A woman accused of plotting the murder of her former partner, whose body was fed into a woodchipper near Gympie, allegedly had a “premonition” about someone being injured in a “terrible” land-clearing accident only weeks before he died, a jury has heard.
Sharon Graham, 61, and her partner Gregory Roser, 63, are charged with the murder of Bruce Saunders, who died while tree lopping at a property in Goomboorian in November 2017.
Last week, the pair pleaded not guilty at the start of their Supreme Court trial being held in Brisbane.
It is alleged Mr Roser killed Mr Saunders before he and another man, Peter Koenig, put his body in the machine, at the request of Ms Graham who stood to benefit from his $750,000 life insurance policy.
Ms Graham has denied instructing anyone to murder her former partner, while Mr Roser accepts there was a plot, but has accused Mr Koenig of carrying out the killing.
On Wednesday, Ms Graham’s former partner Barry Collins gave evidence, telling the court in the weeks before Mr Saunders died, she told him she thought “someone was going to get hurt” whilst clearing land.
“She said 'I had a premonition there was going to be a terrible accident',” Mr Collins said.
Under cross examination by Ms Graham’s lawyer, Mr Collins accepted he only provided this information to police after he was arrested for drug trafficking in 2019, and he received a reduced sentence for his co-operation.
Before doing this, the court heard Mr Collins had provided a character reference for Ms Graham in support of a bail application, telling her lawyer she was an “honest, timid person”.
“I cannot believe she would be involved in anything like this,” he told the lawyer.
The court heard he said to a second lawyer sometime later there was “no way Sharon put this together because she was a sheep”.
“If the crime was committed it was not her doing,” he told the second lawyer.
Girlfriend 'wanted to get rid of her partner'
A friend of Mr Roser’s, Joan Balfour, also testified about conversations she had with him about four months before Mr Saunders death.
“He said that he was very stressed and worried,” she said.
“Then he told me that she … his girlfriend, wanted to get rid of her partner at the time.”
Ms Balfour told the court Mr Roser’s girlfriend, whom he never named but she knew to be a blonde woman, “wanted Greg to shoot her partner”.
“I advised him not to do that obviously,” she said.
Ms Balfour told the court, in a second conversation with Mr Roser, he said he had sourced a “small gun” and it was in the boot of his car.
“He told me that last time he saw his girl, that she sent him to her friend’s house and this friend gave him a gun,” she said.
The court heard Mr Roser then told Ms Balfour his girlfriend had provided him with the names of streets and times Mr Saunders would be driving and asked him to carry out the shooting on one of these routes.
“Before we finished the conversation [Mr Roser] agreed with me that it was stupid and he wasn’t going to do it,” Ms Balfour said.
The court heard from several other witnesses, including Mr Saunders son, his former wife and his former brother-in-law.
The trial continues.
