His partner,Natasha Beth Darcy,told first responders and investigators that Mr Dunbar had taken his own life,adding he was depressed about his sexuality,his relationship with his mother,and a serious leg infection that led to his admission to hospital amid amputation fears in the weeks before his death.
But on Tuesday,following a two-month-long trial and three days of deliberations,a NSW Supreme Court jury found Darcy killed him.
During the trial,the court heard the depression Mr Dunbar suffered was,in the opinion of his psychiatrist,caused by the “gaslighting” and exploitative behaviour of Darcy after she moved into his home with her three children and started making “cruel” comments and material demands.
It was the Crown’s case that Darcy began spreading lies about her partner’s mental state in the months before his death – telling friends and family he was gay,and exaggerating his mental and physical health issues. At the same time,she was goading him to kill himself and using Google to research how to murder him and make it look like suicide.
As early as February 2017,Darcy was running searches on poisonous spiders,fungi and snakes. By March,she was searching epidurals,spinal taps and the number of tablets needed to die by suicide. In June,her Googling included a search for “how to commit murder”.
Throughout the following month,her searches honed in on the method she would eventually use to kill Mr Dunbar. Along with searches for murder by inducing stroke or heart attack,she looked into drugs she could easily access,such as her son’s ADHD medication,Mr Dunbar’s own antidepressants and veterinary sedatives.