Desmond Bernshaw
Desmond is one of those dodgy chaps who cannot take no for an answer. Theres a lot of it about!
He took Karen for a date, paid for her dinner and believes she owes him something as a result.
The text message exchange between Desmond and Shelia Blige show he had an ‘appointment’ with her at the time of the murder.
The presence of his mobile phone and car at the scene merely show he attended his session.
Not Guilty
Sheila Blige
Poor old Sheila, just an entrepreneur trying to offer a service to the community and suffering nothing but abuse from Karen.
Karen’s actions cost her countless customers and sullied her good name in the community.
Sheila was in the company of fellow suspect Desmond at the time that Karen was meeting her maker.
This can be seen from the text message confirmation between the parties.
Not Guilty
Wade Manners
Wade is sick and tired of Karen trying to interfere in his property empire business.
Wade and his son Wyatt were busy starting a fire in their recently purchased building at the time Karen took her plunge.
Like many an arsonist Wyatt likes to hang around to see his handy work in progress hence his phone still being in the area.
Not Guilty
Malcolm Reeve
Malcolm is a shoddy builder who Karen hounded via negative reviews and social media posts. Her behaviour was starting to cost him serious money.
He may be a terrible builder but he’s not a murderer.
At the time Karen drew her last breath Malcom was nibbling popcorn in front of the original Star Wars movie
Not guilty
Kate Martin
Former colleague Kate Martin was literally driven to the point of insanity by Karen’s behaviour and allegations.
Even following Karen being fired from the newspaper we see she is still aggravating Kate and putting her stories at risk.
Kate has no alibi despite claiming to have been at the newspaper office all night.
She used her access at the paper to place the false obituary using the word barbarous to describe Karen. Once she learnt the new word she couldn’t help reusing it in the fake suicide note and again in her story about crime in the Daily Retriever. We also learn in this piece that she is well aware of the need to leave her phone switched off when committing a crime.
Guilty
Oh Karen,
What a pain you were!
On the night of her death she was visited by Kate Martin who hoped to persuade her to stop posting on her Facebook page about Wade Manners.
Karen had been expecting a takeaway delivery and so opened the door to let in her killer. An argument ensued and Kate pushed her way into the home leaving the door open. Karen ran up to her mezzanine level where Kate again challenged her and finally shoved her backwards through the railing (it really was a poor build).
She was in the process of writing the fake suicide note (We know this is fake as the handwriting does not match that of Karen’s journal) when the food delivery arrives. The delivery driver notes the open door and not seeing Karen which is unusual.
The food arrived at 8.14pm, we can surmise that as the delivery driver did not hear any argument taking place nor the crash of Karen falling through the railing, that the murder occurred some minutes prior to 8.14.
Kate then sends an apology text to Karen’s sister, we know this is unusual as Karen always places xx at the end of every text.
Kate then makes good her escape and heads to the newspaper office where she switches on her phone and claims to have been there all night in a message to her editor.
Let me tell you how this idea came from a real case I worked on….
Back when I was a detective on the burglary team I dealt with a job where the suspect was known to the victim and also had been seen stealing from her house by various witnesses.
The issue was that everyone involved only knew him by his nickname not his real name.
Now our police intelligence systems knew exactly who he was when his nickname was mentioned and so we arrested him nice and quickly but we had a battle on our hands to get him charged since he was never actually ‘named’ by any witnesses.
During the interview, he kept denying being referred to by his nickname (despite having it tattooed on his arm!!!!) and we eventually had to supply multiple statements to the prosecutor from officers who had known him by his nickname during his entire offending career.
Sometimes its just all about the language 🙂
