A Victorian man who waited outside his estranged wife’s house before brutally attacking her and making her death look like a suicide, has been found guilty of murder.
After a six week trial a Supreme Court jury found Adrian Basham guilty of murdering his estranged wife, and mother of his three children, Samantha Fraser in her Phillip Island garage on July 23, 2018.
Prosecutors had submitted Basham lay in wait for his wife to return home from school drop-off before he followed her into her garage, assaulted her and tied a hangman’s noose around her neck.
Police found Ms Fraser’s body hanging from the garage door later that day after she failed to pick her kids up from school.
During the trial, lawyers for Basham told the court while Basham confessed to assaulting Ms Fraser, he did not kill her and instead claimed she took her own life.
But that theory was dismissed by the jury which handed down its guilty verdict on Thursday.
The couple had been married for a decade but separated in 2017.
Ms Fraser was living in fear of her estranged husband and sought help from psychologists and even changed the locks on her home.
The court was earlier told Basham told his friend: “Just you wait and see, I’ll get her.”
Though his lawyers argued he was not violent or aggressive.
He will be sentenced on a later date.
