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AAP
AAP
National
Karen Sweeney

Nurse asked accused killer to be IVF donor

Colin Graham who's accused of killing a nurse told police that she'd asked him to be a sperm donor. (AAP)

A murdered Melbourne nurse asked her accused killer to be a donor when she and her husband were going through IVF.

Ina-Doris Warrick had been widowed six months when her body was found inside her Ringwood home in March 1986.

Her close friend and colleague Colin Graham, who had been going through IVF with his wife at the same time as the Warricks, is charged with her murder.

Graham has pleaded not guilty and is standing trial in Victoria's Supreme Court.

In a 1986 police interview, Graham said the two couples had been good friends and supports to each other.

His wife Ros and Ms Warrick's husband Allan had been overseas together, and he had worked with Ms Warrick at Box Hill Hospital where he was an orderly and she had been a nurse.

He is the last known person to have seen Ms Warrick alive, after taking her out for a pizza dinner on March 21, 1986.

It's believed she was killed that night. Her body, with two stab wounds to the back, as first discovered by her lover Gregor Stewart two days later.

He did not report it to police. Neighbours then found her body on March 25.

Graham told police he learned of Ms Warrick's death on the nightly news and immediately phoned police to tell them about their dinner.

He then phoned his wife to break the news.

Though there had been workplace rumours that they were having an affair because she sometimes drove him home from work, Graham said his relationship with Ms Warrick was purely platonic.

But he said she had been flirtatious.

"She asked me to be a (sperm) donor at one stage - she asked my wife at the same time ... Allan was there too," he said.

He said Ms Warrick had commented that he would "make a good specimen", which he said he assumed referred to his looks.

Police accused Graham in the interview of killing Ms Warrick.

"It wasn' tme who did it, I can assure you," he said.

They asked if Ms Warrick had said something to annoy him, or if she had rejected him.

"How did it come about that you stabbed her?" officers asked.

"I didn't bloody stab her," Graham replied.

At one point the interview was suspended, but police recorded a conversation between Graham and his wife.

"I know you didn't do it," she said.

He said people at work had told police that he was a liar and couldn't be trusted.

"I don't know what to do. They don't believe a thing I'm saying," Graham said.

Graham's barrister Malcolm Thomas says prosecutors have not proven beyond reasonable doubt that Gregor Stewart - her lover and the man who found her body - didn't kill Ms Warrick.

Dr Stewart gave evidence in the trial this week and denied any involvement in Ms Warrick's death.

Graham's trial is continuing.

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