An Illawarra woman has told a court she saw Mark Dower’s “mottled and blackened” body in Mark Jenkin’s bathtub before he asked her to help him move the corpse, a NSW court has heard.
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Jenkin, 46, has pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Downer, 56, whose rotting body was discovered stuffed in a surfboard bag inside the laundry of a Mangerton housing commission complex in April 2015.
At Jenkin’s judge-alone trial at the NSW Supreme Court in Wollongong on Thursday, the woman, who can’t be named for legal reasons, said she went to Jenkin’s apartment one night looking for a friend who owed her money.
He wasn’t there, she said, but Jenkin told her there was a body in his bathtub.
Jenkin claimed he’d been trying to help Mr Dower – who he said had been bashed by somebody else – and he thought maybe Mr Dower had died while he was out, the witness said.
The woman wasn’t sure if Jenkin was telling the truth but eventually needed to go to the bathroom, which is when she saw Mr Dower’s body.
‘‘I went into shock and I was mortified,’’ she said.
‘‘I felt for a pulse. He was cold and his body was all mottled ... I saw bruising, blotches from the neck down. The left side of his face was blackened.’’
The woman said Jenkin refused to contact police, claiming he was worried he’d be blamed. The woman revealed she was fearful of Jenkin and remained in the apartment for a number of hours.
Jenkin taught her boxing combinations and they sparred using boxing mitts and gloves, she said. She also folded his clothes.
The woman left in the morning as Jenkin was preparing to leave himself.
The pair met two days later at the house of a mutual acquaintance and Jenkin asked her to help him move the body, the woman told the court.
She went back to his block where Jenkin - having lost his keys - climbed into his second-storey apartment and then threw down two surfboards and a surfboard bag with the body inside.
‘‘It made me feel sick and it was a horrible sound,’’ the woman told the court.
The woman then manoeuvred the surfboards so as to conceal Jenkin from the ground-level units as he carried the bag with ‘‘great difficulty’’ into a laundry and stowed it. She placed the boards on top.
Under cross-examination from defence barrister Peter Lowe, the witness accepted that while Jenkin asked her to move the body she’d also offered to help.
The woman - who was then addicted to the drug ice and admitted she didn’t have a firm recollection of the time - said she’d wanted to keep Jenkin onside.
The trial continues.
