As her plastic-wrapped body lay in a creek, Danielle Easey appeared to ask her mother over Facebook for money.
That request was among a string of messages claiming Ms Easey was in Sydney and "everything was fine" in the fortnight after her death.
A NSW Supreme Court jury was told on Wednesday the author was in fact Carol Marie McHenry, who along with Justin Kent Dilosa is on trial for the murder of Ms Easey in a Narara home on August 17, 2019.
Each of the accused pair has pleaded not guilty, claiming the other attacked and fatally wounded McHenry's friend after the trio ended a day-long car trip to see McHenry's boyfriend in a Nowra prison.
The 29-year-old Central Coast woman's decomposing body - wrapped in a protective suit, a doona, plastic and finally a layer of duct tape - was found two weeks later in a creek near the M1 motorway at Killingworth.
Jennifer Collier gave evidence on Wednesday that she regularly spoke to her daughter Danielle by phone, including on August 16, when Ms Easey said she and a friend were planning to visit the friend's boyfriend.
After hearing nothing further in the following days, Ms Collier sent various messages to Ms Easey on Facebook Messenger, including one saying "please stop torturing me, where is my girl?"
"I thought I would scare her into contacting me," she said.
Instead, McHenry began posing as her dead friend.
The Crown says the Narara woman told the mother Ms Easey was in Sydney, "everything was fine, she was with a friend, her friend was helping her".
Later, a request for money came in, claiming any funds should be sent to McHenry's account.
Ms Collins sent $50 on August 31, saying her daughter would make such requests from time to time and always pay back later.
When police arrived the next day to tell her Ms Easey's rotting body had been found, Ms Collins was "in disbelief as she said she'd only been talking to her the day before on Facebook Messenger," a detective told the jury.
But McHenry hadn't sent the messages to cover up her own crime, her lawyer suggested.
Rather, she acted out of fear Dilosa would kill her next, barrister Tony Evers told the jury.
"What she told police is she was asked to do this by Mr Dilosa, she was asked to maintain a fiction that Ms Easey was still alive," he said in an opening address.
"You'll notice that (at the time of the first messages) Mr Dilosa had still not disposed of Ms Easey's body."
By having the victim's mother transfer $50 into her own account and throwing away Ms Easey's phone somewhere it would obviously be found, McHenry was "laying breadcrumbs" for police to find her and ask her for the full story.
"She was too scared to go to police herself," Mr Evers said.
Meanwhile, Dilosa's barrister Angus Webb said his client's ultimate case was "he did not attack Ms Easey".
Ms Easey had extensive scalp lacerations, skull depressions and stab wounds to her back, consistent the Crown says with being attacked with a hammer and a knife.
A witness whose credibility will be questioned is expected to say when he asked who killed Ms Easey, both Dilosa and McHenry claimed responsibility.
The trial is expected to run into November.
