wrong.

While Kameta didn’t give evidence, it was suggested by his lawyer that Mamfredos – armed and unpredictable due to his own meth consumption – was somehow fatally shot by a mysterious Black Power member who had travelled from Northland for the buy.

Co-defendants Zac Kameta (left), Hassan Al Fadhli and Matthew Snaylam have been found guilty of murdering Jayden Mamfredos, 19 (right), after luring him to a Dairy Flat property in North Auckland under false pretences in April 2023. Photos / Michael Craig

But the jury’s decision suggests the group preferred the narrative suggested by Crown Solicitor Alysha McClintock, in which there never was a Black Power member - only Kameta, Snaylam and the victim.

Instead, the Crown suggested, Mamfredos was lured to the rural area with the promise of an easy-money, fake-drug-deal robbery of the fictional Black Power member. He would have arrived, McClintock said, to instead find a pre-dug grave and to realise – too late – that he had been double-crossed by his acquaintances.

Prosecutors suggested an execution-like killing in which Mamfredos suffered a single gunshot to the head and was quickly disposed of – Kameta, a licensed digger operator known by the nickname “Johnny Trigger”, refilling the grave while his prospect kept a lookout.

Al Fadhli, it was alleged, knew about the scheme but his role that night was to keep his partner and her children away from their home so there were no witnesses.

It was not in dispute that Mamfredos, working under an imprisoned Bloods member with the street name Raw, was a drug dealer who had recently obtained 1kg of methamphetamine worth an estimated $80,000 to $100,000.

Jayden Mamfredos went missing in April 2023. Three men were later charged with his murder. Photo / Supplied

Defence lawyers suggested it was a ridiculous notion that their clients would conspire such a “sinister” plan to kill over as little as $80,000 worth of drugs that would then have to be split three ways.

Prosecutors, however, held a more sceptical view.

“Sadly, what you can see is for these men, Jayden Mamfredos was dispensable,” McClintock said, describing the victim as vulnerable in the criminal underworld – likely seen as an “easy target” due to his recent drug cache paired with his youth and naivety.

“His life was cheap and meth was king for them.”

Police found Mamfredos’ body in the 3m-deep grave in January 2024, after a nine-month search that had included two other searches of Al Fadhli’s property and a search of a gang pad also in Dairy Flat.

Police search a Head Hunters gang property in Dairy Flat during the months-long search for Jayden Mamfredos. Photo / NZME

In July, police had used a digger to find a nearly identical pit but after excavating it, found only rubbish. Detectives then spoke with an Australia-based geoforensics and policing professor, and he came up with a hypothesis the earlier pit was likely a test grave.

After reviewing the site, the professor suggested where police should concentrate their next search. Authorities would later find Mamafredos’ remains in a hole dug within feet of the rubbish pit.

All three defendants were arrested in the days that followed.

Kameta had temporarily gone on the run after the first search, telling a fellow gang member in an intercepted call that he expected to go to prison.

“Reckon yous will be safe?” the friend asked again after promising to look after Snaylam in prison.

“F***, I don’t know,” Kameta responded. “Slim chance but I’m running with it, all good.”

His intuition was not wrong, as demonstrated by today’s verdict.

The now-convicted murderers are likely to face mandatory life sentences, with Justice Geoffrey Venning set to decide their minimum terms of imprisonment at a hearing in February.

Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.