A former hospital orderly who took a nurse out for dinner on the night she was stabbed to death in her home will face a retrial after a Supreme Court jury failed to reach a verdict.
Widowed nurse Ina-Doris Warrick was stabbed in the heart at her Ringwood North home in March 1986.
Her former colleague Colin Earl Graham was charged with the 25-year-old’s murder. But the Supreme Court jury on Tuesday was discharged after they couldn't come to a decision following two days of deliberating.
The 66-year-old pleaded not guilty and denied having anything to do with Ms Warrick’s death.
Prosecutors alleged after Mr Graham took Ms Warrick out for a pizza dinner at an Italian restaurant he followed her inside after dropping her home and killing her.
They also told jurors that three witnesses had come forward claiming the former orderly had discussed the woman’s death or made confessions to killing her.
But his lawyer Malcolm Thomas told jurors not to trust those witnesses and pointed the finger at another possible killer.
Former security guard Craig Maddaford told the court that Graham told him about a nurse he was seeing who “died in his arms” when they both worked at a nightclub in 1999.
“They had been out for dinner or something, a date or something … they had gone back to her place and something happened and she died in his arms,” Mr Maddaford told the court.
“He remembered all the blood.”
An acquaintance called Joseph Royle said Graham told him that he’d done a murder and not been caught, while another witness – who cannot be named – said Grahaxjmtzywm killed a woman named Ina-Doris after she denied him sex.
But Mr Thomas told the court that those witnesses couldn’t be trusted and said the unnamed man – known as Witness Q – was “morally bankrupt”.
“If you’ve met someone more morally bankrupt and dishonest you’d be pretty unlucky. He’s like some sort of comic book super villain,” he said.
He argued his client never had conversations with the trio about Ms Warrick and told jurors they were instead motivated to come forward to claim a million-dollar reward.
Another man could also have been behind the shocking attack, and that was Ms Warrick’s married lover, the court was told.
That man was Dr Greg Stewart, an anaesthetist, who the court heard discovered her body on March 23 but didn’t report it to police.
Instead, a neighbour made the grim find and alerted authorities two days later.
He repeatedly lied to police after discovering his lover’s body, the court was told.
“His lies spring from a consciousness of his own guilt,” Mr Thomas told jurors.
Dr Stewart has not been charged with any wrongdoing.
Mr Thomas told jurors that Mr Graham contacted police as soon as he found out Ms Warrick had died and told them about their dinner.
“Why would he do that if he was guilty? It’s exactly what an innocent man would do,” Mr Thomas said.
A retrial will take place in September.
