A CONVICTED killer was smoking weed and playing Xbox with an unidentified person before they hatched a plan to go to a Stockton unit at night and assault the man who lived there.
Instead, Graham Cameron was stabbed to death inside his home in the early hours of July 26, 2021, before Dalton Trent Oliver and the other person set the unit on fire and left his body to burn.
Oliver was ordered to stand trial for murder in Newcastle Supreme Court, but it was abandoned on its second day on Tuesday after Oliver instead pleaded guilty to manslaughter and arson.
Details of how 54-year-old Mr Cameron died and the web of deception Oliver weaved in the aftermath of the killing have been revealed for the first time in a statement of agreed facts.
Oliver, then 21-years-old, was on bail for an unrelated matter and couch surfing in Stockton when he met Mr Cameron through mutual acquaintances and stayed at his Fullerton Street unit for a night or two.
Oliver was staying at a nearby address at the time of the killing, and was playing video games with the unidentified person on the night of July 25.
He had his phone on "airplane" mode and did not receive several messages Mr Cameron had sent him until about 3am.
The Crown case was that Oliver and the unidentified person reached an agreement to "assault" Mr Cameron and they set out on foot towards his home.
An altercation broke out and Mr Cameron was stabbed in the neck and back three times with a knife. He died a short time later.
Oliver agreed he went to the unit as part of a joint criminal enterprise to assault Mr Cameron, but claimed he was only going to "assist if necessary", and it was the unidentified person that brought the knife and did the stabbing.
They then set fire to the unit, leaving Mr Cameron's body inside.
The Crown accepted it could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this version of how Mr Cameron died was not accurate, and Oliver was to be sentenced on that basis.
According to the facts, the pair lit a second fire on the banks of the Hunter River about 80 metres from the burning unit.
Clothes that were worn at the scene were thrown in and largely consumed, but police were able to recover some fragments, and DNA testing revealed links to both Oliver and Mr Cameron.
At about 5.05am, just after a witness had called emergency services about the two fires, Oliver sent a message to Mr Cameron, despite knowing he was already dead.
"See u tomorrow man I'll give u a hand then only just woke up again I'll see you in the morning," he wrote.
Firefighters rushed to the intense fire and later made the gruesome discovery of Mr Cameron's body inside, badly burned and partially covered in debris, with a knife nearby.
But it wasn't until three days later that a forensic pathologist examined Mr Cameron and found he had died before the fire took hold.
Oliver spoke with police twice in the days afterwards, claiming he had been smoking marijuana and playing Xbox until falling asleep, and denied ever going to the unit.
An extensive police investigation led officers to raid a Pitt Street home in Stockton and arrest Oliver 15 months later in October 22022.
He was charged with murder, which he denied, before that charge was withdrawn on June 25 and the trial was abandoned.
Oliver will be sentenced in the Supreme Court later this year on charges of manslaughter, or unlawful killing, and intentionally damaging property by fire in company.
