Robert Vincenzo Boscaino pleads not guilty to murder of Samuel Hunter Thompson
A prisoner who was in custody with a man charged with murder will give evidence that the accused man told him details of how the victim was killed in his home, a court has heard.
A PRISONER who was in custody with a man charged with murder will give evidence that the accused man told him details of how the victim was killed in his home, a court has heard.
Roberto Boscaino has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Samuel Hunter Thompson on March 7, 2017, at Boscaino’s Bald Hills home.
He has pleaded guilty in Brisbane Supreme Court to improperly interfering with a corpse.
The Crown did not accept his plea to being an accessory after the fact to murder.
Crown prosecutor David Meredith said a prisoner would tell the jury that Boscaino told him two versions of how Mr Thompson, a drug dealer, was killed with an axe in Boscaino’s home.
He said the prisoner claimed Boscaino said another man, Ashley Dyball, hit Mr Thompson with the axe, but he also said both of them hit him.
Dyball is to face a separate trial over the alleged murder.
The Crown alleges the fact Mr Thompson was a cannabis dealer who was known to have large amounts of money provided a motive for his murder.
A former girlfriend, Hayley Adams, told the court when she lived with him, Mr Thompson had hidden stacks of cash in dog food bags and pillow cases and had bought his Ford Mustang with cash.
Mr Meredith said the prisoner would say Boscaino told him he and Dyball had planned to take Mr Thompson’s money and sell his drugs.
The prisoner would say Boscaino told him after Mr Thompson was struck, there was blood running everywhere and his body was dragged to Boscaino’s ute on an old piece of carpet.
He would claim Boscaino told him he and Dyball had driven the body north to a spot where they did not bury it very deep.
The Crown case relies partly on CCTV evidence of the movement of Mr Thompson’s orange Mustang, with SAMMO number plate, Boscaino’s red Triton utility and Dyball’s Chrysler sedan.
The Crown alleges after Mr Thompson was killed, his car was driven to near Pottsville, NSW, where it was found on March 9.
The court heard Mr Thompson’s body was found in a shallow grave, beside a tomahawk, in Beerburrum State Forest on April 3, 2017.
Mr Meredith said Boscaino and Dyball did a lot of things to hide the fact that Mr Thompson had been killed at Boscaino’s house.
He said Mr Thompson’s DNA was found on the underside of carpet in Boscaino’s house.
The jury heard 41 statements of admission in the case, including an admission that Mr Thompson’s body was carried away from Boscaino’s house in a toolbox in Boscaino’s utility.
Defence counsel Tony Glynn said Boscaino neither killed Mr Thompson nor aided Dyball to kill him.
He said Boscaino assisted Dyball to remove and destroy evidence, out of fear of Dyball or because of a real concern to clean up after a killing at his house.
He said that made him an accessory after the fact to murder, but not guilty of murder.
Mr Glynn urged the jury to treat the prison witness, “a man without a conscience’’, with extreme caution.
The trial continues.
Category: | The Courier Mail
