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NORFOLK ISLAND - The man accused of murdering Janelle Patton on Norfolk Island told police he ran over her inadvertently after smoking cannabis, then stabbed her and dumped her body, a court has been told.
"It was an accident," Glenn McNeill told police in a videotaped interview, which was played today at his Supreme Court trial on the island.
"I can't get her out of my head."
McNeill, a 29-year-old New Zealand chef, has pleaded not guilty to murdering Ms Patton on March 31, 2002.
He was interviewed by Australian Federal Police detective Bob Peters, the officer in charge of the investigation, after being arrested at his home in New Zealand on February 1 last year.
The interview was played to the jury on a wide-screen television monitor as relatives of Ms Patton and McNeill looked on from the court's public gallery.
McNeill said in the interview he had been driving to the beach when his car hit Ms Patton.
"I drifted down to pick up my smokes and then all of a sudden run over something," he said.
At first he thought he had run over a cow or a dog, and had panicked when he got out and found Ms Patton "under there, stuck under my car".
"I pulled her out and put her in the boot because I thought she was dead," he said.
McNeill told police he drove back to his flat in Little Cutters Corn and sat there for an hour or two, before grabbing a knife and stabbing Ms Patton as she lay in the boot.
Asked about the knife, McNeill said it was "a fish filleting knife, I suppose".
McNeill said he "felt bad" and wanted Ms Patton's body to be found.
He told police he grabbed a piece of plastic from a building site "up the back" and wrapped Ms Patton in it.
He said he then drove her body to the Cockpit Waterfall Reserve, where it was found later that day.
"It was an accident. I didn't intend on doing what I did," he told police.
"I was just in shock and I didn't know what to do."
The trial continues.
- AAP
