Morris said on one occasion,in the meal room of a Sydney station,Bowie allegedly said,“the police are giving me a hard time about my wife,but the pigs do a good job and don’t leave anything behind”.
The Crown alleges that on these occasions Bowie was referring to having killed Roxlyn and disposed of her in such a way that has “eluded detection”.
The accused also allegedly told a woman,with whom he had a subsequent relationship,that police had “checked out the roo pits and an old mine shaft”,but if he was going to do something to Roxlyn “he would’ve fed her to the pigs,there would’ve been nothing left to find”.
Another woman is expected to testify that she was working at a truck stop near Maitland in 1990 or 1991 and believed Bowie,who was then a bus driver,to be sexually interested in her. She allegedly told him she was having problems with her then husband and wished someone would kill him.
The accused allegedly responded “that he had killed before,and it was not a nice feeling”.
“The Crown says that when Mr Bowie said this ... he was referring to having killed Roxlyn about eight or nine years earlier,and that it was not a nice feeling for him,” Morris said.
He said Bowie was “intentionally violent” towards Roxlyn and had admitted to striking her during their marriage.
Opening the defence case,barrister Winston Terracini,SC,asked the jury to keep an open mind.
“What is our case,you ask? Simply that he’s not guilty,” he said.
Terracini said Bowie had been cooperative with police since 1982,including telling them about his “playing around”,and said in his first statement that he had hit Roxlyn a number of times.
“There doesn’t seem to be much doubt[that] he didn’t get much better with future partners,but that’s not murder,” the barrister said.
He said the defence was not saying that Bowie was a “perfect fellow” regarding his adultery and behaviour towards his wife.
Terracini asked the jury to carefully consider pieces of evidence “and see some of them in context”.
“Throwaway lines in relation to fairly inane conversations,it will be put to you eventually[that] they’re not confessions,” he said. “You know,in your own life,that some people say things offhandedly but don’t necessarily mean they want to do certain things.”
Terracini said there was “a lot that has to take place” in the window of time alleged by the Crown on the evening of June 5,1982,including the accused allegedly forcing Roxlyn to write the letters,murdering her “without anybody hearing a sound” and disposing of her body.
“If the letters are real,then you might think that she left of her own accord,” he said.
The trial before Justice Dina Yehia continues.
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