Killer mother loses conviction appeal
NORLANE killer Alicia Jade Schiller yesterday lost her bid to appeal her conviction for murdering her female housemate over a $50 note.
Three Supreme Court of Appeal judges refused her application to contest the guilty verdict delivered by a jury in March last year.
“There was ample non-contentious evidence upon which the jury could conclude the applicant was guilty of murder,” justices Michael Niall, Geoffrey Priest and Mark Weinberg stated.
Their decision quashes Schiller’s hopes of a retrial or having her murder conviction downgraded to manslaughter.
Schiller, now 28, stabbed mother of three Tyrelle Evertsen-Mostert three times with a short kitchen knife in a frenzied attack at a home in Ibis Court, Norlane, on November 9, 2014.
The jury heard the final blow was fatal, the knife entering under the victim’s left breast, breaking through her rib cage and pericardium and entering her heart.
Witness Shane Fowler testified Schiller attacked her defenceless housemate on her bed, grabbing her by the hair.
“In a hammer fist-like motion she was trying to strike down on top of her head,” he said.
Moments after the attack, Ms Evertsen-Mostert told her partner Jason Gentle: “I think you had better ring an ambulance ... she got me three good ones”.
Schiller and the victim — both mothers — were ice addicts living in the same house.
Ms Evertsen-Mostert was a small-time dealer of the drug, and had taken $50 from Schiller’s room that day to buy her product. Her four-year-old child was home at the time.
The jury heard she was di- viding the drug on her bed, when Schiller, angered by the missing money, attacked.
Schiller tried to argue she did not mean to kill her, with her lawyer Paul Smallwood telling the Court of Appeal the jury should not have found she had “murderous intent” at the time of the attack.
Mr Smallwood said his client thought she’d stabbed the woman in the stomach, left the house while she was still conscious, was drug-affected at the time and was later surprised to learn the woman died.
But the Appeal Court judges noted murderous intent meant “the intention to kill or cause really serious injury”, inferring a deliberate and forceful stabbing to the stomach would have done little to reduce Schiller’s culpability, given the fatal outcome.
“The applicant’s statement to police that she believed that she had stabbed the (victim) in the stomach, even if that was her genuinely held belief, was capable of supporting rather than undermining the Crown case,” they said.
The judgment means Schiller’s 20-year jail term — with a non-parole period of 16 years — still stands.