An accused getaway driver for a hitman who shot dead a grandmother at her front door complained to police it wasn't fair when they charged him with murder.
“It doesn’t sit with me, this murder business,” Stephen Garland, 65, said after his arrest.
The police record of interview from December 15, 2021, was played to a Newcastle Supreme Court jury on Wednesday during Garland’s murder trial.
When told he was being charged with murder and an alternative charge of being an accessory after the fact to murder, Garland told detectives: “That’s not fair”.
Garland claimed he was being set up and had no idea the man he drove to Stockton was going to murder grandmother Stacey Klimovitch.
Mrs Klimovitch, 61, was pronounced dead at the scene at 8.57pm on June 9, 2021, after having suffered a single gunshot wound to the chest when answering a knock at her front door.
Prosecutor Brett Hatfield said during his opening address to the jury that Mrs Klimovitch’s daughter’s ex-partner Stuart Campbell had recruited the hitman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, and Garland to participate in a joint criminal enterprise to murder the grandmother.
Campbell had been in a dysfunctional relationship with Alexandra Klimovitch and was ultimately excluded from his son’s birth in March 2021 and not named as the father on the child’s birth certificate.
The prosecutor said Campbell’s motive for having Mrs Klimovitch murdered was because of the “significant animosity” he had developed towards Alexandra’s mother.
Defence barrister Tom Hughes told the jury Garland did not know the hitman was planning to kill Mrs Klimovitch when he drove him to Stockton.
Mr Hughes said Campbell had asked Garland to give the hitman a lift as a favour for helping him to arrange some rental accommodation.
He said Garland had been “duped” by Campbell to be the driver and did not know he was being dragged into a plan to murder Mrs Klimovitch.
Garland claimed he had been “absolutely f***ing shocked” when he found out the next day Mrs Klimovitch had been shot dead.
“I did not f***ing know that was happening, I wasn’t part of any f***ing plans. Had I have known I would have told them to get f***ed. I wouldn’t have done that, especially a lady, a grandmother. I did this f***er a favour and he did that to me,” Garland told police.
In an agreed set of facts tendered to the court, Mr Hatfield said Mrs Klimovitch had told a friend she would not let Campbell near her daughter and the baby and would “protect them at all costs”.
Mrs Klimovitch told family and friends she hated Campbell because of the influence he had on her daughter.
Campbell was later arrested and charged with murder but suicided in custody in March.
The alleged hitman will stand trial separately at a later date.
The trial involving Garland, who has pleaded not guilty to murder and the alternative charge of being an accessory after the fact to murder, continues.
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