Clayton Weatherston had problems with other staff members at Otago University and was abusive to the woman he is accused of murdering, says a senior university lecturer.
In the three-week trial in the High Court at Christchurch before Justice Judith Potter and a jury, William Alexander, the senior lecturer of the economics department at the University of Otago, said Weatherston clearly regarded himself very highly as an intellectual.
But he had bad relationships with other members of the department and had accused them of plagiarism, the Christchurch Court News website reported.
The Crown says Weatherston murdered Sophie Elliott, 22, by stabbing or cutting her 216 times in an attack at her Dunedin home on January 9, 2008.
Weatherston, 33, her former boyfriend and university tutor, has pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to her manslaughter.
Dr Alexander met Miss Elliott regularly as he was supervising her dissertation.
Miss Elliott told him Weatherston said upsetting things to her, that she was stupid, fat and ugly.
She also told him how awful it was to be put down in Weatherston's class and how when a stairway assault at the university took place, she said Weatherston told her that he wished her dead.
Weatherston said he wished she was dead because she had ruined his chances of a job at the university, Dr Alexander recalled.
However, Dr Alexander also told Weatherston himself that he was unlikely to get a university position whether or not he was in a relationship with a student.
Dr Alexander said he met Miss Elliott on January 8, 2008, in his office, the day before her death. He said she was upbeat, lively and looking forward to going to Wellington in a few days for a new job, he said.
Dr Alexander said they discussed going to the police but she didn't want to because she was leaving Dunedin anyway.
"I regret not having insisted that she go to the police," he said.
Weatherston's defence counsel, Greg King, accused Dr Alexander of having an intense dislike for Weatherston.
Dr Alexander agreed that Weatherston was obsessive, driven and very interested in achieving high grades.
In a diary entry for March 5, 2007, Miss Elliott described having a crush on Dr Alexander.
"That would surprise me," said Dr Alexander.
