Verdict
113There is other evidence to which I have not referred, but the material I have summarised is sufficient to determine the matter. I am grateful to counsel on both sides for their helpful final submissions. The Crown prosecutor's submissions are lengthy and detailed but, here also, it is not necessary to deal with all the matters he has raised to arrive at my verdict.
114I am satisfied that Ms Forrest misappropriated the proceeds of the sale of the Kareela home, and planned to do so from an early stage. I accept that Mr Adamson was a knowing and willing party to a scheme to sell the home and invest the funds in the construction of a house on the land at Bundanoon. With his background in dealing with real estate and property development, he was no novice in this area and perceived the scheme to be in his financial interests. I accept that he was a willing party to the opening of the joint bank account, as he was to the early release of $25,000 from the deposit, which he also saw to be financially beneficial.
115I also accept that he was happy to leave arrangements for the sale and the conduct of it in the hands of Ms Forrest, whom he believed to be competent in administrative matters and whom he trusted. However, I am satisfied that she was in breach of that trust.
116Her interest in his financial affairs was demonstrated late in 2009 by her demands upon his bookkeeper and his accountant for access to his financial records. This was followed by her anonymous calls to Homesafe Solutions enquiring about the operation of the equity release scheme. That is a matter about which I shall have more to say later.
117She came to control the process of the sale of the home completely, to the extent of seeking to exclude Mr Adamson from it. This can be seen in her phone call to Ms Shepherd at Homesafe Solutions in which she expressed concern that Ms Shepherd had had direct contact with him. This is also a matter to which I shall return. It is even more apparent in her angry reaction to the visit to the home by the conveyancer, Ms Nicholson, and her conversation with Mr Adamson in her absence. I might add that, while she portrayed that as her reason for terminating Ms Nicholson's services, it is clear that she had decided to do so in any event.
118Her betrayal of Mr Adamson's trust is clearly demonstrated in the recorded conversation he had with Ms Nicholson on 24 March. I approach that evidence with caution, bearing in mind that it is hearsay. Nevertheless, it has the advantage that there is no doubt about what he said because it was recorded, and I accept it as an accurate account of his understanding and expectations at the time. Plainly enough, he did not know that Ms Forrest had dismissed Ms Nicholson as the conveyancer. Equally, he was not aware that the $25,000 from the deposit had been in the joint account. More importantly, he was unaware that his legitimate expectation about the use of that money had not been met and that, in fact, it had been dissipated by Ms Forrest. In addition, he had been led to believe that progress had been made towards the development, in that a buyer had been found for a block of land and a deposit had been paid to the building company.
119Whether Ms Forrest had intended to use the proceeds of the sale of the home to develop the property at Bundanoon I cannot say. What I can say is that, if she did, she did not intend Mr Adamson to share the benefits of that investment with her. At the time of settlement of the sale of the home she had done little or nothing to pursue that investment. She had done no more than seek a quote from Masterton Homes and request a release of the subdivision by the council. Her claim to the police on the day of her arrest that she had made enquiries at Capital Steel about constructing the barn on the Bundanoon property before Mr Adamson died was false. She did not approach that company until 20 April, four days after his death had been reported. There appears to have been no arrangement in place for their accommodation after their sojourn at the motel.
120Put shortly, she deceived Mr Adamson about the purpose of the sale of the home and the steps taken in pursuit of it. She withdrew the funds from the sale and used them for her own benefit. She lied about the matter to John Adamson, as she did to the police.
121Mr Ainsworth did not concede that Ms Forrest had misappropriated the funds. He argued that the lack of progress towards the development of the Bundanoon property should be seen as inefficiency, and Ms Forrest's withdrawal of the funds as her taking advantage of the situation as it stood after Mr Adamson's death. As he put it, the "doing stage" in relation to the Bundanoon property "didn't match the planning stage", and after Mr Adamson's death she simply "took the money and ran."
122I cannot accept those submissions. As I have noted above, her expenditure of the $25,000 from the deposit preceded the death by some time and her transfer of the sale proceeds into her Credit Union account was effected on a day when, on her case, she had no reason to believe that Mr Adamson had died. Viewed as a whole, the evidence of her behaviour points to a calculated course of dishonest conduct designed to gain for herself the proceeds of the sale of the home.
123That said, Ms Forrest stands charged with murder, not with an offence of dishonesty. The crucial question is whether there is to be found in this evidence a motive for her to kill Mr Adamson, and whether she did so.
124There is nothing in the evidence to raise the possibility that Mr Adamson committed suicide, and Mr Ainsworth did not suggest it. His case was that Mr Adamson may have sought relief through MS-Contin for his pain and exhaustion following his exertion during the move over the weekend and that, being unaccustomed to the drug, he took a dose which was unsafe. He suggested that Mr Adamson might have taken one or two tablets, noting Professor Drummer's evidence that one 100mg tablet could have been enough to produce the high level of morphine which killed him.
