Wife hacked off husband's head

Wayne Chant (above) had put his wife Joyce through years of domestic violence. Photo / Supplied

Before Australian woman Joyce Mary Chant shot her husband dead and hacked off his arms, legs and head, she endured years of domestic violence.

"Dad used to backhand her, closed fist, punch her in the back, push her over, hit her across the face, things you do not do to someone you love," her tearful son Jamie Chant told a Sydney jury.

Her husband's drunken violence erupted again at their Revesby home in September 1992, when Wayne Robert Chant threatened her with his rifle for the first time.

"Out of her mind" with fear and believing he was going to kill her, Chant picked up the gun, which had dropped on to the floor, and shot him in the head. "He groaned for a while and then he was quiet," according to an agreed statement of facts tendered in the NSW Supreme Court yesterday when Chant pleaded guilty to his manslaughter.

Her guilty plea came as the frail 57-year-old, with long grey hair and sunken eyes, faced a murder retrial after a jury was discharged on April 1 when it could not agree on a verdict. The mother of three sons has now admitted lying when she told police the gun had gone off accidentally during a struggle with her 47-year-old husband.

The Crown accepted the manslaughter plea, based on provocation, in full satisfaction of the murder charge.

Chant had already admitted chopping up his body and dumping various parts in separate NSW locations 16 years ago.

She reported her husband missing in March 1993 and was not arrested until 2007, when advances in DNA technology led to the identification of the body parts.

During her police interview, Chant described how she had to swing down hard with an axe to chop the arms and legs off her husband's body, and had to swing twice to remove his head.

In the agreed facts, Chant said her husband's bashing and verbal abuse had increased in the months before she shot him.

She became very frightened when he produced the weapon and managed to push the gun down, when it went off in the third bedroom.

Her husband dragged her to the main bedroom and as she tried to pull away, he fell on to the waterbed and dropped the rifle.

After shooting him, Chant left his corpse in the locked bedroom for days, before she dismembered the body.

"She put the head in an Esky [chilly bin] and the hands in a container and filled them both with cement and hid them under the bird aviary in the back yard" until they were later dumped.

His torso, legs and one arm were found at various sites, but the head, hands and right arm were never recovered. Chant will be sentenced later.

- AAP