Jury told alleged murder victim may have died from 'broken heart'

In short: Raelene Polymiadis is standing trial in SA's Supreme Court accused of fatally injecting her parents with insulin 14 months apart in 2022 and 2023. In her closing address to the jury today, Ms Polymiadis's barrister said the jury cannot exclude the possibility Mrs Anderson died from broken heart syndrome upon learning she would not be going home from hospital. What's next? The trial continues. A woman allegedly murdered by her daughter could have died from a broken heart upon learning she would be going to a nursing home, a jury has been told. Raelene Polymiadis, 66, of Craigmore, is standing trial in South Australia's Supreme Court, after pleading not guilty to murdering her parents, Brenda and Lynton Anderson, by injecting them with her own insulin 14 months apart in 2022 and 2023. The trial, which has been running for four months, previously heard that Ms Polymiadis "deliberately cut short" the lives of her parents. "It's the prosecution case that Ms Polymiadis deliberately administered fatal doses of insulin to her parents, killing them," prosecutor Michael Foundas told the jury during his opening statement. "She poisoned them to death, she murdered them." In her final address to the jury today, Ms Polymiadis's barrister Marie Shaw KC said the prosecution had not excluded the possibility that Mrs and Mr Anderson had died on "their terms". "He and his wife had made a firm choice. They were going to leave this world on their terms," she said. Mrs Shaw said that the possibility that Mrs Anderson died from heart failure, and "broken heart syndrome", in March 2022 — and not insulin poisoning — could not be excluded beyond a reasonable doubt. She told the jury that it was Mrs Anderson's "worst fear" that she would be made to live in a nursing home and that she had been told by a doctor in the lead up to her death that she was "not likely to be going home" from hospital. "It was no coincidence you might think members of the jury that may have contributed to [Mrs Anderson's] respiratory failure," Mrs Shaw said. The court previously heard that Mr Anderson died 14 months later, in May 2023, after he was found unconscious on his kitchen floor with a "large amount of insulin within his body". Mrs Shaw today said that the prosecution had not excluded the possibility that Mr Anderson accessed Ms Polymiadis's insulin and injected himself. "He was talking about leaving this world because he wanted to control the terms on which he left," she said. "I will submit to you; the prosecution had not excluded as just a reasonable possibility that Lynton Anderson did what he said he was going to do and took his own life." During the trial, the jury was played covert police listening device recordings which captured Ms Polymiadis praying and saying, "please Lord, forgive my sins". Mrs Shaw today told the jury that the recordings should not be interpreted as Ms Polymiadis confessing to murder but rather accepting responsibility for her parent's deaths. "Her sense of responsibility for these deaths, members of the jury, is because her insulin played a part," she said. "When you look at these prayers, members of the jury, I ask you to look at them through the spiritual and moral code that they represent. "Under the moral code, if you fail as the watchman, you have blood on your hands." The trial continues.