NSW: Chant admits to chopping up husband's body
23 Mar 2009 2:15 PM
SYDNEY, March 23 AAP - A Sydney woman admitted to hacking up her husband's body before disposing of it at various locations around NSW, a court has been told.
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 a jury in the NSW Supreme Court on Monday, that Chant killed her husband some time between the beginning of August 1992 and October 6 that same year when the first of his body parts were discovered.
"The crown alleges that the accused shot the deceased at their home in Revesby. She then took the body into the back yard 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 off."
The body parts were kept in freezers in the Chant's home before being hidden at various sites around the state, he said.
Chant put her husband's head in an esky filled with cement and hid it under the bird aviary of their back yard, 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."
The left arm and two legs - still wearing striped socks - were found as they washed up onto the foreshore of the Georges River, he said.
Chant's barrister John Spencer indicated his client had acted in self-defence.
Justice Roderick Howie told the jury it should go and take a break "if you can still eat" before the crown finishes its opening address later on Monday.
