Simon Gittany guilty of murdering fiancee Lisa Harnum
...Damning assessment of Gittany's character...In her summing up, Justice McCallum said she did not believe Gittany's account of how Ms Harnum fell to her death.
Justice McCallum gave a damning assessment of Gittany's character.
"There can be no doubt the accused was controlling, dominating and at times abusive of Ms Harnum," she told the packed Supreme Court in Sydney on Wednesday.
"The force of his jealous and controlling personality met mixed reaction from Ms Harmum, who was at times defiant and at times submissive to an inexplicable degree.
"By the end of July 2011, these tensions had reached a point of crisis.
"By 6am on the morning of her death, Ms Harnum was "in a state of absolute fear and despair", Justice McCallum said.
Justice McCallum found Gittany reacted with "nothing short of rage" when he discovered Ms Harnum had secretly put some of her possessions in storage.
"For all his vigilance, his errant fiancee had found a way to secretly remove her belongings," the judge said.
She said she accepted Ms Harnum's mother's evidence that in their last ever phone conversation, Ms Harnum was "frantic", fearful and told her mother to contact her counsellor "if something happens to me".
Justice McCallum said she did not believe Mr Gittany's account of how Ms Harnum fell to her death.
"It's difficult to articulate my impression of that evidence except that I found him unconvincing," she said.
After dragging Ms Harnum screaming back into the apartment, Mr Gittany said she sat on the lounge while he went to make a cup of tea before she suddenly ran for the balcony.
'Accused struck me as being a person playing a role'"At many times in his evidence, the accused struck me as being a person playing a role, telling a story which fitted with the objective evidence but which did no more than that," Justice McCallum said...
..."His account of what happened appeared to exist on borrowed detail.
"It lacked originality and the subtlety of actual experience."...
...Justice McCallum told the court: "The circumstances of Lisa Harnum's death were shocking and tragic."...
...Abusive and controlling behaviour: evidenceThe dramatic three-week trial heard evidence that, despite professing his love for Ms Harnum, Gittany had subjected her to months of abusive and controlling behaviour, including keeping her under near-constant surveillance.
Justice McCallum, hearing the trial without a jury, was told that Gittany had convinced the young woman to change her style of dress completely, convert to Catholicism and leave her job at a hairdressing salon because the staff there were "polluting her mind".
He demanded to know where she was at all times, forbidding her from seeing her friends or doing anything that might involve coming into direct contact with other men.
"Please don't let any guy talk to you today … don't look at any guy as your eyes should only gaze on me, the one," Gittany told his fiancee in a text message.
Another text screamed: "Who the f--- do you think you are walking around the house like you own it or coming and going without my permission?"
Gittany monitored Ms Harnum with security cameras hidden in their apartment, and a computer program that tracked her text messages.
The court heard that in the weeks before her death Ms Harnum began planning her escape, leaving a bag of clothes with her counsellor, Michelle Richmond.
"He had said if she left him, she would be deported ... that she would leave with nothing, just as she had come, even her underwear," Ms Richmond told the court.
But Gittany became aware of the secret plan, telling Ms Richmond in an abusive phone call: "I'll f----n harm you.' "
It was the Crown case that, in the hours before her death, Ms Harnum discovered that she was under surveillance and made a desperate attempt to flee.
One of Gittany's own CCTV cameras recorded him grabbing Ms Harnum and, with one hand around her mouth, dragging her back into the apartment as she tried to escape.
Sixty-nine seconds later, she was dead, plunging 15 storeys to the footpath below.
Scrawled on a scrap of paper in her pocket were the words "there are surveillance cameras inside and outside the house".
Mr Rathmell, an ABC News producer, caught a glimpse of the murder as he was walking to work.
He saw a man "unload" what he thought was "luggage" off the 15th-floor balcony, before dashing back inside.
This contradicted Gittany's claim that, far from killing Ms Harnum, she had climbed over the balcony when he confronted her about a "secret" she had refused to divulge and then told her to leave...
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/simon-gittany-guilty-of-murdering-fiancee-lisa-harnum-20131127-2y9sr.html
Forum
Pages: 1 
