Adrian Basham, estranged husband of Samantha Fraser, found guilty of her murder

The estranged husband of Phillip Island mum Samantha Fraser has been found guilty of killing her and then staging her suicide.

Samantha Fraser’s estranged husband has been found guilty of her murder.

The estranged husband of slain Phillip Island mother Samantha Fraser has been found guilty of her murder.

Adrian Basham, 44, lay in wait outside his former wife’s Cowes home the morning after her 38th birthday in July 2018, before following her into the garage, assaulting her and tying a hangman’s noose around her neck.

Police found Ms Fraser’s body hanging from the garage door shortly after 5pm on July 23, with officers attending the family home when she failed to pick her three children up from school.

Basham had admitted to assaulting his wife in the garage, but insisted she was alive when he left her and her death was a result of suicide.

But a Supreme Court jury rejected his lies. Following a six-week trial, it took less than two days for 12 jurors to find Basham guilty of brutally killing his estranged wife in the home she shared with the couple’s three children and staging a suicide scene.

Samantha Fraser.

Adrian Basham.

Dressed in a blue suit and tie, Basham stared down members of the media as he entered the courtroom to hear the jury’s verdict shortly after 12.30pm on Thursday.

Basham shook his head, squinted and stared up at the ceiling as the jury were asked to confirm their unanimous verdict.

During the trial, which called 79 witnesses, the court heard the couple had been married for 10 years before separating in early 2017 following “domination, aggression (and) controlling behaviours” by Mr Basham.

Prosecutor Nanette Rogers, SC, told the jury Ms Fraser had confided in family, friends, social workers and counsellors that she was scared of her husband and ­believed he was using her phone to track her movements.

A friend recalled an occasion in a park shortly after Ms Fraser had separated from Basham where she hid her mobile phone in bushes, approximately 25 to 30 metres away from where the women were sitting.

“She was whispering and looking over her shoulder,” Peta Strachan said.

Basham at Bairnsdale Magistrate’s Court. Picture: Lawrence Pinder

The court heard Ms Fraser was in frequent communication with family violence counselling services at Bass Coast Health in 2017 and 2018, and had reported to a psychologist she was frightened to leave Mr Basham and believed he would become “vindictive”.

A mental health social worker said Ms Fraser was “probably the most hypervigilant person” she’d seen in 35 years of practice.

And a friend of the couple recalled Mr Basham warning: “Just you wait and see, I’ll get her”.

Ms Rogers said Ms Fraser’s fear of Basham was “an enduring one”.

She said Basham’s motive, among other things, was jealousy.

“It may be that you find that his jealousy sprang from regarding her as his rightful property; he could not accept that she did not want to see him, could not accept that she viewed their relationship as over,” she told the jury.

Ms Fraser’s loved ones told the court by mid-2018 the mother-of-three had turned a corner and was happy, excited for the future and “absolutely not” suicidal.

According to friends, Ms Fraser had been in a “good place”, was laughing more and had started a new relationship in the months prior to her death.

Fraser, a mother of three, was found dead in the garage of her Cowes home. Picture: Nicole Garmston

On the morning of her murder, Ms Fraser responded to a text message from her new partner, Wayne Foster, asking how she would remember her birthday which she had celebrated the day before.

“The beginning of a wonderful new stage in my life,” she told Mr Foster.

Mr Foster was with police officers when they forced their way into the Seagrove Way garage that night and discovered Ms Fraser’s battered and hanging body.

CCTV had captured Basham running away from the house hours earlier before speeding to his father’s Paynesville home, east of Phillip Island, on his motorbike at 200km/h that night.

“He was trying to get away, as far away as possible, as quickly as possible from the dreadful thing that he had just done to Samantha Fraser,” Ms Rogers said.

The construction worker was also seen with a scratch to his nose following his ex-wife’s murder, with prosecutors submitting he sustained the injury as Ms Fraser “fought desperately for her life” in the garage.

Forensic experts testified Basham’s DNA was found underneath the slain mother’s fingernails and on the rope used to hang her.

Footage of a man seen outside Samantha Fraser’s home hours before she was killed.

Ms Rogers said there were many reasons for the jury to reject Basham’s claims Ms Fraser hung herself.

“First and foremost is that she was a loving mother, loved and devoted to her children,” Ms Rogers said.

“This was a staged suicide by the accused with the nice touch of the knocked-over stepladder, very close to the hanging body,” she said.

Defence barrister Ashley Halphen had argued the case was “more of a whodunnit than anything else”.

The prosecution, and ultimately the jury, disagreed.

“It was a cold and brutal murder, and it was Adrian Basham who did it,” Ms Rogers said.

Basham will face a pre-sentence hearing on September 19.

The maximum sentence for murder is life behind bars.