The woman found dead at the foot of a staircase outside a Red Hill home told a friend that members of her family wanted to kill her, a jury heard Wednesday.
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Katherine Panin, 81, died on October 12, 2015, but at first her death was deemed not suspicious.
It wasn’t until later that police launched an investigation and charged her daughter-in-law Melissa Beowulf 61, and her two grandsons Thorsten, 32, and Bjorn Beowulf, 31, with murder.
The three are accused of having an agreement to murder Mrs Panin.
The Crown contends that on the day she died Mrs Panin had been struck to the head and either left to die, or smothered, before the trio agreed to stage the scene of a fall down the stairs.
The defence says it was just that, a fall, and all three have pleaded not guilty to murder.
On Wednesday, a close friend of Mrs Panin, Robijn Alexanda, was the first witness called to give evidence.
She described her friend as an eye catching person with good posture, whose presence would cause people on the street to turn their heads.
Mrs Panin spoke several languages, wore second hand clothes, jewellery, make up and her hair in an elaborate chignon, the court heard.
Ms Alexanda said that after Mrs Panin moved to Canberra to live with her son Thorhammer and his wife Mrs Beowulf, they rekindled their friendship through a chance meeting at the doctor’s office.
She said that Mrs Panin told her, “I am afraid of Melissa, I think Melissa wants to get rid of me,” Ms Alexanda said. She said Mrs Panin told her she was not allowed to speak to friends.
"I'm scared, I think they want to kill me,' Ms Alexanda said Mrs Panin told her.
She recounted a conversation with Mrs Panin in which the woman said Mrs Beowulf had hit her.
And Mrs Panin had told her that no-one told her when her son had died.
They had talked in the past about her late husband’s successful small good business, and also how her son had once burned through $200,000 in one year.
Earlier Wednesday, Thorsten Beowulf’s defence barrister Ken Archer addressed the jury, saying that while Mrs Panin was a flamboyant woman who loved being social, to her family she was a different person.
He said after her grandchildren were born she denied their existence, because to acknowledge them would be to admit she was old.
She was difficult to live with and narcissistic, he told the jury.
He told the jury they would not be left at the end of the trial with the impression that Mrs Panin's family held a gregarious love for her, but rather a practical utilitarian regard.
"You wouldn't say she loved, but she was cared for," he said.
He said the whole family had agreed she needed to move out of the Red Hill home and into the retirement unit and it was Mrs Beowulf who organised it.
He said the jury would have to ask themselves whether or not what they heard Mrs Panin was said to have told people was reliable and what weight they could put on it.
Mr Archer also said the Crown's allegation the accused were motivated by financial gain was empty.
The meeting Mrs Panin was arranging with her solicitor on the day she died was not about changing her will, he said.
But even if it was, any change would directly benefit the two boys.
“Because they stood to gain and not to lose," Mr Archer said, by becoming direct beneficiaries in the will rather than through their mother.
Mr Archer also challenged the Crown's allegation about Mrs Panin's blood on the rug, and that contention that the rug was missing on the day authorities arrived.
The Crown alleges Mrs Panin bled on the red kilim rug and that the three accused removed it before authorities arrived on the day she died.
It's alleged they hid the rug in a storage unit before having it dry cleaned.
Mr Archer said it was complete fantasy that the rug wasn't there when authorities arrived.
The trial continues.
