Officer tells of murder accused getting ‘suicide’ text
A police officer said Helen Elizabeth Milner was hysterical after turning on her cellphone and received a suicide note text message from her husband who had been found dead in his bed.
The Crown alleges that Milner, 50, sent the message to her own phone on a night when she had drugged her husband and suffocated him in his bed.
Sergeant Christopher Roy Barker told the second day of Milner’s murder and attempted murder trial in the High Court at Christchurch that Milner’s long period of hysteria seemed a quite unnatural reaction to grief.
He and the constable with him talked about the suicide text having been discovered “conveniently” in front of the police who had attended the scene about 6am on May 4, 2009. They decided then to contact their supervising officer.
Sergeant Barker said Milner had said she had been in bed with her husband Phillip James Nisbet until 2am, but the body was positioned at an angle and it did not look as though anyone could have been in bed beside him earlier in the night.
Milner said she had got up at that time because she needed insulin for her diabetes and had spent the rest of the night on the sofa in the lounge.
The sergeant said the suicide text had been sent at 10.30pm. It said: “I’m sorry honey. Can’t keep going like this. I love you so much. Please take care and tell Ben I love him.” Ben is Mr Nisbet’s son.
The Crown is alleging at the three-week trial before Justice David Gendall and a jury that Milner had fed the drug Phenergan to Mr Nisbet with his evening meal and when he became unconscious in bed from the anti-allergy and sedative drug, she suffocated him with a pillow.
She denies two charges of attempting to murder him in April 2009, and then murdering him in May 2009. The defence will say that it is reasonably possible that Mr Nisbet did commit suicide.
Sergeant Barker said he found empty blister packs for pills in a bedside cabinet.
The trial spent a lot of the day hearing of comments that Milner made to work colleagues about poisons, or feeling like suffocating her husband. It also heard that the couple had taken out an insurance policy on Mr Nisbet’s life in February 2008. The 13-month suicide exclusion clause ceased to apply in March 2009.
The trial is continuing.
Category: News
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