It’s a bizarre crime that tore through a sleepy regional town in Victoria, Australia.
A stay-at-home mom was found guilty of drugging and killing her husband by lacing his favorite lemon cookies with sleeping pills.
The outback town of Walpeup in northwestern Victoria, Australia was torn in half after 68-year-old Noel Payne was killed inside his own home by his wife Rebecca Payne in 2020.
“I was absolutely devastated,” Noel’s daughter Tracy Payne told Nine’s A Current Affair through tears.
The Paynes appeared to be a normal country family from the outside.
But those closest to them say their marriage was far from happy.
Noel first met Rebecca when she lived next to his daughter Tracy in Gorokan, New South Wales.
Tracy said she thought Rebecca was bad news and she never wanted a romance to blossom between the pair.
She said her neighbor and her father hit it off and they quickly married before setting up a new life together in country Victoria where they shared wholesome holidays with friends.
But neighbors said the relationship was marked with violence and allegations that Noel beat his wife.
Family friend Barry told A Current Affair he saw “bruises on her arm and … chest” too.
“I believe he used to punch her,” Barry said.
In court, prosecutors alleged Rebecca wanted to get out of her marriage — that she was upset about another woman Noel had living in their home with them, and had also had enough of being beaten.
The court heard that Rebecca had dreamt of drugging her husband for months and while testifying, she told the jury she just expected him to just “feel sleepy and go to bed” the night she finally enacted her plan.
Barry said Rebecca was a good cook and Noel liked her biscuits.
“[They] always had biscuits and cakes,” Barry said.
On September 1, 2020, Rebecca baked a big batch of lemon biscuits and crushed up some temazepam pills with a mortar and pestle.
She used the powder to lace the icing of one cookie and set it aside for Noel, which she served to him that night with a cup of Milo.
He never woke up after that.
Rebecca admitted that when she found her husband with no pulse she didn’t try to resuscitate him and she didn’t call and ambulance either.
She claimed she panicked and quickly wrapped the body in a blanket before tying each end with duct tape, dumping him in a chest freezer and strapping the freezer door closed.
A few days later Rebecca dragged the freezer to a neighbor’s backyard.
Shortly after, a resident wrenched the lid open, called police and Rebecca was arrested.
She admitted manslaughter and claimed she didn’t mean to kill her husband, but the jury didn’t believe her and she was found guilty of murder.
Medical examination of Noel’s body couldn’t determine whether he died by drug overdose or suffocation and Tracy has questioned whether her dad was still alive while in the freezer.
“Did he wake up, was he trying to get out?” she said.
Now Tracy has nightmares about what happened and says she’s been left with nothing but his ashes. “She robbed me of my father, not being able to say goodbye to him,” she said.