Clive Whyte: Alexandra man charged with murder calls neighbour ‘dead meat’

“The way things look, I killed my neighbour,” a man told police following an alleged deadly altercation between two heavy drinkers.

A Triple-0 operator spent more than 20 minutes trying to rouse a man who was already dead, a court had heard.

The murder trial of Alexandra resident Clive Whyte, charged with killing his 59-year-old neighbour Martin Bebbington, began in the Supreme Court on Tuesday.

White has pleaded not guilty.

The court heard Whyte, 62 and unemployed in late 2020, often drank with Bebbington, both of them partaking “frequently to excess”.

On the afternoon of December 6 that year, Whyte began drinking alone at his Bayley St flat.

He left to buy more alcohol, noticing upon return that Bebbington was also home.

The two drank together at Bebbington’s flat into the next morning.

It was 1.30am when a Triple-0 operator received a call from Whyte’s neighbour.

The recorded call was played to the court.

Bebbington asked for an ambulance, but the operator had trouble confirming his address.

“Are you going to stab me with that knife?” Bebbington was heard saying.

Later, he screamed four times and dropped the phone.

It was at that point, it is alleged, Whyte stabbed him several times in the chest and under the chin.

The court was told Bebbington could be heard struggling to breathe before he fell silent.

For more than 24 minutes, the operator kept trying to reach him.

“Clearly from what has taken place on the call, what was said to the operator and the sounds that the operator has heard, the operator detects that something terrible has taken place,” prosecutor Ray Gibson said.

The court heard Whyte then picked up his neighbour’s phone.

“Hello, dickhead,” he began, before abusing the operator and describing Bebbington as “dead meat”.

“Dead, dead, dead – duh,” he said.

“There was some sort of altercation, I’m not sure.

“He’s ended up dead … He was bashing me and then I retaliated.”

When a police sergeant joined the conversation, Whyte told her: “The way things look, I killed my neighbour.

“That’s f---ed up, he was my friend.”

The phone call continued until police got to the scene at 3.10am.

Once inside, officers noticed a large blood-soaked knife on the kitchen bench and a pool of blood seeping under the closed door of the flat’s bedroom.

Bebbington was found face down on the ground, dead and covered in blood, whereupon Whyte was arrested.

The trial will continue.