A JURY will on Tuesday retire to begin determining the fate of Sayle Kenneth Newson, accused of murdering Carly McBride at Muswellbrook in 2014.
Mr Newson, 43, Ms McBride's boyfriend of about eight weeks at the time of her disappearance, is on trial in Newcastle Supreme Court accused of murdering Ms McBride at Muswellbrook on September 30, 2014, and dumping her body in bush about 25 metres from Bunnan Road at Owens Gap.
The prosecution allege Mr Newson - who Crown prosecutor Lee Carr said had competed in a number of professional Muay Thai fights - intercepted Ms McBride after she left a visit with her daughter and killed her by inflicting a number of blows to her head and back.
Ms McBride's body was found nearly two years later.
During his closing address last week, Mr Carr told the jury that, motivated by "jealousy and possessiveness", Mr Newson had the opportunity to intercept Ms McBride after she left the home at Muswellbrook and the "skills" in combat sport to inflict the fatal blows to her head and back before dumping her body in remote bushland outside Scone.
But the case against Mr Newson is an entirely circumstantial one.
There is "no smoking gun"; no eye-witness to the murder, no CCTV footage showing Ms McBride being grabbed off the street, no murder weapon and no blood or DNA.
"The reality is that there is no scientific evidence to link any person to this offence," Mr Carr said. And Mr Carr said the prosecution does not know how the injuries that killed Ms McBride were inflicted; whether the murderer used kicks, knees and punches, a piece of wood or some other object.
But what the prosecution does have, Mr Carr told the jury, are pieces of a puzzle that when placed together begin to reveal a picture that he said eventually became an overwhelming circumstantial case eliminating any other potential explanations for how Ms McBride disappeared from Muswellbrook on September 30, 2014, and how her body came to be dumped by the side of the road at Owens Gap.
Defence barrister Chris Watson used his closing address to attempt to poke holes in the prosecution case and put forward two "alternate reasonable hypotheses" to Mr Newson's involvement, including that Ms McBride was robbed and killed by a stranger or that her ex-partner, whose house she visited on the day of her disappearance, was involved in her death.
Justice Mark Ierace, SC, will on Tuesday finish his summing up of the evidence in the trial and ask the jury to retire to begin deliberating.
