Fingers pointed after Sydney woman brutally killed, body burnt

Najma Carroll's body was discovered by a bushwalker hiking through the Sandy Point area. Photo / NSW Police

A former bikie charged with murder after a woman’s body was found brutally beaten and burnt in bushland south of Sydney has pinned the blame on a man to whom he sold drugs.

Najma Carroll, 33, was killed on July 14, 2020, and her body was discovered 15 days later by a bushwalker hiking through the Sandy Point area.

An anthropologist who examined her badly burnt body discovered her cranium shattered into 62 fragments consistent with blunt force trauma.

One of her alleged killers, Benjamin Troy Parkes appeared before a NSW Supreme Court jury this week where he pleaded not guilty to murder.

The 46-year-old allegedly entered into a joint criminal enterprise with Robert Sloan, a man whom the jury heard he had supplied illicit drugs with.

Parkes, Sloan and Carroll met each other while staying at the Hunts Hotel in Liverpool in Sydney’s southwest.

Crown prosecutor Darren Robinson told jurors that Carroll had “invested” $8000 in their illegal drugs business by drawing from her superannuation.

The jury heard Parkes was worried Carroll “knew too much” about his drug business and formed an agreement with Sloan to kill her.

Robinson said the pair arranged to take her from the Hunts Hotel to an acquaintance’s house in Smithfield where she stayed in his garage before being killed.

Parkes has denied his intention was murder, saying he had driven to Sandy Point with a jerry can full of petrol wanting to set fire to Carroll’s SUV.

In an interview with police, the 46-year-old said he was concerned that using the vehicle to sell drugs would draw their attention as it had previously been stopped and searched at the South Australian border.

On that trip, about a week before Carroll was killed, Parkes and another man took the SUV to sell methamphetamine in Dubbo and then Perth.

Police at the SA border seized A$17,000 garnered from the Dubbo sale but failed to find the remaining drugs hidden in the car, jurors heard.

Parkes said he was “shocked” and “disgusted” as he pulled up to where Sloan had parked Carroll’s SUV to see his colleague brutally bashing her with a baseball bat.

Watching the events unfold in his headlights, Parkes said he saw Sloan beat Carroll over and over again with the bat and then drag her body around to be burned.

He said he had been threatened by Sloan afterwards to remain silent.

“You tell anyone what just happened, I’ll kill your family. I’ll kill your wife and kids,” Parkes claims Sloan said.

In phone calls recorded by police in August 2020, Parkes is heard telling people that Sloan alone was responsible for Carroll’s death.

“It’s the crown case that that is simply not true and was an example of the accused trying to shift the blame,” Robinson said.

Defence barrister Nathan Steel urged jurors to keep an open mind as they heard the evidence in the case, and reminded them not to convict his client because of his background as a former bikie or drug dealer.

Giving evidence, Carroll’s mother Anne Carroll said she had last spoken to her daughter in April 2020.

“She said she was excited because she was going to be able to access her superannuation,” she told the court.

“She was going to buy a car to live in and ... she intended to travel north for a little holiday.”

The trial continues.