After helping hide the body of a murder victim allegedly killed by his ex-partner, a NSW man claims he was punched in the face and threatened with decades in jail.
Days after wrapping the body of Danielle Easey in a chemsuit, plastic and tape and concealing her in a cupboard in August 2019, Justin Kent Dilosa claims his former girlfriend Carol Marie McHenry was aggressive on a car trip to a friend's place.
"She said to me, 'I'll make sure you do 20 years for this,' when I suggested she should take responsibility for what she did," he said in the NSW Supreme Court on Tuesday.
On the return journey, he pressed the issue only to be attacked and told to walk home, the jury heard.
"I said to Carol again, 'Twenty years. You need to take responsibility for what you did,' and Carol stopped the vehicle, punched me in the eye, and told me to get out."
Dilosa, 36, and McHenry, 35, are on trial charged with murdering 29-year-old Ms Easey with a knife and hammer at McHenry's Narara home on the NSW Central Coast on August 17, 2019. McHenry is also charged with being an accessory to the fact.
The pair, who were in an intense romantic relationship until August 2018, have pointed the finger at each other for the killing.
Ms Easey's decomposing body was found two weeks after her death in a creek near the M1 motorway at Killingworth.
Dilosa claims he was asleep in his van outside McHenry's home when the murder occurred.
Returning to the house with McHenry and a friend Jeremy Princehorn on August 18, Dilosa said he smoked ice with the two of them before single-handedly wrapping up the body.
He helped place Ms Easey's body in a kitchen cupboard, loaded the cupboard in the back of his van a few days later, and then disposed of the body near a bridge over Cockle Creek, the court heard.
"Why did you do anything with the body at all?" he was asked by his barrister Angus Webb.
"I'd had a long history with Carol. Carol had pled to me that she'd never see the kids again. I loved those children. They'd already lost their father," Dilosa replied.
The jury heard that as well as helping get rid of the body, Dilosa had also thrown the bloodied murder weapons in a bonfire and cleaned up the blood in the back of his van.
During this time, he was "back and forward" about taking responsibility for the murder, he said.
"At the time I cleaned the van, there was no self-preservation. I didn't wear gloves because my mindset was I was taking the van, there was nothing to hide."
However, Dilosa said he eventually drew the line at helping her clean up her Narara home, he told the court.
"If I went down ... she wipes her hands scot-free of committing a murder," he said.
At one stage, McHenry told him she wanted to burn her house down, he added.
He denied claims he had confessed to the murder or that he had considered dumping the body in a skip bin near his home at the "old chicken factory" in Cardiff.
He also said he had never argued with or been rude to Ms Easey in the days before she was killed, and rejected allegations by McHenry to police that he had abused both her and her children while they were in a relationship.
The trial in front of Justice Robertson Wright continues.
