Updated ,first published
Prosecutors allege money and a bitter separation drove a jilted husband to kill his wife and the mother of his children 40 years ago, with the trial over the suspected murder of Sharon Fulton beginning in WA’s Supreme Court this week.
Raymond Reddington, previously known as Robert Fulton and Maxwell Fulton, has been charged with the murder of his then 39-year-old wife in 1986, after cold case detectives re-opened the case into her disappearance following a Coroner’s Court verdict that she likely met with foul play.
The 79-year-old showed no emotion on Wednesday as prosecutor Ben Stanwix opened his case to the jury with allegations that Reddington killed Fulton in their Duncraig home after he discovered she would be getting the lion’s share of their assets, their home and their children in a pending divorce settlement.
Stanwix told the jury a series of lies made by Reddington would be proven by the state over the course of the three-week trial, which included a letter sent to WA Coroner Sarah Linton in 2021 ahead of Fulton’s coronial inquest.
The letter, which was allegedly found to contain DNA matching Reddington’s, purported to be from the husband of a friend of Fulton’s and claimed he had “got her pregnant and that he killed her and then hid her under a concrete patio”.
Stanwix told the jury this was a complete fabrication and an attempt by Reddington to take the heat off himself, as were attempts by him to feign having dementia during a 2017 police interview.
The prosecutor claimed Reddington had become privy to the fact that Fulton had consulted a solicitor in the months leading up to her disappearance and filed for divorce before being advised she would likely be awarded their four-bedroom Duncraig home, their Queensland investment properties, spousal maintenance payments and custody of their four children as part of the settlement.
Stanwix told the jury that Reddington “most likely” attacked Fulton in their home on March 18, 1986 and that “either on that day or in the days following, disposed of her body in a way that meant it has never been found”.
He reported her missing three days later and gave police numerous differing accounts of her last known movements, Stanwix said.
Fulton’s body has never been found, and her disappearance has been the subject of two police investigations – one in 2007 and another in 2017 – as well as the coroner’s inquest in 2022.
Despite extensive inquiries by police and family and comprehensive media coverage, there has been no information regarding her whereabouts since her disappearance.
At the time of her death, Fulton’s children were aged 15, 10, seven and three.
Stanwix said his evidence to the jury would include witnesses who were involved in the capture of serial killers David and Catherine Birnie and Terrence Fisher, who died in 2000 but is a person of interest in multiple murders of women that occurred around the time of Fulton’s disappearance.
One of the officers who will give evidence in Reddington’s trial was the person who interviewed notorious child killer David Birnie, and was in the room when he confessed.
Reddington denies the allegations and his lawyer Jonathan Davies told the jury on Wednesday that the trial was the result of “what happens when family suspicion turns into certainty before proof”.
“No body, no confession, no proof,” Davies said.
“The prosecution has put forward a story of a husband, a troubled marriage, and a murder, but the law doesn’t convict on stories, it convicts on proof and in this case, it is only circumstance.
“There is no body, no confession, no weapon, no crime scene or any other evidence linking the accused person to any violence and there was no witness that saw any killing.”
Davies said the jury was being asked to infer evidence from 40 years ago and suggested the police were operating from the viewpoint of confirmation bias, claiming they had looked for evidence to back up the rumour that Reddington had killed his wife.
“We do not suggest she ran away, we do not suggest she abandoned her children, but we expect the evidence will show that in March 1986 she had a documented history of depression, expressed self harm … had mounting pressures and was in an acute crisis in the days before she was last seen and stated her intention to take a few days away – she had done that before when things had got too much,” Davies said.
“We say she left voluntarily – she intended to take a short break away, not to disappear. What happened to her after that remains unknown.”
The first witness to give evidence in the trial was Fulton and Reddington’s youngest son Heath, who testified that he spent more than an hour talking to his father in 2017 while wearing a hidden recording device in a bid to help police with their investigation.
The trial continues.
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