A teenager who unknowingly sat playing video games metres away from where Paula Conlon was murdered has agreed his chances of hearing someone else enter the house on the night were negligible.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The then high school student was in his room playing the online game League of Legends with friends the night Ms Conlon was stabbed to death in her home in Macgregor in March 2012.
He was boarding with Ms Conlon, a family friend, and his room was just metres from where the mother-of-three was killed.
He told police the night after the murder of hearing a loud, shrill scream, which he said was a woman's, followed by "no'' said three times.
The teenager told officers he was "quite certain" that only he, Ms Conlon, and her boyfriend Aleksander Vojneski, 31, were in the house that night.
He left the house in a rush for school the next morning, not knowing Ms Conlon lay dead in her room.
Mr Vojneski, an ice user with a history of mental illness, is on trial for the murder. His barrister, Jack Pappas, cross-examined the witness on Wednesday.
The teenager had been wearing a set of in-ear earbuds playing sounds from his computer, as well as a set of headphones playing music, which he wore over the top of the earbuds.
Mr Pappas asked him whether that made the chance of him hearing someone coming through the front door on the night of the murder "negligible".
"Correct," the witness responded.
The Crown has alleged Ms Conlon was killed about 10.10pm and have used evidence of the teenager's video game playing to help place a time on her scream.
Mr Pappas quizzed the teenager about those times on Wednesday, asking him about the sequence of different breaks between games.
He put it to the witness that it was later, about 11.20pm, that he heard the scream. The teenager, under re-examination by prosecutor Shane Drumgold, said he thought it was heard during a game between 9.45pm and 10.25pm.
The teenager was also questioned about a phone call he saw Ms Conlon receive in 2011.
He said she had been happy and laughing at the time, but as soon as she got the call was upset and made a "yelp" sound.
The witness agreed Ms Conlon had been very distressed from the time of the call.
He agreed he'd seen her receive another upsetting call in March 2012.
Mr Pappas also asked about Ms Conlon's regime of always locking up the house when someone was inside and only unlocking the back door if the children were outside.
The teenager said he was never told why that was done, and never asked.
The witness agreed that Ms Conlon and Mr Vojneski had seemed perfectly normal and relatively happy together, that her two youngest children had liked Mr Vojneski and that he'd never heard the couple argue.
The trial continues on Thursday before Justice John Burns.
