Alleged bathtub killer Andrew Baker to face retrial, jury unable to reach unanimous decision
A man accused of killing his ex and leaving her body to rot in a bathtub for eight months while he collected her Centrelink payments will face a retrial.
Police & Courts
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A man accused of killing his ex and continuing to collect her Centrelink payments while her body rot in a bathtub for eight months will face a retrial after a jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict.
Supreme Court judge Jane Dixon on Friday discharged the 12 jurors in the trial of Andrew Baker after they remained at loggerheads following more than four days of deliberations.
Justice Dixon said it had been brought to her attention the “high level of distress” the jury was experiencing in trying to agree on if Mr Baker was guilty or not guilty of murdering Sarah Gatt, 39, at her Kensington home in April 2017.
“In the circumstances, I have now decided to discharge you,” she told them.
She thanked the jurors for their “time, effort and concentration” over the five-week trial and told them not to be disappointed at the outcome.
Justice Dixon excluded them from being called for jury service again and told them to “part in peace and goodwill” with each other.
Her decision to discharge the jury came a day after the jurors asked her for advice on how to proceed as they doubted they would be able to come to an agreement after starting deliberations on Monday.
In that instance, on Thursday, she told them to persevere and urged them to return to deliberations, which they did.
Mr Baker has pleaded not guilty to the murder.
Prosecutor John Dickie had told the jury during the trial while it was a circumstantial case, they could have no doubt that Mr Baker killed Ms Gatt in a jealous rage after finding out she had left him for her female lover, Leona Rei-Paku.
Mr Dickie said Mr Baker’s behaviour in the months after her death was evidence of his involvement, including how he continued to collect Ms Gatt’s disability support pension, and falsely told friends they were back together but that she was in a psychiatric hospital receiving treatment.
He said Mr Baker took drug associates, including Ms Rei-Paku, to the Lambeth St house months later in August to show them the body, but claimed he didn’t know who it was, despite later declaring he recognised it was wearing Ms Gatt’s favourite bra.
He, nor the associates, ever reported the remains to police, who made the grisly find in January 2018.
Mr Dickie said Mr Baker even sent text messages to himself from Ms Gatt’s phone to convince people she was still alive.
But defence counsel John Saunders said these messages were to hide the fact Mr Baker was collecting Ms Gatt’s disability support pension, not a murder.
He said his client was a heroin addict and would use the money to get his next hit.
Mr Saunders argued the evidence did not exclude Ms Rei-Paku as the killer, pointing to her DNA being found in the bathroom where Ms Gatt’s decomposed body was found, when Mr Baker’s was not.
An autopsy could not determine her cause of death, but also was unable to rule out Ms Gatt died from a drug overdose, he said.
But Mr Dickie argued the way Ms Gatt’s body was found – “humiliated, tied up, her underpants pulled down, covered in items, left to degrade and decompose in that bathtub” – showed she did not die from natural causes.
“This is not Whitney Houston having an overdose in her bathtub; that’s not the scenario, here,” Mr Dickie told the jury.
“She didn’t fall down the stairs. She didn’t sit in the bath and just die of a drug overdose.
“She was not killed by Leona Rei-Paku. She wasn’t killed by some random person who just happened to be there at that time.
“The only reasonable scenario here is that Sarah Gatt was killed by Andrew Baker.”
Ms Rei-Paku gave evidence in the trial and denied killing Ms Gatt.
She said her brief relationship with Ms Gatt ended after she decided to go back to Mr Baker, who had told her he had cancer and she would stand to inherit money from him if she cared for him.
No new trial date has been set.
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