A 73-year-old man accused of killing his neighbour with an improvised explosive device had a receipt for the same brand of football used in the homemade bomb, a court has heard.
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Paul John Fitzpatrick is accused of murdering greyhound trainer John Burrows, 58, in the small town of Portland, in NSW's central west, following years of "bad blood".
Mr Burrows' widow told the court on Wednesday she heard her husband leave their home early on the morning of July 24 to walk his greyhounds.
"I was dozing back off and that's when I heard the explosion ... I just heard a loud bang and the house sort of shook," Ms Burrows said.
Off-duty firefighter Shane Green and his wife Angela also gave evidence and recalled hearing "a big bang" during their morning jog before the pair both ran in the direction of a plume of smoke.
They found Mr Burrows lying in a laneway behind his mother's home.
Mr Green poured water over Mr Burrows' burning clothes and did CPR while his wife repeatedly yelled "wake up John".
During his opening address Crown prosecutor Jeff Tunks told the jury the accused had taken out an apprehended violence order against the deceased after he had his jaw and eye socket broken during an argument between the pair.
"The accused is a person with a motive, but a person that by virtue of where his premises is, had a line of sight across that way to detonate the bomb," he told the NSW Supreme Court at Bathurst.
The court also heard the bomb was made from steel tubes packed with gunpowder, nails, screws, two baseballs, a stove element and a SUMMIT branded football.
During a search warrant police allegedly found a Big W receipt for the football at Mr Fitzpatrick's home which was bought just weeks before the killing.
They also found a series of documents with instructions on how to build improvised explosive devices, including one titled "how to make a bomb".
Mr Fitzpatrick's barrister David Price told the court, his client "is not a killer but a carer" and who'd had "justifiable bad blood" with the deceased.
"There is nothing in terms of DNA or fingerprints that links this accused to that explosive device or killing of the deceased," Mr Price said.
"This is a purely circumstantial case ... living very close to where a crime occurs is not enough, having personal grievance is not enough," he said.
Before his arrest in 2015, Mr Fitzpatrick was recorded on listening devices saying to his sister, "They have spent all their efforts chasing me, whoever did it is laughing their heads off."