125Although police who came to the scene did not find any MS-Contin in the room or in the Lexus, or any sign of it, they missed the empty blister pack of the drug which was in the lid of Mr Adamson's briefcase. Mr Ainsworth argued that the tablet or tablets Mr Adamson took could have come from that blister pack, which he then placed in the briefcase with his other medication. That DNA consistent with that of Ms Forrest was on the blister pack was hardly surprising, given that she used the medication, and he relied upon Ms Friedman's evidence that the fact that there was no male DNA on it does not necessarily mean that Mr Adamson did not handle it.
126This course of events, he submitted, points to a reasonable explanation of the circumstances consistent with Ms Forrest's innocence. That was so, he said, even if I were satisfied that she had planned to misappropriate the proceeds of the home sale. As he put it, there is a "fairly obvious fault line" upon which the Crown case should be divided between evidence going to her dishonesty, on the one hand, and evidence pointing to murder, on the other. I have given these arguments careful consideration, but I am satisfied that they must be rejected.
127It is here that Ms Forrest's phone calls to Homesafe Solutions acquire additional significance. Clearly, she was enquiring as to what her position might be if she and Mr Adamson married and he died. Equally clearly, she did not want him to know that she was making any such enquiry. In the initial calls she sought to remain anonymous, describing her enquiry as hypothetical. In the telephone conversation with Ms Shepherd she claimed that her enquiry related to her grandmother, which I am satisfied was false. I cannot say that at this early stage she had formed the intention to kill Mr Adamson, but it is significant that she had turned her mind to how she might benefit from his death.
128From the opposite perspective, there is some significance in Ms Forrest's conversations with her daughter, in the intercepted phone calls in early 2011, harking back to the transfer of title to a home to her by Mr David Marshall and the litigation which ensued. Too much should not be read into this evidence. As Mr Ainsworth said, it establishes no more than that there had been a commercial dispute leading to litigation, which was settled. No doubt, what she said about the possible advantage of having murdered Mr Marshall (or her husband) was not meant to be taken seriously. Nevertheless, it is worthy of note that at that time she made comments suggesting that, if a person obtained a benefit in questionable circumstances, the best way to protect that benefit from future challenge would be to eliminate the benefactor.
129Ms Forrest's conduct on the Friday, 16 April, is wholly inconsistent with that of a person who has discovered that a friend and companion had died unexpectedly. As I have said, while I do not accept Dr Mao's evidence that Ms Forrest phoned her in the morning, it may be that the conversation which the doctor attributed to that time occurred in the early evening when Ms Forrest came to the surgery. If that is so, Ms Forrest told her at that time that she found Mr Adamson dead while trying to serve him breakfast. It seems unlikely that Dr Mao would be mistaken about Ms Forrest using those words, even though she might be about when the conversation occurred. If so, it was Ms Forrest's account that she realised Mr Adamson was dead some time in the morning. Yet she proceeded during the day to attend to more or less mundane tasks, making phone contact with Masterton Homes and Highlands Real Estate and attending to the transfer of registration of the Lexus, before she contacted Dr Mao to seek help.
130However, I have sufficient misgivings about the accuracy of Dr Mao's recollection to put aside her evidence about the reference to breakfast. But even on Ms Forrest's version that she did not discover that Mr Adamson was dead until the late afternoon, serious questions remain about her proved conduct thereafter. The evidence establishes that, after going to Dr Mao's surgery and being told that the doctor could do nothing to help her, she did not return immediately to the motel to raise the alarm. She went to the pharmacy to obtain a supply of her medication, which was dispensed at 7.57pm. She attended Kennards Self Storage at 8.40pm, remaining there for almost half an hour. There is no evidence of what she was doing there. She then went to Kara's home at Eldersleigh, and, some time after 10pm, was dropped back at the motel. Finally, at about 10.50pm she rang 000 to report the death.
131Moreover, she clearly lied to the police about her movements during the interview in the early hours of the following morning, at a time when she was hardly likely to have forgotten them. The effect of what she said was that, having waited for a long time at Dr Mao's surgery and then having failed to persuade the doctor to return to the motel with her, she went straight back there herself. That was untrue.
132Equally untrue was her account to the police that she had left the motel early on that Friday morning and did not return until the late afternoon. As I have said, I am satisfied that the manager, Ms Taylor, saw her leave the room at about 11.30am. This was a lie, as was her claim that she had also left early on the Thursday morning to go to Sutherland. The evidence establishes that she made an ATM cash withdrawal at Macarthur Square at 11.41am and paid the balance owing to the motel at 11.59am. I am satisfied that her account of leaving early on both days was a lie.
