Salt Creek backpacker trial day 5
A GERMAN backpacker has told the Salt Creek trial how she woke to the sound of her companion screaming. She looked over to see her friend naked with a man standing over her.
- Day 1: “Get out of here, he’s going to kill us all”
- Day 2: Jurors visit isolated, treacherous terrain
- Day 3: “I’ve never seen anyone so covered in blood”
- Day 4: “I was in the horror movies ... I’m not going to die today”
THE German backpacker at the centre of the Salt Creek trial has told the court how she thought she would die after the accused “came from behind” and hit her in the back of the head.
The woman, whose identity is suppressed, said she had fallen asleep after setting up camp in Salt Creek with a Brazilian backpacker and the accused.
She told the Supreme Court trial she woke about an hour later to the sound of the Brazilian woman’s screams and found her naked on her back with the accused over her.
“She was naked. I thought ‘s--t, we are all alone on the beach, there is no one’,” the German woman told the court.
“Then I got pretty angry and I took a few steps in their direction and shouted at him and said ‘get away from her, leave her alone’.
“He came in my direction and said something strange to me, ‘I just wanted to try her’. I didn’t know what that was supposed to mean.”
She said she yelled at her Brazilian friend to run away, before running to the car to collect her bag which contained her important possessions.
“My back was turned to him (the accused), I tried to grab my bag, then he came from behind and I got a pretty hard smash on the back of my head,” the German woman said.
“It was like on a boat, it felt like I was drunk when I got a hard smash.
“I thought ‘that’s it, that’s the end’ and I saw myself already buried in the sand.
“I was thinking of my parents, that they would never see me again.”
The accused, 60, whose identity is suppressed, has pleaded not guilty to one count each of aggravated kidnapping, indecent assault and causing harm with intent to do so.
He has further denied counts of attempted murder, aggravated causing serious harm with intent to do so, endangering life and aggravated assault.
Prosecutors allege that, on February 9 last year, he attacked two backpackers — one Brazilian, the other German — at an isolated spot on the Coorong.
Prosecutors allege the Brazilian woman’s clothes were cut from her body with a knife before she was bound and sexually assaulted.
They further allege the German was struck four times in the head with a hammer and repeatedly “mowed down” by the man’s vehicle.
Defence counsel, meanwhile, have asserted the incident did not occur at all, telling jurors some things about the case were “not what they appear to be”.
They have suggested the Brazilian “strutted around” naked, and had an argument with the man, before running into the dunes — a version she rejected during cross-examination.
Giving evidence on Thursday, the German woman told the court how she came to be at Salt Creek.
She said she had been looking for a ride to Melbourne and asked to join her Brazilian friend’s arrangements.
She told the court that when she first met the accused, who had offered to give the two backpackers a lift, she was “a bit surprised that he was so old”.
“I was expecting he would be the same age as us,” she told the Supreme Court trial.
“I thought ‘two young girls and there’s a guy’. It was a bit surprising.
“But I thought ‘I’m not alone, (the Brazilian) is here as well, she knows him a little bit, it’s fine’.”
She said when they arrived at Salt Creek, the beach was empty but the accused “kept driving for maybe 4km”.
“(The Brazilian) and I were already wondering why we did not stop because it looked all the same along the beach,” she told the court.
She said the duo had not realised that they would be camping there because the accused “didn’t really talk to us about that”.
After making camp, the backpackers talked to one another while the accused set up his fishing rods.
“We were both feeling a bit confused because we were not expecting we would camp there.
“I said to her (the Brazilian woman) ‘he’s a bit weird, isn’t he?’ and she said ‘yeah’.”
As the Brazilian and the man drank wine, the German went to sleep — only to be roused, an hour later, by “very terrified” screaming of “someone really in danger”.
She found her travelling companion on the sand with the man standing over her — and the Brazilian yelled “run away, run away, he’s dangerous, you’ve got to get away”.
“She was naked ... I thought ‘s--t, we are all alone on the beach, there’s no one’,” she said.
“Then I got pretty angry and I took a few steps in their direction and shouted at him and said ‘get away from her, leave her alone’.”
“He came in my direction and said something strange to me, ‘I just wanted to try her’ ... I didn’t know what was supposed to mean.”
She said she ran for the car and her small bag, where she kept all her important possessions, but the man followed.
“I said ‘stay there, I just want to get my bag’ and he was like ‘yeah, yeah, get your f--king bag’,” she said.
The German said the man then struck her once with the hammer, dealing at least three more blows as they struggled over the tool — and she “may have” hit him once also.
“Something was dripping in my left eye and I wiped it away and I saw it was blood,” she said.
She said she broke away from the man and ran back to the Brazilian, untied her hands and had a “very short” conversation focused on just one thing.
“We were both pretty distressed and we were thinking about how to get away,” she said.
“It was only about that — how to get away.”
The women ran in separate directions, and the German realised the man was following her in his car.
