The friendship between slain Wollongong solicitor Katie Foreman and her murderer Wendy Evans had soured in the months before her death after Evans allegedly learnt her son and ex-boyfriend had both slept with Ms Foreman, a court has heard.
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Ms Foreman died when a deliberately-lit fire ripped through her Corrimal home in October 2011.
Evans has pleaded guilty to her murder, however three others allegedly involved in the crime - Ms Foreman’s estranged partner Bradley Max Rawlinson, Bernard Justin Spicer and Michelle Sharon Proud - have denied the charge.
During day three of the trio’s Supreme Court trial yesterday, two of Evans’s former work colleagues said Evans had told them Ms Foreman had been intimate with both men.
‘‘She believed Katie had slept with Scott [Field, Evans’s ex-boyfriend, and] her eldest son Ashley,’’ court employee Anne Davis said.
The court heard Evans recounted to Ms Davis a time when she had passed out in the rear of her vehicle after suffering an allergic reaction to latex, but woke to discover Ms Foreman and Mr Field having sex in the front seat.
Ms Davis said Evans did not disclose to her when or where the alleged sexual relations between her son and Ms Foreman supposedly took place.
She said during the same conversation though, Evans told her: ‘‘Katie thinks she’s so smart because her dad’s an ex-copper, she thinks she can get away with anything. She might be able to organise the cocaine, but I can organise a bullet.’’
Another court employee, Bruiceen Coulthard, said Evans had sent her a series of emails in mid-2011 detailing the same allegations against Ms Foreman.
‘‘I found out at the weekend Katie was sleeping with Scott – she doesn’t know I know yet,’’ Evans wrote, adding Ms Foreman had ‘‘f---ed with the wrong family’’.
Ms Coulthard said that in August 2011 Evans had sent her another email, claiming Ms Foreman had been intimate with Ashley.
The allegations were among a litany of claims jurors have heard regarding Ms Foreman’s sexual relations in the months before her death.
Several members of the Foreman family claim Rawlinson told them Katie was sleeping with other people.
Ms Foreman’s cousin Alicia Gibbs said Rawlinson had told her he’d heard Katie was having a lesbian relationship with Evans.
Ms Foreman’s former colleague Kylie Falconer said that when Ms Foreman temporarily ended her relationship with Rawlinson in mid-2010, she admitted to spending ‘‘months’’ seeing several different men, including a police officer.
A legal colleague of Ms Foreman’s, Danny Lagopodis, told the court Ms Foreman had come to him in July 2011 with concerns over a series of emails between herself and Wollongong police prosecutor Sean Thackeray, sent while she was in her previous job.
Mr Lagopodis said he did not see the emails but believed they were ‘‘of a sexual nature’’ and said Ms Foreman was worried they would be ‘‘misinterpreted’’ by her former bosses.
‘‘My understanding of what Katie told me was there was advances made by Mr Thackeray towards her, not that she was interested in Mr Thackeray,’’ he said.
At the time she ‘‘absolutely’’ denied she was in a relationship with Mr Thackeray, he said.
The trial continues today.