Bali murder accused Sara Connor and David Taylor brace to learn their fates
AS Byron Bay woman Sara Connor and David Taylor prepare to learn their fates, we look at how their romantic holiday turned into a nightmare.
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SARA Connor turned on her mobile phone.
She was on holiday in Bali with her lover of just three months and remembered that she needed to register her car back home in Australia.
The minute the phone flashed to life text messages started beeping through.
How are you? What’s going on? Are you OK?
We’re worried about you. Call me.
Worried friends in Australia had woken to morning news bulletins that a 45-year-old Byron Bay woman was wanted in Bali for the murder of a local policeman.
Her photograph was plastered on police wanted posters and a hunt was on for her and the man she was with.
Connor says this was the first time she had any clue that a man she and her boyfriend, British DJ David Taylor, had encountered on a Kuta beach three nights earlier was dead.
She says she had no idea he was seriously injured when they left him and rather thought him to
be passed out but OK.
The couple had come across veteran police officer Wayan Sudarsa on Kuta beach late in the evening of August 16 and early hours of August 17.
Connor had arrived in Bali earlier that afternoon.
Taylor had been there for 10 days already and picked her up from the airport.
It was to be an idyllic week-long break and perhaps a goodbye.
The couple, who had been friends for three-and-a-half to four years but only in a relationship for about three months, were facing the prospect of miles between them.
Taylor, known as DJ Nutzo, sporting long dreadlocks, had lost his Australian visa after his former wife, from whom he was separated, told Immigration and he was given a limited time to leave the country.
He was hoping that a trip to Bali and a tourist visa application would be the answer to return.
If not he faced going back to the UK.
After dropping Connor’s bag off at the small local homestay he had rented for 80,000 Rupiah or $8 a night, the reunited lovers went out to watch the sunset at the beach.
The couple drank a beer each as they wandered around the streets looking for a restaurant for dinner.
After dinner, about 10pm, they decided to buy a takeaway beer each and go down to the beach
where they sat and chatted for a couple of hours.
Connor was happy.
She hadn’t seen Taylor for a couple of weeks.
It was only them and a week of romance and fun.
It was dark and silent, the full moon that night the only illumination across the sand.
The ocean beckoned and they left their beers and Connor’s handbag on the sand and went down to the water’s edge to cuddle and wet their feet.
Then, “Where is my bag?” Connor said, realising her small black handbag was gone from where she had left it.
Her NSW driver’s licence, ATM card and about $300 were inside.
They began a frantic search around the beach and Taylor came across Wayan Sudarsa standing near the gate to the beach.
“Someone has stolen a bag,” Taylor said to him.
Taylor says the officer said “ooh” to him and opened his jacket to show his uniform, saying he was police.
Taylor asked him to help and says the officer laughed at him.
Taylor says he had a feeling the officer knew something about the stolen bag and didn’t trust him.
It was when Taylor started to attempt to pat down the officer looking for the bag the course of the evening changed.
He says the officer threw him on to the sand and the two men started wrestling and fighting.
Shocked and scared, Taylor says he grabbed the officer’s binoculars, on a cord around his neck and hit him in the face.
A discarded mobile phone on the sand was also used as a weapon.
Taylor says when the officer thrust his right elbow into his throat he thought he would die and he grabbed a large Bintang beer bottle from the sand, hitting the officer on the back of the head. The bottle smashed on one of the impacts.
Connor says she was not present for much of the fight as she searched for her bag.
When she came across the two men brawling on the beach she tried to pull Taylor away, at one stage launching herself in between.
As she tried to get up she overbalanced and fell on the officer.
This was when he bit her on the arm and thigh.
The prosecution’s key witness, a hotel security guard, who testified that he witnessed part of the fight, says he saw Connor with her arm around the officer’s neck at one stage, while Taylor was straddling the officer. She denies this.
As the officer lay wounded on the beach, Taylor turned him face up. He was still breathing. He took the officer’s wallet and mobile phone.
On the street Connor tried to hail a motorbike taxi driver. She says she wanted to go to the police station to report Sudarsa but the driver refused to take her because she didn’t have any
money.
He says he wouldn’t take her because she had blood on her and he was afraid of blood.
The couple walked back to the Kubu Kauh Beach Inn.
Connor says Taylor told her the man was “just passed out” which Connor took to mean he was OK.
As Taylor showered and washed his clothes in their room Connor used a pair of scissors to cut up the ID cards from the officer’s wallet.
She says she did it to ensure there was no identity theft and that no one could use them.
Connor says she was not concealing a crime because, from her point of view, there was no crime and she had no idea the officer was mortally wounded.
The Prosecution says she was concealing the evidence of a crime and that this shows a consciousness of guilt on her part.
The couple slept, woke the next morning, Wednesday, and checked out of the Kubu Kauh Beach Inn, as they had always planned to do, leaving their bags at reception to collect later in the day when they found somewhere else to stay.
They wanted to go somewhere quieter and had heard that Jimbaran was nice. They headed there, on the way stopping to throw away the garbage bag containing the ID cards.
They had a swim at the beach and lunch and spent the day enjoying their holiday, oblivious to the fact that down at Kuta beach a police line had been set up.
Ketut Arsini was up early that day.
She was attending an Indonesian Independence Day ceremony on the public holiday. Her husband, a police officer of more than 30 years, had been on nightshift and
wasn’t expected to finish his shift until 8am.
She took a phone call, her husband had been found dead on a beach. She didn’t believe it. It was only when another officer showed her a photo of her husband’s bloodied body, sprawled in the sand, did her world start to crash around her.
The next day, Thursday, Connor and Taylor went about their holiday - to the beach, the fish market and wandered around, lunch by the ocean.
It was Friday when Connor turned on her phone to pay her car registration and she learned her future was rapidly changing.
Friends told her to go to the Australian Consulate immediately.
Seconds turned into minutes and desperation set in.
They were villains on the run, wanted for murder.
Taylor suggested they burn their clothes. Connor just wanted to toss them and get to the Consulate. They burned the clothes and Taylor smashed the police officer’s mobile phone against a wall and set off for the Australian Consulate.
Connor was ushered inside and Taylor stayed outside as he was not an Australian citizen. Police watched them. They had been stationed at the consulate for the past few days, waiting for
just this moment.
Connor and Taylor maintain they were not on the run for three days and that they had absolutely no idea the man on the beach was dead and that they had been going about their holiday as normal. They checked out of their hotel on the day they had always planned and
given they had left their bags to collect later said it was plain they
were not running.
Their arrest brought a confused and contradictory series of statements and comments from their lawyers and police.
At one stage the local police chief publicly warned his officers against peeping tom activities, suggesting they buy a blue pornographic movie instead, amid whispers that the officer had been spying on Connor and Taylor as they were intimate on the beach.
Then there was a suggestion from Taylor’s lawyer that the officer had tried to sexually assault Connor that night - later retracted and denied.
And originally, Taylor told police, in a statement, that Connor had told him she hit the officer. Taylor then withdrew the statement, saying he was confused at the time it was made. It was
not true.
He has consistently, since then, insisted that his girlfriend had nothing to do with killing the police officer and that he solely was to blame. Their versions tallied.
He did it, in self-defence and she played only a peacemaker role.
Both have been asked numerous times in court if they love each other.
The answer has always been yes.
But with news that prosecutors equated the roles of Connor and Taylor and both deserved the same sentences their love is set to be tested inside Kerobokan prison.
Connor and Taylor will learn their fate tomorrow on Monday, when the verdict and sentence is handed down.
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