Yachtie killer’s appeal back on
CONVICTED killer Susan Neill-Fraser will return to court this week to continue her bid for freedom.
Neill-Fraser, 64, is using new laws to mount a last-ditch appeal against her conviction for murdering her 65-year-old partner Bob Chappell aboard their yacht Four Winds, which was moored off Sandy Bay, on Australia Day 2009.
The appeal hearing is due to resume tomorrow in the Supreme Court in Hobart.
The hearing, which began in October, paused in March, when the court heard evidence there was no scientifically credible bloodstain evidence to support the sentencing judge’s finding that Neill-Fraser had hauled Mr Chappell’s body onto the yacht’s deck and into a tender before taking it away and dumping it in the river.
Forensic expert Dr Mark Reynolds told the court conclusive testing of the yacht’s tender had failed to turn up evidence of human blood.
This was despite a positive result to the chemical luminol, which glows in response to the presence of blood and other substances.
He told the court a more de- finitive test was carried out, with 16 swabs taken from seven different locations, each one returning a negative result for blood.
Dr Reynolds agreed nobody had claimed during Neill-Fraser’s trial that blood was found in the dinghy.
Neill-Fraser’s lawyers have also sought to place others at the foreshore around the time of the murder to raise doubt about whether she was responsible for the killing.
Director of Public Prosecutions Daryl Coates told the court in February police had obtained two recordings that were “substantial and new evidence” in the appeal.
Neill-Fraser’s legal team asked for time to consider the new evidence, which meant it was not brought before the court earlier this year.
Neill-Fraser was convicted by a Supreme Court jury in 2010. In 2012, the Court of Criminal Appeal rejected her appeal, the High Court declined to hear her case and a coroner’s inquest found she was responsible for Mr Chappell’s death.
New right-to-appeal legislation allows a final appeal if there is “fresh and compelling evidence” and there has been “a substantial miscarriage of justice”.