Ian Riggs provides information about wife’s remains, court told

A MAN who killed his wife and twice buried her body has provided information about where the rest of her remains may be buried, a court has been told.

A MAN who killed his wife and twice buried her body has provided information about where the rest of her remains may be buried, a court has been told.

Crown prosecutor Todd Fuller told Justice Peter Flanagan that Edmund Ian Riggs’s defence had provided the information on the day he was found guilty of manslaughter.

Mr Fuller said the information had been passed on to police.

After Riggs was found not guilty of the murder of Patricia Riggs, his wife of 17 years, on February 13, her family said they wanted him to tell them where the rest of her remains were.

Tricia Riggs’s brother, Mark Knowles, said Queensland’s “no body, no parole” law should apply to Riggs.

Riggs told the Supreme Court that on September 30, 2001, Tricia spat in his face, he pushed her and she hit her head on a bed post, fell to the floor convulsing and died.

Patricia Rigg’s brother Mark Knowles after Ian Riggs was found guilty of manslaughter. Picture: Darren England/AAP

Riggs said after killing Tricia, 34, in their Margate bedroom, he took her body away and buried it in bush near Morayfield, north of Brisbane.

Riggs said he dug up part of her remains two to three years later, reburying them in the back yard of his Margate home, where he lived with their four children.

Riggs sold the house in 2007 and in 2016 the new owner dug up some of Tricia’s bones, while building a retaining wall in the back yard.

Riggs will be sentenced on March 18 and Justice Flanagan said he wanted to hear any submissions about the location of the remains, as the Parole Board would need to know.

Riggs had pleaded guilty at the start of his Supreme Court trial to interfering with his wife’s corpse, by burying her body elsewhere, after killing her in their Margate bedroom.

He will also face sentencing for that charge and perjury.

“We want the rest of my sister’s remains,” Tricia Riggs’s brother, Mark Knowles, said after the verdict.

“Here’s an opportunity, under the Queensland law, to give us those remains and the Queensland law, I believe, is no body, no parole,” Mr Knowles said.

“Give us the rest of her remains so we can bury her with some dignity.”

He said from the court evidence it seemed like more than half of Tricia’s remains were still missing.

“Where are they? Where is she? Only he knows the answers. If he’s got any ounce of dignity he’ll let us know,” Mr Knowles said.