Backpacker killer 'wrote confession on table'
A confession to the killing of British backpacker Caroline Stuttle, found written on a picnic table, was likely to be by her accused murderer, a jury was told today.
Police forensic document examiner Somapala Hettiarachichi told a murder trial in Bundaberg that the confession, written in black pen on a plank of the table, was likely to have been written by Ian Douglas Previte.
Previte, 32, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of 19-year-old Ms Stuttle in Bundaberg on April 10, 2002.
The alleged confession, written on a faded, dirty plank of picnic table, was discovered in Baldwin Swamp, a Bundaberg environmental park, just two weeks after the killing.
It reads: “I Throw the girl of (sic) the brige (sic) I am sorry.”
Mr Hettiarachichi, a handwriting expert of 20 years’ experience, compared the writing in thick black pen with letters that Previte wrote to his mother and father while in jail.
The letter to his mother begins: “Hello my dearest mum how is you ...“.
The handwriting expert told the Supreme Court: “It is likely, in other words, there are indicators that the specimen writing is by the author of the handwriting on the plank.”
During often heated exchanges during cross-examination by defence barrister Denis Lynch, Mr Hettiarachichi refused to be moved from his opinion, saying there were dissimilarities but not differences in the two hands.
He explained differences as being dissimilarities which could not be reasonably explained by the use of different writing implements or surfaces.
Mr Lynch ploughed through the alphabet examining every letter written in the message on the plank starting with Is and Os and finishing with Ss and Ys.
The jury today was shown an eerie tape of the scene of the crime featuring the Burnett River Traffic Bridge and the park below it.
The videotape, taken early the morning after Ms Stuttle plummeted to her death from the bridge, had a sound track of loudly chirping birds.
