An hour before he stabbed his ex-girlfriend Sophie Elliott to death, Clayton Weatherston was accessing her photo albums on Facebook, the High Court at Christchurch heard yesterday.
Kerry Baker, a member of the police electronic crime laboratory in Dunedin, was the last witness called by the Crown in its prosecution of 33-year-old Weatherston's trial for the murder of Miss Elliott.
Weatherston admits killing Miss Elliott, who was stabbed or cut 216 times, at her Ravensbourne home on January 9 last year, but he denies murdering her.
His trial before Justice Judith Potter and 11 jurors enters its 12th day of hearing today.
Mr Baker told the court he examined Weatherston's office computer from the University of Otago economics department and found Miss Elliott's Facebook site had been accessed and her photo albums viewed for several minutes until 11.39am on January 9.
Questions from defence counsel Judith Ablett-Kerr QC suggested Miss Elliott had been making regular visits to Weatherston's Facebook page followed by access to her former boyfriend's site.
Mr Baker agreed his analysis of Miss Elliott's Facebook logs indicated such a pattern was apparent from late December 2007 until January 7, 2008.
But he thought there appeared to be "something unusual going on here", that visits to Weatherston's page followed by visits to the other man's page might not have been a conscious action on her part.
It could be something to do with the way Miss Elliott's page operated, "maybe some sort of linkage between the two", Mr Baker said.
The distinct pattern made him think it was "some sort of automated thing going on in the background" and not necessarily Miss Elliott clicking between the sites.
"You're speculating about that," Mrs Ablett-Kerr suggested.
Mr Baker agreed but said it was "also speculation to say she's deliberately going from one [site] to the other".
To Justice Potter, the witness agreed he could not exclude the possibility there was something in the Facebook system which prompted the sequential entries as opposed to Miss Elliott prompting them herself.
It was definitely possible, he said.
He could not say there was not some internal prompt.
"If I had more time and could have done more research, I might have been able to be more definite," Mr Baker told the judge.
Evidence was read from Patrick Bain, one of the ambulance officers called to the Elliott house at 12.35pm on January 9, 2008.
Mr Bain checked Miss Elliott's carotid artery for a pulse but found none.
He then put four defibrillator leads on areas of skin already exposed.
He did not disturb any clothing.
At the close of the Crown evidence, Crown counsel Marie Grills read the jury an agreed list of facts.
The statement had been prepared so some witnesses would not be needed, Mrs Grills told the court.
She said Clayton Weatherston's defence lawyers agreed the knife used to kill Miss Elliott belonged to the accused and that he had it with him when he arrived at Miss Elliot's home shortly after noon on January 9, 2008.
The defence also agreed Weatherston's palm print was found on the blade of the knife recovered from between Sophie's thighs as she lay dead across her half-packed suitcase in her bedroom.
And they agreed his right palm print was found on the inside of Sophie's right thigh.
Also agreed was that Detective John Hedges, who took a written statement from the Crown witness Erin van de Water, did not recall her saying, either in the statement or in her deposition, that Miss Elliott had demonstrated to her the action of putting her arm across her throat while describing what Weatherston did to her the previous week at his flat.
The final agreed fact was that Weatherston was employed at Treasury between August 2002 and July 2003.
