Man on trial for Samantha Kelly murder told police he helped move body, jury hears
A MAN on trial for the murder of a Bendigo mother of four told police he helped move her body but had nothing to do with the killing, a jury has heard.
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A MAN on trial for the murder of a mother of four told police he helped move her body but had nothing to do with the killing, a jury has heard.
Ronald Lyons and Christine Lyons, who are unrelated, have pleaded not guilty in the Supreme Court to the murder of Samantha Kelly at their Bendigo home in January 2016.
Prosecutors allege the pair organised the murder with Ms Lyons’ husband, Peter Arthur, who has admitted carrying out the brutal killing.
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On Wednesday, a jury was shown a series of police interviews with Mr Lyons following his arrest in February 2016.
Ms Kelly had then been missing for several weeks, and Mr Lyons told police he believed she had “up and left”.
But he appeared to change his story after police told him that Ms Kelly’s body had been found.
“Oh, right,” he said, before adding: “I didn’t kill Sam.”
Like Ms Lyons, Mr Lyons immediately fingered Arthur as the killer, saying: “He come in and said, ‘I’ve done something stupid’.”
The court heard he said that when Arthur told him of the killing, he had thought he was joking.
He admitted later helping Arthur move the body because it was “starting to smell”.
Mr Lyons told police he helped bundle the body, wrapped in a blue tarpaulin, into the back of a van, but had no idea what happened then.
Mr Lyons said he told Arthur to surrender to police.
The court has heard that in a letter to Mr Lyons from prison, Arthur wrote: “Sorry for what I have done, f---ing up your life like this.
“I did not mean to.”
Arthur has been accused of lying about the murder to shift blame from himself and to implicate his housemates.
For months after the January 2016 killing, Arthur swore that he had acted alone.
Then, after pleading guilty to the murder, he implicated his wife and Mr Lyons, saying that the trio had made an agreement to kill.
Police then upgraded charges of being an accessory to murder to charges of murder.
Lawyers for the pair have dubbed Arthur’s revised version of events surrounding the killing as “nonsense”, “rubbish”, and “cock and bull”.
Arthur has told the jury that he watched Walker, Texas Ranger DVDs and drank four cans of Jack Daniels to “get up the Dutch courage” to carry out the killing.
He killed Ms Kelly by repeatedly striking her in the head with a hammer.
The trial, before Justice Stephen Kaye and a jury, was continuing.
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