KEY POINTS:
"Mr Wallace knows that he is the murderer," Crown prosecutor Tim Brewer told a jury in the High Court at New Plymouth yesterday.
"But he also knows that under our system of justice the onus is on the Crown to prove it ... so he can sit here in the court and wait to see if the Crown can put all the pieces of the case together."
Michael Scott Wallace is accused of murdering German backpacker Birgit Brauer at Lucys Gully, southwest of New Plymouth, on September 20, 2005.
Wallace likely took a sexual interest in the 28-year-old while driving her to New Plymouth, and took her to Lucys Gully intent on rape, Mr Brewer said in his closing address at Wallace's trial for murder.
"It is safe to assume she wanted nothing to do with him ... and at some point she became frightened, and he became threatening."
Wallace took an iron bar from his Toyota Surf and hit Miss Brauer in the head, he said. He then dragged her into the bushes and began removing her clothing, before being disturbed by an approaching vehicle.
"He can't leave Birgit Brauer behind as a witness, so he takes his knife and deliberately, forcefully and carefully stabs her once through the heart."
Blood staining on the roadside and into the bush supported the theory, Mr Brewer said.
He said Wallace then drove to Cardiff, about 40 minutes away near Stratford, where he spent the afternoon sorting through Miss Brauer's possessions.
At least three witnesses saw him at Cardiff. He was seen near a pump shed about 5.30pm. Miss Brauer's cellphone is known to have been dismantled at 5.37pm, having received its last text message - through a transmitter near Cardiff - at 4.08pm.
His subsequent 18 days on the run provided "plenty of time to think, to plan and try to work out what to do", Mr Brewer said.
But he was not without guilt, or remorse, in the days following his arrest on October 8, 2005. He had "a real urge to confess", but he "couldn't quite bring himself to cross that line".
Wallace allegedly told officers "They should have just shot me tonight, I couldn't run any more."
He also told police "I would rather die than have hurt someone ... I don't want to muck you around, I don't know what is real and what isn't."
But the Crown case was distinctive for its "almost total absence of evidence against Michael Wallace", his lawyer Susan Hughes, QC, said.
What evidence there was was "almost entirely circumstantial", and she warned the jury against being seduced by such evidence because it allowed the mind to fill in any gaps.
"You can be absolutely, positively certain, and absolutely positively wrong. Your job is to collect evidence; cold, hard evidence."
She said unless the jury was willing to accept Miss Brauer climbed into Wallace's car that first morning, the Crown case failed from the outset.
Forensic testing had failed to find any traces of Miss Brauer's blood, hair or DNA in Wallace's vehicle.
Mrs Hughes said Lucys Gully, being a public reserve, was "not the place you go for an uninterrupted opportunity to rape and murder".
Had Wallace been Miss Brauer's killer it made no sense that he had hung around in Taranaki. She described Wallace as a "gypsy" who was at Cardiff for a "picnic" and to take magic mushrooms.
The accused's comments following his arrest were "largely nonsense", and his discussions with detectives were examples of a conversation held "in a parallel universe", she said.
Justice Mark Cooper is due to sum up the case this morning, before sending the jury to consider its verdict.
