Benjamin Wayne Holcroft has pleaded not guilty to the murder of local larrikin Danny Ralph in early 2008. Holcroft's mother, Kodie Beaudean, denies being an accessory after the fact.

The NSW Supreme Court, sitting in the Queanbeyan courts complex, was told by prosecutors yesterday that the son murdered the 46-year-old handyman and the mother helped Holcroft to try to avoid detection months after the killing.

Barrister Peter Barnett SC opened the case for the prosecution, telling the jury of six men and six women that Mr Ralph was killed early in the morning of March 30, 2008, after enjoying a boozy night at one of the town's pubs. His body was dumped into the Queanbeyan River.

Mr Barnett told the court that Mr Ralph's battered body was recovered from the river, just under the town's suspension bridge, by police divers the following day.

The barrister said that a post-mortem concluded that the father-of-five had died from multiple injuries sustained in an assault and that at one point during the alleged attack, he had probably been lying on the deck of the bridge sustaining blows to the head even after his head wounds were bleeding heavily.

It is the Crown's case that Mr Ralph was murdered by Holcroft, beaten to death on the footbridge as the older man made his way home across the river to his Booth Street unit.

For more on this story, see the print edition of today's Canberra Times.