Accused in abuse claim

A DEFENCE lawyer has said a man accused of murder was manipulated and groomed from the time he was 16 by his alleged victim and “he just wanted to make him feel the humiliation he had felt”.

But the Crown prosecution said Kyle Robert Thompson intended to kill David Knyvett when he attacked him with an empty Jack Daniel’s whiskey bottle and “left him there to die”.

Thompson, 29, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Mr Knyvett, 59, on November 15, 2015.

During the trial, the court was played a video of Thompson’s police interview where he spoke of hitting Mr Knyvett multiple times with an empty Jack Daniel’s bottle before dragging him into the bathroom of his Belgian Gardens home. Mr Knyvett’s body was found there on November 16, 2015, with duct tape around his ankles, hands and neck.

During the police interview p played yed durin during the trial Thomp- son said Mr Knyvett had touched him, rubbed him, gone into his bedroom, and looked at him in the shower.

Defence barrister Harvey Walters said Thompson had “been manipulated and groomed” by Mr Knyvett and he “had had enough”.

“He didn’t want to kill this man, he just wanted to humiliate him as he’s been humiliated for 10 years,” he said.

Mr Walters said Mr Knyvett was “a much older man who has this on- and- off relationship with my client for over 10 years”. “You get a troubled young man … you give him a job and say ‘ you can live at my place’,” he said.

“What would you think if that was a young girl?”

Mr Walters said if the jury found that Thompson did intend to kill Mr Knyvett or cause him grievous bodily harm they needed to consider the defence of provocation.

“Everybody’s got a breaking point, every single person,” he said.

“It’s just the end of 10 years of how he’s been treated.”

Delivering his closing address, Crown prosecutor Nigel Rees said Thompson could have used a pay phone to call for help but did not.

“This is a violent attack, up close and personal, a brutal and vicious attack with a Jack Daniels bottle,” he said.

“He claims David was still alive in the bathroom.

“If you accept that, he left him there to die.”

Mr Rees urged the jury to put any sympathy or prejudice about sexual abuse allegations to one side.

“If you think David did do anything, then there were other avenues to go down, not beating, binding and killing,” he said.

Detective Senior Constable Rowan Cunningham told the court that after the interview, police obtained closed circuit television footage from the Belgian Gardens service station, as well as from a super clinic on Charters Towers Rd that Thompson said he went to after hitting Mr Knyvett to try to get Valium.

The trial continues.