Murder accused changed story

Murder accused Rose Morgan said she could not remember going to Tracey-Anne Harris’s house on the day Harris was alleged to have died.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, a 41⁄2-hour video recording of an interview between Morgan and two police officers on March 16, 2016 was played to the High Court at Nelson.

During the investigation, Morgan had been spoken to by police several times, from the time Harris’s body was found on February 11, 2016 to Morgan’s arrest in Rotorua on February 14, 2018. The Crown alleges that Morgan and Tyler Baillie murdered Harris on February 7, 2016, injecting her with a lethal cocktail of drugs before smothering her with a pillow.

According to witness statements, Morgan had been present at Harris’s Stoke house in the early hours of that morning. Texts from Morgan’s phone also indicated she had been in contact with Harris, and cellphone location data had placed her in the vicinity of Harris’s house throughout the morning and into the afternoon.

However, in her video statement, Morgan said she had no recollection of visiting Harris at all on February 7.

She maintained that the last time she saw Harris was while shopping in Stoke on February 4. She said she sent her texts on the evening of February 7, but received no replies.

Morgan was then shown a series of texts she had made late on February 6 and into the early hours of February 7, including between her and Harris. These included texts organising to meet with Harris, and to another friend that she was at Harris’s address in Marlowe St.

For the length of the interview, Morgan maintained she had been very drunk and could not remember seeing Harris or going to her house.

At 3.30am, Morgan sent a text to a friend saying she had done something ‘‘really f ..... g f .... d’’. She said this referred to her having sex with Kristofer Finlay, whom she had met at a stag night in Richmond that morning.

She said another text at 7.35pm, when she told a friend ‘‘I think I just did the wrong thing’’, referred to the same incident.

Finlay gave testimony on day six of the trial. He said he had been picked up that morning by Harris and Morgan at the Waimea College grounds. He had been kicked out of the stag night for being too drunk, and was taken to Harris’s house.

While he said that Morgan had driven him to Brunner St later that morning, he told defence lawyer Michael Vesty there had been no sexual activity at all between him and Morgan. Morgan said that after going back to Brunner St in the morning, she had spent most of the afternoon with Harris’s daughter at the Nelson Intermediate School pool.

After being confronted with information linking her phone to a cell tower in Stoke, Morgan admitted she ‘‘must have been’’ at Harris’s house in the morning.

Referring to several texts between Morgan and Harris, Detective Neil Kitchen asked Morgan if she went to Harris’s house in the afternoon. ‘‘I don’t think I did, I don’t think I did at all,’’ she replied.

Kitchen asked Morgan why the two statements were different. ‘‘I completely forgot about drinking,’’ she replied.