A lawyer allegedly tried to wipe CCTV footage linking her husband to a murder, after the pair exchanged frantic and emotional text messages.
In May 2019, Sydney solicitor Alev Rojda Oncu was looking forward to taking time off work when her husband Ali Cevik was arrested and charged with murder.
“We have just over a month to our holiday. Don’t do anything stupid,” she texted him hours before he and three others committed the heinous crime.
Cevik pleaded guilty to the murder.
Thirty-two-year-old Oncu is on trial in Parramatta District Court accused of attempting to destroy recordings from cameras at her Blacktown home on May 28, 2019 to pervert the course of justice or, alternatively, to mislead a judicial tribunal.
"She knew what was on the footage, she attempted to destroy it, she knew that Ali Cevik had been arrested for murder," crown prosecutor Philip Hogan told a jury last week.
Details of the proceedings were made public on Tuesday, however details about the murder remain subject to a court order.
The jury was played phone calls with Oncu, recorded by police before the murder, showing Cevik in an emotional state and swearing at his wife.
“Don't go anywhere tonight. You’re really heavily drugged out Ali. Come home and do whatever it is when you sober up,” Oncu texted her husband.
“If you don't do it for yourself, do it for me.”
As Cevik was languishing in a cell at St Mary's Police Station after his arrest, Oncu did not know where he was. She texted that she was scared and missed him.
"I love you. Please come home," she said.
From the police station, Cevik was allowed to ring his lawyer.
After a visit in Blacktown from the lawyer where Oncu listened to her husband over speakerphone, she went underneath the main house to where the CCTV equipment was kept, first with a laundry basket and then with two others carrying a black bag, the jury heard.
On the evening of May 28, she called technician Salar Norouzi and allegedly asked him how to format the CCTV hard drive.
"He showed her that the hard drive was full and that if she pushed the reformat button, it would be empty," Mr Hogan said.
"She then pushed the reformat button, emptied the hard drive."
When police reviewed the footage later on, they found everything from before Mr Norouzi's visit had been erased.
Oncu allegedly told attending officers that the CCTV cameras didn't record.
"The Crown says she was lying when she said that," Mr Hogan said.
In August 2022, police were able to retrieve the missing footage using updated software.
Oncu's barrister Mike Smith said she had no involvement in the murder and denied she asked Mr Norouzi to wipe the hard drive.
“The suggestion that the accused directed, told or requested Mr Norouzi to delete any footage is denied in the strongest possible terms. It did not happen," he said.
Mr Smith asked the jury to carefully review the CCTV footage, saying it did not necessarily show the Crown's versions of events.
The four men involved in the murder, including Cevik, either pleaded guilty or were found by a jury to be guilty. A fifth man pleaded guilty to being an accessory.
The trial with Judge Mark Buscombe continues.
