Man tells police he didn’t mean to kill
A MAN on trial accused of a brutal murder made a string of startling confessions to police, a court heard, telling officers he didn’t mean to kill.
In the interview recorded the day a Townsville signwriter was found bound and bloodied on his bathroom floor in 2015, the court heard that the defendant said he “didn’t expect” the man to die after he used an empty whiskey bottle to bash him.
The trial in Townsville’s Supreme Court continued yesterday with a number of key witnesses including a forensic pathologist and a blood splatter expert giving evidence.
Kyle Robert
32, is accused
David Knyvett
Thompson, of bashing to death on
November 15, 2015. He pleaded not guilty to murder, but admitted to Mr Knyvett’s manslaughter and claims he was provoked after the 59year-old made an unwanted sexual advance on him.
Crown prosecutor Nigel Rees did not accept this plea to the lesser charge and instead elected to continue with the murder trial.
During his interview Thompson told detectives Mr Knyvett regularly made sexual advances on him.
A friend of Mr Knyvett gave evidence that he never saw any inappropriate touching between the pair who had lived together periodically for about a decade after Mr Knyvett took in Thompson as a troubled teen and gave him work.
“There has been abuse,”
Thompson told Detective Senior Constable Rowan Cunningham during the interview, which was played to the court.
“There is touching, him coming into my room and rubbing me up and saying everything is OK.
“He would stare at me like every time I walk past him he would stare down at my penis.”
Thompson told Senior Constable Cunningham that he was helping Mr Knyvett in the kitchen before the attack when the 59-year-old groped him near his bottom.
“I’ve been abused my whole life and Dave rubbed me up that day the wrong way,” he said.
“I was bending over to pick something up and he’s put his hands down like down in be
tween my (legs) like that and rubbed me.
“I grabbed a Jack Daniels bottle out of my room and I hit him in the head with it.”
Later in the interview, Thompson claimed that after he was groped he went to speak to a neighbour to set up an alibi before returning to the Belgian Gardens home, grabbing the bottle and attacking Mr Knyvett.
Thompson spoke in a slow and measured manner to police, telling them he wanted to call for help but that he could not get into Mr Knyvett’s phone to raise the alarm.
“There is people with killer instincts and people with not,” he said.
“I don’t think I have that killer instinct.
“It wasn’t something that I really wanted to do to be honest. I talked myself into doing it.”
Former coronial forensic pathologist Dr David John Williams was the third witness to give evidence in the trial’s second day.
Dr Williams said he concluded Mr Knyvett “basically drowned in his own blood” after a traumatic head injury.
Graphic images taken during his examination showed extensive head injuries, including a laceration on the top of the head where maggots could be seen.
Dr Williams said the body was putrefied, tinged with green and distended when it arrived in his lab for examination on November 18, 2015 making it “quite complicated to examine”.
The trial continues.