Wendie-Sue Dent, accused of poisoning her partner David Lawrence, claims she refused a coroner’s inquest into the death
She stands accused of poisoning her lover to cash in on his estate. Now Wendie-Sue Dent’s trial has heard she labelled his autopsy “pretty bloody shoddy” and claimed the State Coroner offered to conduct an inquest for her.
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A woman accused of poisoning her lover to claim his $300,000 estate claimed the State Coroner offered to conduct an inquest and she refused because “it won’t bring him back”.
In telephone calls played to the Supreme Court on Wednesday, Wendie-Sue Dent tells friends David Lawrence was “riddled” with asbestosis, that it had “almost eaten away” his bowels, and that he “must have been in agony when he died”.
“He told me he was dying, that he was terminal, but he told me he had 15 years,” she says in one call.
“He (David) made me promise he was to die in his own bed, never to be put on life support, stuff like that, and he wanted me with him when he died – no one else.
“His family was not to know about it or anything … asbestosis, can you believe it?”
Dent, 61, of Dapto in NSW, has pleaded not guilty in the Supreme Court to murdering Mr Lawrence in his Morphett Vale home on or about December 2, 2015.
Prosecutors allege she poisoned him with medication – including 20, 100mg tablets of morphine – and falsified documents to make herself his sole beneficiary.
They have further alleged she offered his prized possessions to neighbours and friends in exchange for their support in claiming his estate.
In the calls, Dent tells friends that she and another person had been looking for Mr Lawrence’s medical papers “for a year”, and then came across his “registration” as an asbestosis sufferer.
“When we contacted the registrar to tell them he had died, they thought he already had,” she says.
“The autopsy’s already been done … pretty bloody shoddy autopsy … when I was there doing autopsies it was hard work, mate.”
“Everything had to be measured, weighed, looked into, cut, biopsied … it’s full on.”
That information, she says, had been passed on to then-State Coroner Mark Johns.
“Mark Johns knows me well because he employed me, and he asked me ‘do you want to push for an inquest?’,” she says.
“I said ‘no, it won’t bring him back, Mark, it won’t bring him back so what’s the point of keeping digging and digging and digging?’.
“Now I know why he died, I’m quite content with that, I don’t need an inquest.”
In another call, Dent suggests the reason Mr Lawrence had consumed prescription medication was not due to back pain but because “his bowel was shredded, his spleen was shredded, his pancreas was shredded”.
“From here to Melbourne he knew every single public toilet … he had to … poor bugger, he must have been in so much pain when he died.”
She also complains of SA Police investigations into Mr Lawrence’s death.
“That’s why the cops tried to pin it on me, they did, but (our neighbours) all told them the same thing, that they’d never seen a happier couple,” she says.
“I can’t believe they tried to pin it on me.”
The trial, before Justice Tim Stanley and a jury of six women and six men, continues.