Murder accused killed himself in prison

man waiting to go to trial for murdering his wife used a sheet and twine to hang himself in the shower of his prison cell, an inquest has heard.

Neil Heyward had been in custody for about 18 months, after being charged in December 2007 with the murder of his de facto wife Glenys Heyward, when he took his own life at the Port Augusta jail in June 2009.

The pair's son Matthew and a farmhand on the family property, Jeremy Minter, were also charged with her murder and later jailed after a long trial.


In her prepared opening of an inquest at Port Augusta on Tuesday, counsel assisting Amanda Taylor said Heyward had taken the twine from the prison laundry where he worked.

He had tied it to one end of a bed sheet and managed to slide the other end of the sheet in between a bench top in his cell and the shower wall.

The sheet was then hung over the shower wall attached to the twine which had been fashioned into a noose.

Heyward also placed his belongings in his bed to make it look like he was asleep.

Ms Taylor asked SA coroner Mark Johns to note that another man, Brian Keith Dewson, took his own life in similar circumstances at Port Augusta in 2000.

In his case, Dewson slid a strip of bed sheet under a utility shelf, tying it to a steel support bar.

At the time a coroner recommended the safe cell principles be adopted in prisons throughout South Australia as a matter of urgency to prevent such deaths.

"The case is relevant to this matter as the equipment used to facilitate the suicide, being the utility shelf or bench top ... are identical but for size," Ms Taylor said in her opening statement.

She said the two deaths came nine years apart, "in the face of repeated coronial recommendations".

Earlier this year an appeal court judge described the murder of Ms Heyward as planned and callous. He rejected a bid by Minter to have his 23-year jail sentence reduced.

Ms Heyward, 53, was bludgeoned to death in an empty house on a property near Mt Gambier in SA's south-east.

Neil Heyward inflicted the fatal blows on his estranged wife to prevent the break-up of the family's $6 million farming and property assets.

The woman's body was buried on a property in western Victoria and went undiscovered for several months after she went missing.

The inquest was continuing.