‘Mum, it's bad': Accused killer's ‘out of the ordinary' phone call

The Age

2 days ago

At 2pm on January 16, Tsiliris said she answered a call from Sultana who repeatedly said 'It's bad', to which she asked, 'What's bad?'
'I had no idea what he meant, but I could tell it was out of the ordinary in terms of his behaviour and how he was talking,' her statement read.
As she met her son on Lethbridge Street in Penrith, he turned up in Isaac's car and kept saying: 'It's bad.'
'I didn't know what to take from that,' she told police.
'I thought, 'What's bad?' I thought maybe she didn't get the job or something.'
She said Sultana parked in Isaac's car park and took her into her apartment, where she saw blood in the entryway and a 'pressure mark' on the wall.
Tsiliris told police she looked towards Isaac's bedroom and saw her lying on her back with blood on her face. In shock, she ran out of the unit, yelling 'I'm gone, I'm out of here', saying she was too traumatised to check on Isaac. Instead, she went to the police station to make a report.
Also tendered to the judge-alone trial were the statements of Isaac's parents, Garry and Deborah English.
They both described instances where Isaac told them Sultana and her were only friends and he wanted more, but she did not.
Deborah said she saw Isaac and Sultana at Isaac's unit the day before she was killed.
'During the day Dayna told me that she did not want a relationship and that Paul was moving his stuff into her unit and she did not want that as it felt like she was in a relationship,' her statement read.
Meanwhile, Garry described a heated argument on Christmas Day in 2022 in which Sultana told him how much he cared for Isaac and how he could 'give her the world and treat her like a lady'.
'I said, 'Paul, she likes you as a friend, you have to accept that',' Garry wrote.
'He got in my face and told me that I have to tell Dayna that he was good for her.'
During opening addresses on Monday, Crown prosecutor Yvette Prowse said the trial would hear testimonies of three women – including two former intimate partners – suggesting a pattern of physical and verbal violence when Sultana believed relationships were crumbling or felt rejected, saying their similar experiences were 'not a coincidence'.
Loading
Sultana's barrister Gregory Woods KC told the court his client did not kill Isaac, the Crown's case was largely circumstantial and there were no eyewitnesses to the murder.
He said Deborah's police report did not state her son had committed murder and that Sultana's decision to burn her car and belongings stemmed from 'panic' rather than guilt.
He said his actions were consistent 'with a man who believed that he might be blamed in these circumstances because he had previously been accused of bad behaviour by ex-girlfriends'.
The court heard Isaac died of strangulation, had blunt-force injuries to her face and body and was found with two cords around her neck.
Tuesday's evidence began with testimonies from a forensic pathologist and the lead crime scene investigator.
The trial continues.