Two witnesses who lived with a 68-year-old Victorian man whose body was hidden in a freezer for three days after he was drugged have told the Supreme Court in Mildura that he was abusive, threatening and violent.
Warning: This story contains descriptions of alleged domestic abuse and language that readers may find distressing.
Rebecca Payne, 43, is on trial for the murder of her husband, Noel Payne, who died in September 2020 at Walpeup, 130 kilometres south of Mildura.
Ms Payne has pleaded guilty to manslaughter and not guilty to murder.
The court heard that a woman, who lives with a sustained brain injury, was residing at the property and was in a sexual relationship with Mr Payne.
In a police interview conducted on September 9, 2020, that was played to the court, the woman said Mr Payne was a "controller" and alleged that he physically abused his wife.
"He took [Ms Payne] out the gravel road, scraped her on the gravel road and [she got] spat on," the woman said in the interview.
"[Mr Payne said] 'You're nothing, little slut' [to Ms Payne] when she came back [to the house]."
In the interview played to the court the woman told police that Mr Payne told her not to tell his wife about their sexual encounters.
"He comes into my room and has sex and says, 'Don't tell her, because if you tell her she gets the shits,'" she said.
"He controlled me and her and we couldn't do anything.
"He takes my bank card and I can't get anything. I have to ask him to get money."
'Bleeding or crying'
Ms Payne's son, who was Mr Payne's stepson, told the court that Mr Payne physically disciplined him and his two younger half-brothers, as well as his mother and the other woman living at the residence.
For legal reasons the son cannot be named.
"I have walked around the corners and seen Mum in her room sitting there, either bleeding or crying," he said.
"I didn't say anything, because if I did say something I'd get the same treatment.
"I've approximately seen her bleeding three times.
"One of them she was in her room, Noel was on the toilet, she was sitting there with a blood nose and mouth.
"Another one he got her in the car, took her down the back street and did stuff to her, I don't know [what] — came home and she was bleeding.
"There were times Mum would fight back, but never physical.
"If she did, that's when he'd throw her around."
The son told the court that Mr Payne was violent towards everyone in the household.
"I watched Noel also physically abuse [the other woman] as well," he said.
"He pushed her down right in front of the door and kicked her and said something about the phone, and the phone got smashed.
"Noel got physical, pushed her down, she went straight down on her back between the door, she was talking back to Noel, saying, 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.'
"He called her a 'filthy slut' and other names."
Ms Payne's son told the court his stepfather would sometimes deprive him of food.
"He disciplined us physically, yes," he said.
"I wasn't his biological son.
"He would make me sit outside in the sun approximately all day, usually from about 9am until sometimes 7:30pm, 8pm at night, and he would make me go without lunch.
"Sometimes it could be weeks on end, sometimes it could be for the day."
'Very nasty person'
In the 2020 police interview played to the court, the other woman living at the house said that Ms Payne had drugged her husband with temazepam.
"She crushed it up, put it in the biscuit and gave it to him at night time," the woman said.
"After that she dragged him, put him down on the floor in his room.
"And then she dragged him in the lounge room and wrapped him up in a blanket, dragged him outside, put him outside and put him in the washing machine area out the back.
"Then she put him in the freezer and left him in the freezer … the freezer near his back shed."
The woman told police that Ms Payne then moved the freezer containing the body to another property.
"She came home [and said], 'I'm in trouble,' and next minute she started crying, 'I killed my husband,'" the woman said in the interview.
"She panicked because he hits her or something.
"I was worried about the kids and I was worried about myself too."
The court was told Ms Payne confessed killing her husband to Walpeup resident Rodney Bullock, who said he had been a friend of Mr Payne's.
Mr Bullock told the court that Mr Payne had changed from "such a lovely person to a very nasty person".
Mr Bullock told the court that Ms Payne told him, "I murdered him," while she was in the process of making a formal complaint to police about the abuse she, their children and the other woman living at the house allegedly suffered at the remote Victorian residence.
The court heard Ms Payne told Mr Bullock she drugged Mr Payne with 25 or 50 tablets before wrapping his body in a blanket and sealing his body in the freezer.
The trial, presided over by Justice Rita Incerti, continues.
