Bruce Saunders murder trial Woman had premonition before chipper death

Weeks before Bruce Saunders was found in a woodchipper, Sharon Graham had a premonition about a terrible accident, a court has heard.

Graham is accused of asking Roser and another man, Peter Koenig, to kill Saunders and make it look like an accident to claim her ex-partner’s $750,000 life insurance policy.

Ex-partner Barry Collins said Graham spoke about a premonition “three or so weeks” before he first heard about Saunders’ death on the news.

“She said, ‘I have had a premonition, there is going to be a terrible accident that someone is going to get hurt’,” he told the Brisbane Supreme Court.

When pressed on what Graham said about the premonition, Collins said: “They are going to be clearing a block, clearing some land and there is going to be an accident and someone is going to get hurt.”

The jury has earlier been shown police video and pictures of Saunders’ legs protruding from a woodchipper at the Goomboorian property near Gympie after he had been clearing trees with Roser and Koenig.

Weeks after the death, Collins said Graham had a conversation about what had happened to Saunders.

He said Graham didn’t go into detail but told him it was an accident.

Graham has been accused of being in a “love quadrangle” with Roser, Koenig and Saunders, plotting the latter’s murder for months.

Collins said Koenig had been a long-term employee for his transport business.

During their de facto relationship, Collins moved from South Australia to Queensland with Graham and Koenig had come with them, living on the same property as the couple.

He described Koenig’s relationship with Graham as “very close”.

Before relocating to Queensland, Collins said he had found a handgun that he had forgotten he had owned and gave it to Koenig but “never seen it again”.

The court heard a “very stressed” Roser visited a fellow resident at a caravan park north of Brisbane in July 2017 and told her that his girlfriend wanted him to shoot and kill her partner.

Joan Balfour said caravan park neighbour Roser told her that he had obtained the small handgun from his girlfriend’s “friend”.

Balfour said she had never met the girlfriend or knew her name but had seen the blonde woman visit Roser at the caravan park.

“He told me his girlfriend wanted to get rid of her partner at the time,” she told the court.

“She wanted Greg to shoot her partner … I advised him not to do that obviously.”

Balfour said Roser revealed the gun was in the boot of his car when they met for lunch the next day.

She said Roser had also told her that the girlfriend had provided an address and times to lay in wait to shoot the partner.

“He told me the last time he saw his girlfriend she sent him to her friend’s house and this friend gave him a gun,” Balfour said.

“I asked ‘what sort of idiot gives someone a gun?’, and he said that the guy who gave him the gun was in love with his girlfriend but nothing had ever happened.

“I just said … ‘don’t do it, it’s stupid’. Before we had finished the conversation he agreed with me that it was stupid and he wasn’t going to do it.”

The trial before Justice Martin Burns continues.