‘She knew too much’: Ex-bikie watched woman ‘killed with baseball bat’

The jury heard Carroll had a drug addiction and had met Parkes and Sloan while living in motels around Liverpool in 2020.

Crown prosecutor Darren Robinson told the jury Carroll had withdrawn $8000 from her superannuation and “invested” it with Parkes after learning he was dealing methamphetamine.

“She saw an opportunity to make a dollar without doing f— all for it, to be honest,” Parkes told police.

“She just had to invest in it with Pockets and drive him around.”

But prosecutors told the jury Carroll wanted her money back – so he and Sloan plotted her murder.

“[Parkes] and Robert Sloan murdered Ms Carroll because they believed that Ms Carroll knew too much about their drug supply activities and posed a significant risk to them,” Robinson said, closing out his case against Parkes on Monday.

“And because Ms Carroll had given the accused $8000 and wanted it back.”

The pair were captured on CCTV, the prosecutor said, moving Carroll and her items out of her room at the Hunts Hotel in Liverpool.

The final image of the small, dark-haired woman showed her carrying bags and items down the hallway of the hotel on the evening of July 11, 2020.

They allegedly took her to a garage in Smithfield where she was held, without her phone, for two days, the court heard.

Grainy dashcam footage, recorded early in the morning of July 14 and played to the jury this week, captured Parkes’ blue ute on the dark, remote road leading to Sandy Point quarry in bushland south of Sydney.

The court heard Parkes told police he had driven to Sandy Point to torch Carroll’s car, he believed as part of Sloan’s plan to “teach her a lesson”.

He repeatedly denied any knowledge of a plan to kill Carroll at the quarry.

The prosecutor asked the jury why Sloan would have waited for Parkes to arrive at the quarry if he was acting alone.

“He could have killed Ms Carroll and waited for [Parkes] to arrive,” Robinson said on Monday.

“If the truth is that he went there to burn Ms Carroll’s car, why did he need to workshop possible answers to that question?

“There is a very simple answer to those questions; the truth is that [Parkes] attended Sandy Point in the early hours of the 14th of July, 2020, as part of an agreement to kill Ms Carroll.”

The court heard Parkes had been telling associates before his arrest that Sloan was a “predator” who had killed Carroll in front of him and he was traumatised.

“It’s because what happened was not part of any plan, and not part of any agreement, by Mr Parkes,” barrister Nathan Steel said on Tuesday.

The jury are expected to retire to consider their verdict after Justice Natalie Adams summarises the case against Parkes later this week.