Trial focus on tree lights

Too dangerous to climb tree: Father says

THE parents of accused wife killer Louis James Mahony have told their son’s trial that they had not instructed that party lights be removed from a gum tree outside his Charleville home.

Louis Mahony claims he had walked outside the home at 11 Walter St, Charleville, which was owned by Mahony’s parents, on the afternoon of Sunday, August 23, 2009, to find his partner of 18 years Lainie Coldwell lying at the foot of the tree with a serious head injury.

He claimed she had fallen out of the tree while removing party lights.

Lainie’s niece Rae-Anna Hicksen (nee Coldwell) told Toowoomba Supreme Court after Lainie’s death she had heard Louis Mahony make a phone call and say into the phone words to the effect “It’s your f---ing fault, you wanted the lights out of the tree”.

She said she didn’t know who he was talking to but believed it was Louis Mahony’s mother.

However, Mahony’s mother Adele Mahony told the court she and her husband were living in Maryborough at the time and she had been visiting Lainie and Louis that week.

As she prepared to leave on August 22, 2009, she had noticed Lainie on the porch and asked if she was okay as she had been quiet.

She said Lainie told her she had not been well and had dizziness and nausea.

Mrs Mahony said she told Lainie she might be pregnant but remarked how difficult a time Lainie had having the couple’s only child.

When she arrived at a friend’s home that night at Durong, Mrs Mahony had called Lainie and Louis to say they’d arrived safely and said that Louis had told her they had been up the tree removing the lights.

“I said ‘Why? What were you doing up the tree?”

Mrs Mahony said she wondered what Lainie would be doing up that tree when she had told her of her dizzy spells and nausea.

When told that they had removed some lights and we going to get the rest the next day, Louis Mahony’s father James Mahony said he had told his son “What the bloody hell are you doing getting those lights out?”

Mr Mahony said the lights had been in the tree for 10 to 15 years and he thought it too dangerous to climb the tree to remove them.

Louis Mahony, 44, has pleaded not guilty to a charge of murder arising from the death of Lainie Coldwell.

The Crown has accused him of killing Lainie and staging the scene to look as if she had fallen from the tree, hitting her head on a rock garden at the base of the tree.

Rae-Anna Hickson told the court she had worked at the meatworks with Louis Mahony and after Lainie’s death Mahony had approached her saying he had the autopsy report and that Lainie had been pregnant.

Mahony had also told her to practise for an interview she had coming up and said he had been practising for an interview with the insurance investigator for seven weeks.

She said she had found that strange because at that time she didn’t think Lainie had been dead for seven weeks.

The trial before Justice James Douglas continues.