A witness has told the Port Augusta Supreme Court Kane Rodney Jonathon Allen said “he wanted to hang himself” the night before his wife Melissa Michelle Allen was found dead.
Mr Allen, 30, is alleged to have killed 25-year-old Ms Allen in July 2008, before faking her suicide.
Over the past week a court has heard from the friends, relatives and neighbours of the former couple.
An acquaintance of Ms Allen, Viki Bratt, told the court last Wednesday she spoke to an intoxicated Kane Allen at the bar of the Central Augusta Football Club the evening before Ms Allen’s death.
“He just said Mel’s leaving me, I can’t live with out her and I just said maybe it’s time to let her go.
“He said he wanted to hang himself.”
On Monday the jury visited the Osborne Street marital home of Kane and Melissa Allen.
They inspected a shed on the property where Ms Allen’s body was discovered and prosecutors pointed out a number of landmarks in the area, including a backyard from where a neighbour, Pauline Dennis, said she heard a “bloodcurdling” scream.
Ms Dennis told the court the sound she heard as she hung out sheets on the afternoon Ms Allen died was loud and forceful.
“It was almost a cry, like I would say that someone was in stress, in trouble.”
She said that as she gripped onto her clothesline, she then heard a man’s voice say expletives and a dog whingeing - before all went silent.
“It was very, very quiet, not even a bird,” she said.
In opening the crown case on Tuesday last week, prosecutor Brain Nitschke alleged the young couple’s marriage had deteriorated in the lead up to Ms Allen’s death.
Ms Allen’s younger brother, Marcus Koch, told the court that the Allens were then living in separate homes.
He said, on the night before his sister’s death, he overheard her telling Mr Allen she was ending the relationship.
“He asked if he could talk to her and she said no, it’s three o’clock in the morning.
“She said it was over between them.”
Mr Allen’s brother, Ashleigh Allen, also took the stand last week.
He lived adjacent to Ms Allen’s Osborne Street home and described the afternoon his sister-in-law died.
He told the court he was sitting at his kitchen table when he saw Kane Allen, who that day had been painting the couple’s home, leave the property and walk down Osborne Street towards the Port Augusta Hospital.
Soon after his return one hour later Ashleigh Allen said he watched his brother run up the home’s driveway calling for help.
“I met him at the front door ... all he said was that something’s happened to Mel,” he said.
Ashleigh Allen told the court he could not find a pulse on Ms Allen, so started mouth-to-mouth while another person conducted compressions on her chest.
He said Kane Allen was “shaking” and that he held Ms Allen’s hand until the ambulance arrived.
Last week the court heard from friends and family who said they noticed changes in Ms Allen’s behaviour in the months before her death.
Her colleague at Community CPS Port Augusta, Sarah Mayhew, said she would cry in her office or in the tearoom and sometimes leave work early.
But she said in the final two weeks of her life Melissa had appeared much happier.
A local doctor, Ashley Thomas, who treated Ms Allen in the final months of her life, told the court on Friday he saw nothing to believe Ms Allen was depressed during her final consultation.
“Never, ever ... in fact, the reverse, she was a chirpy person,” he said.
Yesterday the jury viewed pictures of Ms Allen’s body and heard evidence from a policewoman who visited the alleged crime scene.
The trial is continuing.
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