Murder accused Natasha Darcy said she didn’t know what was in Mathew Dunbar’s will, court told

A woman accused of sedating her partner with a cocktail of sedatives from a Nutribullet and gassing him to death made a surprising claim after he died, a court has been told.

A woman who was the sole beneficiary of her partner’s $3.5m property told one of his closest friends that she did not know what was in his will the day after he died, a court has been told.

Natasha Beth Darcy, 46, is on trial in the NSW Supreme Court for the murder of Mathew Dunbar, 42, at his Pandora property in the rural town of Walcha in 2017.

She has pleaded not guilty and says she assisted in Mr Dunbar’s suicide but did not murder him.

On Tuesday, witness Lance Richard Partridge said Mr Dunbar was an unusually, sometimes excessively, generous person, a trusty collaborator on plays for the Walcha musical society, and a close friend who often came over on Christmas Day.

“He was part of the family,” Mr Partridge, a grazier who lives 30km from Pandora, told the court.

Mathew Dunbar was allegedly murdered at his Walcha property, Pandora, on August 2, 2017. Picture: NSW Supreme Court

In May 2015, the court was told, Mr Dunbar appointed Mr Partridge as executor of his will and Ms Darcy as the beneficiary of his estate.

According to agreed facts read aloud in court, Mr Dunbar told Ms Darcy a day later, “You now own Pandora if I die”, and she replied, “I don’t want Pandora, I want you.”

In court on Tuesday, Mr Partridge recalled a conversation he had with Ms Darcy more than two years later, the day after Mr Dunbar died.

“She said she didn’t know what was in the will,” he told the jury.

Mr Partridge said in 2017 Mr Dunbar had called him late at night to say he had argued with Ms Darcy, who wrongly believed he was having an affair.

“He said he had a gun and he was going out with the gun and it would be the last time that he left Pandora,” Mr Partridge said.

“I kept him talking. To get a phone call like that, I was very concerned.”

Mr Dunbar later turned up at Mr Partridge’s house and said he was worried about Ms Darcy’s spending and his relationship, Mr Partridge said.

Mr Dunbar was admitted to a mental health ward following the incident, the court was told.

Ms Darcy allegedly sedated him with a drink mixed in a Magic Bullet blender before gassing him in his bed. She has pleaded not guilty to murder. Picture: NSW Supreme Court.

Ten years earlier, Mr Dunbar had unexpectedly told Mr Partridge that he had depression when they passed “a little black or blue dog book” in a store.

“Mathew looked at it and said, ‘I’ve got depression, I’ll buy one of those’. I said, ‘You haven’t got depression Mathew’, and he said, ‘I do’, and he bought the book.”

Mr Partridge was cross-examined at length about Mr Dunbar’s spending but said it was largely practical, and he had only questioned a $160,000 tractor he thought Mr Dunbar did not need.

Less practical, he said, was Mr Dunbar’s gift-giving habit, of which Mr Partridge and his wife were frequent targets.

Mr Partridge said he was gifted three cameras – a Canon, a small one designed for panoramas, and a GoPro he has never used – as well as a $1000 microwave and a phone that, inconveniently, received messages meant for Mr Dunbar.

“He said, ‘It might be best if you see the messages’,” Mr Partridge said. “He spoke to me about everything.”

Mr Dunbar’s spending differed greatly from his father John, who was “careful” with money and died of a brain tumour in 2007, Mr Partridge said.

Mathew Dunbar was mostly ‘practical’ in his farm spending but bought extravagant gifts for others, a close friend said.

He also told the court that Mr Dunbar, who was adopted, had been estranged from his mother Janet.

“He was terrified of her. He told me when he was a child he got grease on his hands and he was playing with another small boy and she took him inside and scrubbed him until his hands were bleeding … he did not consider his mother to be a normal character,” he said.

The crown alleges Ms Darcy did extensive online research – including googling “how to commit murder” – before she drugged Mr Dunbar with a cocktail of sedatives blended together in a Magic Bullet on the evening of August 1, 2017.

In the early hours of the morning, as he lay sedated in bed, Ms Darcy is alleged to have run a laundry hose from a helium gas cylinder to a plastic bag she had affixed over his head and turned the tap on.

Her barrister, Janet Manuell SC, told the jury to keep an open mind and consider Mr Dunbar’s long history of depression as they pondered Ms Darcy’s guilt.

The trial continues.

Originally published as Murder accused Natasha Darcy said she didn’t know what was in Mathew Dunbar’s will, court told