A man accused of murdering Mangerton pensioner Mark Dower has professed his innocence, telling a Supreme Court judge he was “emotionally attached” to Mr Dower and – far from causing his injuries – had protected him from multiple aggressors.
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For the first time since his trial began a month ago, Mark Kenneth Jenkin moved from the dock to the witness stand on Wednesday.
He countered the testimony of a long line of Crown witnesses who painted him as a violent standover man who repeatedly assaulted and detained Mr Dower in order to take his money.
Jenkin stands accused of murdering 56-year-old Mr Dower, a one-time English language teacher whose battered remains were found inside a surfboard bag stashed within a laundry at the Crana Place complex on April 16, 2015.
A video filmed March 22, 2015 and tendered to the court in earlier evidence allegedly shows Jenkin angrily berating an injured and semi-lucid Mr Dower in the bathroom of Jenkin's nearby unit.
In court on Wednesday Jenkin said he had found Mr Dower bruised and battered, staying at a neighbour's unit earlier that day.
He said he offered Dower use of his spare bedroom because he believed the neighbour was responsible for his friend’s injuries.
"Listen Marky, you don't have to stay and put up with that,” he told Dower, according to his evidence on Wednesday.
“Did you force him to go with you?" asked Jenkin’s defence barrister, Peter Lowe.
"No, not at all. I gave him a choice. I'm not going to leave him there."
Dower disclosed the neighbour had "flogged" him in the past, when Jenkin wasn't there to protect him, Jenkin claims. He said another man told him the neighbour had been "bashing (Dower) for days" and had "jumped on his head".
He described finding Mr Dower lying facedown on his lounge, having lost control of his bowels later that day and said he became angry at him because he believed he was in a state of extreme intoxication and had lied about having only had half a cask of wine. "He usually has 2-3 [casks] a day,” he said.
He said he then filmed the bathroom footage with the intention of later showing Mr Dower the extent of his intoxication.
He told the court Dower was "wobbly" the next day and his eyes were pointing in different directions "like a chameleon lizard".
He said Dower unexpectedly collapsed and hit his head heavily at his unit in view of at least other visitors that night, and he was surprised he didn’t lose consciousness.
"His head came back up and then back down again ... I was shocked ... I was expecting him to be knocked out (but) he said ... 'I've fallen I've fallen'. I said, 'I can see that, you silly duffa'."
"In shock, I went and picked him up underneath his armpits and started to drag him ... into the hallway.
“I said, 'I'm going to call the ambulance and take you to hospital mate'.
Jenkin adopted a feeble voice to mimic Dower's alleged response: "Don't take me to hospital. I'll be right in a couple of days - please Mark, please Mark.”
He said Mr Dower had once told him he had endured a prolonged stay in a hospital and didn't want to return to one.
Jenkin denied an earlier witness's claim he gave the injured Dower a shot of heroin. He told the court Dower never touched class A drugs.
Jenkin tells the court he resisted a friend's advice to kick Dower out and have him sleep on the grass outside. "He doesn't realise I'm more emotionally attached to (Dower) than that. I like the bloke.”
Dower was stiff-legged and needed to hold onto things in order to stay upright and was "sometimes good and sometimes slurring" in the five or six days he spent living at his unit, Jenkin says. "What I now know is it was obviously a subdural bleed (causing his behaviour)," he said.
Elsewhere in evidence, he suggested the abnormal behaviour was due to Mr Dower “detoxing” – having gone without alcohol for several days.
He told the court Mr Dower died the night of March 27 or 28, as he was helping him out of the bath.
He said Mr Dower became stuck, with one leg in and one out of the tub. He said he went to retrieve Mr Dower's tracksuit pants from his bedroom and heard him collapse.
Wedneday’s evidence ended abruptly at this point.
In earlier testimony, Jenkin revealed he was the only one in the Crama Place complex who used the padlocked laundry, as other residents have washing machines in their units.
He also denied he once detained another resident at the complex overnight and said the man's evidence to the contrary surprised him.
"I can't believe what I heard from him ... I'm shocked ... because we got on fine."
He told the court he had never asked Mr Dower for money - "ever".
The trial resumes Thursday.