“I was thinking ‘I have to run away’ but I was also thinking that ‘I’m not fast enough’. I tried to run as fast as I could,” she said.
“The car was coming, closer and closer. I thought ‘s--t, what am I going to do, where can I run?’.
“He got closer and closer. He bumped into me, my back, with the bullbar. I pretty much flew away.
“I didn’t feel any pain so I knew I had to get up immediately and start running away again.
“He chased me and he bumped into me again a couple of times. I always flew and I always got up again.”
Though disoriented, the German said she remembered the sound of the car’s engine was so loud that she believed the man was driving at her as fast as he could through the soft sand.
She said that, at one stage, she fell and the car “did a doughnut” and drove right over the top of her — its wheels passing on either side of her body.
“I thought ‘I cannot run away anymore, I have to do something’,” she said, telling jurors she had faced the car and, as it drove at her, jumped on its bonnet.
She said she held on to an antennae at first and then climbed onto the roof, while the man kept driving over the dunes.
“I felt pretty weak but also full of adrenaline, so I could feel no pain ... he shouted at me ‘get off my f--king roof’ 10 times,” she said.
The German said that, in response, she “demanded” to be taken back to the track and the roadhouse.
“I was shouting, I was pretty angry as well,” she said.
When the man stopped the car, got out and tried to attack her with the hammer again, she said she responded by “trying to kick in his face”.
She said they also fought over the shovel on the roof of the 4WD but neither could get it, as it was screwed down.
The man drove off over the dunes again as she clung to the roof, she said, still bleeding and feeling “like a rodeo.”
She said the man “calmed down” and became “nervous” when the four-wheel drive bogged — and he had to ask her for the shovel.
“I said ‘I cannot trust you, you tried to kill me’,” she said.
She demanded he throw away his hammers and knife — he agreed, she said, and she agreed to give him the shovel as “some sort of strategy” to keep him calm and get back to help.
She said she “was pretending he had not done anything bad to me” in order to “talk him down”.
The woman told the jury that, after freeing the vehicle, the man gave her a blanket as she “was freezing” because she was “wet with blood”.
She said the man told her it was “ridiculous” she was on the roof, refused to go any further unless she got down.
“He was definite about it,” she said, and agreed — so long as the passenger door remained open at all times.
Before she sat down, she said, he covered her seat with another blanket — to protect it from blood, not to keep her warm.
“He offered me some kind of Panadol but I refused,” she said.
“I was suspicious, I thought it might be some kind of drug he wants to give me.”
She said they drove back toward the gate to the beach and saw fisherman — at which time the man told her “be quiet, don’t say a word”.
When she ignored him and screamed for help he drove past at speed, turned back into the dunes and stopped as if “confused”.
The German said she told him she wanted an ambulance, and for the fishermen to take her to it, but the man insisted would do that.
“He said ‘I owe it to you’. I said ‘do you feel guilty?’ and he said ‘yes’,” she said.
She said he also asked, in German, for her to stay with him but she refused and left — taking her and the Brazilian’s possessions with her.
She said she walked toward the fishermen but they moved slowly, “like they did not want to come toward me for some reason”
“They were shouting something toward me like ‘run, run, what are you doing?’ ... they seemed to be very scared ... they were in shock when they saw me,” she said.
Prosecutors have previously alleged that was because she was covered head to toe in blood.
The German was shown several pieces of evidence recovered from the site, including a bloodstained towel and her tracksuit pants.
When shown a photo of her hat, she said she had asked police to return it to her because “I really wanted that hat”.
Asked what the slogan on the hat said, she replied: “Stay Strong”.
In cross-examination, the German conceded she was concerned when the Brazilian changed into her bikini upon their arrival at Salt Creek.
“I had already started to worry on the beach because (the man) did not talk a lot to us and he was acting strange,” she said.
“I thought that it’s not a good idea to walk around in a bikini with an older man.”
Bill Boucaut SC, for the man, suggested the German’s version of events were “just not right”, and that the Brazilian had “run off naked” into the sand dunes.
“I suggest (the man) never hit you with a hammer, or anything for that matter ... (being driven over) just didn’t happen,” he said.
“You got in the car at the campsite and he drove off with you while you were looking for (the Brazilian).
“You asked if you could get on the roof of the car to look for her ... at that stage, you had no injuries at all.
“At some stage, he went over a sand dune, came to an abrupt halt and you flew off the roof, and you hurt your head from falling off the car, from the roof.”
The German said that was incorrect and stood by her earlier evidence.
“He was driving quite rough, pretty roughly like a madman, through all the bushes even though it would destroy his car ... it was quite wild,” she said.
Mr Boucaut questioned how the German could have wrestled the hammer from the man, as she described, given he was taller and larger than her.
“I was full of adrenaline, I did not want to die,” she replied.
The trial, before Justice Trish Kelly and a jury of eight men and four women, continues.