Daughters tell court farmer Greg Johnston ‘broken’ after wife’s death

The daughters of the Great Southern farmer accused of murdering his wife by staging a fiery crash on their farm have both come to their father's defence.

Great Southern farmer Greg Johnston.

The daughters of the Great Southern farmer accused of murdering his wife by staging a fiery crash on their farm have both come to their father's defence - saying he had never been angry or violent, and had been left “broken” by his Susi Johnston’s shocking death.

Greg Johnston, 61, is on trial in Perth over the alleged killing of his wife in 2008, who burned to death inside a car after it crashed into a tree on their Borden property weeks before Christmas.

Mr Johnston escaped the deadly blaze unscathed, without even smoke or soot staining his clothes. He first told police he had blacked out while driving, then that he was distracted – and finally that his wife had steered into the tree herself.

Ten years after the death, police charged Mr Johnston with killing her deliberately - with prosecutors pointing to his affairs, and money being paid to a woman he would later marry, as motive for murder.

Today, the couple's daughters Felicity and Elise took the stand as Mr Johnston's defence case began.

While they both admitted their father's story about how their mother died had changed twice over the years, they still considered him as gentle, generous and genial.

Younger daughter Felicity, an engineer, said her father had been “broken” by the death of his wife, and told the WA Supreme Court she feared her father might take his own life, such was his level of distress.

She said she considered a poem written by her mother, seized by police in 2017, which started “To those I love …” as a suicide note.

“She was definitely not afraid of death … she regarded it as the next stage of life,” Ms Johnston said.

Elise told the court she believed her father had been protecting her and her siblings by not revealing until 2017 his claim that Mrs Johnston had grabbed the steering wheel of the car and deliberately steered it towards a tree.

But in their circumstantial case, prosecutors say the shifting sands of Mr Johnston’s explanations to police over the years, was one of many strands pointing to the crash being a “staged” homicide rather than a tragic rural accident.

In his first account Mr Johnston claimed he had “blacked out”, vaguely remembering his wife vainly grabbing the steering wheel before they hit the tree hard. The next thing he remembered, he said, was him outside the car, which was already consumed with smoke.

Medical evidence later showed Mrs Johnston was alive as the car burned, with the cause of death eventually ruled as smoke inhalation and incineration.

And crash experts concluded tyre tracks did not support the gradual drift usually associated with a driver blackout —but rather that the car had been steered to the right deliberately, and then straightened up as it approached the tree.

In repeated interviews by police over the next ten years, Mr Johnston’s story changed, particularly in 2013 when he told the police his wife had tried to kill herself, and him, by grabbing the steering wheel and pointing them towards the tree.

Evidence of Mr Johnston’s life away from his wife also pointed to foul play, prosecutor Justin Whalley said. The court heard in the months before his wife’s death he had met another woman, Jenny Yu, and had begun an affair with her.

Money had already been exchanged between the Johnston’s bank accounts and hers. Less then two weeks after Mrs Johnston’s death, $15,000 went from Mrs Johnston to his new love interest.

They were married nine months later.

Both daughters today said they had not been aware of the marriage until many years after it had occurred, but both said they now got on well with their father’s new wife.

The trial continues.

Originally published as Daughters tell court farmer Greg Johnston ‘broken’ after wife’s death