Tasmania’s headless body murder case: Crown says accused cut victim’s head off to hide how he died

The body of a man found buried in a shallow grave by cadaver dogs at Railton in 2016 was missing its head … and it has never been found, the jury in a murder trial has heard.

Police collect evidence at the unit of missing man Noel Joseph Ingham in West Ulverstone, in 2016. Picture: CHRIS KIDD

THE head of a man found buried in a shallow grave by cadaver dogs at Railton in 2016 has never been found, a jury in a murder trial in Burnie has heard.

Darren Ward Gale has pleaded not guilty to murdering his former Ulverstone housemate Noel Joseph Ingham sometime between July and August of that year.

The trial, before Justice Helen Wood, is expected to take up to six weeks and involve more than 60 witnesses.

The photo distributed by police when Ulverstone man Noel Joseph Ingham was reported missing. A former housemate is now standing trial for his murder. Picture: SUPPLIED

A missing person investigation was launched in October 2016 after the housing authority from which Mr Ingham rented the unit he shared with Mr Gale raised concerns with police.

Mr Ingham’s burnt out Jeep was found at Dulverton, near Railton, on a bush track on November 2. The skeletons of his two small white dogs were found inside.

Three weeks later his body, with its legs at almost right angles and wrapped in bedding, was found by the cadaver dogs about 1km from the car and the missing person case turned into a murder investigation.

“His head was not found in the grave and has never been located,” Crown prosecutor Katie Harnett told the jury. “The decapitation happened after his death and was done with a knife.

“There were some injuries to Mr Ingham’s body but the head has been taken to conceal how he died.”

The Crown said forensic experts would tell the jury they believed Mr Ingham had been murdered months before he was found.

Ms Harnett said Mr Ingham was a single 58-year-old pensioner who lived in a Housing Choices unit in Colac Court, West Ulverstone.

In July, two weeks before the police claim he was killed, he took in Mr Gale, then 51 and unemployed, as a boarder. The pair had met at an emergency accommodation facility in Burnie.

A CCTV camera at an Ulverstone doctor’s surgery has footage of the pair together on July 22. It was the last sighting of Mr Ingham.

“The State’s suggestion is that within days he had been killed and, in the hours, days and months that followed, the accused carried out deliberate acts of concealment and destruction to cover his crime,” Ms Harnett told the jury.

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“The case is a circumstantial one. There were no eyewitnesses that saw the murder happen. But most murders do not happen in crowds but behind closed doors.”

Today the victim’s sister-in-law took the stand saying she had received a phone call and automated text from a strange man in July 2016 saying Noel was “doing fine” and that he would be coming up to Queensland to collect his things.

He did not arrive.

Ms Harnett told the jury Mr Ingham “spent most of his days with his dogs and drinking”.

Mr Gale also liked a drink, the jury heard, and the pair were regulars at the local bottle shop.

But after July, Mr Ingham’s bank and phone activity changed and locals noticed he was no longer around.

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Doctors appointments were missed along with a house inspection.

The court heard it was that house inspection — and a handwritten note attached to the door saying the tenant was away in Hobart having medical tests and signed “Noel” — which sparked a massive police investigation involving a tracker on Mr Gale’s vehicle and the placing of a covert camera in a tree near the gravesite.

Defence counsel Greg Richardson said the Crown did not have the “faintest idea of what happened in Mr Ingham’s death.”

“The cause of death is the real issue in this case,” Mr Richardson said.

“All the evidence is circumstantial and requires looking back after his death."