Tutor had 'nasty, mean side' ex-girlfriend tells court

Living with Clayton Weatherston could be "a bit like walking on eggshells", a former girlfriend of the 33-year-old former University economics tutor told the Christchurch High Court this morning.

The trial was later adjourned until tomorrow after a juror collapsed.It will reconvene at 10am tomorrow.

The young woman whose identity is suppressed was in a relationship with Weatherston for two to three years until 2007 when he became involved with Sophie Elliott, a 22-year-old Honours student.

Weatherston stabbed 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.

The young woman was giving evidence on the seventh day of Weatherston's trial.
To defence counsel Judith Ablett-Kerr QC, she said she learned she had to be "quite careful" with Weatherston. If she said something that set him off he would "really go off".

But she agreed their relationship was generally loving and kind although she found it really stressful when he came under stress "He had two sides, a loving and generous side and a nasty, mean side which he seldom showed in public," the woman said.

During their time together, she had never challenged Weatherston nor questioned his sexual performance. And she would not have compared his sexual organs to anyone else's although she did once "reluctantly" when he asked her directly.

She never implied he was "a retard" but Weatherston told her Sophie Elliott had called him that.

" I thought she was probably saying it in jest and I suggested that to him. I said I didn't think it was directed to his intelligence or meant that way.

"But he took it differently, and referred to it several times," the young woman said.

She knew he could be mean and nasty when he was under stress and that he had been seeing a psychotherapist for years. She also knew he was on the antidepressant drug known as prozac.

"You knew he was psychologically fragile?" Mrs Ablett-Kerr asked, and the witness agreed there was "an element of fragility" to his personality.

- OTAGO DAILY TIMES