Days after wrapping the body of Danielle Easey in a chemsuit, plastic and duct tape and concealing her in a cupboard in August 2019, Justin Kent Dilosa claims his former girlfriend Carol Marie McHenry was aggressive on a car trip to a friend's place.
"She said to me, 'I'll make sure you do 20 years for this,' when I suggested she should take responsibility for what she did," he said in the NSW Supreme Court on Tuesday.
On the return journey, he pressed the issue only to be attacked and told to walk home, the jury heard.
"I said to Carol again, 'Twenty years. You need to take responsibility for what you did,' and Carol stopped the vehicle, punched me in the eye, and told me to get out."
Both Dilosa and McHenry are on trial charged with murdering the 29-year-old Ms Easey with a knife and hammer at McHenry's Narara home on the NSW Central Coast on August 17, 2019.
They have denied being involved in the killing, each pointing the finger at the other.
Ms Easey's decomposing body was found two weeks after her death, wrapped in a chemsuit, plastic, a doona and tape in a creek near the M1 motorway at Killingworth.
Dilosa claims he was asleep in his van outside McHenry's home when the murder occurred.
Returning to the house with McHenry and a friend Jeremy Princehorn on August 18, Dilosa said he smoked ice with the two of them before single-handedly wrapping up the body.
He helped place Ms Easey's body in a kitchen cupboard, loaded the cupboard in the back of his van a few days later, and then disposed of the body near a bridge over Cockle Creek, the court heard.
"Why did you do anything with the body at all?" he was asked by his barrister Angus Webb.
"I'd had a long history with Carol. Carol had pled to me that she'd never see the kids again. I loved those children. They'd already lost their father," Dilosa replied.
Earlier on Tuesday, the jury heard that before attending the Narara home, Dilosa had doubts that there was a body at all because McHenry had previously claimed she was to blame for the death of a former partner who overdosed in 2016.
Although this was determined to be an accident or suicide, McHenry still underwent a mental health assessment by medical professionals before being discharged the following day.
The trial in front of Justice Robertson Wright continues.
Lifeline 13 11 14
14°C