When Constable Joanne McLaughlan and other police entered Sophie's bedroom, the young woman's body was lying on top of an open suitcase on the floor, the High Court in Christchurch has heard today.
Her legs were on the floor and there was a bloodied silver knife blade between her legs and a small pair of blackhandled scissors, also bloodied, on the carpet between her legs, about the level of her knees.
The knife handle was not visible but was recovered in a bloodied condition from the lid of the suitcase after Sophie's body was removed, later that night.
One pair of scissors was missing from a scissor block in the kitchen and Const McLaughlan said she found a metal skewer on the hallway floor outside Sophie's bedroom.
There was a large quantity of blood staining on the carpet around where Sophie's body had been lying and in one corner of the bedroom.
There were hairs on the knife handle recovered from the lid of the suitcase and, when she examined the inside of the suitcase, she found a clump of hair in the bottom.
Blood was spattered on the wall of the room to the left of the door and on another wall beneath the window.
Earlier a former girlfriend of Clayton Weatherston has told how he twice attacked her and detailed how he 'trapped' her into making comments about his genitalia to which he then reacted badly.
The young woman told defence counsel Judith Ablett-Kerr QC at the High Court in Christchurch she was probably Weatherston's "bolt hole" and he could "sound off" in safe circumstances to her.
Weatherston (33), a former University of Otago economics tutor, stabbed or cut 22-year-old Sophie Elliott 216 times during an attack in her bedroom soon after noon on January 9, 2008.
He has pleaded guilty to manslaughter but denies murdering Miss Elliott.
The witness, whose identity is suppressed, was in a relationship with Weatherston for about three years until mid-2007, about the time he became involved with Miss Elliott, who was then one of his students.
To Crown counsel Mr Bates she recalled that early in the relationship, Weatherston had asked her directly to compare his genitalia with those of another person with whom she had earlier had a relationship.
"I answered grudgingly and he became upset at my answer," the witness said.
"He said to me 'I can't believe you'd tell me that, it's such an insensitive thing to say',".
"So I walked into a trap," she said.
Asked about the two different sides of Weatherston she had talked about earlier, the young woman described an incident when she had been trying to go to sleep when Weatherston was playing his guitar.
She asked him several times to stop, eventually putting her hand on the guitar and suggesting he could play somewhere else in the flat.
He put the guitar down then jumped up and down on top of her several times as she lay in bed.
"He just didn't stop. I told him 'that really hurt'," the witness said.
Weatherston's response was 'Oh well, I was just playing at wrestling".
And she told Mr Bates when she confronted Weatherston some time after an incident in which he kicked her across the room and jumped on her, the accused said to her 'It was the worst thing he'd ever done, to hurt me".
But his immediate reaction at the time of the incident had been a combination of two things - "trying to blame me and being upset about it".
On one hand he was quite upset by the way he had acted, on the other, he tried to make the inference it was her doing, the witness said.
