21st-November-2007
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Dateline: Sydney, Australia By: APP From: Dad’s On the Air Via: The Honor Network Women Cuts Up Husband Priority News Exchange Program News Item (PNEP) Quote: A WOMAN shot her husband dead, hacked him to pieces with an axe and put the pieces in a freezer 15 years ago, a Sydney court has been told. Her son, who was a teenager at the time, allegedly helped dispose of the body in a number of NSW locations, and kept the murder a secret.
The remains of Wayne Robert Chant, 47, of Revesby, were only recently identified after advances in DNA technology. His left arm and legs were found at two sites in Sydney's south in October 1992, days after a truck driver discovered his torso near Kiama on the NSW south coast.
His head, hands and right arm have never been found.
Mr Chant's widow, Joyce Mary Chant, 56, appeared in Liverpool Local Court today charged with his murder while her son, 34-year-old James Vincent Chant, appeared charged with being an accessary after the fact. The court was told that that detectives secretly recorded conversations between the mother and son discussing the alleged murder.
Police documents tendered to the court said Mrs Chant allegedly said: "I don't know why they can't find the other arm because I put everything there, in the river.
"I put the legs in one place, arms in the other." The police documents allege James Chant told his ex-girlfriend in 1997 that he and his mother had put his father's head in an esky filled with concrete.
"Dad didn't go missing, mum killed him ... yeah, she cut him up and we got rid of the pieces ... mum put the bits into freezers ... the head was put into an esky and filled with concrete," the documents quoted him as saying.
In opposing bail for James Chant, police prosecutor Sergeant Graham Wedge told the court Mrs Chant shot her husband and hacked him up with an axe. Referring to the involvement of James Chant, then aged 19, he said: "There is a degree of criminality in disposing the body parts of his father, the knowledge of the death of his father and keeping a secret that knowledge".
Mr Chant's defence lawyer Paul Byrne SC said Wayne Chant had been a violent alcoholic who abused his family. "This instance involves the death of a very brutal man who was a violent alcoholic who kept loaded guns in the house and in the car," Mr Byrne said.
Mr Byrne said there was no suggestion James Chant participated in the murder itself. The pair sat next to each other in the dock today but did not look at each other. They were remanded to reappear in Central Local Court on January 16. |
The good men may do separately is small compared with what they may do collectively -
Benjamin Franklin
None of us is smart as all of us-
Old Japanese Proverb
Last edited by Timocrat; 21st-November-2007 at 06:28 AM..
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