Accused wished ex-girlfriend dead, court told

Clayton Weatherston assaulted and verbally abused Sophie Elliott and told her he wished she was dead in the months before he killed her, a court has heard.

A confidant, Otago University senior lecturer Robert Alexander, has told the High Court at Christchurch of the many discussions he had with Ms Elliott about her turbulent relationship with Weatherston in 2007.

Ms Elliott told him that Weatherston, an economics tutor, had attacked her at his home.

"I regret not having insisted that she go to the police," Dr Alexander told the court.

Ms Elliott, 22, died after being stabbed or cut 216 times by Weatherston in her bedroom on January 9 last year.

Her mother, Lesley Elliott, has told of forcing her way into the bedroom and seeing Weatherston straddling her daughter's body and repeatedly stabbing her with a knife.

Weatherston, 33, says Ms Elliott attacked him first with a pair of scissors and he lost control.

Police emergency call operator Shelley Ann Jones told the court yesterday of hearing "blood-curdling" screams from Mrs Elliott over a cellphone at the time.

Dr Alexander said Ms Elliott vented to him about Weatherston, who also taught her at the university, calling her stupid or other insults.

"There was a lot of abuse, a lot of put-downs in the relationship".

He said she told him of an incident at Weatherston's home where he had thrown her on his bed, jumped on top of her, held his arm over her throat and put his hand over her mouth when she screamed. When he let her go, Weatherston told her he wished she was dead and he hoped a plane she was to travel on would crash, he said.

Ms Elliott told him that on a later occasion she had gone to see Weatherston at the university to give him a cheque for damaging a door at his home when she slammed it. They got into an argument and Ms Elliott put her arm across Weatherston's throat and said something along the lines: "So do you not think this is assault?"

Mrs Elliott said her daughter was deeply upset she had "lost it" when Weatherston denied assaulting her.

"Because it wasn't in her nature."

Dr Alexander said Ms Elliott also told him Weatherston had shoved her and she fell down some stairs, stated he had a new girlfriend who was "a step up" from her and wished her dead.

Dr Alexander agreed with Weatherston's lawyer Greg King that his knowledge of what occurred between Weatherston and Ms Elliott was based purely on what she had told him.

THE CASE

Clayton Robert Weatherston, 33, is on trial for the murder of Sophie Elliott, 22, in Dunedin on January 9 last year.

Weatherston accepts he is guilty of manslaughter but denies the charge of murder. His "partial defence" is that he was provoked into the act of killing.

The prosecution has reached the seventh of its 31 witnesses in the High Court trial expected to last about three weeks.