A man has told a murder trial he saw a woman who was the "spitting image" of one featured on a poster as having been missing for months.
Tommy Bridge said he saw the woman near the chips aisle in an IGA store in Wyong a few hours after seeing the poster at the Wyong RSL club.
He was giving evidence in the NSW Supreme Court at the trial of 51-year-old James "Jim" Scott Church, who's pleaded not guilty to murdering Leisl Smith.
The 23-year-old, whose body has never been found, vanished from the Central Coast on August 19, 2012.
After police obtained CCTV footage showed Church giving Ms Smith a lift at Tuggerah railway station that afternoon, he said he then dropped her off at Wyong.
The Crown alleges Church killed her after she told people she was pregnant to him and because he wanted to save his new relationship with Belinda Lees.
But the defence contends other scenarios could not be ruled out including that Ms Smith's violent ex-boyfriend could have been involved or that she disappeared on purpose.
Mr Bridge said after seeing a FaceBook page "Find Leisl Smith" he posted a comment saying he had seen her about a week ago.
He testified to having walked into the IGA and turning to see a woman who walked in behind him.
She was wearing jeans, a red top and had brown shoulder-length hair and was near the chips aisle where he was buying "snacks for the footy".
She was "the spitting image of the person" he saw on a missing persons poster a few hours earlier at the RSL club.
In one picture she had been standing next to a horse and "her face was all over the poster".
He said he told his friend Ashley Hastings, who had been with him at the RSL club and who worked at the IGA, "I am pretty sure that's the girl we saw in the missing poster".
When Mr Bridge was referred to differences in timings and his movements given in his January 2013 police statement and his evidence, he said it was nine years ago but also the police may have got it mixed up.
He denied it was possible that he made the connection after seeing the woman at the IGA and later seeing the poster.
Justice Elizabeth Fullerton referred Church's lawyer Manny Conditsis to his opening address when he said one of the possible scenarios was that Ms Leisl needed, as she saw it, "to get away so nobody will find her".
He had agreed that he was saying she may have "disappeared by choice into anonymity".
The judge asked if this still remained his case given the evidence about her being seeing undisguised in a supermarket, looking as she did in the poster.
"My submission is they are not inconsistent," Mr Conditsis replied.
Mr Hastings gave evidence about seeing the missing persons poster in a butcher's in November 2012 and realising that the woman was a regular IGA customer.
The last time he had seen her was probably a month or two before he saw the poster.
He said he did not see the woman from the poster on the day he had a conversation with Mr Bridge at the Wyong RSL.
The trial continues.
