NSW: Hatfield not guilty of murdering husband

AAP General News (Australia)
08-14-2000
NSW: Hatfield not guilty of murdering husband

By Gavin Lower

SYDNEY, Aug 14 AAP - Hugging her two daughters, Irena Hatfield smiled and whispered
thank you after a jury found her not guilty of murdering her husband 15 years ago.

The 51 year-old director of the Lismore Regional Art Gallery, in northern New South
Wales, sat behind her barrister, Paul Byrne, SC, and between her adult daughters for the
verdict.

She had pleaded not guilty to shooting her husband, Christopher Kevin Hatfield, 36,
four times in the right temple and once in the chest at their Maroubra home, in Sydney's
east, on April 19, 1985.

Walking free from the NSW Supreme Court after a five week trial, Mrs Hatfield said
she was pleased and relieved that her "terrible ordeal" was over.

"I'm just so pleased that 12 people have had the good sense and the intelligence to
distinguish between fact and fiction," she said.

"I should never had been subjected to this ordeal. I shouldn't have been because I'm innocent."

She refused to be drawn on her feelings for Atticus Busby, her former lover who went
to police alleging that she had confessed to him that she had killed Mr Hatfield.

Mrs Hatfield told police that she was asleep in an upstairs bedroom when Mr Hatfield,
a yachtsman and Paddington butcher, was shot.

She said that she had left him sleeping in the lounge in front of the television to
go to bed at about 11pm.

About midnight she went downstairs to bring him to bed and found his body with blood
coming from his head and blood on the wall behind him.

A .22 calibre Brno (Brno) rifle with a silencer attached was found several hours later
dumped in Long Bay, about 2.5km from the Hatfield home, with the serial number filed off
and bolt missing.

Experts said that the weapon was most likely to be the one that killed Mr Hatfield.

Mrs Hatfield was charged with her husband's murder in 1997 at Lismore after Mr Busby
went to police claiming that she had confessed to the murder the year before.

Mr Busby, the prosecution's main witness, told the court that Mrs Hatfield had said
to him: "I shot him. I did it. Pow pow pow pow. One for me, one for my mum and one for
each of my girls Julia and Amanda."

He secretly taped two conversations he had with Mrs Hatfield in which the prosecution
alleged that she had spoken about the killing.

Under cross-examination by her barrister, Paul Byrne, SC, it was revealed that Mr Busby
had smoked and supplied marijuana, been convicted of four drink driving offences, changed
his name several times and had outstanding warrants for his arrest in Victoria and Queensland.

Mr Byrne put to the jury that the tapes did not implicate Mrs Hatfield in the murder
and that in them she could have been referring to infidelities she had during her marriage
to Mr Hatfield.

He also said that the shooting had all the hallmarks of a professional hit.

The prosecution alleged that Mrs Hatfield had shot her husband because she suspected
that he was having affairs.

The jury took about 10 hours to return its verdict after retiring on Thursday at about 12.30pm.

Outside court Mr Byrne said that Mrs Hatfield's health had begun to suffer recently
and was probably related to the strain of the trial.

AAP gl/ah mg

KEYWORD: HATFIELD NIGHTLEAD

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