AN EMOTIONAL Tracy Goodman told police she did not kill "that Marton lady" during an interview about pensioner burglaries, in which the detective never spoke of Mona Morriss.
Yesterday, the High Court in Wanganui was shown videotapes of an interview with Goodman filmed at Palmerston North police station on May 7, 2005.
The interview, conducted by Detective Sergeant Gwynne Pennell, was about Goodman's suspected involvement in burglaries of pensioner flats during April 2005. The Crown alleges Goodman, 44, murdered the Marton pensioner on January 3 2005 and burgled her flat; charges which Goodman denies.
In the videos, Ms Pennell questions Goodman about three incidents on April 2, 2005, involving elderly people in the Hawke's Bay and another on April 30, when Goodman was photographed with a handbag leaving a pensioner flat complex in Pahiatua.
Goodman initially told police she left Hawke's Bay about lunchtime on April 2 and denied being in Pahiatua at all. Goodman told police she was at home on April 30 and the woman in the photo, who was wearing a hat, scarf and two-toned blue shirt, was someone called "Andrea", who had borrowed her car that weekend.
However, Ms Pennell said Goodman was lying and produced cellphone data which placed her in both areas at specific times, including a call made from her phone near Pahiatua on April 30.
Ms Pennell told Goodman police had been following her on that day, and had taken the photograph in Pahiatua. She then asked her what she was doing there and why she kept avoiding the matter and would not "go near it".
Goodman became emotional and blurted out that it was because she was "afraid of the lady in Marton" and she thought something similar may have happened in the Pahiatua pensioner flats.
"I didn't do that, I didn't do that to that lady in Marton, I thought what did someone do at this flat (in Pahiatua)? I didn't go in there," she said.
"I thought someone had been killed and I didn't do the one in Marton."
Goodman went on to say she did not steal anything from the flats and had only lied because she thought "it was Marton" and was "freaked out" because police had also spoken to her niece about her in relation to the Marton murder. Ms Pennell said they had questioned a lot of people about the murder.
Earlier in the interview, Goodman had passionately denied she was still burgling elderly people's flats, saying she had put her "ugly" past behind her.
She had changed after she was forced to faced rest home residents she had stolen from in 2001, she said. "That knocked that on the head I'd never had that punishment before&I; found out who I was through going in front of those old people," she said.
Goodman repeatedly said she hadn't done anything wrong and wouldn't do anything that was going to jeopardise things with her son.
Ms Pennell said she did not believe the burgling had stopped, asking Goodman what she would think if she were an elderly person.
"I can't put myself in that position at the moment, I can't," Goodman said.
Before that Ms Pennell had questioned Goodman about three incidents on April 2, where three elderly people had described a woman who looked like her entering their Napier properties and asking for someone.
One of these people reported her car's registration number to police, while one woman had reported a stolen wallet containing $200 and the other said she had lost a $180 bottle of perfume shortly after seeing the woman.
Goodman, who claimed she was an "avid" collector of perfume bottles, said couldn't understand why the incidents had been linked to her or why police had "wronged" her by following her.
Lewis Findlay, the former coordinator of Goodman's drug rehabilitation centre, spoke to her on May 9 2005 and said while she had admitted to the burglaries, she was "absolutely adamant" she didn't murder Mrs Morriss.
"She was aware that she was going to go to prison for the burglaries&she; was extremely upset, she was at times crying, she was a mother in the process of losing her son," he said.
The trial continues today.
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