A 65-year-old man has been convicted of manslaughter in the relation to the death of his former wife in the Western Australia Goldfields town of Laverton in 2016.
Mervyn Annear was charged with murdering Charma Annear in the unit she was living in with her new partner, who was the father of her unborn child.
While the Gnowangerup man had admitted to causing Mrs Annear's death, he had claimed it happened during a struggle and he did not mean to kill her.
When he gave evidence in the Supreme Court, Annear said the injuries to his ex-wife's head may have been caused by her.
He told the court that when he was struggling with Mrs Annear after an argument, she held a pot and may have hit herself in the back of the head.
Under cross examination, he denied he used the pot to hit the woman.
His testimony was that he may have caused her to suffocate when he lay on top of her to "calm her down".
Broken marriage
He had also told the court while he did not want to divorce her because he did not want her to marry her new partner, Charlie Haggarty, he "probably would've divorced her eventually".
There were issues with sponsorship to stay in Australia as Mrs Annear was from the Philippines.
Annear claimed on the stand that he did not know she was pregnant.
The 30-year-old woman, who was about 50 kilograms and 150 centimetres tall, was about 24 weeks pregnant.
But Annear told the court that when he asked his ex-wife if she was pregnant, she said "I wish I was".
Victim abandoned
In sometimes emotional testimony, Annear said that after Mrs Annear died, he had knocked on all the doors of the units nearby and nobody answered.
He told the court he was "panicking, in shock" and dragged Mrs Annear's body but did not have the strength to lift it into a vehicle to take her to the hospital.
Under cross examination, he could not say why he did not take the two-minute walk to the nearby hospital to get help and admitted he had done nothing to seek medical attention for her.
When he drove back towards Kalgoorlie, Annear said he took a back road because he "hadn't been that way before," not specifically because he was trying to avoid police, who he believed were going to catch up with him anyway.
Police found him near Ora Banda, by which time Annear had changed the plates on his vehicle — he said he had got them from an abandoned car while the prosecution alleged he had them with him all along.
He had pleaded guilty to stealing the car his estranged wife had been driving and destroying it by fire.
On the witness stand, Annear said he took her car and burnt it in bushland to make it look like there had been a botched robbery.
He had also admitted to throwing some of his deceased former wife's belongings down mine shafts.
He did, however, admit he took money from her purse.
The jury deliberated for about two and a half hours before finding Annear not guilty of murder, but guilty of the less serious offence of manslaughter.
He was remanded in custody until his sentencing next month.
