A former ambulance officer was trying to sweet talk a woman into having sex when he said "I have killed someone before and it's not a nice feeling", a jury has been told.
"This is a joke not a confession to murder," defence barrister Winston Terracini SC said in the NSW Supreme Court on Thursday.
He was giving his closing address at the trial of 72-year-old John Douglas Bowie.
He's pleaded not guilty to murdering his wife Roxlyn Bowie, who was 31 when she vanished from their Walgett home in northern NSW.
The Crown alleges he killed his wife on or about June 5, 1982 and may have fed her to pigs, so he could have an unfettered relationship with another woman.
Mr Terracini criticised the police investigation, citing a string of matters including the absence of evidence on whether pigs eat bones, on Walgett's public transport system at the time Ms Bowie vanished and the failure to test for blood splatters in the house.
He said the prosecution had made a great deal about so-called confessional material.
A previous partner said when she asked him if he had anything to do with the disappearance of his wife, she said "he got angry and yelled at me for asking and doubting him".
Mr Terracini emphasised his client was then said to have commented "if" he had done it, he would have fed her to the pigs.
Another woman said she had been covered in bruises from her partner, and very distressed and crying when she wanted a cigarette and Bowie came up and lit her smoke.
When she said she wished someone would kill her husband, she said Bowie told her: "I have killed someone before and it's not a nice feeling".
Rather than being a murder confession, Mr Terracini said Bowie was on the one hand trying to say "I am a tough guy" and at the same time "I am a sensitive guy".
Referring to Bowie's womanising habits, the barrister noted the witness said she had the impression he was "trying to get into her pants".
"He met her twice and the Crown would have you believe he is confessing to a killing to someone he hardly knows."
Mr Terracini said Bowie's daughter Brenda Boyd acted as "an agent of the police" and was wired up in a conversation with her father which revealed "zilch".
"He has maintained his innocence for approximately 40 years."
Prosecutor Alex Morris has contended Ms Bowie was "forced or coerced" into writing a "Dear John" letter and one to her parents saying she was leaving her husband and two children for good.
But Mr Terracini said "it is virtually over" if the jurors can't be satisfied she was actually forced into writing the letters.
He noted a statement made by a neighbour who said she volunteered to search the house when Bowie asked if his wife was at her home on the evening of her disappearance.
Rather than Bowie suggesting she do the search to set up an elaborate ruse or camouflage, Mr Terracini said the neighbour went in and also first noticed the note under a sugar bowl in the kitchen.
He said that evening no one had noticed a mark on Bowie, a ripped search, stains on his jacket or mud on his boots.
The police had asked if the neighbour looked underneath the house, which was an example of the "pot calling the kettle black" given they too had not done such a search in the following decades.
Justice Dina Yehia will continue her directions to the jury on Friday.
