A divorced father blamed his ex-wife's new partner for destroying his family before fatally attacking him with an axe, a NSW Supreme Court jury has heard.
Cabramatta West man Thanh Tran, 79, is on trial for the murder of Pok Min Fah, who died from severe head wounds after having dinner with Tran's adult children and former wife on March 14, 2019.
"He said he (Mr Fah) was a bad person," Nina Tran said of her conversation with her father.
"He said something along lines of 'he destroyed the family'."
That conversation was one of three between the pair in the six months between her parents' divorce and Mr Fah's death, Ms Tran said.
Her relationship with her father, who moved out of the marital home into a nearby unit, wasn't good and she had rebuffed his offers to move in with him, she said.
His last offer - mentioning a mattress in a spare room - came four days before Mr Fah was killed.
"But I refused and that was pretty much it," she told the jury.
Ms Tran agreed her father had been persistent in trying incentives for her to move in and had at one time offered to give her his share of the proceeds from the sale of the martial home.
Tran denies a charge of murder but has pleaded guilty to manslaughter, arguing his judgment was substantially impaired due to a loss of control caused by trauma from his lived experience of Cambodian dictator Pol Pot's regime.
The jury has been told he was forced out of his home province during the regime and into hard labour before eventually making his way to refugee camps.
He migrated to Australia in the mid-1980s.
The jury has been told Mr Fah was killed shortly after leaving Tran's ex-wife's home.
Tran, then 75, drove his car into Mr Fah before going to the boot, retrieving an axe and attacking the defenceless man lying on the road edge, the court has been told.
The trial continues.