133The effect of what she told the police was that she left early on the Thursday and was out until very late and, after a few hours sleep, she left early on the Friday and was out until the late afternoon. This, I am satisfied, was a story concocted to explain why she may not have noticed that Mr Adamson was dead earlier than she claimed she did. On her own account, he had remained in the same position since he lay down on the bed on the Wednesday afternoon.
134The effect of the evidence of the ambulance officer, the crime scene officer and the forensic pathologist who conducted the post-mortem is that it was apparent from the condition of the body that Mr Adamson had been dead for a considerable time when he was found. While taking account of Dr Brouwer's evidence of a variety of factors which complicate an estimate of a time of death, it could well be that he was dead by the Thursday morning and I have no doubt that he was by the Friday morning.
135It is inconceivable that on the Thursday or, certainly, by the Friday morning, Ms Forrest would have believed that Mr Adamson was still sleeping and not have noticed that something was amiss. One can understand that when Ms Taylor entered the room briefly on the Friday morning she may have thought he was asleep. However, Ms Forrest had the opportunity to observe him over a long period. It was to meet this very question that she gave a false account of her movements conveying that she was largely absent from the room on the Thursday and throughout the Friday and, in particular, was not there during the day.
136I inspected the motel room during the course of the trial. It had not changed in relevant respects since April 2010. There were opaque curtains across the rear sliding door. However, there was a small window above the front door, which admitted light. With the interior lights off, the doors closed and the curtains drawn, the room was dim but not dark. To my eye there was enough light to see the furniture in the room and to be able to see a person lying on one of the beds. If, as I am satisfied, Ms Forrest was in the room until well into the morning on both the Thursday and the Friday, she would have been able to see Mr Adamson and it must have been apparent that he was not merely asleep.
137I am persuaded that the scenario for which the Crown prosecutor contended is correct. Having caused Mr Adamson's death, Ms Forrest sought the assistance of Dr Mao, with whom she had had a long relationship, asking her to come to the motel in the hope that she would certify his death as being of natural causes, so that there would be no investigation into it. She panicked when Dr Mao refused to help her, and it was for this reason that she appeared to be distraught when she saw Kara and Mr Bleakley. Eventually, she saw no choice but to call 000, but even in that call she did not in terms report his death. Rather, what she conveyed was that she needed help because she had just found him unresponsive and apparently not breathing.
138I am satisfied that it was she who put the MS-Contin blister pack into Mr Adamson's briefcase. The Crown prosecutor did not advance any reason why she would have done so, or why she took the briefcase when she went to see Dr Mao. What is clear, however, is that she did handle the briefcase at that time.
139I also accept the Crown prosecutor's submission that the note apparently left for Mr Adamson was a sham. As he put it, she "staged the room", leaving the note to suggest that she believed that he was alive when she left on the Friday morning.
140I have referred to a number of untruths, which I am satisfied were deliberate lies, told to the police in both interviews, to a number of the civilian witnesses and, apparently, to Mr Adamson himself. The purpose of many of these lies might fairly be seen as an attempt to cover up her misappropriation of Mr Adamson's money. However, her lies to the police about her movements on the Thursday and Friday, and about Dr Mao being Mr Adamson's doctor, have a greater significance. I am satisfied that they were deliberate lies designed to cover up her involvement in the murder, that is, lies born of a consciousness of guilt of the crime charged.
141I am also satisfied that she lied when she told police in the interview of 17 April that Mr Adamson had no children. Her subsequent assertion to Ms Hasley at Guardian Funerals, and to the police after her arrest, that she did not see John Adamson as his father's next of kin because he was not his natural son is specious. What she sought to do was to arrange for his cremation without anyone in the family knowing of it, a scheme which was foiled only by the fact that John Adamson became aware of his father's death from another source. That said, this may not have been conduct directed to covering up the murder rather than, as Mr Ainsworth suggested, to ensure her retention of the misappropriated money.
142Of course, it is necessary to have regard to the combined effect of all the circumstances proved by the evidence. Having done so, I can find no reasonable explanation of them other than that Ms Forrest misappropriated Mr Adamson's money and killed him to prevent that misappropriation being exposed. She killed him by having him ingest MS-Contin. I cannot be certain how she did so, but it is most likely that she crushed tablets and mixed them with his food. The conflict in the expert evidence about how many tablets would be required to achieve the level of morphine found in him is not one which I can resolve. Nevertheless, in the light of all the circumstances, I am satisfied that she had him ingest sufficient of the drug to cause his death, intending that that would be the outcome.
143Accordingly, the elements of murder have been established in this case beyond reasonable doubt and I find the accused guilty.