Craig Rumsby, 56, confessed to undercover police he killed the 17-year-old because he was caught in a “ruse”, his barrister Nicholas Broadbent told a NSW Supreme Court jury.
Mr Broadbent argued his admissions could not be trusted because he was induced to give them by the prospect of financial and social reward.
Parallel to the covert police operation, Rumsby was entangled in a romance scam, in which he believed he was in a relationship with an American woman who promised to come to Australia and buy the pair a house.
“This tells you a lot about Mr Rumsby,” Mr Broadbent said at Dubbo Courthouse on Wednesday.
“About his vulnerability to manipulation. His ability to accept the farfetched when he perceives a benefit. His unsophistication. His inability to consider risk versus reward.”
The jury heard Rumsby’s vulnerability was heightened as he had little in the way of familial or social support and was struggling financially.
Rumsby is accused of murdering Ms Bright after she left a friend’s 15th birthday party in Gulgong, central west NSW in the early hours of February 27, 1999.
He is also charged with an assault on another 18-year-old woman after she left a New Year’s Eve party on January 1, 1998. He is alleged to have choked her with the intent of raping her.
He has pleaded not guilty to both charges.
Mr Broadbent questioned the reliability of the alleged assault victim’s evidence given to court, saying it differed from statements and photographic record taken on the day of her attack.
In the contemporaneous records, there is no mention of blood on the woman’s face or that the assailant removed her underwear – evidence that she gave to the court over 20 years later.
The jury heard earlier in the trial the woman, who cannot be named, did not press charges against Rumsby and retracted a statement she made at the time as she feared going to court and having her character discredited.
Crown prosecutor Lee Carr SC on Tuesday argued Rumsby’s admissions to undercover police prove his guilt in both offences beyond reasonable doubt.
“The accused had a particular state of mind, that being a sexual interest in females, including strangers, in their late teens,” he said.
“He had a tendency to act on that state of mind by committing sexual violence on them opportunistically.”
The similarity of both offences – in terms of the time, location and manner of the attacks – would make it “extraordinary in the extreme” if they were by sheer coincidence committed by different assailants, he said.
The trial continues.
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