Thomas Lang was ‘driven to the edge’ and feared he would lose Maureen Boyce

The defence in the murder trial of Thomas Lang has told a Brisbane court his lover Maureen Boyce stabbed herself to death in “characteristically melodramatic fashion”, after prosecutors alleged text messages on his phone drove him to kill her in her bed.

Thomas Lang’s defence barrister has urged a jury not to compound the “tragedy” of Maureen Boyce’s death by “convicting an innocent man” of her murder.

In her final address to the Brisbane Supreme Court jury, Barrister Ruth O’Gorman submitted former model Ms Boyce had stabbed herself to death in the early hours of October 22, 2015 and had not been murdered by her lover Lang.

‘I found my fiance dead’: Jury played triple-0 call in Maureen Boyce murder trial

Knife used to kill Maureen Boyce was reinserted several times, a forensic pathologist tells court.

“Maureen Boyce killed herself in a characteristically melodramatic fashion and the evidence shows that to be the case,” Ms O’Gorman said.

She said she did not wish to demonise Ms Boyce and the jury should keep in mind she was a mother, friend and wife and had intrinsic worth.

“Maureen Boyce like many of us battled with significant mental health problems,” Ms O’Gorman said.

“Because of Maureen’s death my client Tom Lang stands charged with murder.

“It’s an extremely serious matter.”

Model Maureen Boyce during her modelling days in early 70's. She was known then as Maureen Madden.

Ms O’Gorman said Ms Boyce suffered from bipolar and borderline personality disorder and had struggled with suicidal ideations.

She said “protective factors” had been eroded in the days before she died after her husband, daughter and son all expressed their anger at Ms Boyce’s relationship with Lang.

Ms O’Gorman said a third man she had also been involved with had also not written back to her messages which may have compounded her “sense of abandonment” from those closest to her and increased her “vulnerability”.

Tom Lang who stands accused of murdering Maureen Boyce.

“The objective scientific evidence (also) … demonstrates that this death cannot have been murder,” she said.

Ms O’Gorman said Lang’s DNA was not on the knife found in the woman’s stomach, the blood stains were inconsistent with a struggle, Ms Boyce showed no signs of having struggled or fought and Lang himself had no injuries.

“We say the evidence confirms what Mr Lang says, what he said at beginning of trial - he is not guilty he did not kill Maureen Boyce – she died by suicide,” she said.

“We say it would be terrible to compound the sadness and tragedy of Mrs Boyce’s death by convicting an innocent man of murder.

“You only need to have doubt about whether he’s guilty and you would we say and will acquit Mr Lang.”

Model Maureen Boyce during her modelling days in early 70s.

EARLIER: Boyce killer ‘driven to the edge’ by lover’s deceit

Thomas Lang was “driven to the edge” and feared he would lose his lover Maureen Boyce to another man in a case of “history repeating itself” the night he allegedly stabbed the former model to death in her bed, a prosecutor has alleged.

Crown Prosecutor Todd Fuller detailed the tumultuous relationship between Lang and Ms Boyce in his closing address to the jury in Supreme Court murder trial.

Lang denies responsibility for her death.

Mr Fuller said on the night Ms Boyce died, Lang had been reading through her text messages to other men which shattered his “illusion” about her passion and commitment to him and their relationship.

“This man here who was driven to the edge by her duplicity,” Mr Fuller said.

“When I say history repeating itself, he was being betrayed by her for the second time, not the first.”

Maureen Boyce's husband Graham Boyce (centre), son Zachary Boyce and daughter Angelique Pennisi are seen leaving the Supreme Court in Brisbane in 2017. AAP Image/Dan Peled

The court heard Lang and Ms Boyce had first met 30 years earlier in America and unbeknown to Lang, she left the country pregnant with his child whose existence she only revealed to him in 2013, two years before her death in October 2015.

Ms Boyce left Lang and returned to her husband in Australia pregnant with the child and only got back in touch with Lang two years before her death.

“(She was) the love of his life, the woman who he described when he first saw her as like a movie star stepping out of a car, who turned heads wherever she went but she wasn’t all that she seemed but he knew that,” Mr Fuller said.

“By October of 2015 he had lived through the Maureen Boyce experience from 2013 through to October of 2015.

“Their plans for the future he discovered in the early hours of the morning were just an illusion.”

Mr Fuller said the jury might think Lang had been “deluding himself about how passionate and committed their relationship was” given Ms Boyce’s mental illness and the fact she was still married.

“Tom Lang had loved and lost back in the 80s and on the morning of the 22nd as he scrolled through those texts that (another man) had been sending to Maureen Boyce and that Maureen Boyce had been sending to (the other man), he saw that was what was going to happen again,” the prosecutor said.

“He stood there somewhere near that balcony with that phone in his hand watching all those things disappear.

“That’s what drove him, that’s what’s caused him to leave the balcony we know what he’s walked past – the kitchen where that knife has come out of the knife block that short walk through the lounge room to where Maureen Boyce was lying in bed.”

Lang’s defence has argued that Ms Boyce committed suicide on the night she died in October 2015.

The trial continues.