Murder accused Edmund Ian Riggs questioned over blood of wife Patricia found on bedroom wall

A Queensland man charged with the 2001 murder of his wife could not say why police found stains from her blood in a spatter pattern on wallpaper behind the bed head, a court has heard.

Patricia Riggs was last seen at her Margate home on September 30, 2001.

THE defence case of a man charged with murdering his wife closed today, with a forensic scientist criticising police analysis of blood spatter on a wall of a bedroom, where she died.

Edmund Ian Riggs told a court his wife, Patricia Riggs, died in 2001, after he pushed her on the chest and she fell back, hitting the back of her head or neck on a bed post at the end of their bed.

He claimed he reacted to her spitting in his face, during a late night argument in their Margate bedroom, on September 30, 2001.

Edmund Ian Riggs pleads not guilty to murder of wife Patricia

“I wanted her to get out of my face. I didn’t know whether she would spit again or slap me,’’ Riggs, who pleaded not guilty to murder, told the Supreme Court.

Riggs said Tricia, who had been standing, then fell on a rug, at the foot of the bed, convulsing for 30 seconds to a minute.

“I was just frozen in shock,’’ Riggs said, explaining why he did nothing.

He said after checking her vital signs, feeling blood behind her head and realising she was dead, he then picked her up and laid her on the bed, with her head towards the bed head.

Under cross-examination, Riggs could not say why police found stains from Mrs Riggs’s blood in a spatter pattern on wallpaper behind the bed head.

Ian Riggs, pictured in 2004. Picture: Darren England

He said it could have happened when he was moving his wife’s body around that night or when she previously cut her hand, while they were assembling the bed.

Riggs also said, under cross-examination, that he could have dropped the body and picked it up again, but he was not sure, because brain had “exploded’’ after he killed his wife.

Defence witness, forensic scientist Helen Roebuck, was critical of limited photographs of the stains and some of the analysis of blood spatter by a police forensic scientist in 2001.

The court heard the blood droplets on wallpaper behind the bed head were two metres apart.

Ms Roebuck agreed with defence counsel Lars Falcongreen’s suggestion that the projection of blood could have been caused by a hand impacting with the back of a neck coated in blood.

She said if a person lifting a body removed a hand and put it back into the blood, it could result in the impact seen on the wall.

But Ms Roebuck also agreed with Crown prosecutor Todd Fuller that a hand squeezing the back of a bloodied neck, while a body was lifted, would not spread stains as far as two metres apart.

Mr Fuller put to Riggs that he struck his wife while she was lying on the bed, but he denied it.

Riggs said he wrapped his wife’s body in bedding, put her in a car boot, where he already had a spade, drove to bush near Morayfield, north of Brisbane, dug a hole in the dark and buried her.

Patricia Riggs died in 2001.

He said two to three years later he dug up her remains and reburied them in his Margate back yard. The house was sold in 2007 and the bones were discovered by the new owner in 2016

Mr Fuller put to Riggs, who has pleaded guilty to interference with a corpse, that he disposed of her body so nobody would know the mechanism by which he killed her.

He replied: “Incorrect’’.

Riggs said before he killed his wife she had told him she had found a list of escorts in his pocket, and about affairs she had had.

Riggs told the court he had seen prostitutes when the family lived in Darwin and Canberra, before moving to Brisbane, and he told Tricia he was thinking about seeing an escort.

Riggs said his inability to work, after a hand injury at a mine in 1999 and other health problems, had a huge impact on their marriage, and he and Tricia were not having sex.

He said on the night Tricia died she had berated him, saying he wasn’t a man, he was sickly and gutless, before moving forward and spitting in his face.

He said each of them had raised the idea of divorce previously, but their four children kept them together.

Riggs said he and Tricia’s bridesmaid, Shantele Tait, had had sexual phone conversations and had once arranged to meet up for sex, but he called it off and they never had sex.

The court had heard Tricia Riggs told friends that Ms Tait had told her they had had an affair years earlier, but Ms Tait denied it.

Riggs said two days before she died, Tricia told him she knew he had had an affair, before their youngest child was born.

Tricia Riggs, who had been home schooling the couple’s children, was due to start work as a swimming instructor on the day after she died.

The jury will hear final addresses from the prosecutor and defence counsel on Monday.

Originally published as Murder accused Edmund Ian Riggs questioned over blood of wife Patricia found on bedroom wall