AN ABATTOIR worker who butchered an older colleague inside a unit at Scone, stabbing him 49 times in a "frenzied" attack after he woke to the man sexually assaulting him told his father he should have just bashed "him", Newcastle Supreme Court has heard.
Jamie Cust, 22, was found not guilty of murder, but guilty of manslaughter in July after a jury accepted he was acting in response to "extreme provocation" when he brutally stabbed his "mentor" at JBS Meatworks, 41-year-old Filipino national Jesus Bebita, in a unit in Parker Street on the night of December 17, 2018.
During a sentence hearing on Wednesday, Cust's step-father, Vivian Price, recalled the conversation the pair had after he picked him up from the unit on the morning of the stabbing.
"He was hysterical," Mr Price said. "I was dumbfounded when he told me. He also admitted that he done wrong, he shouldn't have done what he done and he should have just bashed him."
Mr Price and his daughter, Layla Price, both said they had never seen Cust be violent or aggressive and the brutal stabbing was completely out-of-character.
Cust and Mr Bebita were friends and colleagues at the abattoir at Scone and met up on the night of December 17, 2018 to drink alcohol at Mr Bebita's unit in Scone.
But by 4.14am the next morning, when Cust called his step-father to pick him up, Mr Bebita had been stabbed 49 times, including 12 wounds to his back and a large laceration from his right ear to his left chest.
While Cust was being driven back to Muswellbrook, he told his step-father: "I stabbed him because he tried to rape me."
His step-father encouraged him to go to the police and Cust repeatedly replied: "I can't. I don't want to go to jail." "I stabbed him because he tried to rape me," Cust repeated. "I think he is dead. "I woke up, my pants were down and he was rubbing his d--- on me." Cust had a shower and put his bloodstained clothes into a plastic bag before he went to Muswellbrook police station and told the officer at the counter: "I killed someone who tried to rape me."
Police went to the unit in Parker Street and found Mr Bebita's body in the bathroom in a pool of blood. They also discovered that one of the bloodstained bedrooms had been set on fire. Before his arrest, Cust wrote a note that was a list of of things to do before running away.
It read: "watch, cleanest blending in clothes and travel to northern point of Australia".
Cust did not deny inflicting the wounds, but the sole issue during the trial was whether he was operating under "extreme provocation", a partial defence that, if not eliminated beyond reasonable doubt by the prosecution, would reduce Cust's criminal liability from murder to manslaughter.
He was hysterical. He admitted that he done wrong, he shouldn't have done what he done and he should have just bashed him.
Vivienne Price said his son, Jamie Cust, told him after killing Jesus Bebita.
