Aaron Jon Woodsbey and Sean Murray Hopkins sat side by side in the docks of the Mount Isa Magistrates Court, facing murder charges relating to the death of Mr Macfarlane by gunshot wound on the night of January 3, 2012.

It was revealed Mr Macfarlane had been selling synthetic speed, or MDPV, for around five months before his death, and had sold the substance to both Hopkins and Woodsbey.

Seven witnesses were cross-examined during the committal hearing, including police officers and family members of the deceased, with further witness statements to be heard today.

The court heard Mr Macfarlane had used the substance at around 6pm that night, only hours before he was dumped at the Mount Isa Hospital by a white Holden Commodore sedan with what would be a fatal gunshot wound to the stomach.

Mr Macfarlane’s wife Chanara told the court the last time she saw her husband alive was at around 8.30pm on January 3 when Hopkins had picked him up from their home to meet Woodsbey, a meeting she said was civil and one she assumed revolved around a drug deal.

Mrs Macfarlane said both she and her husband had been on an eight-day ‘drug binge’ in the lead-up to the shooting, excluding two days of sobriety, where Mr Macfarlane had been paranoid, aggressive and fluctuating in his behaviour.

The court heard police believed when the shooting occurred Woodsbey had been waving a gun around before Mr Macfarlane charged at him and was eventually shot in the stomach during a struggle.

Detective senior constable Curtis Zealey, from the Mount Isa Criminal Investigation Branch, said during the initial investigation he had spoken with a surgeon at the Mount Isa Hospital who had told him Mr Macfarlane suffered powder burns around the wound which were consistent with being shot at a point blank range.

Two witnesses told the court Woodsbey and then-girlfriend Laura Louise Waller, who is charged with accessory after the fact to murder, arrived at an Old Mica Creek residence later that night where Woodsbey showered and burned the clothes he had been wearing.

Detective Zealey told the court he had had a number of conversations with Hopkins in the days following the shooting regarding witness protection in exchange for further information on other people involved in the incident, after which Hopkins provided police with a series of phone numbers, movements and car registration numbers of the other accused.

Woodsbey was before the court on further charges of unlawful possession of weapons, possessing explosives, possessing property obtained from trafficking and supplying and drug possession.

Woodsbey and Hopkins remain in custody throughout the hearing but Waller had been allowed bail until her Magistrates, District and Supreme Court hearings, with her conditions changed yesterday to report to Mount Isa police once per week instead of the previous three times.

The committal hearing will continue at the Mount Isa Magistrates Court today.