A Taranaki woman has this morning told a High Court jury she saw murder accused Michael Scott Wallace looking "anxious" near the area where German hitchhiker Birgit Brauer was bludgeoned and stabbed to death.
Charmain Brennan was driving with family members at Lucy's Gully, southwest of New Plymouth,on September 20, 2005 when their vehicle was forced to one side of the road to allow another vehicle to pass.
"It was a dark, not black, charcoaly colour," she told Crown prosecutor Tim Brewer today.
"I was a four-by-four type... slightly dirty. Not really dirty, a working vehicle."
Wallace, 46, faces a charge of murdering Miss Brauer, at Lucy's Gully, after picking her up as she hitchhiked between Wanganui and New Plymouth.
Wallace was at the time drifting about the North Island after abandoning his job as a firewood cutter at Himatangi, near Palmerston North.
He had been travelling in a dark-coloured Toyota Hilux Surf, belonging to his employer Brent Cleverley.
Wallace is defending one charge of murder, at trial, in the High Court at New Plymouth.
Mrs Brennan decribed the driver as looking like a "forestry type" worker with a "very hollow" face.
"I thought he looked a little bit anxious, and at the time I thought it was because of the close passing."
Mrs Brennan was interviewed by police in the days after Miss Brauer's killing, and identified Wallace from a police photo montage.
The photograph she chose was later published in the local newspaper as the manhunt for Wallace got underway.
She later heard of Wallace's arrest, and was anxious to see if he was the same person.
"(We) heard it on the radio in the cowshed, and made a big effort to get up to see it on the news.
"My immediate reaction was that (Wallace) looked exactly like the man I had seen at Lucy's Gully."
The trial, before Justice Mark Cooper, is expected to run for up to five weeks.
