A Mangerton public housing resident has told how he was forcibly detained for the night by a neighbour who allegedly went on to murder his flatmate.
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Serbian-born Dusan Vukadinovic lived at his Crana Place unit for 12 years before he abruptly moved into emergency housing, leaving behind his on-off housemate, the couch-surfing Mark Dower.
On April 16, 2015, a tip-off led police to discover Mr Dower’s decomposing body inside a surfboard bag in the shared laundry of the Crana Place complex.
The Crown alleges Mark Kenneth Jenkin, 46, murdered 56-year-old Mr Dower as part of a prolonged pattern of strong-arming residents for money.
At Jenkin’s Supreme Court trial on Thursday, Mr Vukadinovic said Jenkin “stood on top of me” in order to obtain a key to his home, and used one of his bedrooms as a storage space for a large amount of goods including speakers, computers and surfboards.
He recalled Jenkin once detained him at his home from 10pm to 5am.
“He locked me up all night, abusing me, hitting me … treating me like a piece of sh-t,” he said. “I was scared for my life.”
Mr Vukadinovic said he took to visiting a nearby park each morning from as early as 4.30am, in order to avoid Jenkin “coming and abusing me”.
The court heard Jenkin would sometimes accompany Mr Vukadinovic to the ATM and used his money to buy cigarettes. In February 2015, Jenkin obtained his pin number, stole his pin card and stole $470 from his account, he said.
Mr Vukadinovic was placed in emergency housing after his sister reported Jenkin to police, and Housing NSW told him “I’m not safe any more”.
“The reason you moved out of your unit after 12 years was why?” the Crown asked on Thursday.
“If I didn’t move that day he [was] gonna kill me,” Mr Vukadinovic said.
He gave evidence he saw Jenkin repeatedly assault Mr Dower by slapping him and kicking him in the back.
“I seen him so many times being slapped, hit in the face by Mark Jenkin,” he said. “Every day or every second day.”
In court, Jenkin laughed disbelievingly at this.
Tony Hardy, a friend of Mr Dower’s since high school, said he had seen bruises around his eyes and cheeks the weekend of March 14-15, 2015.
Mr Dower told him “some guy bashed me”, adding the man lived in the unit above where he was staying, and that the man’s home was full of stolen property.
Mr Dower allegedly said he’d given the man $2000 and “that person threatened to kill him if he didn’t give him any money, and that person had asked Mark to supply him with his bank statements”.
“He said, no, I’m not going to the police. If I do, this person’s going to kill me’,” Mr Hardy said.
The Australian-born Mr Dower once worked as a teacher in Finland and was the recipient of pensions from both countries.The Crown alleges made him a target for Jenkin.
Jenkin’s alleged motive was the recovery of $1690 taken from him by police a month earlier; he wanted Mr Dower to tell officers the cash had been legitimately obtained and should be returned to Jenkin.
Mr Hardy said his friend began couch surfing at Crana Place after an incident between his housemate and landlord led to his being evicted from his Staff Street, Wollongong unit.
“It had a devastating effect on him. His mental state had deteriorated substantially and he was drinking substantially,” Mr Hardy said.
He recalled he later ran into Mr Dower at a Gwynneville bus stop and, mindful of his earlier bruises, told him “stay in [Mr Vukadinovic’s] unit and don’t associate with any other person”.
“It was only a two-minute meeting. My father was ill and I had to get back to him. That’s the last occasion I ever saw my friend Mark Dower.”
Another friend, Jodie Pike, said he let Mr Dower use his Crana Place unit for a couple of years, rent-free, as he mostly stayed with his partner in the nearby Myuna Way public housing complex.
He said Jenkin once brandished a taser in one hand and a baton with a chain and a lock attached in the other, in order to force him out of his home and into Jenkin’s nearby unit, where he agitated for money. Mr Pike found Mr Dower already inside the unit, looking stressed.
“I said, We’ve got to go Mark, we’ve got to get out of here – something’s going to happen.”
“Somehow I got out through the door. I can’t even remember how I got out.”
Mr Pike said Mr Dower wouldn’t follow him, and the next time he saw him, he was “worried about a lot of things … worried about how his life was going” and disclosed “he’d been getting hit”.
He told the court he once saw a bruise on Mr Dower’s side, stretching from his stomach to just underneath his armpit.
He gave evidence Mr Dower could consume two or three casks of wine in a day and “always” had bruises and scratches on his body.
“He had no balance – the alcohol used to take all his balance away.”
Mr Dower told him he was in poor health, and that doctors had warned him 90 per cent of his liver “was gone” and he needed to cut back on alcohol. He smoked 50-100 cigarettes a day, plus “bumpers” he found on the ground, Mr Pike claimed.
Under cross examination, Mr Pike admitted he slapped Mr Dower “only because he slapped me. “We used to muck around, that’s all. It was nothing serious”.
He admitted his memory was so bad he couldn’t recall having given evidence at a committal hearing on April 27 last year.
Another friend, Mark Spicer, recalled he and Mr Dower falling silent when Jenkin once came calling at his home.
“Mark was scared of him and I was scared of him” he said.
“Those [were his] exact words – ‘I’m scared for my life’.”
The trial continues before Justice Peter Hamill.