THE ex-girlfriend of a professional golfer said she thought he could have been responsible for the bashing death of Penny Hill in Coolah 21 years ago, a coronial inquest heard yesterday.
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Madeleine Feehan told Tamworth Coroner’s Court that her then golfer boyfriend Ross Kitto sat on her and pinned her to the ground with his knees, before pressing his fingers around her neck on the night before 20-year-old Penny Hill was discovered unconscious on a roadside.
“... Just like he was going to snap my neck,” Ms Feehan told the court during her evidence.
The court also heard Black Stump Motel owner Colin Baigent was among staff members to hear her screams and come to her rescue after Ms Feehan bit Mr Kitto’s thumb.
Ms Feehan was one of eight people called to give evidence in relation to the brutal death of the Penny Hill, who was beaten and left for dead three days after arriving in Coolah from her hometown of Narrabri for a week-long trial as a nanny for Mr Baigent’s children in 1991.
She told the court she used the words “help me, please help me” which were the same words heard by Leeola Davis when she was woken up from her sleep at a neighbouring home that night.
Ms Feehan said she believed Mr Kitto wanted to kill her and that he could have been the one who beat Penny Hill.
That night she stayed at a motel staff member’s house but said when she went back to the hotel room she scoped it out to see if there was anything that “linked him” with Penny’s bashing.
Despite the previous night’s events she drove back to Sydney with Mr Kitto but said she was in “stay-alive mode” because she thought Mr Kitto would come after her if she ran away.
“I was still frightened that he was going to come and get me,” she said.
Mr Kitto is living in New Zealand and has not been subpoenaed to provide evidence at the inquest.
Ms Feehan told the court at some stage on the Monday Penny was discovered she walked into the motel shop when she heard who she believed to be Barbara Baigent talking to a woman about wanting to “sack the nanny”.
Ms Feehan said she could remember thinking “how cold and callous; the woman’s just been beaten.”
The third day of the inquest heard from Tracey Lansdowne who said she was “sacked” by Barbara and Colin Baigent two weeks before Penny Hill started work at the Black Stump Motel.
Under cross-examination she said she was 17 years old and approached while in the motel laundry by Mr Baigent, who was holding two glasses of wine.
She said Mr Baigent was drunk and he began to touch her inappropriately by putting his hands inside her top and pants.
Mr Baigent’s solicitor, Warwick Hill, suggested that Ms Lansdowne was “making it up” and had “absolutely no memory” of Mr Baigent touching her at all.
“If he didn’t walk in, how come he was touching me?” she said.
“I still can’t even say it.”
She said she told her aunt, Kaye Landers, about the incident but it was not publicly heard until the first inquest into Penny’s murder in 1992.
Ms Landers was a former motel employee and claimed she was also touched inappropriately by Mr Baigent, but his solicitor suggested she was also making it up.
Ms Landers said her husband previously confronted Mr Baigent when he heard his niece Tracey tell him what happened to her and Mrs Baigent allegedly “took a swing” at her husband.
Coolah motel cleaner Josephine Gilbert described Mr Baigent as a “toucher” – but only the type of man to “touch your arm.”
“I put it down to nothing other than that. That was just his nature. He was a showman,” she said.
She said when news of a brutal bashing spread, Mr Baigent went to the hospital with a photo of Penny and came back shaken and said: “I never want to do that again”.
Mrs Gilbert said when police spoke with her about the case, motel chef Bob Lee would seek her out while cleaning and ask if the police had asked about him.
Justin Landers told the court he reported seeing Bob Lee leave his Land Rover and go to his caravan in the early hours of the morning. When Justin said hello, Mr Lee didn’t say a word.
The inquest continues today before Magistrate Sharon Freund.
COOLAH resident Marie Maybury said most of the town’s residents had their own version of events about the death of Penny Hill.
Ms Maybury told the media outside the court that she hoped the cold case would soon be solved so the Hill family could sleep at night.
She was subpoenaed last week to appear at the inquest. She made a police statement in July 1991, a few days after Penny died.
“It’s been a sleepless week,” she said.
“Twenty-one years ago I made a statement and didn’t even think that 21 years later I would get subpoenaed to come to court.
“It (talk of Penny’s death) is virtually an everyday occurrence ... everyone’s got their own story to tell.”