Qld: Man accused over Keyra said death must have been mistake

AAP General News (Australia)
08-28-2000
Qld: Man accused over Keyra said death must have been mistake

By Suzanne Klotz

BRISBANE, Aug 28 AAP - A man accused of murdering a nine-year-old girl said that if
he did do it, he must have "snapped", Brisbane Supreme Court was told today.

Leonard John Fraser, 49, of Baker Street, North Rockhampton in central Queensland,
has pleaded not guilty to murdering nine-year-old Keyra Steinhardt on April 22, 1998.

Keyra was attacked while she was walking through an allotment on her way home from
school, with witnesses seeing a man rape her, then stash her body in the boot of his car.

A number of people put Fraser at the scene at the time of the attack and DNA tests
revealed Keyra's blood and hair was found in the boot of Fraser's girlfriend's car.

Today, a taped police interview was played to the Supreme Court jury of Fraser talking
to police after he had just shown them where the body was hidden in bushland, north of
Rockhampton, two weeks after Keyra's death.

"It'll be something that's just gone wrong, I'm being honest on that. Maybe she had
a weak skull or that," he told police.

"I'm still coming to terms with it, if I did do it."

Fraser claimed to police in taped interviews that he must have "snapped" and hit Keyra
as she walked home from school, but his memory of the incident and his subsequent hiding
and dumping of the body were "hazy".

"I know a lot of people say I'm callous, but I know myself it must have been an accident,
and that like something went wrong," he told police during the conversation in the car
on the way back to the station.

The trial is continuing before Justice Ken Mackenzie.

AAP smk/ch/rs/br

KEYWORD: FRASER (CARRIED EARLIER)

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