A man accused of helping to bury the body of Deane Fuller-Sandys told a jury yesterday that he believed a crucial crown witness had been paid $30,000 by the police.
Mark William Henriksen, aged 33, is charged with helping to dispose of the body 11 years ago to help Stephen Stone avoid being arrested.
Gail Maney, 33, is accused of ordering the "hit" and getting Stone to do the killing because she believed that Mr Fuller-Sandys had stolen her drugs in a burglary.
She is also accused of helping to dispose of the body.
The Crown says that Stone shot Mr Fuller-Sandys in the garage of Maney's home and then passed the handgun to a number of other young men, including Henriksen, who were made to fire into the body.
Henriksen was also said to have been part of the burial party.
In his opening address, Henriksen's lawyer, Adam Couchman, was heavily critical of the "famous four" principal crown witnesses, who all have immunity from prosecution.
Henriksen denied knowing Mr Fuller-Sandys or anything about his killing. It was easier for witnesses to finger him than the people who were really involved and "a damned sight safer too," he told the jury.
He denied knowing two of the key crown witnesses and barely knew a third.
Asked by prosecutor Charles Cato why the fourth would lie and implicate herself, Henriksen replied: "$30,000 sounds good."
The allegations against him were a "pack of lies," he said.
"I have even offered to take a polygraph [lie detector test] and hypnosis to prove my point."
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