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Queensland police were told Gregory Lee Roser tried to save Bruce Saunders when he discovered his friend’s legs dangling out of a woodchipper, a court has been told.
Roser, 63, is on trial for murder after 54-year-old Saunders died while working on a property north of Brisbane in November 2017.
The crown alleges that Sharon Graham, 61, asked Roser and another lover Peter Koenig to kill Saunders and make it look like an accident in a bid to claim his $750,000 life insurance.
Roser has pleaded not guilty to murder as has Graham. Justice Martin Burns this week ordered she be tried separately. Koenig pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact to murder in June 2022, the jury has been told.
Police footage has been shown to the jury of Saunders’ legs protruding from the woodchipper at the Goomboorian property near Gympie after clearing trees with Roser and Koenig.
Police audio from the night officers attended the property was played in the Brisbane supreme court on Friday.
“Don’t know what happened, it happened so quick, eh … oh my God, I just can’t believe it,” Roser told Det Sgt Christopher Duhig.
Roser described Saunders as a good little worker but claimed his friend had been mucking around near the chipper.
“All day we were into him about it. You just can’t tell him, eh. You couldn’t tell him anything,” he says in the audio recording. “Every time you looked around he was trying to shove things in the chipper and I was like ‘no stay away from it, Pete and I can handle it’. It’s a really dangerous machine … it chews it up really quick.”
Koenig has accused Roser of killing Saunders by repeatedly hitting him with a metal bar before they carried the body to the chipper. Koenig used a branch to push Saunders into the machine but decided to stop with the legs still sticking out so it appeared to be an accident, the court has heard.
Roser told the detective sergeant at the property he didn’t see what happened but turned around and saw Saunders in the machine.
“I really can’t work out what happened … never heard a sound,” he said. “I tried to pull him out. I just couldn’t get him out of there. He was stuck in there – I tried to save him.”
Roser said in his police statement read in court that Saunders looked inexperienced around a chipper and he believed it was the first time he had used one.
“He seemed oblivious to the dangers. He would stand there and watch the branch disappear into the machine,” he said. “Sometimes I actually grabbed his shirt and pulled him away. He would laugh when I tried to teach him about safety.”
Duhig said at that stage he was treating Saunders’ death as an industrial accident. He said two days later he started receiving calls from people who knew Saunders.
The investigation shifted toward following up on that information and Graham was interviewed, he told the court.
By January 2018, police organised telephone intercepts for the mobiles of Roser, Koenig and Graham. They also looked back at text messages on the phones.
Listening devices and a camera were then set up at Graham’s Nambour residence that she had shared with Saunders. A surveillance camera was also established at a neighbour’s house, the jury was told.
The trial continues.
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