Ricky jury told case is ‘strong’

BELL Park man Karl Michael Hague pleaded not guilty to murdering Ricky Balcombe yesterday, 23 years after the teenager was stabbed in the heart in Geelong’s Market Square shopping centre.

Mr Hague, now 44, was first charged with the public execution of the teenager in 1997 but never faced trial because the case against him fell over.

But a Supreme Court jury was told yesterday the prosecution believed it now had a strong case against the defendant.

The killing happened at 3.20pm on Friday, May 5, 1995, near the lifts in front of “startled onlookers”.

While Mr Hague says he was nowhere near the scene, Crown prosecutor Andrew Tinney SC said the jury would hear he approached Balcombe and his friend Paul Bellia, 17, and said “Remember me motherf---er” before stabbing the victim with a knife that was later found near the scene.

“This was a vicious, lethal attack on an unarmed child,” Mr Tinney said.

The 13 jurors will tour the Geelong CBD today to see where Balcombe was slain and other locations key to the trial.

Balcombe, 16, died at the scene within minutes of being attacked.

Mr Tinney told jurors Mr Hague and Balcombe were rivals in two incidents on Malop St on April 21 and 22, 1995, and these were the motive for the fatal stabbing a fortnight later.

He alleged Mr Hague, then 21, injured the teenager in the first incident, but Balcombe’s gang — known as the Main Street Criminals or Red Bandanas — hit back a few hours later, attacking a car the defendant was in with a machete, an axe and sticks.

Mr Tinney said there wasn’t one piece of evidence that would prove Mr Hague was guilty, but said he would rely on a combination of facts and witness accounts to make his case over the four-week trial.

He said those factors would include: PAUL Bellia identifying Mr Hague as the killer; TESTIMONY from a number of witnesses about the incidents in April, and Mr Hague’s anger at the car attack; EYEWITNESSES who saw Mr Hague in Little Malop St minutes before the killing, including the brother of his thengirlfriend, and a teenage friend of Balcombe’s, who said he was threatened by the man; TWO alleged confessions from Mr Hague, one to a member of a different gang — The Syndicate — “two or three days” after the stabbing and a jailhouse admission months later; A NEAR-CONFESSION to a female friend hours after the killing, when the defendant heard a radio report on the murder. Even though Balcombe was not yet named, Mr Hague allegedly told the woman the victim was “the little c--t that knifed the car”; ALLEGATIONS Mr Hague arrived at a unit in Corio with a friend shortly after the murder and left 30 minutes later in a different outfit; and MR HAGUE’S “ever-changing” alibis for the murder.

But defence lawyer Felicity Gerry QC said she would prove the prosecution case was “unconvincing, weak, lacks credibility and reliability”.

“Ultimately the issue in this case is simple . . . Karl Hague did not kill Ricky Balcombe,” she said.

Ms Gerry said her client was not involved with a gang, was not in the Little Malop St mall that day, and rejected the claim he had lied about his alibi.

Mr Hague — who was first interviewed by police three days after the killing — took part in a number of identification parades, but was never identified by any of the witnesses, Ms Gerry said.

She said the evidence the jury would hear over coming weeks needed to be considered without emotion, and within the context of the decades that have since passed, and other factors that might have influenced witnesses.

Members of Ricky Balcombe and Karl Hague’s respective families, including both mothers, were in court yesterday for the opening addresses.

Ricky Balcombe’s mum, Christine Loader, told the Geelong Advertiser it was a relief to have the trial under way after almost 23 years waiting for answers to her son’s death.