Danielle Birchall: Woman found to have murdered partner’s elderly father maintains innocence
A woman found to have brutally murdered her partner’s elderly father continues to claim she is innocent and that she knows who is responsible, a court has been told.
A woman convicted of killing her father-in-law only to feign the horror discovery hours later continues to maintain her innocence, a court has been told.
Danielle Lee Birchell, 49, returned before the Victorian Supreme Court on Tuesday for a presentence hearing after a jury delivered a unanimous guilty verdict on a charge of murder at trial last year.
Birchell and her then long-term partner George Kritikos arrived at his parents’ Coburg home about 10.45pm on November 11, 2020, after a night spent socialising and gambling.
Inside, George’s father Kon Kritikos was found with fatal head injuries in the foyer of the home and died 13 days later in hospital.
George would later tell police he asked Kon who attacked him, with the elderly Greek man responding; “they were big” and “her, her, her” in Greek.
At trial, prosecutors argued he was savagely attacked by Birchell with a weapon, similar to a gardening mattock, hours earlier when she visited the home between 3.30pm and 5pm.
“It was a ferocious and brutal attack on a vulnerable and defenceless old man,” Crown prosecutor Sarah Thomas told the court.
Ms Thomas argued the murder was in this “high range of seriousness” with Birchall abusing a position of trust with a man she called dad and was viewed as a family member.
She said on the Crown case Birchall was living above her means and needed money to purchase a car the following day when she went to Kon’s house.
The prosecutor said it was likely Birchall was either hoping to ask Kon for money or beak in and steal from him, but did not visit with violent intent.
Birchall’s barrister, Chris Pearson, told the court his client maintains she is not responsible for Kon’s murder, continuing to stick with an alternative hypothesis put to the jury.
During the trial, it was argued Mr Kritikos was actually killed by an unknown person during a “run through” orchestrated by his son George Kritikos and the couple’s alleged heroin dealer Nathan Stone, with Birchall left to take the blame.
On the stand, both George and Mr Stone denied they were involved, with Mr Stone also denying he ever dealt heroin. Neither has been charged with any offence.
“That’s the version of events the accused maintains, Your Honour,” Mr Pearson said.
“The fact is there must have been, consistent with the jury’s verdict, a dispute between the accused and deceased where the accused dealt with this elderly human being, in the sanctity of his own home, in a way that no human being ought be dealt with.”
But the defence barrister said his client had accepted that as a result of the verdict she will receive a significant term of imprisonment.
He told the court the sentence must be moderated on her personal circumstances, including Birchall’s deprived childhood growing up in Tasmania before she moved to Victoria alone at the age of 16.
He said she was functionally illiterate, had experienced significant domestic violence at the hands of a number of partners and suffered a myriad of conditions including complex PTSD.
“She has many years in front of her before she is back into the community,” he said.
“She will get assistance … and hopefully emerge from prison a better person than when she went in.”
Birchall will return to court on April 4 when Justice Christopher Beale hands down his sentence.