Husband’s grim threat before wife’s alleged murder

Before her death, Phillip Island mum Samantha Fraser disclosed to various people that her estranged husband and accused murderer attacked her, a court has heard.

Samantha Fraser was allegedly murdered by her estranged husband.

As Samantha Fraser reflected on her 38th birthday in 2018, she told a friend the occasion marked “the beginning of a wonderful new stage of my life”.

The next day she was dead, allegedly at the hands of her estranged husband, Adrian Basham.

Mr Basham, 44, has pleaded not guilty to murdering Ms Fraser, the mother of his three children, in her Phillip Island garage on July 23, 2018.

As the six-week Supreme Court trial began on Wednesday, prosecutors alleged Mr Basham lay in wait for his wife to return home from school drop-off before he followed her into her garage, ­assaulted her and tied a hangman’s noose around her neck.

Adrian Basham has denied killing his wife.

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

Lawyers for Mr Basham told the court on Wednesday while the accused admitted to causing the injuries to Ms Fraser in the garage that day, her death was a result of ­suicide.

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.

The court also heard Ms Fraser had made disclosures to various people that Mr Basham attacked her on more than one occasion.

Ms Fraser had the locks changed at her Seagrove Way home and visited a computer store in an effort to stop him monitoring her phone and tablet.

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”.

After the couple’s initial separation, Mr Basham told a friend he wanted his wife back and “said repeatedly he would make her pay financially and in other ways”, Ms Rogers told the jury.

Samantha Fraser had confided in family, friends, social workers and counsellors that she was scared of her husband, a court was told.

The court heard Mr Basham told his mate: “Just you wait and see, I’ll get her.”

Lawyer Ashley Halphen, for Basham, told the jury “anything that represents Mr Basham as being abusive and controlling is ­vehemently denied”.

“You will need to consider whether you can exclude suicide as a possibility,” Mr Halphen told the jury in his response.

“This trial is more a whodunit than anything else,” he added.

The prosecution allege Mr Basham manipulated the crime scene to make it look as though Ms Fraser had taken her own life, and no suicide note was found. 


The court also heard his DNA was found on the rope used to hang Ms Fraser.

The trial before Justice Lesley Taylor continues.