Killer makes freedom bid

GUILTY verdicts returned by a jury in the 2015 murder trial of Launceston man Marco Daniel Rusterholz were unsafe and unsatisfactory, a defence lawyer has told the Court of Criminal Appeal.

Two years ago, Rusterholz, now 53, was found guilty of killing Angela Maree Hallam and Joshua Eric Newman then burning their bodies in a Ravenswood unit in 2012. He was sentenced to serve at least 25 years of a 45-year jail term.

Yesterday in the Court of Criminal Appeal in Hobart, defence lawyer Fabiano Cangelosi argued that not only were the verdicts unsafe, but that Justice Robert Pearce’s directions to the jury had led to a miscarriage of justice.

Mr Cangelosi said his client had been convicted on the basis of supposed admissions made to people “of little credit”, including convicted criminal Matthew James Coventry.

Mr Cangelosi said Coventry and another witness had waited weeks to tell police that Rusterholz had confessed to them, and that details of their accounts were inconsistent with forensic evidence.

Mr Cangelosi also said that despite the obvious violence that had taken place during the “fight to the death” inside the Ravenswood unit, no trace of his client’s DNA had been found at the scene. But Crown Prosecutor John Ransom argued that Mr Cangelosi’s arguments were analogous to “a skyscraper built on a foundation of sand”, saying Justice Pearce’s final directions to the jury regarding Coventry’s possible involvement had come at the express request of Rusterholz’s trial lawyer.

Regarding an alleged admission Mr Coventry made in the case, Mr Ransom said that His Honour told the jury that if they found Mr Coventry’s supposed admissions to the killings to be true, “it obviously follows that you must have a reasonable doubt about Mr Rusterholz’s guilt”.

Mr Ransom said that His Honour had also told the jury that unless they found Rusterholz’s guilt was “the only reasonable scenario”, then the Crown case had to fail.

Mr Ransom said that a telling piece of evidence at the trial was a sample of Mr Newman’s DNA on a fuel can in Rusterholz’s back shed. “How did that get there? It was a locked shed,” Mr Ransom said.

The court: Justice Helen Wood, Justice Stephen Estcourt and Justice Michael Brett, reserved its decision.