Marice McGregor trial: Court told of two confessions

The jury hearing the case against murder-accused Dean Mulligan has this morning been told of two alleged confessions.
Mulligan, 43, is on trial in the High Court at Wanganui for the murder of Marice McGregor in April last year, and is accused of hitting her three times in the head with an iron bar, and leaving her at the bottom of a gully on Whiskey Bend, on the Parapara Range.
Mulligan has pleaded not guilty.
This morning the court heard from Raetihi man Gregory Windle, who was driving up the Parapara on his way home on April 15, when he saw Ms McGregor walking along the roadside.
She had a "dishevelled" appearance and had dirt on the knees of her pants.
Mr Windle pulled over and Ms McGregor walked over to him, telling him she had been meeting a friend but got her car stuck down a track around 3km north of the second turnoff to Lismore Forest, and between 20-40km from Fields Track.
Mr Windle and his son helped Ms McGregor move her car, and when they got back to his vehicle, a van was parked behind him.
There was a man in the van, who had a "grimset face". It soon became obvious that this was the woman's friend, and they left.
Mr Windle said it was not until he saw an April 30 edition of the Wanganui Chronicle that he recognised the woman he had spoken to as Ms McGregor.
Brian Signal, a Feilding sickness beneficiary, gave evidence of meeting Mulligan at a river near the Feilding motorcamp he was staying in on May 25, where he confessed to hitting his girlfriend on the head with a metal object in a rage, before panicking and leaving her.
He confirmed he was talking about the woman missing from Wanganui, and said he was going to turn himself in.
Mulligan's minister, John Sefton, told the court of two strange phone calls he received from "Katrina", saying Mulligan was under intense financial pressure and she was worried he was going to commit suicide.
Ms McGregor told him she was Mulligan's girlfriend and that the pair were going to get married.
Mr Sefton said she sounded surprised when he told her that he had married Mulligan and his wife Fiona two years ago.
Ms McGregor asked him to speak with Mulligan because of her concerns.
However, she called back later in the evening to say she had spoken with Mulligan and told Mr Sefton not to bother.
When he later spoke to Mulligan about the phone calls, he said Ms McGregor "didn't have a grip on reality".
Mr Sefton also gave evidence that Fiona Mulligan told her husband their marriage was over after hearing he had been visiting a dating site while they were married, and told the court Mulligan later confessed to killing Ms McGregor as he drove him to the Palmerston North Police Station on May 25.
He mentioned a bar, but at that point Mr Sefton changed the subject because he did not want to know, he said.
The trial continues this afternoon.