What really happened? Inside the murder of Lisa Harnum
On Tuesday 11 February at 11:06am, convicted killer Simon Gittany was sentenced for murdering his 30-year-old fiancee Lisa Harnum.
His new girlfriend, Rachelle Louise, was not at the sentencing hearing,
"I knew it would be over 25... 26 years, non-parole period of 18 years," Rachelle said, first reading the final verdict of Gittany's sentence via text message.
"Told you it would be over 25, I knew it."
In the second part of Sunday Night's exclusive investigation into the death of Lisa Harnum, and the secret life of Simon Gittany, Louise staunchly stands by her 40-year-old boyfriend's innocence.
But she also revealed that she will only stay with the convicted killer for five years before starting a family of her own.
“I do want to start a family of my own one day, so I’m not going to wait that long," Louise said in an exclusive Sunday Night web extra.
"Right now I said he’s got five years.”
VIDEO: RACHELLE LOUISE'S EXTENDED INTERVIEW
In the extended online interview with Steve Pennells, Louise also revealed astonishing insights into her private life with Gittany - including that the convicted killer "just does cute things all the time".
"Really, he always does things for me - like in the morning, he’ll wake up before me to make me green tea and if it’s cold 'cause I haven’t got up, he’ll make me another one so that I can have one when I get up," she said.
"My relationship with Simon is so full of love," she said.
"He’s very intuitive to women... he’s very in touch with his emotional side.
Louise detailed Gittany's version of the events which led to his fiancee's tragic death, vehemently dismissing ideas that Gittany would be strong enough to lift Harnum, who weighed 50 kilograms, over the glass railing of his 15th-storey balcony.
"By the time he got there, she was already almost over [the balcony], like her left leg was just about to go over," Louise said.
"He goes, 'just a split second, and she was just gone'."
Lisa Harnum fell to her death from her apartment overlooking Sydney's Hyde Park on July 30, 2011.
VIDEO: SIMON GITTANY INVESTIGATION PART 2
Harnum's fiance Simon Gittany was found guilty of throwing Lisa off his balcony in an 'apoplectic' fit of rage when she tried to walk out on him, refusing to reveal a secret from her past that he was obsessed with discovering.
Central to the case against Simon Gittany was what happened in his apartment in the 69 seconds before Lisa Harnum plunged 15 stories to her death.
Sunday Night reconstructed the crime scene inside Simon Gittany's apartment and called upon experts to investigate both the Prosecution and Defence versions of those fateful 69 seconds inside an exact reproduction of the apartment’s living area, and balcony.
VIDEO: WALK THROUGH SIMON GITTANY'S 'APARTMENT'
Journalist Steve Pennells put the Gittany Defence theory that Lisa Harnum climbed over the balcony by herself to the test.
"He says by the time he reached the railing, she had slipped she was lying across the awning below, one leg was hanging over, and she was gripping for life," he said.
A fingerprint expert revealed it was near impossible to get an accurate fingerprint reading from smudged fingerprints on glass - an effect Pennells found could have happened if Harnum had, in fact, climbed over the balcony glass by herself, as the Gittany Defence suggests.
Partnering in the investigation, journalist Ross Coulthart called on one of Australia's leading forensic pathologists, Professor John Hilton, to see if it would be possible that Lisa Harnum was made to be unconscious in under 69 seconds, as the Prosecution put forward.
"It's entirely possible for a person to render another person unconscious," he said.
Speaking exclusively to Sunday Night in part one of the investigation, Louise vowed to prove her boyfriend innocent and refuted the evidence which is likely to see him serve 20 years in prison.
“I don’t make a statement based on something Simon’s told me. I have worked through the case completely,” Louise said.
The Sunday Night investigation revealed a telephone call in which Harnum is heard trying to placate Gittany's control and rage.
"I am not having a go at you,'' she says in the recording of the phone call," to which Gittany replies: "We can do this nicely or we could do it a different way."
"I always wait at home for you," Harnum pleads.
"Like, I don't go anywhere. I don't do anything without your permission, without asking, without you being OK with everything, and I don't do anything other that what it is you tell me to do. Nothing."
Visit Rachelle Louise's website, www.freesimon.com.au
If you are a victim of domestic violence, find help by calling the national White Ribbon hotline on 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732).
CATCH UP ON PART 1 BELOW
