Stephen Stockwell

One of the questions we had from Catherine sent into the case of at abc.net.au was around the way this trial was kind of run.

We had four defendants in court.

We had Mark Murphy and Cherie Glastonbury accused of murdering Geoffrey McLean, along with

a few other offences as well, and Lynette Sexton and Peter Murphy accused of assisting an offender, allegedly helping Mark Murphy and Cherie Glastonbury in the murder and the movement of Geoffrey McLean's body following his death.

Catherine was wondering, did the defendants decide to go to trial together or was that something that was decided by the courts?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I've thought a lot about the way this trial was run in this way.

I mean, four defendants seems like so many people.

And even just from the prosecution opening, the story the prosecution was telling went for so long.

It was a story that started in 2022, right?

And then it was one that ran all the way through until early 2023.

And so, you know, we were going to be hearing evidence from that whole period relating to four different defendants, which is why the trial was going to go for so long.

But the thing I was wondering about is like, look, is that the right decision?

But again, if you sever these trials, if they don't run at the same time, how do you tell this story?

How do you look at explaining what has allegedly happened to Jeffrey McLean throughout this period and the way that Sheree Glastonbury and Mark Murphy and Peter Murphy and Lynette Sexton have behaved through that time in a way that relates to everyone because it's all so intertwined.

You know, if you're a prosecution team, I can see the kind of the draw of having that all together because it's so much easier to tell that story now

when those four people are in the room to one jury, as opposed to breaking them apart and having to try and do them in bits.

There's a question, Eva, that we've had a whole bunch of times sent to the KSOV inbox.

And it's not something we could answer because the jury hadn't heard about it.

But I really do want to ask you this question that's been sent.