A PERTH woman accused of killing 18-year-old autistic man Aaron Pajich wrote to the actor who portrayed serial killer Freddy Krueger to tell him the movie character was a father figure.
Jemma Lilley, the 26-year-old supermarket worker charged with murder, spent a fourth day giving evidence in her own defence, after having made allegations implicating co-accused and housemate Trudi Lenon, 43.
Lenon’s lawyer Helen Prince produced a letter that Lilley wrote to the actor Robert Englund, following several weeks of evidence from witnesses testifying that she was obsessed with and researched murder and serial killers.
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READ NOWIn the 2014 letter she referred to “Papa Freddy … my protector”.
“He was my protector when I was young, a young child is someone who needed protecting, a guardian angel … I had Freddy and would rather have someone that can defend me,” Lilley told a Supreme Court jury on Thursday.
“Everything is perfect if I get to hug Freddy.”
Lilley insisted she knew Krueger was a fictional character but mentioned she had “met Freddy at a convention and he gave me his address” when she referred to Englund.
Mr Pajich’s body was found in a shallow grave in the backyard of Lilley and Lenon’s home a week after he was believed to have been killed with a knife and garrotted in June 2016.
The women have both pleaded not guilty, but have made allegations against each other.
Ms Prince spent much of Thursday accusing Lilley of having experienced a shift in her “grip between fantasy and reality” based on her writing, including a book she had once written about a serial killer as a 16-year-old.
Some of her writing mentioned strangling and stabbing in the same manner as Mr Pajich died – “fighting urges”, “watching life drain from a person” and the “feeling of dominance” from taking a life.
Lilley wrote about feeling no emotions but copying how other people acted to pretend so she could have friends.
She insisted it was fictional, representing the serial killer character SOS she says would be a part of her next book.
She rejected Ms Prince’s suggestion that it was not fiction, but a personal diary.
Texts and evidence from numerous witnesses have suggested Lilley referred to herself as SOS and former Woolworths colleague Matthew Stray says she confessed and accurately described how Mr Pajich was killed before police knew he was dead.
“The fantasy world you had been creating since you were at least 16 was becoming real,” Ms Prince said.
An image from a video saved on Lilley’s phone was also produced, showing a female actor cutting a man’s throat from behind, similar to how police believe Mr Pajich was killed.
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