Court Told Man Boasted Of 'getting Rid Of His Wife' To Shepparton Stripper

The Age

Wednesday May 3, 2006

IAN MUNRO

YEARS after the body of Nancy Kaye King was found face down in a water-filled pit in central Victoria, her husband Graeme King told a stripper that he had "got rid of his wife", a court heard yesterday.

Matthew Trimby, a former barman at a Shepparton nightclub, said that a dancer whom he saw sitting on King's knee later approached him at the bar and asked if he knew the man she had been with.

Mr Trimby, who had known King for much of his life, said he could not remember the name of the stripper or precisely when the incident occurred, but it was during the period 1998-2001, when he was working at the Rawhide nightclub in Shepparton.

"The dancer said to (me) something like, 'He told me he got rid of his wife'," Mr Trimby said. "Once I told the dancer that Kingy's wife was dead, she asked me: 'Did he do it?'. I told her I didn't know."

Mr Trimby, who was giving evidence to a Shepparton Magistrates Court committal hearing by video link from Perth, said King had been drinking "but that didn't surprise me because as long as I had known him he had always appeared to be a heavy drinker".

Mr Trimby related the incident to his sister but did not go to police. "It wasn't the craziest thing I heard in that place . . . people talk and try to impress the girls," he said.

King, 54, has been charged with the murder of Nancy King, 38, at Tallygaroopna on June 25, 1991. King, who has not been required to enter a plea, protested yesterday at the "disgraceful" conditions in the police cells where he is being held.

"I would rather go back to the MAP (Melbourne Assessment Prison) every night than stop in these cells here. That's how bad they are," he said.

King's eldest son, Jason, said his suspicions about his mother's death were heightened when he discovered a 1993 letter from his father's solicitor urging the Coroner to speed up his investigations to enable King to claim insurance.

"If you loved someone . . . wouldn't you want to know what happened to them?" Jason King said. Gesturing towards King, he said: "I have directed all my time and effort into this to get the truth from him over there. He is my father and if it leads down that road to him, he should pay."

The lack of mud on the gumboots his mother was wearing at the time of her death added to his doubts, he said.

He rejected suggestions the mud could have been rinsed off by rain and possible immersion in the pit in which she was discovered.

Former homicide squad investigator Detective acting Superintendent Graeme Collins said he noted the lack of mud when he was on the scene in 1991, but the squad had ultimately found no reason for a continuing investigation and handed the case back to local police.

He agreed with Howard Mason, for King, that the lack of marks on the body suggesting a violent blow, a struggle or suffocation contributed to the squad's assessment of no suspicious circumstances.

Another officer on the case, Senior Sergeant George Buchhorn, said: "Based on the information we had at the time, we were satisfied that the circumstances of the death were not suspicious."

King's daughter, Nicole Ryan, who was not quite 14 when her mother died, said that after years of silence she had asked her father why the incident was never discussed within the family.

"From the day mum died dad has never sat down with me and spoken to me about how mum died," she said.

Mrs Ryan slept in her father's bed for two or three nights after her mother's death, prompting false allegations that her father was molesting her. Mr Mason said this reflected a community consumed by malicious gossip, similar to that which had persisted about his client.

The hearing before magistrate Reg Marron continues.

© 2006 The Age

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