PART 2 OF 2
Prosecution’s closing address to the jury (most relevant parts)
[Rifle and shotgun]
There are certain points where GL, a man you might think is very careful and methodical, falls down on the detail, things he claims not to be able to remember or where he gives an inconsistent answer. One such inconsistency is how he describes the gun. He’s a shooting enthusiast and told you he’s been shooting since the age of 16 when he went shooting with his father. He explained to you how his Barathrum arms was set up. He was very keen on correcting Mr Griffiths about how to hold it, explained what sort of shooting the rifle is good for versus the shotgun, told you how to use the laser point on the gun, to point the dot on the deer, how to focus on its heart and lungs. Yet look at how he describes the firearm that RH is said to have confiscated. Remember, it’s a shotgun yet, yet, at answer 369 he said he approaches RH to retrieve the rifle and RH tells him to fu*k off. At answer 373 in his interview he says he saw the rifle popping up over the bonnet. At answer 693 he says while they’re struggling at the bonnet, RH’s hands were on the rifle. At answer 774 describes the so-called struggle with the knife where he grabbed RH’s wrist again, the same as like he did with the rifle, and he made the same error in his evidence before you. He started to say he put the shotgun away after hunting, then corrected himself and said the rifle. The reason that might have been given for those sorts of inconsistencies – panic, stress. Yet the time, on his account, he’d been most panicked would have been during the incident itself.
The prosecution alleges that all the relevant circumstances, including the violent deaths of 2 people in close proximity, point to each of RH and CC being killed deliberately and without lawful justification. The prosecution does not need to prove motive. What we do say it is likely GL bore some animosity towards RH and CC, and most probably towards RH. There is no evidence that these people had a pre-existing relationship with one another. The only contact they had was as campers, so it is commonsense to assume that there must have been a disagreement regarding events at the campsite. It may possibly have been over RH’s drone or footage on the drone because the drone was one of the items that was taken from the campsite. The photos of the model 10 (ui) drone show it had a cradle for a mobile phone to be used as its camera or viewfinder. RH’s mobile appears to have been on at the same time he was murdered, given it reconnected to the network the following morning when driven in GL’s car. As he and CC had been in the valley, a place with no mobile reception for more than a day before they were murdered, you can infer that the phone had been on because he was using it in the drone.
The prosecution alleges that RH was killed first, in part this is because CC is very unlikely to have provoked a violent confrontation involving the firearm with which she was killed, or to have posed any threat to GL other than having been a witness to RH’s violent death. Also, if he had been alive when CC was shot, he would have called for help using his radio. It was in working order on the night as he had used it on the 6pm net. In fact, it was in working order when it was tested afterwards. Mr Francis said that if you make a call for help on any amateur radio at any time of the day or night, even outside usual net hours, you’d be likely to get someone answer who could provide help or at least call for help. If you are satisfied that RH was killed first, you can find that CC was killed because she was a witness to RH’s violent death. In other words, she was eliminated because she was a witness.
You might think that the act of burning of the bodies is conduct that is so extreme that it could only have been done after their murders. In other words, if they were accidental or unintentional, why would you go to the extreme and extraordinary step of burning the bodies.
Incinerating their remains is so disproportionate to an accidental or unintentional killing. You can use this evidence together with all other incriminating conduct evidence to reason that GL murdered RH and CC.
The evidence needed to determine cause of death had been obliterated by the apparent decomposition and the burning and fragmentation of the remains. All the testing that forensic pathologists might do to assist in establishing the cause of death was not possible in this case. Whatever had caused their deaths had been masked by the changes that had been brought about to their bodies by the burning and fragmentation.
The prosecution closes
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