Robert Crawford trial: Frances weighed up leaving husband before alleged murder

Not long before her body was found next to a ride-on mower on the sprawling, off-grid property she shared with her husband, Frances Crawford wrote a series of notes to self.

Among them was a list of pros and cons for staying in a marriage with the man she knew to be a cheat and liar - and who is now on trial accused of her murder in the Brisbane Supreme Court.

The cons were the potential loss of the mother of three’s close relationship with her daughter Jessie, who had opposed allowing her father to move back into the family home, as did youngest son Jake.

Christmas gatherings would be awkward. Friends would have difficulty accepting her decision. And there was the “ongoing reality” her husband was more than likely to cheat again.

Then there were the pros.

Among them, she wrote that staying with Robert Crawford would be a testament to God’s faithfulness: faith that a broken couple could resolve their differences and “do amazing God work together”.

There were financial advantages: the couple’s property was conservatively valued at $2 million. Her family, no matter how divided, would be restored. She would have a companion for life.

And then there was this: “I am attracted to this man - they’re hard to find (and) I’m picky.”

Frances Crawford continued to pick her husband - whom she had temporarily kicked out a year earlier after she contracted chlamydia from him, due to one of his many affairs.

Her sister Tamara Davis testified to the jury that Frances said her marriage was “in disrepair”.

It was beset by infidelity and suspicion, with Crawford forced to undergo regular polygraph testing as one of a number of strict conditions imposed by his wife if she was to stay.

He boasted to one female friend he could beat the tests anyway.

Crawford, 49, now stands accused of killing his wife of more than 25 years, then staging her death to appear she had been the victim of a late-night rollover on a mower her children have testified they never saw her ride.

It was a bitterly cold winter’s night in the early hours of July 30, 2024, when the former RAAF pilot called triple zero in the high country of Upper Lockyer, near Toowoomba west of Brisbane.

His wife was cold, too.

Crawford was panic-stricken as he told the operator he was struggling to free her from under the mower. At one point in the 22-minute call, the operator asks, “What was she doing mowing in the middle of the night?”

He provided CPR but it was too late. Paramedics told Crawford “she’s gone” shortly after their arrival, with signs of rigor mortis already apparent.

Text messages between the couple on the evening of July 29 purportedly show Frances Crawford asking her husband to move the mower inside, before the sprinkler system around the home was activated.

The jury heard from another RAAF pilot, Peter Wuttke, Crawford told him his wife may have attempted to move the mower inside herself “to prove a point” while he was otherwise preoccupied.

Prosecutor Chris Cook - who has described Crawford in florid terms as a “love rat” and “master manipulator” - accused Crawford of fabricating the messages between his wife and himself to cover his tracks.

He also called him a “Top Gun” in his professional life - and a terrible husband.

Crawford’s barrister Saul Holt KC has countered that being a serial philanderer - admissions to the extent of Crawford’s extramarital liaisons were agreed after opening submissions - does not make him a killer.

The jury has been shown graphic images of Frances Crawford’s body next to the lawnmower, tilted on its side.

Her nose was badly bloodied, and there was severe bruising and abrasions in her neck area.

She also suffered a severe laceration to her scalp, with forensic scientist Owen Esaias telling the jury he found blood on the rocks of the retaining wall above her body.

He also found droplets of blood on a towel and bath mat inside.

The images of Frances caused obvious distress, with some observers of the trial left in tears.

Holt, for Crawford, has explained how his client tried to free his wife from under the steering wheel of the mower, which he said lay across her neck.

On Thursday, the jury heard from pathologist Andrzej Kedziora, who performed an autopsy on Frances’ body.

He said he had great difficulty in reconciling her injuries with a lawnmower falling, or being dropped on her.

He told the jury the insides of both Frances’ eyelids showed “pinpoint” or petechial haemorrhages where increased blood pressure in the head had burst the smallest veins.

Such haemorrhages were often seen in cases of asphyxia, including by strangulation, he said.

Among her notes, Frances Crawford wrote she did not feel safe with her husband, something she also told police officers when Crawford broke into the house a year before during a period of separation.

She told them her husband’s definition of domestic violence was limited to hitting.

Their son Jake has testified he feared for his mother’s safety, while their daughter, Jessie, described her father as an “abuser”.

In bodycam footage of a police interview shown to the jury, Crawford sits shivering and tearful under a blanket in the kitchen of his home, well after four in the morning on July 30.

He told officers he thought his wife was watching Netflix and he only woke up when he realised she hadn’t come to bed.

The trial, before Justice Lincoln Crowley, is scheduled to continue until November 20.

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