Murder trial of Steven Hinrichsen hears records of interview from accused murderers Tanya Hinrichsen and Gavin Skinner
A murdered man’s wife told police she last saw him lying on the floor of their home a day before he was found stabbed to death.
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A woman accused of killing her husband has described the moment she returned to their Housing Trust home and found him lying on the ground in a pool of blood.
Tanya Hinrichsen, 43, is standing trial with her boyfriend Gavin Scott Skinner, 46, and his friend Robert John Thrupp, 47, for the murder of Stephen Hinrichsen in the early hours of December 15, 2019.
A jury has been told by the prosecution that Ms Hinrichsen had been having an affair with Mr Skinner and had been trying to leave the victim.
In separate records of interview with police officers in the hours after the body was discovered both Ms Hinrichsen and Mr Skinner described going to the house earlier in the evening.
Mr Skinner said he had gone to the victim’s house with his two co-accused to collect Ms Hinrichsen’s belongings.
“We were like ants trying to get most of her stuff,” he said during the interview.
In reference to Mr Hinrichsen, who Mr Thrupp said was lying on the ground in the lounge room, he told police “no one hit him, no one touched him”.
Ms Hinrichsen told police her husband had been “kind of off his face” that evening.
“He didn’t make sense he kept on mumbling and I didn’t take any notice of it and I’m now pissed off that I left rather than staying at home,” she told detectives.
“I was at the lounge room door, I didn’t think to check on him, I now regret it.
“I don’t know if he was all right or not.”
Ms Hinrichsen said she returned the next morning to find her husband two metres from where he had been lying the night before.
“I walked in this morning and their was glass everywhere and I saw his stomach wasn’t moving and checked his pulse and their was nothing there,” she said.
During his interview, played by the jury, Mr Skinner said he had received texts from Ms Hinrichsen and then photos of the body.
The jury previously heard Mr Hinrichsen had high levels of several pain killers in his system when he was killed.
Mr Hinrichsen was wheelchair bound and occasionally used a walking frame to get around after breaking his femur in two places.
Professor Jason White, an expert pharmacologist, said samples taken from Mr Hinrichsen showed high levels of tramadol and pregablin, two kinds of pain killers, in his system.
Additionally, the jury heard he also had oxycodone and a powerful antihistamine, in his system.
Professor White said the levels of both tramadol and pregablin where higher than would normally be found in a user of the drug.
He said the combination of the drugs could have led Mr Hinrichsen to be
“The tramadol effects would have been magnified by the presence of oxycodone as well,” Professor White said.
“So, I would expect that someone with that combination of drugs, even if they were accustomed to taking them, would experience sedative effects such as drowsiness and some impairment of cognitive functioning.
“I’m not sure exactly why he was prescribed (pregablin), but it’s higher than would be the case for pain relief and at the upper end of the dose range for epilepsy.”
The trial continues.
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