Cyanide murder accused told undercover cop how lover’s husband died, court hears
A MAN accused of a love-triangle cyanide poisoning murder was secretly recorded telling an undercover police officer: “I took that guy off”, a court has heard.
Law & Order
Don't miss out on the headlines from Law & Order. Followed categories will be added to My News.
A MAN accused of a love-triangle cyanide poisoning murder was secretly recorded telling an undercover police officer: “I took that guy off”.
The tape, played to a Supreme Court jury on Tuesday, recorded Arun Kamalasanan saying: “I took that guy off. I went there with the powder, sleeping pills ... and I gave it.”
COURT TOLD MURDER VICTIM DRANK LACED AVOCADO SMOOTHIE IN KILL PLOT
ACCUSED CYANIDE PLOT KILLERS WERE FOLLOWED BY POLICE FOR SIX MONTHS
MURDER VICTIM HAD ‘EXTREMELY HIGH’ LEVELS OF CYANIDE IN BLOOD, COURT HEARS
Mr Kamalasanan, 35, who police say was having an affair with the wife of the dead man, has pleaded not guilty to murder. Sofia Sam, 33, has also pleaded not guilty to the murder of her husband, Sam Abraham, at their family home in Epping in October 2015.
Prosecutors have said the duo plotted the crime together.
Mr Abraham’s death was initially deemed an accident. But an investigation began after an autopsy found he had died of cyanide poisoning.
Jurors heard that the undercover police officer befriended Mr Kamalasanan over five months.
In the recording, he says he planned the murder for a long time, but repeatedly says Ms Sam had no knowledge of it.
Asked why he did it, he replies: “You know, I’ll do anything for my friends.
“This guy was troubling her for some time.”
He details how he dropped avocadoes off at the house in the evening, knowing Ms Sam would make smoothies from them for her family.
He says he then hid in the house and drugged Mr Abraham, Ms Sam, and their son, 6, with sleeping tablets he had slipped into their drinks.
“I drugged the entire family,” he tells the undercover officer. “The three of them. The kid, her and him ... and they slept. I drugged him more.”
He then says: “I gave the powder.”
Asked what the powder was, Mr Kamalasanan replies: “Cyanide ... because it works well with orange juice. I mixed orange juice and gave him.”
On the tape, he details how he bought the cyanide powder in India and then flew back to Australia with it in his luggage.
Mr Kamalasanan says he was inside the couple’s house from about 10pm to 3.30am.
Ms Sam was sleeping beside her husband, and had no idea he was there, he says.
He denies suggestions that Ms Sam, whom he had met at college in India about 15 years earlier, was involved in the crime and had asked him to kill her husband.
He says he believes Ms Sam suspects that her husband had died of a heart attack.
“It’s already published everywhere ... as heart attack,” Mr Kamalasanan says. “They are waiting for the final papers from the Coroner’s.”
Patrick Tehan, QC, representing Mr Kamalasanan, earlier told the jury that the taped confession was false.
He told jurors to ask themselves: “Can you be satisfied that the admissions made by Arun to undercover police operatives are true?
“The defence contend they are false, and made in circumstances which would lead you to have real doubts about their truth,” he said.
Mr Tehan said his client’s relationship with Ms Sam was one of “mutual affection” but was not a motive for murder.
The jury has heard that Ms Sam and Mr Kamalasanan had been friends since meeting in college in India.
Mr Kamalasanan, who has a wife and child in India, attended Ms Sam’s 2008 wedding to Mr Abraham. He moved to Melbourne months after she did in late 2012.
On the recordings played to the jury on Tuesday, he told the undercover officer he had “always loved her” but that “she never accepted me”.
“I still love her,” he says.
The trial, before Justice Paul Coghlan, continues.