Witness ‘was nervous’

Press, 13 December 1989, Page 31

Witness ‘was nervous’

PA Auckland A woman’s account of her conversation with Renee Melanie Chignell in Mt Eden Prison differed from previous statements because she was nervous, the woman told the High Court at Auckland yesterday. The woman, known only as witness A, said on Monday that Chignell had told her that she and Neville George Walker had thrown Peter Plumley-Walker from the Huka Falls on January 28 after he was beaten in a bondage and discipline session the day before. Chignell, aged 19, a dominatrix, of Remuera, and Walker, aged 35, a concrete layer, of Panmure, deny murdering Mr Plumley-Walker at Taupo on January 28 and wilfully damaging his Cortina station waggon at Auckland the same day.

Under cross-examination by Chignell’s counsel, Mr Peter Davison, Witness A said her recounting of the conversation with Chignell was different in two written statements and her verbal account to the jury. This was because the first statement was made in a room at Mt Eden prison where a warden kept interrupting the interview she had with a police officer, witness A said. “That is why one statement is not as detailed as the other,” she said. The “courtroom atmosphere” during the last two days meant she was nervous and got some parts of her evidence wrong, she said. Witness A told the court she was released on bail the day after she gave evidence to the depositions hearing of charges against Chignell and Walker “for my own protection.” She had been in custody for some

months then as one High Court bail application had been refused and another adjourned indefinitely, she said.

Discussions with her lawyer led to the adjourned bail application being reopened without police opposition, she said.

“It was no coincidence. It was done for my own safety,” she said. Witness A said she was quite depressed during some of her time in the prison’s remand section, but was not “desperate” to be released.

Details of her treatment for that depression were presented to the Court.

She denied she had received the dosage listed on medical records and said either the records were wrong or the doctor had lied to her.

The trial before Mr Justice Hillyer and a jury of seven women and five men continues. ■