Mate’s ‘extreme’ actions

Jury hears closing address in headless man murder trial

THE “extreme” actions of a man accused of killing his flatmate — including cutting off his head and throwing it into a river — were not efforts to conceal an accidental death but the acts of a murderer trying to avoid facing responsibility, a jury has been told.

Crown prosecutor Jackie Hartnett delivered her closing address yesterday in Darren Wade Gale’s murder trial in the Supreme Court in Burnie.

Mr Gale has pleaded not guilty to killing Noel Joseph Ingham in the unit they shared in Ulverstone in July, 2016.

Earlier this week, Mr Gale took the stand and told the court he did not kill Mr Ingham but had panicked when his flatmate had died after falling and hitting his head on a fish tank.

But he admitted cutting off his head, burying the body in bushland near Railton, stowing the head in a backpack and dropping it off a Devonport bridge as he rode a pushbike back to Ulverstone.

“The extremity of the cover-up shows intent and the gravity of the crime he has committed,” Ms Hartnett said.

“Are they the efforts to conceal an accidental death or the acts of a murderer trying to avoid responsibility?

“This is a man who left messages of concern on a dead man’s phone — a man he had just buried and decapitated.

“He had the arrogance and ill-placed confidence that his grave crime would not be discovered. He told lie after lie and feigned concerns for the welfare of Mr Ingham.”

Defence counsel Greg Richardson told the jury the trial they were being asked to decide was based entirely on circumstantial evidence with no-one else being a witness to how Mr Ingham died.

“It is also based totally on post-death conduct,” Mr Richardson said.

“You are being asked to convict Mr Gale on what he did after Mr Ingham’s death.

“Murder is the most serious of crimes. His conduct can be equally explainable as that of someone being fearful of being accused of such a crime.

“I am not asking you to like him but I am asking you to give him a fair go and leave emotion out of it.” Mr Richardson said Mr Gale did a lot of “serious and bizarre things” after Mr Ingham died.

“But he did them out of fear of being made to wear a crime he did not commit,” he said.

Mr Richardson will complete his closing address on Tuesday. The jury will then retire to consider its verdict.