A police transcript of an interview with the man accused of raping and murdering Irish woman Jill Meagher was today released by the Melbourne Magistrates Court.
The edited transcript from a 10-hour interview reveals that Adrian Bayley (41) blamed an argument with his girlfriend about his "ongoing jealousy and possessiveness" for his aggression on the night Ms Meagher was killed.
Mr Bayley pleaded guilty yesterday to raping Ms Meagher, but not guilty to two other counts of rape and one charge of murder. He is accused of raping and strangling the Drogheda woman in a laneway in the Melbourne suburb of Brunswick last September.
The police transcript says Mr Bayley saw Ms Meagher walking down the road and ran to catch up with her.
"I was just walking ahead of her and we'd already interacted on Sydney Road, and that's when she rang her brother. She was actually telling me about her father," Mr Bayley said.
He told police interviewers that Ms Meagher looked lost.
“You know it wasn’t really my intention to hurt her,” he said.
“I spoke to her, you know and said, look... I’ll help you. She flipped me off and that made me angry, because I was actually trying to do a nice thing... and I didn’t take well to her response.”
The court heard that Mr Bayley accosted Ms Meagher at 1.38am and dragged her into a laneway off Hope Street on September 22nd last, one minute after her husband sent her a text message asking if she was OK.
“I actually apologised... I can’t imagine how how she felt, but I know how I felt. It’s not nice, man, it’s not nice. And all I thought was, ‘what have I done?’,” Mr Bayley says in the police transcript.
“I cannot believe that it — it went that way. I swear.”
Police allege he left Ms Meagher’s body in the laneway while he went home to get a shovel and his car.
He allegedly returned at 4.22am, put the body in the boot and drove 50 kilometres to Gisborne South to bury Ms Meagher on the side of the road.
“I cried, man, and I dug a hole ... I didn’t cry for me,” Mr Bayley told the police.
Police say he admitted to raping and strangling Ms Meagher, blaming it on an argument he had with his girlfriend earlier that night, and that he had an “angry and aggressive demeanour which he transferred onto the deceased”.
“I’m going to jail for a long time... I hope they bring back the death penalty before I get sentenced... I have no life left,” Mr Bayley said.
“They should have the death penalty for people like me.”
Police allege that Mr Bayley’s girlfriend found a broken SIM card from Ms Meagher’s phone when she was washing his clothes.
“Before [his girlfriend] had the opportunity to ask the accused about the SIM card, the accused was arrested by homicide detectives,” the police said.
Mr Bayley has been committed to stand trial in the Victoria Supreme Court.
