Michelle Sharon Proud’s response to her arrest over the Katie Foreman murder was short and sharp.
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‘‘Oh get f--–ed,’’ she shot at police as they tried to advise her, and her partner, Bernard Justin Spicer, of the charges against them and their legal rights.
But just hours later, Proud’s angry outburst had been replaced with tears, the result of revelations that police had been secretly recording her telephone calls and text messages the whole time that she and others had been crafting a false story they were going to tell police if questioned over Ms Foreman’s October 2011 death.
Jurors in Ms Foreman’s Supreme Court murder trial were played a video on Friday of Proud’s post-arrest interview, when she learnt of the bugging.
At the outset, Proud maintained her story that she and Spicer had simply gone to Wollongong on holiday at the suggestion of her friend, Wendy Anne Evans.
She said she knew Ms Foreman, a one-time friend of Evans’s, and had met her a few times, but denied any involvement in the events surrounding her death.
However, an hour into the interview, police told Proud they knew she’d been lying to them, producing evidence from phone taps and a listening device in her western Sydney home.
In the video, Proud can be seen to almost immediately break down in tears, before saying, ‘‘I just don’t want BJ [Spicer] to get in trouble... he’s my partner".
Proud then said that Evans had called them saying she wanted Spicer to ‘‘organise to have something done’’ to Ms Foreman, before asking if Spicer could do it himself.
Proud said she was reluctant at first, but said Evans had told her Ms Foreman had ‘‘put a hit out on her [Evans]’’ and she was in fear for her life.
Proud said the couple agreed that Spicer would ‘‘scare’’ Ms Foreman in exchange for $3000.
However, she said there was never any agreement for Spicer to kill Ms Foreman, and that had not been supposed to happen.
‘‘All he was going to say was ‘stay away from Wendy, I’m watching you’, and then Wendy changed the whole thing, she went and got the fuel,’’ Proud said.
‘‘All they were supposed to do was make a little fire and, um, all BJ did was put a bit of fuel [in the room] and Wendy lit the thing and threw it in [the room] and they walked down the stairs and then... it blew up.
‘‘And then in the morning when I heard on the news [about Ms Foreman’s death] I told BJ and BJ was nearly in tears ’cause he said to me ‘this was not supposed to happen, I was only supposed to scare her... it wasn’t supposed to kill her’.’’
When asked why she’d lied to police, Proud said: ‘‘I just don’t want to get my partner and my friend in trouble. I’m no dog, I don’t bring my friends undone.’’
The trial continues.