Walcha widow Natasha Darcy-Crossman ‘Googled information on how to kill someone’
DAYS before her partner’s death from apparent helium asphyxiation, Natasha Darcy-Crossman allegedly googled information on how to kill someone including “99 undetectable poisons” and “the science of getting away with murder”.
NSW
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POLICE will allege that days before she staged the “suicide” of Walcha grazier Mathew Dunbar, Natasha Darcy-Crossman was Googling information on how to kill someone.
Darcy-Crossman searched several terms on her mobile including “the science of getting away with murder”; “99 undetectable poisons” and whether “helium showed up in an autopsy”, according to a police statement of facts.
Other search terms police allege she searched were “murder by injection”, “helium filled exit bag”, “euthanasia device”, “suicide/suffocation/helium” and “arsenic”.
Detectives will also allege Darcy-Crossman put drugs and animal sedatives in Mr Dunbar’s food to knock him out, before putting a plastic bag around his head and placing a tube from a helium canister underneath.
The much loved farmer was found dead at his sheep property ‘Pandora’ in the early hours of August 2.
This week the Daily Telegraph revealed details of the police case including the allegation the mother-of-three had tried to buy ram sedatives from the local Walcha vet but was refused because neither she nor Mr Dunbar owned any male sheep.
According to court documents, police will allege Darcy-Crossman used Mr Dunbar’s mobile phone to send a text to her paramedic ex-husband Colin Crossman on the night of the alleged murder.
She allegedly sent a text at 1.13am on August 2, purporting to be Mr Dunbar which said, “Tell the police. I don’t want Tash and the kids to find me”.
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The 42-year-old then called triple-0 about 2am and told the operator she had found Mr Dunbar in bed and that he had “gassed himself”.
Her ex-husband, Mr Crossman was then one of the first paramedics on the scene.
Following a three-month investigation Darcy-Crossman was arrested on Saturday at Mr Dunbar’s sheep property ‘Pandora’ on Thunderbolts Way.
After being charged with one count of murder she spent three nights in the cells underneath Tamworth police station after failing to get bail in a closed court session on Sunday.
Yesterday the mother-of-three was seen for the first time since her arrest as three plain-clothes detectives led her in handcuffs across the tarmac at Tamworth airport.
Wearing a long-sleeved white and navy-striped T-shirt and glitter-studded jeans, Darcy-Crossman almost smiled when a journalist called out to ask her how she was faring.
She was then bundled onto a small aircraft where she was expected to be flown to Sydney before being transported to Silverwater’s Women’s Jail for processing.
Police allege Darcy-Crossman deleted all her internet searches about how to commit a murder but officers were able to recover her deleted web browser searches — including a search for “suicide/suffocation/helium” on August 1.
Last Tuesday Darcy-Crossman took a phone call in front of The Daily Telegraph where she was told police wanted to give her computer and phones back.
“They’ve just closed it all [the investigation] now — so they are giving me all my computer stuff back, all Matt’s phones and everything that’s what I found out just then,” she said standing on Mr Dunbar’s sheep property.
This journalist asked, “That must be a relief?”
To which she responded, “Well I knew it was going to close [the investigation] eventually, I mean I was there — I know he killed himself,” she said.
She will spend Christmas behind bars and will next face court in January.