Court hears of bloodied scene after Sophie Elliott's killing

Murder accused Clayton Weatherston. Photo / Dean Kozanic

Constable Joanne McLaughlan has told the High Court at Christchurch of the bloodied scene which greeted her and other police in the room where Dunedin student Sophie Elliott was killed.

When Ms McLaughlan and other police entered Miss Elliott's bedroom, the young woman's body was lying on top of an open suitcase on the floor.

Her legs were on the floor and there was a bloodied silver knife blade between her legs and a small pair of black-handled scissors, also bloodied, on the carpet between her legs, about the level of her knees.

The knife handle was not visible but was recovered in a bloodied condition from the lid of the suitcase after Miss Elliott's body was removed, later that night.

One pair of scissors was missing from a scissor block in the kitchen and Ms McLaughlan said she found a metal skewer on the hallway floor outside Miss Elliott's bedroom.

There was a large quantity of blood staining on the carpet around where Miss Elliott's body had been lying and in one corner of the bedroom.

There were hairs on the knife handle recovered from the lid of the suitcase and, when she examined the inside of the suitcase, she found a clump of hair in the bottom.

Blood was spattered on the wall of the room to the left of the door and on another wall beneath the window.

Otago University academic Clayton Weatherston has admitted stabbing Miss Elliott to death at her Ravensbourne home on January 9 last year and is on trial for murder.

He has admitted manslaughter but denies the killing was murder. The defence says he was provoked by the pain of the tumultuous relationship with Miss Elliott and because she attacked him with a pair of scissors.

Earlier, a former girlfriend told the court she believed she had brought a calming influence to her relationship with Weatherston.

The young woman, whose identity is suppressed, agreed with defence counsel Judith Ablett-Kerr QC that she was probably Weatherston's "bolt hole" and he could "sound off" in safe circumstances to her.

To Crown counsel Mr Bates the young woman recalled that early in the relationship, Weatherston had asked her directly to compare his genitalia with those of another person with whom she had earlier had a relationship.

"I answered grudgingly and he became upset at my answer," the witness said.

"He said to me 'I can't believe you'd tell me that, it's such an insensitive thing to say',".

"So I walked into a trap," she said.

Asked about the two different sides of Weatherston she had talked about earlier, the young woman described an incident when she had been trying to go to sleep when Weatherston was playing his guitar. She asked him several times to stop, eventually putting her hand on the guitar and suggesting he could play somewhere else in the flat.

He put down the guitar down then jumped up and down on top of her several times as she lay in bed.

"He just didn't stop. I told him 'that really hurt'," the witness said.

Weatherston's response was 'Oh well, I was just playing at wrestling".

And she told Mr Bates when she confronted Weatherston sometime after an incident in which he kicked her across the room and jumped on her, the accused said to her 'It was the worst thing he'd ever done, to hurt me".

But his immediate reaction at the time of the incident had been a combination of two things – "trying to blame me and being upset about it".

On one hand he was quite upset by the way he had acted, on the other, he tried to make the inference it was her doing, the witness said.

The trial is continuing with 11 jurors after one of the panel was discharged by Justice Judith Potter earlier today.

The man became suddenly unwell yesterday and was taken to hospital by ambulance.

It was understood he had been given a medical clearance and was to have returned to court this morning for a 10 o'clock start.

But about 11.15am, the other 11 jurors returned to the courtroom and
Justice Potter said she had discussed the man's situation with counsel and decided he should be discharged from his duties as a juror.

She suppressed the circumstances of the juror's discharge, other than that he was unwell.

- Otago Daily Times, NZ Herald Staff