Murder accused was nicknamed ‘The Black Widow’
Workmates nicknamed Helen Elizabeth Milner “The Black Widow” after she asked about access to rat poison, the third day of her murder trial was told in the High Court at Christchurch.
The evidence came from Brent Russell Hazeldine, who was a division manager for Ground Services Ltd, where Milner worked in Christchurch in 2009. He gave evidence by video-link from Whangarei where he now lives.
He explained that the nickname came from the movie “about the wife who going around popping off all the husbands”.
He said Milner said she was concerned because she thought her husband was trying to kill her by giving her sugary foods when she was diabetic. She said, “I might have to get in first.” Mr Hazeldine thought it was a strange comment.
She asked him if he had access to rat poison through the firm, or any chemicals she could use.
“I didn’t think anything about it at the time. I probably laughed, if anything,” he told Justice David Gendall and the jury.
He said Milner made the comment about two months before the death of her husband, Phillip James Nisbet, in May 2009, but even after the death he did not make the connection with her comments.
He said staff had nicknamed her The Black Widow.
Cross-examined, he said the company had weed killer but no chemicals to deal with pest animals. He said he had not taken her comments seriously.
Milner, 50, denies two charges of attempted murder of Mr Nisbet in April 2009, and his murder the next month. The Crown alleges he was drugged by Milner with the anti-allergy and sedative drug Phenergan, and then smothered as he lay unconscious in bed.
The defence says that the death was a suicide.
Sergeant Christopher Roy Barker said in cross-examination that he believed Milner’s reaction was “acting” when the police were at her house when her husband’s body had been discovered.
He told the trial: “Her reaction was highly unnatural. I have never seen anything like it before. She was wailing. It was a prolonged wailing that just didn’t add up.
“I have never encountered anything like it before or since. It appeared to be acting.”
Defence counsel Margaret Sewell accused him of now seeing everything that Milner had done as sinister, because of the murder investigation. She said he could not recall such details as the glass beside the bed where Mr Nisbet had died.
The trial is expected to last three weeks.
Category: News
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