Father's grief at Norfolk Island murder evidence

NORFOLK ISLAND - An Australian woman murdered on Norfolk Island desperately fought her attacker, suffering 64 injuries including a stab wound to the chest and fractured skull, a forensic pathologist told a court.

The father of Janelle Patton wept yesterday after hearing the graphic evidence of his daughter's murder during a committal hearing on the remote former British penal colony in the South Pacific.

The hearing in a convict-built stone court room will determine whether New Zealand chef Glenn McNeill, 28, should face trial for murdering Patton in March 2002.

McNeill has not entered a plea.

Patton's murder, the first on Norfolk in more than 100 years, shocked the community of about 1,600, many of them descendants of 18th-century Bounty mutineers. The tiny Australian territory lies about 1,600 km east of tropical Queensland state.

The 29-year-old hotel restaurant manager disappeared while walking along an island road and her battered body was found a day later wrapped in black plastic at an island picnic spot.

Forensic pathologist Allan Cala told the hearing that Patton suffered 64 separate injuries, including a stab wound to the chest and a fractured skull and pelvis.

Cala, who conducted an autopsy on Patton's body three days after her death, said a combination of 35 of those injuries, to her head, neck, torso and limbs, had caused her death.

"There were injuries which caused blood loss and a degree of incapacity that, in combination with that stab wound to the chest, led to her death," Cala told the magistrates court.

Patton suffered hand injuries indicating she had tried to fight off the sustained and "extremely violent" assault, which fractured her ribs, skull and pelvis, he said.

"If Ms Patton was already dead ... there would be no defence-type injuries," Cala said. Forensic biologist Katherine Lee told the court she had analysed more than 100 samples of evidence from the crime scene, including Patton's clothing, and had been unable to find McNeil's DNA.

However, analysis of her underwear found evidence of mixed DNA from two females, said Lee.

Patton's father Ron, who travelled to Norfolk Island from Sydney for the hearing, had to be comforted by his wife Carol during the gruesome evidence.

Speaking outside the island's tiny Georgian court room afterwards, Carol Patton said the evidence had proved too much for her husband.

"I've cried a lot in the past four years, now maybe it's his turn," she said.

- REUTERS