Man asked if he was ‘in trouble’
A FINANCIAL planner accused of murdering his client asked police, “I’m in big trouble, huh?,” when detectives revealed they had CCTV footage of his car in the dead man’s driveway.
Businessman Trung The Ma, 35, is on trial in the Brisbane Supreme Court for the alleged murder of Huegio Bonham at the Gold Coast in 2014.
He has pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter on the basis of diminished responsibility, with his lawyers arguing he had an “abnormality of the mind” at the time of the killing.
Prosecutors told the court Ma killed Mr Bonham with a hammer in February 2014 after his client threatened to tell people the financial adviser had defrauded him.
A video of Ma’s interview with police was yesterday played to the jury showing the businessman telling police he was unaware of what had happened to his client.
But hours into the interview and his description of how he spent his day working, investigators revealed they had CCTV footage of his vehicle in the driveway of Mr Bonham’s Gold Coast home.
Ma sighs several times and takes a long break before explaining why he was at his client’s home.
“Well Huegio sent me an email sounding quite upset and that he wanted to leave me as a financial adviser, I went to his house to confront him about it and I um, I spoke with Huegio and yeah told him that I understood why he wanted to leave,” he said.
“I’m in big trouble huh? “I went there, spoke to him and um the reason I didn’t want to say anything is because I know it would look really bad for me.”
Crown prosecutor Michael Lehane told the jury Ma killed Mr Bonham, hitting him with a hammer and disposing of his body, because he “feared” he would reveal the extent of his fraudulent activity, arguing he had taken more than $700,000 of the man’s money.
The trial continues.