NSW: 'Battered wife' admits hacking up husband's body with axe
By Katelyn John23 Mar 2009 5:21 PM
SYDNEY, March 23 AAP - A Sydney woman who used an axe to hack up her husband's body lived in fear of her "oppressive and dangerous" partner, her lawyer has told the NSW Supreme Court.
The torso, legs and one arm of 47-year-old Revesby man Wayne Robert Chant were found dumped in three separate NSW locations more than 16 years ago.
His wife, Joyce Mary Chant, 57, has pleaded not guilty to his shooting murder, but guilty to a charge of improper interference with human remains.
Crown prosecutor Mark Hobart SC told jurors at her trial that Chant killed her husband some time between the beginning of August 1992 and October 6 the same year when the first of his body parts were found.
"The crown alleges that the accused shot the deceased at their home in Revesby. She then took the body into the backyard and dismembered it," Mr Hobart said.
"She cut off the legs and the arms and the hands, and the headless, armless, legless torso was then disposed of."
The body parts were kept in freezers at the Chant home before being hidden at various sites around the state, he said.
"The hands, we believe, and the crown will allege, she put in a container, filled it with cement and then put it in a builder's bin in Menai," he said.
"A truck driver, Raymond Jones, found a dismembered human torso wrapped in a sheet at a truck stop ... near Kiama."
When surveyor Huo Sat (Stephen) Sii found a leg on the foreshore of the Georges River, still wearing a striped sock, he thought he had found part of a mannequin.
Another leg and a left arm were discovered nearby.
The only part that Chant held onto was her husband's head, which she placed in an esky filled with cement and hid under an aviary in their backyard, he said.
Later her son Jamie Chant, who was in juvenile detention at the time of the killing, helped her dispose of it.
The son would later tell police he was "horrified, sickened and scared" when he discovered what his mother had done, but didn't come forward because "he feared the same thing would happen to him".
Chant was charged with her husband's murder in 2007 when new advances in DNA technology allowed for the identification of her husband's body.
She pleaded guilty three weeks ago to getting rid of his body, but her lawyer told the court the actual killing had been an accident.
"It's a sad thing that any person loses his life, but if the loss of his life is caused by a genuine accident over a struggle for a gun that the accused did not produce ... then this woman is not guilty of anything," barrister John Spencer told the jury.
"Certainly she was frightened, terrified, there was a loaded gun and she pulled the trigger - does that amount to murder?
"Our case is (it was an) accident - but certainly self-defence and certainly provocation (were factors too)."
The struggle over Mr Chant's loaded gun was indicative of the violent nature of the couple's relationship, he said.
"This woman suffered at the hands of this man for many years in a variety of ways," Mr Spencer told the jury.
"You have heard of the expression battered wife? It is a matter for you what you make of it in this case.
"She was bashed over many years ... and lived in fear of her oppressive and dangerous husband."
The trial continues before Justice Roderick Howie.
