VIC: Crown witness may not be trustworthy, jury told

AAP General News (Australia)
04-05-1999
VIC: Crown witness may not be trustworthy, jury told

By Stuart Walsh

MELBOURNE, April 5 AAP - A lawyer defending a man accused of murdering two Bega schoolgirls
today questioned whether the key crown witness, who admits to the killings, could be trusted
or whether he was "downright evil".

Accused man Leslie Alfred Camilleri, 29, of Yass, New South Wales, has pleaded not guilty
to two counts of murder.

He denies having any part in the stabbing killings of Bega High School pupils Nichole
Collins and Lauren Barry.

The bodies of Nichole, 16, and her 14-year-old friend Lauren, were found in dense bushland
at Fiddlers Green Creek, 10km inside the Victorian border on November 12 1997.

The court has been told that Camilleri's then close friend Lindsay Hoani Beckett, 25,
pleaded guilty to the murders and was now serving life with a minimum term of 35 years.

The Court of Appeal rejected his appeal against the severity of the sentence.

Beckett has told the court he thought he would be sentenced to 30 years because he had
pleaded guilty and had agreed to give evidence against Camilleri.

Beckett has said that in carrying out the killings, he was acting under orders from
Camilleri because he feared for his own life. He said Camilleri had threatened to stab him to
death if he did not obey him.

Beckett told the court that after picking the girls up near their homes, he and Camilleri
repeatedly raped them before they were tied up and killed on October 6, 1997.

Camilleri's defence is that he knew nothing of the rapes and killings because he was asleep
in the car and "doped out" on heroin.

Beckett said that for 10 hours the girls were driven hundreds of kilometres throughout NSW
and Victoria.

Stratton Langslow, for Camilleri, said Beckett had shown in giving evidence that he would
lie whenever it suited him.

Mr Langslow asked the jury to consider whether Beckett could be relied upon or "is he
inherently dishonest and perhaps even downright evil?"

Mr Langslow said it was clear nobody could ever trust Beckett, who had shown no emotion,
"no real sense of conscience and no real sense of the gravity of the crimes that he
committed".

"He blankly told you how he used the knife - because, on his story, Lauren Barry dared to
struggle..."

He had kicked Nichole Collins as she struggled for her life.

Mr Langslow said the jury might think just about the only sign of emotion that Beckett
showed in the witness box had been when, asked by Camilleri to burn things that might be
traced through DNA testing, he recalled losing his favourite footy jumper.

The trial, before Justice Frank Vincent, is continuing.

AAP sew/er/cfm

KEYWORD: CAMILLERI (CARRIED EARLIER)

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