Leniency plea was fake: brothers

The murder trial of Noor Ellis, which is playing out slowly one day a week in a balmy Balinese court, had just broken on Wednesday when Peter Ellis sent a frantic text to his brother John.

Peter was staying in Bali but keeping well away from the court and the woman he says he no longer sees as his mother but as a cold-blooded killer.

He also believed that any appearance by him would be latched on to and falsely painted by her legal team as support.

On Wednesday, Mrs Ellis' lawyers ramped up her defence and produced a surprise letter to the court they said had been signed by John, begging for leniency for his mother because she was the family's "backbone".

Peter found out a short time later. "I was disgusted and felt physically sick at the possibility of my brother supporting the mastermind of my father's murder," he said.

He sent a text to John: "Did you really write that?"

John said he had not.

The brothers say the letter presented to the Indonesian court was forged. And that letter is central to their mother's bid to escape a possible death sentence for the premeditated murder of their father.

"It seems they have thought they could get away with the forgery just as much as with the murder," Peter said yesterday.

"Noor has nothing to lose, she's doing everything possible to get away with it."

The brothers are trying to get the letter withdrawn, which is easier said than done in a case in which the children of the victim - and, tragically, of the murderer - are being shut out of the court process.

They have no line of communication with Indonesian police or the courts and are being ignored by their mother's legal team at the same time her lawyers are saying they are on her side.

Peter says they are wary of being used by her mother's legal team but feel helpless.

It has happened several times since his nightmare began in October when the brothers read in Perth on the internet that their father, Australian businessman Bob Ellis, had been found murdered in a Balinese rice field and their mother had confessed to the crime.

Peter and John were tricked into posing with their mother at the murder scene in a photo that was released to Indonesian media as a sign they had "forgiven" her.

Mrs Ellis has also sought to bribe them, then divide them, and has tried to convince them to sell a block of land, splitting the money three ways, which would have helped the brothers, who are struggling financially.

But they refused because it would have also given her a treasure chest they didn't want her to have in Indonesia's malleable court system.

Peter and his older brother, John - the quieter of the two who had always been the one closest to his mother - have stuck by each other. Both say they are devastated but determined to see justice play its course, whatever that means.

"Personally and emotionally it gets worse week by week," Peter said yesterday.

"I can only imagine what Dad's last moments were like, being beaten to the floor by a mob, then suffocated before having his throat cut multiple times while Noor stood by watching him agonizingly bleed to death.

"This is just one of the many thoughts that go through my mind on a daily basis."

While the planned executions of Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran dominate headlines in Indonesia, the trial of Mrs Ellis has mostly played out under the radar. Mr Ellis' body was found on October 21, bound and wrapped in plastic and his throat had been slashed.

Police allege that Mrs Ellis arranged the killing and that money was the motive. She has been charged with premeditated murder, which carries the death penalty in Indonesia.

Mr Ellis was well-known in Perth and Bali and had an extensive business empire worth an estimated $30 million across Australia, Indonesia and New Zealand.

When she was arrested late last year, Mrs Ellis confessed to police and also to her Perth-based children, Peter and John, that she paid $14,000 to a group of hit men to carry out the killing.

But she has argued since that she was abused, coerced and "possessed by an evil spirit" when she did it.

"The allegations that my father mistreated Noor are complete lies," John said yesterday.

"At the moment we are hearing Noor's side of the story. No one has mentioned the supportive and kind-hearted providing father who we all knew."

Peter said he did not see Mrs Ellis as his mother any more, only as "a calculated and ruthless murderer".

"She previously said to John and I, when we first met her after she murdered our father, that there was a monster inside her who made her murder Dad," he said.

"The only monster I see is Noor."

I was disgusted and felt physically sick. " *Peter Ellis *