Kill suspect claim a ‘dreadful stain’ on Lloyd Rayney reputation

Perth barrister Lloyd Rayney has launched defamation action over “a dreadful stain” he says cost him his career.

Barrister Lloyd Rayney arrives at the Supreme Court in Perth. Picture: Colin Murty.

Perth barrister Lloyd Rayney yesterday turned the blowtorch on the state that put him on trial for his wife’s murder five years ago, suing for defamation over “a dreadful stain” that he says cost him his reputation and his career.

On the first day of the defamation trial in the WA Supreme Court, Mr Rayney’s lawyer Martin Bennett said the former prosecutor turned high-flying barrister earned $490,000 in the 2006-07 financial year, but three months after it ended police named him as their only suspect in the murder of his wife Corryn.

When Mr Rayney returned to his practice last year after what Mr Bennett described as “an ­extraordinary series of events”, including getting disbarred and reinstated, he earned $80,000.

Corryn was a 47-year-old mother of two and registrar in the Supreme Court whose disappearance on August 7, 2007, rocked Perth and its legal fraternity. Eight days after the last confirmed sighting of Corryn at her regular bootscooting class, her body was found in a shallow grave at Kings Park in Perth.

At a press conference on September 20 of that year, Detective Jack Lee was responding to questions when he said: “(Mr Rayney) is our only suspect at this time. He is our primary person of interest.”

It was two years later when police pulled his car over in the Perth CBD, arrested him and charged him with murder. He was acquitted at a judge-alone trial in 2012 and a subsequent appeal by the state was dismissed.

In his opening address yesterday, Mr Bennett said he would contest the 33 circumstances that police say raised suspicion, such as the couple’s acrimonious marriage and estrangement. The murder trial heard the Rayneys were living separately under the same roof.

Mr Bennett gave a detailed ­account of what Mr Rayney did, where he went and who he called on the day before his wife disappeared, the evening she was last seen and the following morning when he woke to find she was not at the family home.

Mr Bennett told the court that the police list of Mr Rayney’s suspicious behaviour included that, after Corryn disappeared, he said his wife always went to work early. Mr Bennett said it was later revealed that, although Corryn did not arrive at the her workplace early, she did regularly leave home early and unbeknown to Mr Rayney she met a man with whom she was romantically ­involved at a coffee shop called the Secret Garden.

“She’d say ‘I’m going in early’ and go off for a secret assignation,” Mr Bennett said.

Mr Bennett said the defamation trial, set down for six weeks, was Mr Rayney’s opportunity to attempt to restore his reputation. “(This is) a dreadful stain on Mr Rayney … that was ­allowed to set and firm in the minds of the WA public,” he said. “It was a poison incapable of being expunged.”