Murder accused confessed, jury told

Denis Kenny Billesdon confessed to friends years later that he had smothered his elderly sister with a pillow at her home in Christchurch in 2001, a crown prosecutor said yesterday.

Billesdon, now 72, denied the charge of murder at the start of his trial in the High Court at Christchurch before Justice Graham Panckhurst and a jury.

Nola Doreen Billesdon was 77 when she died at her home and her death was not at first seen as suspicious.

Crown prosecutor Kerryn Beaton told the court Miss Billesdon's doctor had seen her only a few days before her death and had worked out a management plan to enable her to continue living at home and to manage her medical conditions. She had been to hospital on occasions and suffered from chronic and on-going stomach pain.

Billesdon and his wife had sometimes stayed with his sister because of her medical condition, and he had been alone with her on the night she died.

He had helped her to take her prescribed medicines that day, including morphine for her pain. He had returned home in the evening, but went back after she phoned to say she had had a fall. He found her to be distressed and not breathing very well.

Billesdon told police he gave her more morphine and sleeping tablets and told her to go to bed. He watched some television but found her dead when he checked on her in bed about 30 minutes later. He went to tell his wife and phoned 111.

The post mortem examination produced a likely finding of death by congestive heart failure. But the pathologist, Dr Martin Sage, would give evidence that there were sometimes no physical signs that someone had been suffocated.

Ms Beaton told the court: "The reason we are here is that over the next four or five years, Denis Billesdon told a number of people he had killed his sister by smothering her with a pillow."

Ms Beaton said he told this to a woman friend while they were having coffee at a shopping mall. He told another long-term friend that his sister had been in a lot of pain and he could not take it any more and had smothered her with a pillow.

He had also told a close friend of smothering her, and that man had later spoken to Billesdon about it while wearing a secret police recording device. The jury would be played that recording.

"The Crown relies on the confessions he made to his friends and associates over the years since his sister died," Ms Beaton said.

A witness would tell the court that Billesdon became angry before the death when he heard that his sister had left her property to her nieces and nephews. "Over my dead body," he had said.

He had then arranged for her to change her will so he became the sole beneficiary.

Police became involved in the homicide inquiry in 2006. Police and ambulance staff who attended at the scene of the death had little recollection of the 2001 job. The police had made no note of any disarray in the bedroom where Miss Billesdon lay.

Evidence was given by caregivers, and by a psychiatric registrar who had examined Miss Billesdon about two weeks before her death. She showed significant anxiety and depression symptoms, which could be early signs of dementia.

- NZPA